Still, the incident at the theater cast a pall over their London idyll. While Macklin’s house remained delightful, the world outside seemed less welcoming. They stayed in town another week, then drove back to Frithgerd on a sultry July day with thunder rumbling in the distance. Once again, Daniel’s mother’s notebooks traveled with them in a strongbox, returning to their place in the estate’s safe.
As they pulled up before the front door, Penelope tried to think of it as coming home. On the one hand, she knew the place and its denizens well by this time. On the other, she met them now in a new role—as mistress of the house—and she had wondered if this would cause difficulties. She found no hesitation in their greetings, however. Even the housekeeper seemed pleased to greet her.
Foyle, who had stayed on at Rose Cottage with the dogs and their goat, also seemed content. He had no desire to join the Frithgerd household. He preferred his autonomy, at least for now. Penelope suspected that eventually he and Mrs. Hart might come to an understanding, and she would join him there.
Kitty was another question. She’d stayed at Frithgerd during their absence, and enjoyed the company thoroughly, as she was quick to tell Penelope. Indeed, she was full of chatter about the other servants and the routines of the place. Already, they seemed to have become more important to her than Penelope had been. “Only fancy,” the girl told Penelope. “Cook learned her trade from a Frenchman who worked in the king of France’s kitchens. The one whose head they chopped off!” She clove the air with one hand. “He saw the gee-o-tine come down like an outsized meat cleaver and decided then and there to get out of the country. Well, who wouldn’t?”
Penelope was not yet well acquainted with Frithgerd’s cook. Clearly she was worth knowing better.
“He came over on a fishing boat, not knowing a word of English and only seventeen, and got a lowly place in a pastry shop. And his con-fections were so good he was hired away by a duke. That’s where Mrs. Jensen met him, when she was just a scullery maid.” Kitty’s pointed face was full of animation. “His name was A-tee-enn. She helped him with his English, and he showed her how to make hawt qui-sine.”
Penelope wondered what else they might have taught each other. And then she wondered if Mrs. Jensen could make éclairs. “An interesting story.”
“She told me while I was helping in the kitchen. And, miss, if you please, Mrs. Jensen said she’d teach me.”
“To cook?”
Kitty nodded. “Particularly pastries. That’s what I like best to make. Remember my Shrewsbury cakes?”
Penelope remembered the shapeless blobs all too well.
“I’d have to start out peeling vegetables and the like,” Kitty went on. “But if I work hard and do well, Mrs. Jensen’ll show me all she knows. She says some great houses have cooks who just do pastry. The royal palaces do.” The girl’s blue eyes shone.
“Have you spoken to the housekeeper?”
“Well, she knows what I’d like, but she said we must wait for you, miss. My lady, I should say.” Kitty ducked her head and grinned. “Forgot. Forgot to wish you happy too, my lady.”
Marveling that Kitty had found ambition, Penelope agreed with the plan. It was actually a relief. To fill her position as a viscountess, Penelope required a trained ladies’ maid, which Kitty was not. She’d worried that Kitty would expect to serve her personally, but in fact, as soon as her own future was settled, she had put forward the claims of her friend Betty, who’d been learning all the necessary skills. And so the latter was appointed Penelope’s attendant, Kitty plunged into the mysteries of sugar and butter and cream, and everyone seemed happy.
Henry Carson called the following morning to report significant progress on the bath project. Penelope and Daniel walked with him to inspect the small mill that had been erected on the banks of the creek behind the house. Its wheel was already turning, driving a pump that spewed water into a line of wooden pipes running off toward the house. “Quite a powerful flow,” said Daniel, observing the racing liquid.
“Has to be, my lord, to get the water up to the tank in the attic,” replied Carson.
They followed the line back to Frithgerd. The pipes rested first on a wood framework and then on top of the wall that circled the garden, partly to hide them and partly to maintain their elevation. Water gurgled and hissed inside.
In the bathing chamber, the walls were newly plastered and the floor tiled. More importantly, the tub had arrived. “It’s as big as a horse trough,” Daniel exclaimed.
“I believe it began manufacture as one, my lord,” said Carson. “But it’s been lined with copper and trimmed in oak.”
“You could fit two people in there,” said Penelope.
Daniel had been thinking the same. He caught her eye. When she flushed, he smiled. It seemed quite possible that his wife shared his imagining about their new bath. “Drains?” he asked.
“At the bottom there, my lord. We’ve connected it to the main one in the scullery.” Carson put his hand on a sheet of metal that had replaced part of the wall behind the tub. “This tank is fitted into the kitchen fireplace. The water comes in from above and is warmed by the fire.”
They rested their palms on the metal and felt the warmth.
“There’s also a place to put coals underneath the tank—in the kitchen that is—to get the water hotter if need be. We’ll be attaching the spigot tomorrow.” He indicated a protruding stub of metal pipe, now sealed.
“And then we can try it out,” said Daniel. Penelope didn’t look at him this time, but she didn’t need to. He could tell she had followed his train of thought. “Very well done, Carson. You’ve surpassed yourself.”
“Thank you, my lord. It was a new sort of work, but we figured it out.” The man patted the side of the tub, looking proud.
“You did indeed.”
“Other local landowners might be interested in having baths,” said Penelope. “If they’d like to see ours when it’s done, we can arrange that.”
Carson blinked, then looked intrigued at this prospect of more work. “Thank you, my lady.”
How like her this was, Daniel thought. She was always thinking ahead, seeing possibilities for others. He’d provided his household with a skilled and thoughtful mistress, which was more than it had had in many years. How lucky for him that she was also a sweet and passionate wife. His heart swelled in his chest as they walked out of the bathing room through the new doorway into the blue parlor.
Penelope surveyed the trunks of papers still stored there. “We should get back to the records,” she said.
“Ugh,” said Daniel.
She smiled at him. “The mess hasn’t gone away just because we married.”
“More’s the pity. Where’s the fairy godmother with the magic wand? Or the elves who come in the night and finish all the work?”
Penelope laughed. “Don’t they make shoes?”
“The brownies then. They clean, don’t they?”
“Not the same as sorting documents, I’m afraid. I can take over the job, if you like.”
Daniel was tempted. The disarray was as much hers as his now. But he realized that he liked working with her. How else was he to see that tender smile? “No, I’ll help.”
There was the smile. She was glad of his company. Daniel smiled back.
A footman appeared as they were about to enter the estate offices. “Callers for you, my lord.”
The look on the young man’s face told Daniel that these were the visitors he’d been dreading. He had left instructions about them. “I’ll see who it is.”
Penelope turned. “If we have visitors, I should come.”
“They seem to want me.”
“I want to be a good hostess to the neighborhood.”
“I’ll send word if you’re needed.”
With a nod, she went on. Daniel closed the door of the estate office behind her and turned to the footman. “Is it the two men I told you about?”
“Yes, my lord. I put them in the front parlor as you ordered.”
This was the least welcoming of Frithgerd’s reception rooms, right off the front door. “Good. Now you may go and tell them that no one is available to receive them. Take Joseph with you. They won’t be pleased.”
“I can handle them, my lord.”
“I don’t doubt you, Ned, but it will be better to have two large footmen ready to show them out.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Their horses were left outside?”
“No one took them to the stables.”
“Very good.” Daniel let the footman go, then slipped upstairs to watch from a window. He kept well out of sight behind the draperies.
A few minutes later, the two Foreign Office men appeared in the drive. They were obviously annoyed, particularly the blond one with the side-whiskers, who was gesticulating angrily. His companion tried to calm him, but he turned and stared up at the house. Though he knew he was invisible in the shadows, Daniel felt an urge to step back in the face of the fellow’s glare. He resisted, and after a moment, the two men mounted up and rode away.
Penelope sat at the desk in the estate office with a pile of papers before her. She was looking into space rather than at the records, however. She’d suspected the identity of the visitors from Daniel’s manner and a sidelong glance. And of course she’d known they’d come. Men like her interrogator didn’t give up. She felt a little guilty leaving them to Daniel, but she didn’t want to see them. After all, they were here about the notebooks, not her. Not her, she repeated silently. It was time to put those fears behind her. Still, she couldn’t concentrate until Daniel came back, after a surprisingly short time. Perhaps she was wrong about the callers, Penelope thought. “Who was it?”
“No one important.”
Should she ask, or not? “I thought it might be those men from the Foreign Office.”
Daniel looked at her as if he was unsure what to say.
“I prefer the truth to protection,” Penelope added. The latter was an illusion. And reality was worse than ever when it was torn away.
“They called, but I didn’t see them. I turned them away.”
“That will only make them more determined.” Such people relished breaking down resistance. They preferred a battle and acted as if every word was a stratagem. Penelope had decided, after weeks of bewilderment, that this made them feel useful.
Daniel sat down beside her. “Don’t worry. I will see to this.”
Appreciating the sentiment, even if she couldn’t quite believe in it, Penelope smiled at him.
“What are we looking at today?” He picked up a document and ran his eyes down it.
“The top layer from trunk number two. Mostly tradesmen’s bills so far.”
“Good God, this one is dated 1693. Are they all so ancient?”
“These are. What is it for?” She leaned over to look. “A tester bed with carved posts and an embroidered tapestry canopy. Very grand. There are others for expensive furniture. And yards of cloth. I think one of your ancestors was redecorating.”
“That sounds like the massive old bed in the east wing. Supposedly, royalty slept in it.”
“Really? Which royalty?”
“I don’t know.”
Penelope bent over the page, her blue eyes alight with curiosity. As always, Daniel enjoyed the enthusiasm in her expression. “Let’s see, who would it have been in 1693?” she asked.
Daniel ransacked his brain for school history lessons. “William and Mary? Wait, I think one of my several times great-grandmothers was a crony of Queen Anne’s in her youth.”
“Really? Perhaps she left letters, or even a diary.”
“Well, if she was like the rest of my relations, she never threw anything out.” Daniel remembered something else. “Her husband, or son, fought under Marlborough in France.”
“These stories should be recorded in a family history.”
“There’s another job for you then,” said Daniel. “I might have consigned much of this to the next Guy Fawkes bonfire.”
“You wouldn’t have!” Penelope looked sincerely shocked.
“Probably not,” he admitted. “More likely I’d’ve left them where they were in the attics and shoved the piles of paper down here in with them.”
“How can you not be fascinated?” Penelope asked.
“I’m interested when you tell me,” he replied. “It’s the hours of sifting through dusty documents I can’t bear.”
“I’m going to put together a history,” she said. “You can tell me about the portraits in the gallery, can’t you?”
“I know their names and a bit about most of them.”
“And I’ll find the papers they left.” She looked triumphant.
“The house of Frith is very lucky to have you.” Daniel enjoyed her flush of pleasure, as well as his success at distracting her from their unwelcome visitors. He had no illusion that he’d disposed of that matter, however. And indeed, later that day he received a letter from the Foreign Office agents, delivered by a neighborhood boy on a pony. Daniel took it off to the library to read in private.
The language was less insolent than the bewhiskered man had dared face-to-face, but also more formal. Daniel was required to hand over his mother’s papers, they informed him, under the law of the land. As they cited no specific edicts, he didn’t worry much about that pronouncement. But the veiled references they made to Penelope enraged him. The notebooks must not be “left to fall into dangerous hands.” They must be kept from “those whose loyalty to the crown had been put in doubt.”
Briefly Daniel enjoyed imagining the agents’ reaction if they’d seen Penelope deciphering parts of the notebooks in London. Apoplexy seemed the least of it. He toyed with the idea of having her translate all of his mother’s entries for her family history. But in fact, he didn’t wish to cause any problems for his country. And he could see that a government records office probably was the best place for the notebooks. He simply hated the way they were going about it, and the continuing threat hanging over his wife. He knew it nagged at her. He was determined to do something about it.
Daniel wondered if Macklin had returned to London. He’d said he would be back by now, and the earl was a critical element in the plan Daniel had formulated. He’d left a letter for Macklin at his town house. It was to be hoped that the older man was even now acting on Daniel’s request.