your example,” George said.
The older woman preened like a gray bantam hen.
Violet felt a twinge of guilt for always being so exasperated with the
silly dear. She made a solemn vow to try and be more kind to her in the
future.
They entered the manor’s huge double oak doors, where George nodded to
Greaves, the butler. Light streamed in from the crescent window above
the doors, illuminating the coffee-and-cream walls and the entry’s old
parquet floor.
“Have you found something to amuse yourself with at Woldsly?” George
asked as they continued down the hall. “I confess, I was surprised when
you said you wanted to rusticate here with just Euphie. It’s a bit of a
backwater for a fifteen-year-old. Although, of course, you are always
welcome.”
“I’ve been sketching,” Violet replied, keeping her voice carefully
light. “The views here are a change from Leicestershire. And M’man was
becoming quite tiresome at home. She claims to have found a new tumor in
her right leg and has brought in a Belgian quack who is dosing her on
some awful stuff that smells like cooked cabbage.” Violet exchanged a
glance with George. “You know how she is.”
“Yes, I do.” George patted her arm.
Violet looked away, relieved she didn’t have to explain further. Their
mother had been predicting her own death since before Violet was born.
Mostly the countess kept to her bed, attended by a patient maid. Every
once in a while, however, M’man would become hysterical about some new
symptom. When that happened, she nearly drove Violet mad.
They entered the rose morning room, and George pulled off her gloves.
“Now, then, what was the purpose of that letter—”
/“Hist!”/ Violet jerked her head toward Euphie, who was busy instructing
the maid to bring tea.
George raised her brows but caught on quick enough, thank goodness. She
pressed her lips together and threw the gloves on a table.
Violet said clearly, “You were going to tell us why you changed carriages.”
“Oh, that.” George wrinkled her nose. “My carriage slid off the road
last night. Quite sensational, actually. And then what do you think?”
She sat down on one of the saffron settees, propped an elbow on the
back, and rested her head in her palm. “The horses ran away. Left Mr.
Pye and me quite high and dry—only, we were sopping wet, of course.
/And/ in the middle of who knows where.”
“Good G—” Violet caught Euphie’s censorious eye and changed her
exclamation midbreath. “Gracious! Whatever did you do?”
Several maids with laden tea trays trooped in at that moment, and George
held up a hand, indicating to Violet that she’d continue after they laid
the tea out. A moment later, Euphie poured her a dish of tea.
“Ahh.” George sighed contentedly over her cup. “I think tea would cure
the worst of mental ills if only applied in sufficient quantities.”
Violet bounced impatiently in her seat until her sister took the hint.
“Yes, well, fortunately Mr. Pye knew of a nearby cottage.” George
shrugged. “So we spent the night.”
“Oh, my lady! All alone and Mr. Pye not even married.” The revelation
that George had spent an entire night with a man appeared to shock
Euphie more than the carriage accident itself. “I do not think, no, I do
/not/ think it could’ve been comfortable for you.” She sat back and
fanned her face, causing the puce ribbons on her cap to flutter.
Violet rolled her eyes. “He’s only the /land/ steward, Euphie. It isn’t
as if he’s a gentleman from a good family. Besides,” she said
practically, “George is eight and twenty. She’s too old to cause a scandal.”
“Thank you, dear.” George sounded rather dry.
“A scandal!” Euphie clutched her dish of tea. “I know you will have your
little games, Lady Violet, but I do not think we should bandy the word
/scandal/ about so carelessly.”
refrained from rolling her eyes—/again./
“All this excitement has wearied me, I fear.” Euphie got to her feet.
“Will it put you out terribly if I have a small lie-down, Lady Violet?”
“No, of course not.” Violet suppressed a grin. Every day after tea,
regular as clockwork, Euphie found an excuse to have a small lie-down.
She had counted on her companion’s routine today as she had in the past.
The door shut behind Euphie, and George looked at Violet. “Well? Your
letter was incredibly histrionic, dear. I believe you used the word
/diabolical/ twice, which seems improbable considering you summoned me
to Yorkshire, usually a most undiabolical place. I do hope it’s
important. I had to refuse five invitations, including the Oswalt autumn
masquerade, which had promised to be full of scandal this year.”
“It is important.” Violet leaned forward and whispered, “Someone is
poisoning the sheep on Lord Granville’s land!”
“Yes?” George raised her brows and took a bite from a tart.
Violet blew out an exasperated breath. “Yes! And the poisoner is from
your estate. Maybe from Woldsly Manor itself.”
“We did see some dead sheep by the road this morning.”
“Aren’t you concerned?” Violet jumped to her feet and paced in front of
her sister. “The servants talk of nothing else. The local farmers are
whispering about a witch, and Lord Granville has said you’ll be liable
if the poisoner is from this estate.”
“Really?” George popped the rest of the tart into her mouth. “How does
he know the sheep have been deliberately poisoned? Couldn’t they just
have eaten something bad for them? Or more likely died from disease?”
“The sheep died suddenly, all at once—” “Disease, then.”
“And cut poisonous plants were found by the bodies!”
George sat forward to pour herself a cup of tea. She looked a little
amused. “But if no one knows who the poisoner is—they don’t, do they?”
Violet shook her head.
“Then how do they know he is from the Woldsly estate?”
“Footprints!” Violet stopped, arms akimbo in front of her sister.
George quirked an eyebrow.
Violet leaned forward impatiently. “Before I wrote you, they found /ten/
dead sheep on a Granville tenant farmer’s field just over the stream
dividing the estates. There were muddy footprints leading from the
corpses to the bank of the stream—footprints that continued on the far
side of the stream on /your/ land.”
“Hmm.” George selected another tart. “That doesn’t sound too damning. I
mean, what’s to keep someone from Lord Granville’s land tramping into
the stream and back again to make it look like he’s coming from Woldsly?”
“/Geor/-rge.” Violet sat down next to her sister. “No one on the
Granville estate has a reason to poison the sheep. But someone from
Woldsly does.”
“Oh? Who?” George lifted the tart to her mouth.
“Harry Pye.”
George froze with the tart still hovering near her lips. Vio
let smiled
triumphantly. At last she’d gotten her sister’s full attention.
George carefully set the tart back on her plate. “What possible motive
could my steward have for killing Lord Granville’s sheep?”
“Revenge.” Violet nodded at George’s incredulous look. “Mr. Pye bears a
grudge for something that Lord Granville did in the past.”
“What?”
Violet slumped on the settee. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “No one will
tell me.”
George started to laugh.
Violet crossed her arms. “But it must have been something terrible,
mustn’t it?” she asked over George’s chortles. “For him to come back
years later and enact his diabolical revenge?”
“Oh, sweetheart,” George gasped. “The servants or whoever has been
telling you these tales are bamming you. Can you really imagine Mr. Pye
skulking around trying to feed sheep poisonous weeds?” She went off
again into gales of laughter.
Violet poked the remaining lemon tart sulkily. Truly, the principal
problem with older siblings was that they never took one seriously.
“I’M SORRY I WASN’T WITH YOU, my lady, when you had the accident,”
Tiggle puffed behind George the next morning. The lady’s maid was
fastening an interminable row of hooks on the sapphire sack dress George
had chosen to wear.
“I don’t know what you’d have done, except end up in the ditch with us,”
George addressed Tiggle over her shoulder. “Besides, I’m sure you
enjoyed the visit with your parents.”
“That I did, my lady.”
George smiled. Tiggle had deserved an extra day off to spend with her
family. And since her father was the proprietor of the Lincoln inn
they’d stopped at on the way to Woldsly, it had seemed an opportune time
to travel on and leave Tiggle to catch up in a day. But because of the
accident, Tiggle hadn’t arrived that much later than they had. Which was
good, because George would’ve made a mare’s nest out of dressing her own
hair. Tiggle had the hands of an artist when it came to taming George’s
messy locks.
“It’s just that I don’t like to think of you alone with that Mr. Pye, my
lady.” Tiggle’s voice was muffled.
“Whyever not? He was a perfect gentleman.”
“I should hope so!” Tiggle sounded outraged. “Still. He’s a bit of a
cold fish, isn’t he?” She gave a final tug and stepped back. “There.
That’s done.”
“Thank you.” George smoothed the front of her gown.
Tiggle had served her since before George had come out, so many years
ago now. She had laced and unlaced what must be a thousand gowns and had
lamented with George over the frizziness of her orangey-red hair.
Tiggle’s own hair was a smooth golden blond, the preferred color of all
those fairy tales. Her eyes were blue, and her lips the requisite ruby
red. Indeed, she was a very lovely woman. Were her life a fairy tale,
George should be the goose girl and Tiggle the fairy princess.
She walked to her vanity table. “Why do you think Mr. Pye is a cold
fish?” She opened her jewel box and began rummaging for the pearl drops.
“He never smiles, does he?” In the mirror, she could see Tiggle
gathering her nightclothes. “And the way he watches a body. Makes me
feel like I’m a cow he’s sizing up, trying to reckon if I will calf well
another season or if he should send me to the slaughterhouse.” She held
out the dress George had worn during the accident and examined it
critically. “Still, there’re plenty of lasses hereabouts who find him
fetching.”
“Oh?” George’s voice came out a squeak. She stuck out her tongue to
herself in the mirror.
Tiggle didn’t look up as she frowned over a hole she’d found near the
gown’s hem. “Aye. The maids in the kitchen talk about his fine eyes and
pretty bum.”
“Tiggle!” George dropped her pearl earring. It rolled across the
vanity’s lacquered surface and came to a stop in a pile of ribbons.
“Oh!” Tiggle’s hand flew to her mouth. “I’m sorry, my lady. I don’t know
what came over me to say that.”
George couldn’t help but giggle. “Is that what they talk about in the
kitchen? Gentlemen’s bottoms?”
Tiggle’s face reddened, but her eyes twinkled. “Too much of the time,
I’m afraid.”
“Maybe I should visit the kitchen more often.” George leaned forward to
peer into the mirror as she put on an earring. “Several people,
including Lady Violet, say they’ve heard rumors about Mr. Pye.” She
stepped back and turned her head from side to side to study the
earrings. “Have you heard anything?”
“Rumors, my lady?” Tiggle slowly folded the gown. “I haven’t been down
to the kitchens yet this stay. But I did hear something while at my
pa’s. There was a farmer traveling through who lived on Granville land.
Said as how the Woldsly steward was doing mischief. Hurting animals and
playing pranks at the Granville stables.” Tiggle met George’s eyes in
the mirror. “Is that what you mean, my lady?”
George took a breath and let it out slowly. “Yes, that’s exactly what I
mean.”
THAT AFTERNOON, HARRY HUNCHED OVER his saddle in the relentless drizzle.
He’d expected to be summoned to the manor almost from the moment they’d
driven onto the Woldsly estate. Surprisingly, it had taken a full day
and night for Lady Georgina to send for him. He nudged his mare into a
trot up the long, winding drive to Woldsly Manor. Perhaps it was because
she was a lady.
When he’d first learned that the owner of the multiple estates he would
be managing was a woman, he’d been taken aback. A woman didn’t usually
own land by herself. Normally, if she did have an estate, there was a
man—a son or husband or brother—in the background, the real power in how
the lands were run. But although Lady Georgina had three brothers, it
was the lady herself who was in control. And what was more, she’d come
by the lands through inheritance, not marriage. Lady Georgina had never
wed. An aunt had left everything to her and apparently stipulated in the
will that Lady Georgina would have the reins of her holdings and their
income.
Harry snorted. Plainly the old woman hadn’t had much use for men. Gravel
crunched beneath the bay mare’s hooves as he entered the vast courtyard
before Woldsly Manor. He crossed to the stable yard, swung down from his
horse, and tossed the reins to a boy.
They dropped to the cobblestones.
The mare stepped back nervously, the reins trailing. Harry stilled and
raised his gaze to meet the eyes of the stripling boy. The lad stared at
him, chin up, shoulders back. He looked like a young St. Stephan
readying himself for the arrows. When had his reputation gotten this bad?
“Pick them up,” Harry said softly.
The boy wavered. The arrows were looking sharper than he’d expected.
“Now,” Harry whispered. He turned on his heel, not bothering to see if
the lad followed his o
rder, and strode to the manor, leaping the steps
two at a time to the front doors.
“Inform Lady Georgina Maitland that I am here,” he said to Greaves. He
thrust his tricorn into the hands of a footman and entered the library
without waiting to be shown in.
Tall windows draped in moss-green velvet lined the far side of the room.
Had the day been sunny, the windows would have bathed the library in
light. But it wasn’t sunny. The sun hadn’t shone in this patch of
Yorkshire for weeks.
Harry walked over and stared out the window. Rolling fields and pastures
stretched as far as the eye could see, a patchwork quilt in green and
brown. The drystone walls dividing the fields had stood for centuries
before he was born and would stand for centuries after his bones had
crumbled to dust. It was a beautiful landscape to his mind, one that
made his heart tighten every time he saw it, but something was wrong.
The fields should have been full of reapers and wagons, harvesting the
hay and wheat. But the grain was too wet to harvest. If the rain didn’t
let up soon . . . He shook his head. The wheat would either rot in the
field or they’d have to reap it damp. In which case it would rot in the
barns.
He clenched his fist on the window frame. Did she even care what his