Amanda Scott - [Dangerous 02] (7 page)

Catching Letty’s eye, Charley saw that there was no need to warn her to keep silent. Thinking of how she would have responded at the same age to an impertinent rebuke from a tradesperson made her very glad that Letty’s temperament was less fiery than hers had been.

Angelique said with much more politeness, “I have mourning gowns already made up, Mademoiselle Charlotte, just like any other modiste of quality. They require only fitting and hemming, so if you will allow me to take some measurements—What do
you
want?” She hurled the indignant question at a ragged-looking child a year or two older than Letty, who had stepped through the curtain from the back.

“Beg pardon, mum,” the child murmured, “but Bess wants to know—”

“Can you not see that I am engaged? When I am finished, you may believe that I will teach you never to interrupt me when I am assisting a customer.”

The child paled and clutched her hands together under her limp apron.

At the same moment that Charley noted the red imprint of a hand on the little girl’s white cheek, she recognized her. “Jenifry Breton, is that you? Good mercy, I nearly didn’t recognize you, you’ve grown so. Come here, child, and tell me how your mama and papa are getting on. I’ve just returned from France, you know, so I have not seen them in months.” Glancing at the seamstress, she added, “You must know, Angelique, that Jenifry is the daughter of one of my grandfather’s tenants.”

The child gazed anxiously at Angelique, who nodded curtly. Only then did Jenifry say, “Good day, Miss Charley—Miss Charlotte, I mean,” she added with a darting look at her stern mistress. “Mama and Papa are well, I expect, though I haven’t seen them in months myself, not since I got apprenticed to Madam Angelique.”

“Good mercy,” Charley exclaimed, looking at the seamstress. “Is that not a trifle harsh? Surely, she might have leave to visit her parents from time to time.”

“Not for the first year,” Angelique said firmly. “Once our girls know the rules and have shown they can abide by them, and once I know they take well to stitching, then perhaps. Until then, it is not so good for them always to be shifting from Papa and Mama to Angelique.”

“I see.”

“Go away now, Jenifry. I shall speak with you when Miss Tarrant has gone.”

Jenifry blanched again, and Letty said quietly, “Perhaps she could select some black ribbons for me, Cousin Charley, while Madame Angelique assists you.”

Charley said, “That’s an excellent notion. Lady Letitia will need several widths, I think, Angelique. Sash lengths, and for her hats—and black gloves, as you suggested. She requires only one mourning dress, however, to wear the day of the funeral. No one expects to see a child rigged out like a baby raven for months on end, thank heaven, and gray is one of her favorite colors. She will have plenty of suitable outfits if the trimmings are altered.”

“As you say, mademoiselle. Now, as to yourself, perhaps I might suggest …”

Charley allowed herself to be drawn away then, but after making her selections and before arranging for payment, she said quietly, “I hope you were not intending to punish Jenifry too harshly merely for coming to ask you a question.”

“She will be soundly whipped,” Angelique said uncompromisingly. “My girls have strict orders never to enter the shop. She must learn to obey my rules, miss.”

“Nevertheless, Angelique, I would take it kindly if you were to let her off with a scolding this time. I could not, in good conscience, continue to patronize a shop where a child from Tuscombe Park is harshly used. Much as I should dislike having to travel all the way to Bodmin or St. Austell …” Pointedly, she let her words trail to silence.

Angelique nodded. “It shall be as you wish, mademoiselle, certainly.”

Having arranged for delivery the following day of two gowns suitable for deep mourning, and a few accessories, Charley and Letty took their leave.

“How glad I am that I had this black habit made for me in London,” Charley said. “Now that Kerra has removed the pink epaulettes and piping, and replaced the mother of pearl buttons with jet, it is perfectly suitable. Oh, but how vexatious! Dewy the Baker’s shop is closed now. I wanted to buy you a special Cornish treat.”

“Thank you, but I don’t feel like enjoying a treat right now, in any event,” Letty said. She remained silent after that until they had left the cobblestones and the resulting clatter of hoofbeats behind them. Then she said fiercely, “I am very grateful to have been born a Deverill, believe me!”

“I suppose you are thinking of Jenifry. I have known her since she was born, you know. Their cottage is on the edge of the moor near the river. I used to ride up there and play in a pool nearby. In fact, her father, Cubert, taught me to swim.”

“Papa taught me,” Letty said. “Cousin Charley, do you know that awful woman beats the girls who work for her? Not just when they are naughty but for setting stitches too far apart or for getting a fingerprint on the material. Jenifry says she makes them pick up their skirts behind and takes a switch to their bare legs. If she complains to her husband about them, their punishments are even worse.”

“Good mercy,” Charley said.

“Jenifry and Bess are the only ones left to do the work right now, too. There was another girl, but I think she must have run off. I don’t think Jenifry was supposed to tell me about her,” she added thoughtfully. “She kept darting looks at her mistress while we talked, and that was one of the times Angelique looked back. Jenifry didn’t say another word, except about ribbons.”

“I’m sure it is a hard life,” Charley said, “but if Jenifry learns the business from Angelique, one day she may have a shop of her own. She might even go to a bigger town—even London—and make her fortune. It’s too bad she angered her mistress today, but I took care that she won’t be whipped this time. I believe that if she works hard and always does her best, one day she will be very thankful for her training.”

Letty did not look convinced, but when Charley suggested a gallop, she agreed with alacrity.

Their mourning gowns arrived the following day, and the day after that, the Earl of St. Merryn breathed his last breath. Charley was with him when he died, and she felt abandoned, even a little angry, but she experienced almost none of the profound grief she had expected to feel. St. Merryn had played a large part in her life. Now he was gone, but she felt only the same empty numbness she had felt since the accident. It seemed strange, but she did not allow her thoughts to dwell on it for long. There were too many other details to attend to, no time to contemplate mere emotions.

Stephen Kenhorn arrived from Bodmin that afternoon. He met with Charley in her grandfather’s library, a spacious room lined with books that she doubted the hunting-mad earl had ever read. Kenhorn, a thin, wiry man with a habit of wringing his hands together, seemed almost put out with St. Merryn for dying before his arrival.

“I’d have come last night, Miss Charlotte, but for the unfortunate circumstance of my having had business yesterday in Truro. Everything there is in a great bustle, you know, thanks to all the preparations in train to consecrate the new cathedral.”

“What must we do next, Mr. Kenhorn?” Charley asked, having no patience for amenities. She had already sustained a trying hour with Lady St. Merryn, who clearly believed her husband had died to make her life more difficult than it was already.

The solicitor primmed up his lips. “Fortunately, you had the good sense to describe his lordship’s condition when you wrote of your parents’ deaths, so I came prepared for the worst. I’m just sorry I could not get here sooner. Your father, I regret to say, made no will. He had no private fortune, in any case, only the allowance Lord St. Merryn gave him each quarter. Still, I had hoped I might get here soon enough to remind his lordship of that fact.” He clicked his tongue in frustration.

“What about my mother’s money?”

“Well, Mrs. Tarrant had her marriage portion, of course, but if there is a penny left of that, my dear, I shall own myself astonished. Your parents were not careful with their money, never were.”

Recalling many arguments between the two over that painful subject, Charley sighed. “I suppose you mean I am entirely dependent upon what Grandpapa left me.”

Mr. Kenhorn looked uncomfortable. “Ah, as to that, my dear, I should be talking out of school if I were to reveal details of his will before the proper reading. That must take place, of course, directly after the funeral. And that will be … ?” He raised his brows quizzically.

“They’ll all be buried tomorrow,” Charley said. “There is no point in waiting longer. The family is too spread about to expect anyone to come, and I refuse to pack all the bodies in ice merely so that more relatives can see them put underground.”

“Just so,” he said, glancing at her with undisguised concern. “Just so.”

“I suppose you think me callous, sir. I am not. I am merely practical. My grandmother is most distressed by all this, as you might imagine. It will not help her to know that her son, her husband, and her daughter-in-law are all stored away down in the ice house, awaiting the gathering of a proper funeral party.”

“Perhaps you would prefer to sit down whilst we finish our little talk,” the solicitor said with a worried frown.

“If you like, certainly.” She gestured toward a chair near the hearth, where a cheerful fire crackled, and took its twin for herself.

“Have you no one to support you, my dear?” he asked gently. “No older female—or even better, a male relative?”

“I’ll manage on my own, Mr. Kenhorn, thank you. And that’s just as well, since I know of no male nearer than Paris, or perhaps Edinburgh, whom I’d trust to make decisions, and no female nearer than London. Now, do stop fretting, and tell me what I must do. As you must know, I have never had to deal with such a situation before.”

“Few people are ever called upon to deal with a situation like this one,” he said. “And—forgive me for speaking frankly—you are quite young, Miss Charlotte, to take on such a burden.”

“Nonsense, sir. I am four-and-twenty, an old maid quite contentedly on the shelf, and I’ve had the benefit of an excellent education. What must I do first?”

“In point of fact, ma’am, there is very little that you
can
do except see to the burials and keep the household running smoothly until the new heir arrives. Petrok Caltor will keep the estates in trim, and I will see what we can arrange about sales of sheep and such like events that must be seen to before probate is complete. No one can sell any of the property unnecessarily before then, as I hope you know.”

“What a good thing I hadn’t planned to sell the house,” Charley said.

He smiled weakly.

“What of the house in Plymouth that my parents used from time to time?”

“As you doubtless know, it has been hired out to a family for the year. We’d be in breach of contract if we tried to evict them.”

“I was not suggesting that we should. I just wanted to know. Really, Mr. Kenhorn, I would be much obliged if you would not treat me like an idiot.”

“I hope I am doing no such thing, but the fact is, my dear, that there is no dower house at Tuscombe Park. Until we complete probate and the new heir has decided what to do with you, I’m afraid that you and Lady St. Merryn—and Miss Davies, too, of course—will be obliged to remain under this roof.”

Since it had not occurred to Charley that she might have to leave Tuscombe Park, especially if her father had been unable to provide her with an independence, she was somewhat taken aback by his concern, but she rallied quickly. “I shan’t require a great deal, sir. As you must know, I do not intend to marry, and have long looked forward to reaching that stage in my life when I shall be considered old enough to set up housekeeping with a reliable female to lend me countenance. Since Papa and Grandpapa have always known that to be my intention, I daresay there will be enough. It is not as if I were expecting a large dowry to see me properly married, after all.”

Mr. Kenhorn looked very unhappy, and the following day, when the family gathered in the drawing room at the end of the gallery to hear the reading of St. Merryn’s will, Charley discovered why.

Letty was not present, since the will did not concern her. When Charley, Lady St. Merryn, and Miss Davies had taken seats, Kenhorn said apologetically, “There is a great deal in this document that no longer pertains, I’m afraid, since his late lordship quite understandably expected his son to survive him. In the event, I shan’t bore you to death by reading the whole thing unless you particularly wish me to do so.”

“On no account whatsoever,” Lady St. Merryn said, languishing on the sofa. “My salts, Ethelinda!”

Miss Davies, a stout lady with frizzy, graying blond hair, hovered over the older lady, plumping pillows and straightening shawls until Lady St. Merryn was sufficiently bolstered to sustain the ordeal.

Kenhorn glanced at Charley. “Miss Charlotte?”

“I shall want to read the whole later, sir, but for now, the salient points will do.”

He blinked, then turned his attention to the document. Raising a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles to his eyes, he said, “First, there is her ladyship’s jointure. That, of course, was settled at the time of their marriage, and his lordship believed it was adequate. It is not a vast sum—”

“It is a pittance,” Lady St. Merryn said, sitting up indignantly. “Surely, that is not all he left me, Kenhorn!”

“I regret to say that it is, your ladyship. Please, bear in mind that although his lordship was aware that in the natural way of things, and notwithstanding your ladyship’s precarious health, he might well predecease you, he also expected his son to look after you and see that you lacked for naught.”

“Don’t fret, Grandmama,” Charley said calmly. “You will continue to live as comfortably as ever. You still have your share of the Balterley money, after all.”

Lady St. Merryn brightened. “Quite right. I had forgotten that.”

Kenhorn cleared his throat. “As to that, ma’am, I am happy to say that there is still a good bit of principal left of your marriage portion. Nevertheless, you will recall that you signed a large amount over to your husband several years ago to help settle some difficulties at one of the mines. Moreover, the amount I previously mentioned includes the income from what remains of your marriage portion.”