The Ghost and Jacob Moorhead (5 page)

She responded to a question and then fell back to musing.
Almost
, she thought,
I would do as the earl suggests and go north
—
and
,
also as he suggested
,
take colored clothing as well as my blacks for those times I need not fear nosy neighbors spying on me
.
That is I would if he would come up with a good
…
reason
…
for me to do so
. She thought of her miserly widow’s portion with loathing.

The thing holding her back from going was not really his lordship’s stingy offer to pay the cost of travel, but far more the lack of certainty of how her arrival would be viewed. Jacob was such a strange man. Their last interview had not gone as she’d hoped it would. In fact he’d left abruptly when she’d only
hinted
at marriage.

“Yes?” she asked when Lady Merriweather’s tone indicated she’d missed something. “I am so sorry. I fear my mind wandered there for a bit.”

* * * * *

“Jenna?” Mary came on through the door around which she’d peeked. Her old friend was awake and sitting up against her pillows and smiled a welcome. “I hear,” Mary added, mischief in her eyes, “that you’ve been a bad girl.”

Mrs. Jennings’ eyes opened wide. “Mary, you must not tease me so. Hm—” She blushed. “I mean,
Lady
Mary…”

“You mean no such thing,” scolded Mary.

Mrs. Jennings shook her head at the hint she should forget such formality between them. Mary had treated her as a friend from the time she’d discovered the irregular but happy relationship between her father and Mrs. Jennings. “I was informed you were coming. Are our people taking care of you?”

“Of course they are. Especially our niece. What a delightful young woman she has grown to be.” Mary grinned. “Oh, you’d be amazed at how, even though surprised by our unexpectedly quick arrival, she instantly set to organizing us and feeding us and only just now left me to my own devices.” All the time she’d been speaking she’d been closely observing the ailing housekeeper. “I had hoped to find you up and about but you still look drawn and too pale, Jenna. You are taking good care of yourself, are you not?” she scolded. “We really cannot do without you, you know. In fact Jacob tells me you are to retire.” Mary’s eyes widened at the shock evident on Jenna’s face. “He hadn’t told you? Silly boy. You will be his guest from now on, living here and helping me chaperon her properly. We’ll have to see to hiring a new housekeeper, will we not?”

Jenna swallowed her shock that decisions concerning her future were being made without her consent. “I suspected they were plotting my retirement but I’ve not agreed. How could I live here? Jacob’s
guest
? Oh no. And with Verity as well. So very awkward, her being her grandfather’s granddaughter and me only a servant. Oh dear, how could I?”

Mary chuckled, mentally kicking herself for letting slip a decision her cousin Jacob hadn’t yet revealed. “If you will not be Jacob’s guest then you will be mine. A pair of eccentrics shocking the neighborhood with our antics!”

“Chaperons shouldn’t be eccentric,” objected Jenna.

“Shouldn’t we? Oh dear, I’ll have to put away my foreign clothes and buy a wardrobe suitable for visiting and I’ll have to wear all those uncomfortable garments every day just in case company arrives unexpectedly—as it will as soon as the local swains get a really good look at Verity.”

That last notion settled into Jenna’s mind, which began clicking over in obvious ways.

Mary once again was irritated with herself. She didn’t want Jenna promoting a relationship to one of the local gentry when it was her dearest wish to see Verity and Jacob facing an altar together and saying vows to no one but each other. She sighed. Softly. And then set her mind to distracting Jenna with tales of her travels since she’d last visited this particular estate.

Not
, of course, the last adventure, the one that very nearly ended her adventures altogether. A small part of her mind wondered if Rube had found a suite of rooms of which he approved, ones he could defend against her enemy if the enemy discovered her whereabouts and came, once again, to— But no. Surely not. It had been very nearly two years since the last attempt. Despite what Rube believed, surely the madman had given up?

* * * * *

“He
what
?” It was several days later when Jacob swung around from the mirror where he stood brushing his hair. He stared at his valet.

“He has yet to sleep in his bed,” repeated the valet, holding up Jacob’s best evening coat in one hand, the clothesbrush in his other.

“It is getting on for a week since Mary arrived—”

“And worse,” interrupted the outraged and inattentive valet, “the creature is fanatical about washing himself. Does it each and every day out in the washhouse after the maids and washerwomen are done with it. Top to bottom, clean clothes, the whole thing.
Every day
.”

Jacob wasn’t as shocked by that as George was. George objected that
Jacob
wanted a bath far too often to be at all necessary. It couldn’t, George believed, possibly be good for a man’s health.

If the man’s habit of regular bathing wasn’t upsetting, Jacob
was
interested in where Mary’s servant slept. He’d been surprised the first time he’d run into the man called Rube. He’d asked Mary about the tall golden-skinned man with eyeglasses and long curling beard, a scar high across his cheekbone. A friend, he’d been told. A prince in his own country…

But a
friend
? Surely Verity’s aunt hadn’t…

Would
she take a lover—and such a lover? A
foreigner
? From who knew where—except Mary mentioned the north of Africa and the desert and long months traveling from one side to the other and back again? Nomads?

Jacob was determined to check his suspicions and, if there was any basis to them, confront Mary. Whatever she did in her own home, she couldn’t behave that way with Verity in the house. Then he relaxed. The notion was nonsense. Surely it was nonsense. She couldn’t…wouldn’t…

Or would she? She’d lived her life in as strange a fashion as even an eccentric man might do. But then Jacob thought of the pair’s ages. Mary was a bit older than his mother. Maybe five years? But surely she was that much older than Rube. Rubin?
Prince
Rubin or Rube something else? Whatever. Didn’t their ages preclude…

Jacob was silent as he finished dressing and went downstairs to where he and Mary met before dinner.

“Why doesn’t Verity join us?” asked Mary the instant he walked through the door. She sounded rather cross when she added, “I thought perhaps she ate her evening meal with her aunt but I’ve found she does not. So why is she not dining with us?”

“You see if you can convince her to do so,” he said, strolling toward a side table on which Reading had set out several decanters. Unable to bring himself to bluntly question Mary, Jacob lifted one, looked at it, set it down and picked up another. Once he’d checked the third, he turned frowning. “Reading has yet to find a good white wine. Either that or he is deliberately ignoring my orders.”

“I’ll check the wine cellar tomorrow. If he’s ignoring you, we need to know that,” said Mary, wondering if the older servants, by subtle means, were hoping that somehow they might manage to evict Jacob and keep Verity. But surely they knew that wasn’t possible? That otherwise, by the will, the estate would go to the newest Lord Everston? She would set Rube to discover what was what. He was good at that sort of thing.

“I like that coat,” she said, her eyes on her cousin rather than the tatting that grew under her quick fingers.

“How do you do that?” he asked, ignoring the compliment.

“Do what?”

“That, whatever you call it, with that shuttle thing.”

“Tat?” She paused in her work and raised it slightly, looking at it. “It is quite simple. And peaceful. I find it eases tensions and allows my mind the freedom to wander.”

“Maybe I should learn.”

“Did I hear a wry note?” she asked, glancing his way and then down at her tatting, turning a corner before looking up again.

“I suppose you did.”
I won
’
t confront her
.
I
’
ll spy on her and she need never know my absurd suspicions if nothing is
…
wrong
.
“I wonder,” he continued, “if I can survive a year here. Or if I want to. If it weren’t for dear old Mud inheriting if I do not, I’d toss it up and say good riddance.”

“
Murdock Upton Denver
Tomlinson—” Mary chuckled. “He’s Mud, all right. I will be happy if he doesn’t gain a single one of the properties my father willed away from him. He’s a— No, I won’t say it. It isn’t at all ladylike to use the word I have in mind for him.” She sobered. “Jacob, there is worse. I don’t trust him. Not so far as I could see him.”

“Worse, maybe, when you
can
’
t
see him.” He looked up as the door opened. “Ah. Reading. Where is my cousin?”

“Miss Verity has, as is her custom, dined in the upper servants’ hall,” said the butler, his nose ever-so slightly elevated.

“Tomorrow,” said Lady Mary, her tone firm, “she will dine, as is proper, with us.” When Reading’s brows arched, she added, “I will tell her.” She bundled up her tatting, shoved it into a small bag and, rising, hung the bag from her belt by a hook. “Well, Jacob? Shall we go?”

He stared. “I have just realized that that gown is so far out of style I cannot even think when it was
in
style. Have you visited a modiste anytime in the past, oh, five or six years? Fifteen perhaps?”

She laughed. “I design my gowns myself, Jacob. I’ve no interest in style. Only in comfort.” Her eyes twinkled and a small catlike smile played around her lips. “If I were at home,” she added on a sly note, “I’d be dressed in a way that would truly shock you.”

“How?” He offered his arm and she took it.

“A sort of trousers and tunic set such as is worn in the Levant. I discovered how comfortable they are while visiting Lady Hester Stanhope.”

“You met her ladyship? Can you tell me if the stories one hears are true?”

“That she lives as would a man in the Eastern fashion? A sheik in his tents? Oh yes. Quite true—except it is a rambling old walled structure and not a tent. In any case, I have worn such clothes ever since.”

“But not here?”

“I wouldn’t wish to give poor Jenna such a shock it sets her back to where Verity tells me she began. Jacob,” she continued, suddenly serious, “did you know she almost died?”

“I’m aware. I’m not happy she worked herself into such a tizzy just because of my expected arrival. Such nonsense.”

“She insists the house was in such a state no one could live here…and yet she didn’t seem at all bothered that Verity, upon her arrival a week or so before my father’s death, lived with rooms under covers and cobwebs in the corners and windows unwashed and…and I don’t remember what else was supposed to be wrong.”

“Verity is her niece. She never approved her sister’s marriage to your brother. As you are well aware.”

“Nor did Father approve of my brother wedding his housekeeper’s young sister.” She glanced at Jacob. “
Sister to his lover
.”

“His…
Jenna
?” Jacob’s brows arched high up his forehead. And then he gave a soft whistle. “Sounds as if he should have understood the attraction.”

His dry tone brought a chuckle to Mary’s lips. “I thought that would surprise you. Father and Jenna were lovers from before I was born. Heaven only knows which of my mother’s lovers fathered me. Your granduncle and Mother separated years earlier. Right after Verity’s father was born, I think. The heir and the spare, you know? Which weren’t,” she added on a sad note, “quite enough, were they? But let’s not think of Mud. I like that name for him, by the way. In any case, I am glad Father accepted me as his own when it wasn’t physically possible. I called him Father and he treated me as a daughter.”

Her voice trailed off and the look in her eye told Jacob she was indulging in happy memories. He allowed his soup to be served and waited for the footman to stand back before he responded. “As, in many ways, he treated me as a son.” Jacob sighed softly, thinking of his own father who had been rather distant. “However that may be, Verity is my cousin and I have tried to see she takes her place at this table in the evening. I hope you are more successful.”

Mary nodded. “We must hire a new housekeeper too and, once she has recovered enough to do so, Jenna too will join us. In any reasonable world, she’d have been my father’s widow rather than his housekeeper and would belong here by right.”

Jacob smiled, his eyes gleaming with good humor. “I always thought you a right one, Cousin Mary, but I didn’t know you were so, um, liberal as all that.” And then he remembered his suspicions of Prince Rube…and wondered…

“I lived in too many countries, learning about too many cultures, to think ours is perfect and shouldn’t be changed in any way. Jenna and my father were deeply in love, but by the rules of our society were not supposed to wed.” Her voice softened to a musing tone. “That my brother had the courage to wed Jenna’s younger sister… I sometimes think that shamed my father in some way, but he still could not bring himself to wed his housekeeper.”