Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

“Drop me by the bridle path,” I said as Atticus squirmed on the bench beside me. “I have an errand to run.”

“You want me to take old Ladon back to the stable?”

“For a quarter mile on a mostly straight lane, in the direction of home, yes. I think we can trust Ladon not to turn up contrary.” He might trot a smidgen more briskly without my weight in the sleigh, but that would be the extent of his mischievous tendencies.

Atticus sat up straighter. “Where you going?”

“To pay a call on Mrs. Swinburne. I’ll walk back to the Hall.”

“Ruin your boots, then, guv. Don’t make no difference to me.”

“I’ll go by the bridle path, and they aren’t my best pair.” Even as I spoke, I knew what Atticus was thinking. He had only the one pair of boots. Newish, and they fit him well. He treasured them as only a boy expected to go shoeless for much of the year could.

While I had three pairs of riding boots, a dress pair of Hessians, a casual pair, two pairs of half boots, my old cavalry boots, and my favorite pair. Utterly disreputable and divinely comfy.

“Tell Mrs. Swinburne thanks for the biscuits.” Atticus maneuvered Ladon to a halt and made the beast stand while I climbed down.

“What biscuits?”

“She sends ’em over on Mondays. Shortbread biscuits. Cinnamon mostly, though in summer lemon and orange were frequent. When I die, I’m not going to heaven unless Saint Peter promises me some of Mrs. Swinburne’s biscuits for all of eternity. She can make them look like little biscuit wreaths and biscuit stars, according to Jamison.”

“I’d forgotten about her stars. Mind you don’t prose on about them too loudly around Mrs. Gwinnett.”

“It’s Mrs. Gwinnett’s recipe, so she don’t mind. Ladon, walk on.”

Ladon responded with his version of alacrity.

I headed up the bridle path and then cut along a stone wall until I came to the hedgerow. My eyes reproached me for spending so much time in the bright sunshine, but the mission—the neighborly call on Pettigrew—had been successful. I was entitled to a bit of investigating, even if my detour meant Arthur’s afternoon mail sat for another half hour.

Mrs. Swinburne had loomed as a majestic authority over my childhood. With every passing year, she now seemed to shrink. She would never be elfin, but I towered over her, and her hair, once coal-black, was snow-white.

She hugged me on sight, though I knew that at the Hall, she would have been more circumspect.

“To see you does a body good, my lord. Tell Mrs. Gwinnett to make your portions larger. You are too thin by half.”

“I do justice to her cooking on every possible occasion, Swinnie. I bring thanks from young Atticus for your biscuits. He is your devoted admirer, along with the entire junior staff.”

“I have to pass the time somehow, and baking warms up the house. Come sit with me.” She slipped her arm through mine and escorted me down the short hallway to her guest parlor. I was pleased to see the fire burning merrily and a substantial pile of peat squares stacked in the brass bucket by the hearth.

Beyond the parlor windows, Caldicott Hall sat on its slight rise, looking austere and dignified. Without spring greenery or summer flowers, the Hall was a staid piece of neoclassical architecture. Abundant swaths of pine swagging gave the place a welcoming air. Red ribbons threaded through the wreaths hung in every other window added another dash of cheer.

“Do you miss it?” I asked, standing by the window. “The hum and bustle at the Hall?”

“I did at first.” She settled onto a tufted blue sofa and took some knitting from a wicker workbasket. “Now I wonder how I managed all I used to do in a day. The young people look in on me from time to time. They mostly want tea and sympathy, but I listen to their troubles and commiserate with their woes. I could never do that as housekeeper.”

“Her Grace tells me you are thinking of traveling in the spring.”

The needles clicked steadily, the soft periwinkle wool forming half a closely woven triangular shawl. The color was nearly the same shade Pettigrew had been wearing, though this shawl would be warmer than the rag the squire favored.

“I am not thinking of traveling in the spring, my lord, I am determined upon it. Some kind soul has provided the means. While I’m still spry enough to make the journey, I most certainly shall. I wrote to my Daphne this morning, and unless she tells me to stay put, wild seahorses will not stop me from flying to her side.”

Swinnie, bastion of domestic rectitude, was tearing up. I produced my handkerchief and took the place beside her on the sofa.

“You miss her.”

Swinnie put aside her knitting and took my offering. “Miss her? My heart breaks with longing, my lord. I haven’t even laid eyes on the two youngest, and Bradley was just a babe in arms when they sailed. My own grandchildren and they won’t know me, I’m growing so old and feeble.”

“Older, I grant you. We all grow older, but feeble? Don’t be ridiculous.” A year ago, I’d been truly feeble. Winded at the thought of climbing a set of stairs. I’d had to gather my energies just to rise from my bed to use the chamber pot, and consuming more than tea or toast had been beyond me.

Please let me not fall into that state ever again.

“Well, not feeble, then.” Swinnie dabbed at her eyes. “But one day I will be feeble, and when that day comes, I want my Daphne nearby.”

“Have you any idea whose generosity has made this dream come true?”

She studied me with the sort of scrutiny recruits faced at parade inspection. “I assumed you were behind it, my lord. It’s the sort of thing you’d do, sneaking about in the dead of night when sensible souls are all abed.”

Amazing, how she could accuse me while complimenting me. Truly, those grandchildren would be better off with her on hand.

“I am innocent of the generosity you attribute to me, but I hope you will let me know if additional means would make your journey more comfortable.”

She tossed my handkerchief back to me. “Additional means? Perish the notion. I’m rich as a nabob, thanks to whoever is playing Father Christmas. I won’t be a burden to my Daphne, and that matters to me a great deal.”

“It truly was not me, Swinnie, but it should have been. I have no idea who your benefactor is.”

“Might it be the duchess?” Swinnie asked, taking up her knitting again. “She’s ever so kind, and she knows how a mother misses her children.”

“Her Grace has not claimed responsibility, and she seemed surprised to hear of your good fortune.”

“I was certainly surprised. Cousin Philomena won’t believe me when I write to her.”

I mentally dug through neighborhood history. “Your cousin kept house for Squire Pettigrew and went to East Anglia with Miss Mandy when she married the baronet.”

“Cousin is still keeping house for Miss Mandy. Two children already and a third on the way. I hoped the squire would visit his daughter for the holidays, but Mrs. Gwinnett says he didn’t want to be underfoot if the baby came early.”

Or he didn’t want a new arrival competing for Mandy’s attention. Perhaps the old fellow was simply unwilling to risk travel in winter. I was about to comment to that effect when another piece of stray local history crossed my mind.

“Mandy’s mother died in childbirth, didn’t she?”

“Mrs. Pettigrew lived for a few weeks, though the fevers got her in the end. Squire was never the same, but Miss Mandy has wanted for nothing, despite what people say about her papa. The baronet dotes on her, too, according to Cousin.”

“The squire has apparently disdained to hire another housekeeper. I called on him just now, and his dwelling is less than spotless.”

“I do hear things.” Mrs. Swinburne paused to switch rows on her knitting. “Young Jamison took some biscuits and currant bread to Pettigrew’s, and he claims the house needs only bats and a ghost to qualify for one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels. Such a shame. It’s a fine old place.”

Young Jamison—when sober—was an accurate observer. “A thorough dusting is long overdue, and the footmen have neglected the windows inside and out. I doubt the chimneys have been cleaned since Miss Mandy spoke her vows, and that’s plain foolishness. The whole place is sad.”

“Pettigrew doesn’t want to hire new staff. His footmen recall Queen Anne’s coronation fondly, and his cook worked for Noah on the Ark. She’s a dear, but not at all in Mrs. Gwinnett’s league. Never was, if I might be honest.”

“Nobody is in Mrs. Gwinnett’s league, and I would say that to Carême himself.”

“Now who is exaggerating?”

“Certainly not me. Swinnie, you truly have no idea who is funding your travels?”

She clicked through a quarter of a row. “I do complain sometimes to Cousin in my letters. I tell her how I miss my Daphne and long to see the children. Cousin might have mentioned something to Mandy, and Mandy does write to her father regularly.”

“You think Pettigrew might be your benefactor?” Pettigrew, who had taken specific notice of the ponies in the livery stable. Pettigrew, who well knew that our church steeple had been without a bell for years.

“If the squire had that much money to spend on a widow who misses her family,” Swinnie said, pushing her stitches along her needle, “why not hire some young footmen to take that house in hand?”

Valid question. “Because that would offend the old footmen?”

“Hardly. They would boss the youngsters without mercy, my lord. That’s how it works. If you do find out that Pettigrew has turned up generous, please let me know. I’d like to thank him.”

If not Pettigrew, then who else had the means to give away such a large sum? Too many of the gentry were rich in acres and poor in cash. And yet, Pettigrew was a miser and a grouch.

Or circumstances had turned him miserly and grouchy. I spoke before common sense could stop me. “You could thank Pettigrew by organizing a thorough cleaning of his house, Swinnie. Nobody can see as much done by maids and footmen, or see it done as well, as you when you take a notion to clean.”

Her needles went still. “One cleans like that in spring, my lord, when a house can be properly aired.” Despite her demurral, her eyes had taken on a particular gleam.

“If the young people on staff at the Hall have time to maunder on about their broken hearts and lost wagers, they have time to spare you a day of cleaning at Pettigrew’s.”

“We’d need two days at least. He’ll never allow it.”

“He won’t know a thing about it. As of tomorrow, he’ll bide at the Hall for the holidays. Do your worst, Swinnie. Vinegar and newspapers for the windows, fresh sachets on the bedposts, brushes up every flue. Beeswax and lemon oil on the wainscoting, and every carpet beaten within an inch of its wool.”

The longer I spoke, the more the gleam in Swinnie’s eyes turned to a fire of determination.

“If that man made it possible for me to be with my Daphne—and I’m not saying he did and also not saying he didn’t—then I will personally scrub his floors with my own signature lavender wax.”

I rose, half dismayed at the mischief I was suggesting and half amazed at my own daring. “And you will swear everybody to secrecy, lest Pettigrew not appreciate the gesture.”

“I will counsel discretion for the sake of the squire’s pride, but secrecy and young footmen are not close companions.”

She truly knew her infantry. “I leave the details to you, then, and will be thoroughly surprised when Squire’s windows sparkle on Christmas morning.”

“They will sparkle by this time next week, or my name isn’t Helen Marie Swinburne.” She got to her feet with the energy that had characterized her throughout my youth. “I will need supplies from the Hall, and you will please alert your dear mother to this scheme, my lord, lest she think half her staff has joined the Royal Navy.”

“Her Grace will applaud your generous spirit, as I do.”

“Flatterer.” She hugged me again at the door and adjusted my purple plaid scarf so my ears were covered.

I doubtless looked ridiculous swaddled like that, but I made my way back to the Hall a bit lighter of heart for having instigated a good turn for a neighbor and a little project for a woman who knew how to keep thirty female inside staff organized and occupied.

And as to that, Pettigrew might well have been Mrs. Swinburne’s benefactor. That did not prove he’d purchased the church bell or bought the dapple gray pony.

Puzzling, the whole business. Damned puzzling.

The afternoon mail was as voluminous as it was dull. I dealt with the simple matters—pay this, thank you for that, a polite explanation that His Grace was traveling for the other—and plowed onward to the reports and estate matters.

A tap on the door made me glance at the clock.

Ye gods and dancing elves. Despite approaching darkness, I still had two hours before the dressing bell rang in anticipation of the evening meal.

“Enter.”

“I come bearing gifts,” Hyperia said, slipping around the door and closing it with her hip. “Tea and biscuits to spoil your supper.” She set the tray on my desk, right on top of my carefully sorted piles of mail.

“Mrs. Swinburne herself has admonished me to eat more. Are these her biscuits?” Little shortbread rounds dusted with cinnamon.

“They are. The stars are all gone, but Mrs. Gwinnett saved back some of these. I brought gunpowder. I hope that suits?”

Hyperia sat opposite the desk. I didn’t want the expanse of wood, blotter, and mail between us, so I came around and took the chair beside her.

“Any excuse to set aside the great debate between rutabagas and mangel-wurzels suits. Did you know it’s becoming popular to breed Norfolk ewes to Southdown rams? The progeny lack their mamas’ horns, but they mature early and make good mutton. Crossing that progeny with Cheviots or merinos might result in good-quality wool as well. Please say you find the topic fascinating, because I am only halfway through the report, and I never want to see another sheep again in all my born days.”

Hyperia passed me a cup of steaming tea with two biscuits tucked onto the saucer. “Jules, are you well?”

“Well enough. I am not Arthur, though. God in heaven, I am not Arthur. I tell you, Perry, the man is a dear brother and a conscientious steward of the family holdings, and he is also a living saint. Mangel-wurzels and rutabagas, for pity’s sake, and nobody can plant anything until a decree goes out from the Hall as to how many acres of which are most desirable.”

She patted my arm. “Spring is some months off. You have time to deliberate.”

My darling was mocking me, and I mostly deserved it. I dunked my biscuit into my tea and consoled myself with the buttery sweetness.

“How does Mrs. G or Mrs. S turn sugar green?” I asked. “Atticus was most impressed.”

“Spinach, I suppose. Mash it up, and it will turn everything, including your fingers, green. I’m told you persuaded Squire Pettigrew to join us. Her Grace is in alt.”

“Her Grace was sworn to secrecy. Pettigrew wants to make an entrance, exactly like Uncle Terrence did, and I am inclined to abet Pettigrew. He honestly did not take much convincing to join us.”

The tea was hot and sweet—I often drank it plain, but Hyperia had doctored mine with honey—and the biscuits were luscious. As rich as everyday shortbread, but sweeter and lighter.

“You don’t sound happy to add him to our collection of grouches, Jules. He’s all alone in that musty old pile of his, and winter came early this year.”

To those shut up in musty old piles, winter probably came early every year. “Mrs. Swinburne thinks Pettigrew might be financing her travels.”

Hyperia took her time selecting a biscuit from those on the tray. “What does it matter who paid the shot, Jules? She’s delighted to go, and we are delighted that she’s happy.”

Had Hyperia arranged for Mrs. Swinburne’s reunion with her daughter? “Perry, dearest…”

She dunked her biscuit and held it dripping over her tea. “What?” A little cross, a little defensive.

Rather than make a blunt accusation, I kissed her.

“I love you,” I said, which was absolutely true. “You were kind to bring me the tray, and a respite with you from rutabagas and rutting sheep is a dream come true.”

“You are ambushing me.”

“I am expressing my gratitude to you. Mrs. Swinburne is certainly grateful to whoever is funding her remove to Philadelphia.”

Hyperia bit off half her biscuit. “Jules, let it go. Somebody had the same kind idea you did, and that is simply coincidence.”

“The same somebody arranged the business with the dapple gray pony.”

“Why does any of it matter? Are you simply in want of an investigation? Aren’t the mysteries of root vegetables and sheep breeding enough to keep your curiosity in good form?”

I took another biscuit from my saucer and considered the question. Why was I fixated on the fact that my little holiday schemes had been thwarted by another? The point had never been to take credit for the gestures.

The point had been to alleviate hardship, to rectify an oversight. Or that had been part of the point.

“Arthur has done a spectacular job executing the duties attendant to the title,” I said. “He stayed at the Hall and contended with rutabagas and rents, MPs and cabinet ministers. He did all this while Harry and I were off playing soldier.”

Hyperia set down her tea cup. “You were not playing anything.”

“At times, we were. Harry especially had a flare for enjoying the job, a bit too much for my comfort. In any case, Arthur often had the harder task. I see that now. Not more dangerous, but the risks Harry and I took on were risks we chose. Arthur never chose to be the duke.”

“Very well, Arthur is a good fellow. We knew that. What does it have to do with your church bell or the ponies?”

“Arthur is a good fellow, and I want him to find his duchy in better shape when he returns than it was in when he left it. I want to pay my debt to him, Perry, a debt I wasn’t even aware I had until well after I mustered out. The reports alone… They blind me every bit as much as excessive sunshine does. Arthur has been reading them for years, taking them seriously, recalling them.”

Hyperia looked puzzled. “Arthur would say you owe him nothing. That you served your country in your way, and he served in his. Both matter, and both were done to the best of your respective abilities.”

How to explain to her that getting Harry killed and myself captured by the French was by no means a best effort? The opposite, in fact.

“You ask why the bell, pony, and Mrs. Swinburne’s bank draft matter. They matter because those gifts were to be my contribution above and beyond the call of duty. My efforts to do more than the required minimum at the job Arthur left me.”

Hyperia poured me more tea. “You are a good brother, Jules. Also ridiculous. Arthur had years to order the village another bell. He wasn’t concerned about it.”

Maybe because he hadn’t faced death at such close range as I had, not yet. Maybe because a church bell was a luxury compared to developing sheep that were equally valuable for their mutton and wool.

“Or he was concerned, but simply lacked the hours in the day to tend to the church bell too. In any case, I want to do more than hold the reins here at the Hall. I want to move at least a few matters forward. Picking out a pony for Leander was another job Arthur would take seriously if he were here, so I took it seriously too.”

“And you adore Mrs. Swinburne.”

“Somebody else apparently esteems her just as highly, but in Arthur’s books, she was very comfortably retired, and for him to meddle in any regard would have been disrespectful. I saw her situation differently. She was pining and lonely, which is no condition to be in later in life.”

Or earlier in life. At any time of life, and especially not at the holidays.

“Drink your tea, Jules.”

I complied, the tea being less sweet for having been topped up, but still hot, and Hyperia wasn’t scolding me. She was reminding me not to neglect food and drink.

“I don’t like secrets, Perry, and that’s also part of why these coincidences trouble me. I get on better when I have a puzzle to solve, though I usually grumble all the while, and this Father-Christmas-by-Stealth situation is a puzzle.”

“It is that,” she said, finishing her tea. “And how we will manage Squire Pettigrew, the aunties, and Uncle Terrence is another puzzle. I vow Bertha would criticize Saint Peter because his halo wasn’t bright enough. At the very least, she shows me the sort of elder I do not want to be.”

“You are nothing like her, dearest Perry. Now tell me why you really sought me out among the rutabagas.”

My darling looked at her hands, and lovely hands they were too. “I have a favor to ask.”

“As long as it doesn’t involve breeding sheep…”

“I still haven’t heard from Healy, Jules. Might we send a pigeon to Town and have somebody look in on him?”

“You fear he’s developed an ague?”

My teasing earned me a scowl. “People do, especially foolish people who neglect themselves at the coldest time of year. London reeks of coal smoke in winter, and Healy barely socializes anymore.”

Socializing for a fashionable bachelor was an expensive undertaking, and Healy West was trying to exercise economies.

“Whom shall I ask to look in on him, Perry?” The town house was minimally staffed, what with His Grace out of the country and the remaining family ruralizing, but through the butler, I could get word overnight to just about any London household.

“Fashionable Society has gone to the shires for the holidays,” Hyperia said, getting up to pace. “Where is Lady Ophelia?”

I rose as well, sensing the conversation had finally arrived at the subject of greatest concern to Hyperia now that I was through with the afternoon’s quotient of bleating and whining.

“Godmama is in Hampshire, I believe, or that’s where she claimed she was off to when last we corresponded. Would you like me to nip up to Town and drag Healy back with me?”

To my shock, Hyperia tucked herself against me. “What if Healy is in a sponging house, Jules? They’d charge him a fortune just to send word to me.”

Healy West, owner of considerable acreage and a pedigree that went back centuries, would have to have been a very great fool indeed to land himself in a sponging house. That was the last stop before debtors’ prison, a diabolical combination of jail and rooms to let, where every glass of water and blanket added astronomically to the debtor’s tally.

“He’s not in a sponging house,” I said, stroking Hyperia’s back. “He has funds.”

“He had funds. He doesn’t discuss his finances with me, and he’s been very secretive lately.”

The mail would reach Himalayan heights if I abandoned my post. The elders would be aghast that I’d jaunt off on little notice, and I had every confidence that in my absence Mrs. Gwinnett’s toddies would result in Caldicott Hall’s first winter bacchanal.

“I’ll leave in the morning,” I said, kissing Hyperia’s cheek. “You can make my excuses to Pettigrew for not welcoming him properly. The press of ducal business, an urgent matter with the solicitors. Make up any Banbury tale you please, and I will have Healy down here by the end of the week.”

She let me have her weight. “Thank you, Jules. I didn’t want to ask, but I no longer know my brother as well as I once did. He’s still my brother.”

We held each other, and a frisson of some vague desperation threaded through me. May the day never come when Hyperia feared to share her burdens with me. May the time never arrive when I was so consumed with duty and debts that I neglected to honor this sweet, kind, fierce lady.

She fortified me, with her esteem and her affection, with her pragmatism and pride.

I had not lied to her: I wanted to know who our at-large anonymous benefactor was, because so far, their generosity had thwarted my efforts to serve with distinction in Arthur’s stead. I had also been truthful when I’d admitted that puzzles had become nigh irresistible to me, and a vexing investigation would alleviate my creeping case of the dismals.

I had not, though, admitted to Hyperia that I hoped, if I was a good enough steward at the Hall, and a clever enough investigator, that perhaps I could be forgiven for being just the extra, illegitimate spare who’d bungled so badly in uniform.