Chapter Twenty

August 1817

O ne warm Sunday morning, George and Arabella attended the morning service at St. Edmund’s church, in Pendleford. They did not linger outside the church chatting, as some of the parishioners did, but hurried home. Confinement in the stuffy, crowded church had given Arabella a headache that grew even worse on the walk home. Even with a bonnet shading her face, the sun was too bright today.

By the time the cottage came in sight, her headache had become a hammering beat that made it difficult to think. “I wish we had a carriage,” she blurted out. “This walk is rather much in the heat.”

“It will be too much in the rain, too,” George pointed out. “Perhaps we ought to buy a horse and gig? A gig with a hood, of course, so we can use it rain or shine. What do you think?”

Arabella did not even need to think about the question. “Yes. I would hate to have to walk to town in rain or snow this winter.” A gig didn’t cost too much, did it? But they might have to hire a groom to look after the horse, and that would be an additional expense. Horses ate feed in the winter, too, she thought. Bran or oats or some such. “Can we afford it?”

George looked down at her and smiled. “Of course! It’s an essential. I ought to have thought of it earlier.”

But Arabella still worried about the cost. All their income came from money in the Funds: Uncle William’s gift and Arabella’s dowry. If their spending ate into their principle, they would have even less income in the future. It would be far better to live below their means, so that they could save more. Someday they might have daughters in need of dowries, or sons in need of professions, and they would want reserves to draw upon.

Despite her skepticism, Arabella remained silent. Her head ached too much for her to even attempt arguing with George. It wouldn’t hurt to look into the cost of a horse and a gig. Mr. Hastings might be able to advise them. He might know someone who could work as a groom, too.

She rubbed her head, wishing she knew some magic that would make it stop hurting. Her mother used to brew willow bark tea for her, but she did not even know where to get willow bark. Would the apothecary sell it? Maybe she should find out, because she usually had these headaches at least once a month, just before—

She stopped in her tracks and her whole body drooped. These pounding headaches always showed up a day or two before her courses arrived. Well, that answered the question about whether she was with child yet, didn’t it? Ugh. Forget the willow bark. She ought to send someone to the apothecary for laudanum. A few drops of laudanum could make the difference between curling up in an agonized ball while her innards cramped or resting peacefully.

Arabella turned to George, intending to ask him if Mrs. Hastings kept laudanum on hand, but George interrupted her.

“What the devil is the dog doing in the garden?”

She looked over the gate, confused. Sure enough, George’s bulldog puppy stood on his hind legs, resting his paws on the gate. His tongue lolled out of his mouth and his tail stump wagged with abandon.

“Maybe Mrs. Hastings let him into the garden?” Arabella suggested. She saw nothing out of the ordinary about that. Dogs belonged outside! “Maybe she was afraid he would soil the kitchen floor.”

George opened the gate, carefully blocking it so that Bowser could not get out of the garden. “The whole point of a guard dog is to guard,” he grumbled. “How can he watch the kitchen when he’s outside?”

Arabella restrained the urge to roll her eyes. Instead, she pointed out the obvious. “No one can get into the kitchen without going through the garden. He can guard the house just as well from outside.” Moreover, any food that might have been left on the kitchen table or counter would be all the safer for Bowser’s absence. She suspected Mrs. Hastings would fear Bowser poaching food more than she would fear a burglar.

“You have a point.” George crouched down to greet the puppy, but he cast a sheepish glance in Arabella’s direction. “I suppose if he’s in the garden, he can protect the whole house and not just the kitchen.”

“Precisely.” Arabella’s lips twitched as she hid a smile. The so-called guard dog was currently zooming around the garden, having been transported to a state of ecstasy by their return. She suspected he would greet any would-be evildoers with similar enthusiastic friendliness. “If you don’t mind, I believe I will go inside and get a cool drink.”

“Of course, of course.” George had already turned away from her so he could take a stick away from the puppy. But the puppy had a different game in mind. Instead of releasing the stick, he backed away with it, pulling George into a tug of war.

This time Arabella did not even try to restrain her smile. She watched her husband playing in the garden with as much as abandon as if he were a pup himself rather than a grown man. Then she headed towards the cottage.

When she got to the door, though, she found it locked. No one answered her knock, either. Strange. She glanced back over her shoulder. “George?”

He was so involved in tug-of-war with Bowser that it took him a moment to look up. “What? Is something wrong?” While he stared at her, Bowser snatched the coveted stick away from George and started running victory laps around the garden.

“The door is locked,” she explained.

“Oh, right!” The puzzlement instantly vanished from George’s face. “I gave all the staff the morning off, so they could go to church or chapel.”

“Chapel?”

“The Hastings worship at the Methodist chapel, not the parish church,” he explained. “They’ll be back before dinner, and Mrs. Hastings promised to leave a cold luncheon for us. We ought not want for anything.”

Arabella nodded. They could surely handle the house by themselves for half a day. She had only one concern. “How are to get back into the house?”

“With the key.” George rose to his feet, futilely brushing at the soiled knees of his pantaloons. He reached into his pocket, but frowned when he pulled only a pocket watch and a crumpled handkerchief.

Her heart sank. “Did you lose the key?”

“It must be here somewhere!” He frantically patted all his pockets. Then he froze. “Hellfire! I had the key this morning, but I think I left it on my dressing table.”

By now, Arabella’s heart had sunk so low it might as well be in the root cellar. Her head ached, sweat crawled maddeningly down her back, and she would have given half her dowry for a glass of cold lemonade. Her hands began to tremble from sheer pain.

“What are we to do?” She spoke more to herself than to George. Then a happy thought hit her. “There’s a pump near the kitchen, isn’t there? We can at least get a drink of water.” There would be shade in the garden, too, she reminded herself. She could cool off a bit. A day lolling about the garden was not at all what she wanted, but it would be better than nothing.

“We can do better than that,” George said. “There’s a spare key to the back door hanging in the garden shed. I’ll go get it.”

“Oh, good. I’ll meet you at the back door.” She scurried around the house, lowering her chin in an attempt to keep the sun out of her eyes. She needed a bonnet that provided better protection from the sun!

But although the kitchen door remained properly locked, the back door was not only unlocked, but also ajar. She touched the handle hesitantly, as if it might bite. Just a moment ago, she had desperately longed to get inside, away from the dust of the road and the August heat. Now a frisson of fear crept down her back, and her mouth went dry.

Was someone else in the house? Someone who shouldn’t be there? In normal circumstances, she might have dismissed that idea as paranoia. Given the repeated break-ins the cottage had suffered, though, she could not dismiss the possibility. Instead of hurrying inside, she waited for George to return with the key.

It seemed to take an eternity before he loped up to the door. “Sorry it took me so long. Had trouble finding the right key. None of them are labelled.” His eyes widened when they fell on the open door. “I say, did you open it without the key? How’d you manage that?”

Arabella shook her head. Her heart pounded heavily, and the slight tremor in her hands had become a full body tremble. “The door was already open.”

“What?” George’s jaw dropped.

She repeated herself. “The door was already open when I got here. Someone left it ajar.”

He shook his head. “It must have been one of the maids, I don’t believe either of the Hastings would forget to lock the door.”

“What if it’s someone else?” Arabella whispered.

George gave her an odd look. “Who else would be in our house?” Then he stilled, apparently having worked out what she meant. He thought for a moment before coming to a decision. “I will go in first. You stay here until I’m sure there are no intruders inside.”

She shook her head. “I am not going to stay out here by myself. What if there is someone outside the house?” She glanced over her shoulder at the garden and the orchard that lay beyond it. She saw no sign of any intruders, but they might be good at hiding. She turned back to George and caught his eye, hoping to convey how strongly she felt about this. “I will go with you.”

George looked like he wanted to argue, but he wisely held his tongue. “At least let me go in first,” he suggested, “and you can follow a few feet behind me.”

“Very well.” She was not sure what she ought to do if they really did run into an intruder. Run away?

She twisted the cross on its chain as she watched George moving slowly down the corridor. He cracked open the dining room door and peered in, then shut the door. He glanced back over his shoulder and shook his head. Then he moved across the hallway to the kitchen door. This door swung open at his touch. Someone had left it ajar, just like the door into the garden.

George peered through the open door, and his whole body visibly stiffened. “Damn it all to Hell!”

Arabella’s heart skipped a beat. “What happened?” Visions of murder or arson flooded her mind, and she took a cautious step backward, preparing to turn around and run if necessary.

“Someone made a wreck out of the kitchen again,” he grumbled. “This time they’ve gone too far. They knocked over the old walnut dresser!”

“Oh?” She nearly added “Is that all?” She caught herself, though, seeing how much the damage distressed George. He charged into the kitchen before she could ask any clarifying questions, such as “Are you sure the intruders are gone?” or “Is anything broken?” After a moment, Arabella followed him.

She sucked in her breath sharply when she saw the destruction. The heavy wooden dresser that occupied most of one wall had been tipped over—with all its contents still inside. Broken crockery and shards of china littered the kitchen floor.

George stooped to pick up the spout of what used to be a very pretty Wedgwood teapot. “This belonged to my Aunt Helena.” He scowled at the broken china in his hand. “She only used it on special occasions, but one year Caro’s birthday fell during the middle of our visit, and she let us have tea using this set rather than the nursery set.”

“There was a nursery set?” That surprised Arabella. The house didn’t even have a nursery! “I thought your uncle had no children?”

George looked back over his shoulder and twisted his mouth into a wry smile. “I believe Aunt Helena bought it when she was first married, under the assumption that they would eventually need it. I suppose she did need it, given that Caro and I came to visit almost every summer. Sometimes Vincent and his sisters were there at the same time.” His smile softened into something more genuine. “She loved having children in the house.” He shook his head and gently placed the broken fragment on the kitchen table.

Arabella’s first thought was that the damage was only a costly inconvenience. She knew a good deal about both bone china and porcelain, and so far as she could tell, none of the broken tableware was particularly valuable. Pretty, yes, but not rare or collectible. She and George could replace the tea set with something even better.

Then she asked herself how she would have reacted if any of her fairy tale figurines had been broken. That Little Bo Peep figure she bought long ago had little value to a collector, but it meant a good deal to Arabella. She would have been distraught if it had gotten chipped, broken, or lost in the move to Dogwood Cottage.

To George, the broken cups and saucers were not mere objects. Pieces of his childhood lay broken in a million pieces all over the kitchen floor. So, instead of telling George that “they are only things,” Arabella said, “I am so sorry. Can anything be salvaged?”

“I don’t know,” he said grimly. “I think we ought to get this dresser upright again so that we can see.”

That proved to be beyond their strength, though. The dresser weighed far more than both of them combined. In the end, George conceded that he would need the help of a few strong people to haul the piece of furniture back into position, assuming it could even be salvaged. One of the legs had cracked.

While George examined the damaged dresser, Arabella hunted for promising-looking pieces of china. She found most of the teapot and set those pieces aside in the hope that it could be mended. She knew more than one expert on ceramics who might advise them on that.

Her best discovery was a single teacup that had sustained only a slight chip in the rim. She put that on one of the built-in wooden shelves, feeling relieved that George would at least have one reminder of those long-ago tea parties. She suspected that most of the rest of the broken crockery would end up being discarded.

“I think I’d better have the magistrate in to look at this,” George concluded.

“Who is the magistrate?” she wondered aloud. “Mr. Cawley?” He seemed young for the task, but he was the principal landowner in the area.

George shrugged. “Maybe. I expect Hastings will know. In any case, we’d better have someone investigate this.”

“Because the treasure seekers keep breaking in, you mean?” For that matter, why hadn’t anyone tried to investigate the previous break-ins? Maybe this damage could have been prevented.

Her husband surveyed the wreckage again and shook his head. “I don’t think this is the work of the treasure seekers. It feels personal. Whoever did this wanted to damage these things. I can think of no reason for that apart from malice.”

“But why would anyone feel this malicious towards us ?” Arabella asked. “What have we done to make anyone so angry?” She shivered as she imagined the malevolence necessary to fuel such senseless destruction.

George met her eyes and frowned thoughtfully. “That is the question, isn’t it?” But he could no more explain the vandalism than she could.