Chapter 31

From the interior of the kitchen, there came a scramble of motion and a woman’s voice. “Begging your pardon, sir. We thought you was ne’er-do-wells.”

“Do you get many ne’er-do-wells popping into your kitchen?”

“Can’t be too careful.” Whatever Rufus had done to cow the stranger, she was becoming progressively de-cowed with every passing moment. “And gentleman or no, that don’t explain why you’re creeping around someone else’s house in the middle of the evening.”

“Ah yes. The middle of the evening. A famously prime time for larceny.”

There was a brief silence. Then, “You what?”

“We’re not creeping,” Belle protested, mostly to Rufus’s back. “Or doing any larceny. This is my house.”

“I very much doubt that,” returned the now thoroughly cowless servant. “And if you don’t turn right back around, I’ll ... I’ll—Miss Arabella?”

Belle had finally managed to squeeze under Rufus’s arm, still clutching at her elbow, because was there anywhere worse to take a blow? The room beyond him was dimly lit, the fire mostly embers, and the candle little more than a stub, but all in a rush she remembered. She remembered it full of light, pale as flax in the mornings, and saffron gold in the late afternoon, and the cream-painted panels, and the moulded crossbeams that turned the ceiling into a giant game of noughts and crosses. She remembered sheets drying before the grate on rainy days, and the big brass scales that sat upon the countertop, and the stoneware jars that were full of secrets, not all of them as delicious as Bonny found to his cost the day he snuck a spoonful of what turned out to be mustard powder, and the big table where you were allowed to sit if you were good and watch plums being chopped for jam or dough kneaded for bread or gravy stirred for dinner, and if you were very very good, Hannah might—

“Hannah?” cried Belle, rushing into the embrace of a stranger who was not a stranger. “Oh, Hannah, I can’t believe you’re still here.”

“I can’t believe you’ve come back, miss. We thought the place was done for.”

Reluctantly, Belle made herself let go of Hannah. She and Bonny, in the way of children for whom grown-up was a single category, had always assumed the cook was old, but she must have been young. She was still young, in fact, although she looked tired, her soft brown hair streaked here and there with grey. “Who is we . And what’s happened?”

“That’s a long story, miss. It’s—”

The back door opened, and a slim, slight, clean-shaven man of about Hannah’s age rushed inside, wielding an honest-to-goodness pitchfork. “Whoever you are,” he announced, “and whatever the fuck you’re doing, if you don’t—”

Stepping forward, Rufus neatly parted him from the pitchfork. “Why is everyone around here so violent? Is it something in the water? Or is it something I’m doing specifically?”

“You’re breaking into our house is what you’re doing.” The newcomer squared up ill-advisedly to Rufus, a doomed David versus an elegant Goliath.

“Tom, no.” Hannah put herself between Rufus and the man addressed as Tom. “Miss Arabella’s come home. And this is—actually, I don’t have a clue who this is. But”—and here she turned back to Belle—“this is the we . We’re all that’s left.”

“I don’t think we’ve met before?” said Belle, peering at Tom hesitantly. “Maybe you weren’t here when I was growing up?”

“Oh, he was, miss. He was just different then.”

Tom cleared his throat. “I used to be your mother’s maid. Did a shite job of it, I’m afraid to say. I think at the end she was keeping me on out of pity. I work in the stables now, and do what I can for the grounds, which isn’t much. And”—his chin came up proudly—“if that’s a problem for you, I’ll pack my things right away.”

“If Tom goes”—Hannah stepped to his side and put her arm through his—“I go.”

“Would you say,” asked Rufus of nobody in particular, “that a journey from assault to blackmail is a de-escalation or the reverse?”

“I’m not trying to force anything,” protested Hannah. “Just stating a fact.”

“I’m confused,” said Belle, ignoring Rufus for now. In all honesty, he was not at his most helpful, perhaps because he hadn’t liked someone trying to clonk her with a skillet, even if it was circumstantial attempted clonking. “Why would I have a problem with Tom taking care of the stables? I mean”—she glanced again at Tom—“are you bad at it? Do you eat the horses?”

Outrage flashed across his face. “No, I don’t eat the horses.”

“Well then.” Belle shrugged. “Nothing else is my business, is it?”

“Some people might reckon it was, miss,” offered Hannah, shifting uncomfortably, her fingers tightening on Tom.

“Well, they’d be wrong,” said Belle, dismissing that particular matter. “And please don’t think me ungrateful for the fact you stayed and for everything you’ve done, and continue to do, for my family, but what’s happened to my house? Where are the rest of the servants?”

Hannah made a fretful sound, blowing air across her teeth. “Dismissed. It’s him got sent down from London, miss.”

“The one who was supposed to manage things?”

After a moment or two, clearly reluctant to gossip, she nodded. “It wasn’t so bad at first. I mean, he was always a snooty fu—fellow, gave himself all sorts of airs. But he seemed to be doing right by the estate. And then ...”

“Then,” Belle prompted.

“Then he just sort of ... stopped, miss.”

“Stopped?”

Hannah nodded again. “The farm was the first to go. Then everyone except us. Things started falling apart, and we tried, we tried to talk to him, didn’t we, Tom?”

“Did you take your skillet and pitchfork?” enquired Rufus.

“I’m so sorry.” Belle sighed. “He gets like this when he’s worried I’ve been, or could have been, hurt. Rufus, I’m fine. Hannah, Tom, this is my husband, Sir Horley Comewithers. Technically, I should be Lady Comewithers, but for the sake of my continued health, I would like to remain Miss Tarleton.”

“Oh, I couldn’t.” Hannah seemed genuinely scandalised. “Not now you’re a married woman.”

“Mrs. Tarleton then.”

“It’s not done, Miss Tar—m’lady. What would your husband say?”

“Her husband says,” murmured Rufus, “that my wife can call herself whatever she damn well pleases. And, if it comes to it, I am more than happy to be Mr. Tarleton within this household.”

Belle spun round, startled, her emotions swimming far too close to the surface. “You ... you would allow it?”

“Why not?” He cast up his hands in a gesture of resigned exasperation. “You have explained to me in some detail why my own name is appalling and needs to be taken away and burned. Besides, this is your house. Your family. Your history. I”—he got that nervy, defensive look that suggested incoming sincerity—“would be honoured to be a part of that.”

“Then it’s settled,” declared Belle, intending to hold him so tightly later it would annoy him. She returned her attention to Hannah and Tom. “What happened when you tried to speak to ... I don’t think anyone ever told me his name?”

“Smith,” said Tom, in the tone most people reserved for obscenity.

“Mr. Smith,” added Hannah, as if this would somehow make it better. “And what happened was nothing very much at all. Just flat out ignored us, he did. Said it wasn’t our business and not our place.”

“And we reckon”—the words exploded out of Tom, despite Hannah’s attempts to hold him back—“he’s been thieving. It started small, candlesticks and what have you. But—”

“But we can’t swear to it,” Hannah interrupted. “Though we did think best to take some precautions, begging your pardon for the liberty, Miss Tar—Mrs. Tarleton.”

From the corner of her eye, Belle could tell Rufus was trying very hard to check his amusement. “Precautions?” he asked.

“Yes.” Hannah hung her head. “We took some of the valuables and we ... we stashed them in one of the old priest holes.”

“Which one?” Somehow Rufus was maintaining his composure.

“The . . . the one . . .”

“The one down the bog,” explained Tom. “We thought Mr. High and Mighty wouldn’t look there.”

“And we was right,” Hannah concluded, still looking downcast, but with a trace of satisfaction in her voice.

“Well, my dear”—Rufus put a hand upon Belle’s shoulder—“it seems that you shall go to the ball.”

Tom eyed him, as though he was genuinely concerned Rufus had lost his mind. “ Bog means toilet .”

“I don’t know how to begin to thank you both,” said Belle, thinking it best to steer the conversation away from sewers, mediaeval or otherwise. “While I’m horrified by what’s happened here, I’m even more horrified at the thought of how things would have gone without you.”

“We’ve done our best,” Tom told her, his eyes anxious and earnest. “But it’s not good. Nothing’s been cared for. Not for years.”

Belle was doing her best to remain stalwart. But the thought of all that time and neglect piling up like dust in this place that she’d loved for so long was almost enough to reduce her to tears.

“Then,” said Rufus quietly, “we shall simply have to start caring ag—” His head turned sharply. Somewhere in the distance came the undeniable creak of a hinge and the muted thud of a door closing. This was followed by a splash. “What was that?”

Tom scowled. “Probably Mr. Smith making a break for it, the weasel.”

“That’s what he thinks.” Rufus took a few swift steps across the kitchen. “Hannah, do you have such a thing as a knife?”

“I do.” Opening a drawer, she produced a moderately sized one and passed it over.

“Ooh,” said Belle, rallying somewhat. “Are you going to stab him?”

He spared her an exasperated glance and a “Belle, no” before striding out of the room. Somewhat confused by his actions, Hannah, Tom, and Belle exchanged a few glances of their own before hurrying out after him. By the time they caught up, he was already halfway across the bridge.

“Where are you going?” asked Belle, panting slightly, for Rufus had long legs, and she had the opposite. “What are you doing? You are aware he went the other way and is probably through the gardens and across the fields by now?”

“I’m aware. Tom”—Rufus threw the words over his shoulder—“can you help the coachman with the carriage? And apologies in advance for what I’m about to do to the rig.”

Even in the face of extremely erratic behaviour from the household, Tom proved stalwart. “Of course, Mr. Tarleton.”

“I should probably apologise to you too.” This was addressed to one of the carriage horses, which Rufus had severed from the traces with a few swift cuts of the knife. “You’ve already had a hard day. Belle, take this, and no stabbing under any circumstances.”

She took the knife carefully, and Rufus flung himself onto the horse’s back. It did not seem wholly impressed by this behaviour, weaving where it stood and bucking slightly. Belle had been around Peggy long enough to recognise expert handling when she beheld it, and, sure enough, Rufus had calmed his steed within moments.

“Where is he likely to be heading?” he asked.

“He’s been going to London on the regular lately,” Hannah called up. “For all the good it’s done him. He came back in a right state the other day, though he tried to hide it.”

“So London?”

“In his shoes”—that was Tom—“especially considering they’re soaking wet, I’d head to Lapworth first. South-west.”

Rufus gave one swift nod to the bystanders, clicked his tongue to urge the horse into motion, and then they were gone in a flurry of kicked-up gravel, hoofbeats fading into the night.

“Gawd,” exclaimed Hannah. “Bit dashing, your Mr. T, isn’t he?”

And Belle could only agree.

For even though it was not what he wanted from life, Rufus was proving to be an exceptional husband. He was amusing, supportive, thoughtful, pleasing to look upon, and apparently more than capable of chasing down an errant steward at a moment’s notice, not a quality she would have previously considered vital. It made her feel faintly guilty, not the steward specifically, just the amount in general he was doing for her, when—with her house about three rainstorms from falling into ruin—she had even less to give than she’d thought she had.

While she waited for Rufus to return, she left Tom to stable the remaining horses and returned to the kitchens with Hannah. There, too agitated to sit—even when offered a cup of tea—she took up the candle and began a steady exploration of the ground floor, Hannah trailing anxiously behind her, trying to prepare her for the worst.

“It won’t be as you remember, miss.”

“I know,” Belle said. “I know. But I have to see.”

Though perhaps she should have listened. With the rugs grown threadbare and the panelling dull, with what furniture remained covered in sheets and pushed out of the way, with portraits missing from the walls and books from the library shelves, the house felt like no place she could remember. No place anyone could ever have called home. Upstairs was even worse because the ivy—which was crawling unchecked up the exterior stonework—had got under the roof in what had once been Bonny and Belle’s room, bringing part of the wall down with it. This in turn had let in the rain, rotting away much of the panelling, leaving black-and-green mould to bloom blotchily across the ceiling and wind through the exposed plaster, bringing with it the undisputable reek of decay.

Hannah tried to wrestle a tattered curtain across what was clearly an attempt to board up some of the worst of the damage. “I’m so sorry. We did what we could, but it was too late.”

The worst of it was, Belle could barely remember the room or its contents, whatever it was that Hannah and Tom had tried to save for her. Their books maybe? Favoured childhood toys? Had they been writing their stories even then, or had they had no need in those days of imaginary places and fantastical adventures? She didn’t know. She would never know. And how futile it was, this desperate grief for things so lost that even memory rejected them, like the sound of her mother’s laughter, or the colour of her father’s eyes.

“You’ve nothing to apologise for,” she told Hannah, because now was not the time to bow or buckle or break. “You’ve done more than enough. More than I’m sure I deserve.”

“Your family has always been good to us.”

“Even so, I’m astonished you stayed.”

Hannah’s mouth turned down briefly. “I can’t pretend it was only loyalty. It was some of that, mind. But Tom wasn’t sure about his prospects elsewhere, and ... well ... Tom and me, we ...”

“You’re as married, as I understand.”

“It used to get talked of. It probably still would if there was anybody left to talk. Either them as used to know Tom thinking it strange and them as don’t calling me no better than I ought to be for taking up with a man I’m not wed to.”

“Then maybe you should make an honest lad out of him.”

Once again, she’d slightly shocked poor Hannah. “But is that right, miss?”

“It’s never wrong, Hannah, to be with someone you care for.”

From below came the clatter of hooves, and they rushed to the cracked window just in time to see Rufus dismounting from his sweat-flecked steed, dragging a struggling bundle from where it had been unceremoniously tossed across the horse, and then equally unceremoniously tossing it over his shoulder.

“Well, I’ll be,” cried Hannah. “That’s him. That’s Mr. Smith. I never thought I’d live to see the day.”

“Live to see the day he got hauled about like a sack of potatoes?”

Hannah was grinning, a cat who had not only got the cream, but had secured access to the pantry. “Couldn’t happen to a more deserving fellow.”

By the time they returned to the kitchen, Rufus had just entered it and was casting a drenched, extremely dishevelled gentleman to the floor in front of the grate.

Belle glanced from Rufus to the stranger, who as well as his other indignities was sporting a swollen lip, a black eye, a bruise upon his brow, a long cut across his cheek, and another upon his chin. “What in God’s name have you done?”

“He was like this when I found him.” Only mildly winded, Rufus settled into a nearby chair.

“You”—the young man uncoiled like a snake—“are a fucking madman .”

Rufus raised an eyebrow. “And you, my dear, are a fucking thief.”

This earned a shrug, then an inadvertent wince as though the shrug had been more painful than the shrugger anticipated. “So turn me over to the magistrate.”

The supercilious Mr. Smith was a lot younger than Belle had thought he would be—her age, perhaps, or a little older. He was tall and angular, with a long, pointed face and heavy-lidded eyes that probably contributed to his reputation for being up his own arse. The situation was not doing him any favours, but she would have been hard-pressed to imagine a less prepossessing villain. And yet here he was. The man who’d treated her home, her past, like a carcass to be stripped. She could barely stand to be in the same room as him.

“What happens when we turn him over?” she asked.

“Probably they hang him.” Rufus shrugged. “Or ship him off to Australia so he can play with the rest of the cockroaches.”

Belle looked again at Mr. Smith. His irises were the palest grey, like frost-encrusted glass, and seemed to reflect no emotion whatsoever. No guilt, no fear. Maybe—if she searched—deeply embedded bitterness and a kind of sullen resignation. “I can’t think about this tonight,” she said. “If only we had a dungeon we could lock him in.”

“What about the brewery?” suggested Hannah, ever resourceful. “He’s not getting out of there in a month of Sundays.”

“Yes. Put him there.” Exhaustion was beating at Belle like waves against a cliff. She could feel herself crumbling a pebble at a time. “And make sure he has a towel and a change of clothes. Some blankets for the night.”

“How magnanimous of you”—Mr. Smith’s sneer was both audible and visible—“to take such pains over my comfort in your improvised dungeon.”

There were things Belle could have said. Probably should have said. But she was as done as could be. “Oh, fuck off,” she told him instead.

Then she went upstairs to one of the rooms that did not have an enormous hole in the wall, thought fleetingly about removing the dust sheets from the bed, gave up before even trying, and simply threw herself down upon the mattress, where—with dust billowing around her—she burst into tears.

She was still crying when Rufus joined her, having presumably seen to the incarceration of Mr. Smith.

“Dear heart,” he said, putting a hand upon her shoulder, for she refused to turn around or even straighten from her woe-struck curl. “Please. You’ll make yourself ill.”

Belle snuffled desolately. “I insist you call him out. And then murder him. Very very hard.”

“While I’m sure he deserves it, I don’t think we should be taking the law into our own hands.”

“What use is the law to us?”

“Well, we are rich and upper class, so quite a lot.”

“But he’s a duke.”

“Mr. Smith?”

“Valentine.”

There was a pause. “Ah.”

“He’s ruined everything,” Belle wailed. “Everything.”

Rufus stroked her back soothingly. “He has land of his own to govern, more money than any reasonable person would know what to do with, and Bonny to distract him. He has been drastically inattentive, but none of this was intentional.”

“You know,” she said, reaching for fury because it was so much easier than pain, “that I find negligence worse than cruelty.”

“Even so, I do not think my killing him will improve the situation for anyone.”

“It would improve the situation for me.”

“Yes, but Bonny would be very upset, and I would likely have to flee to the continent.”

“I would flee with you.”

“Not to undermine your display of devotion, but that would be absolutely the least you could fucking do after inciting me to shoot our friend who is literally a duke.”

“Benedick was willing to kill Claudio for Beatrice.”

“And it turned out best for everyone that he didn’t go through with it. Besides”—nudging her into the middle of the bed, Rufus lay down next to her—“you’re a free-thinking modern woman. If you want to murder Valentine, do it your damn self.”

Belle flipped onto her side immediately. “May I?”

“That wasn’t supposed to be encouragement.” Implausibly, the sight of her repulsively swollen and tear-stained face seemed to make something in him soften. “We will fix this, Bellflower. And without recourse to random acts of violence against our nearest and dearest.”

“Fix it how?” she asked, overcome by a fresh flood of tears.

“Well, as far as I understand it, the land is no longer mortgaged, so that is a quantifiable asset we possess. We also have your dowry and apparently a privy full of valuables, which we can sell if we need—”

The breath seized in Belle’s throat. “No. We are not selling my family’s things.”

“Very well. We have a privy full of valuables we can use to make the place look attractive. And as yet we do not even know what happened to the money Smith has been taking from the estate. Perhaps some of it can be retrieved. And more importantly, we have each other, we have our resourcefulness and ingenuity, and we have time.”

“I’m afraid”—Belle could barely speak through the sobs that choked her—“I feel neither resourceful nor ingenious. I just feel ... I just feel so sad .”

“As well you might. You’ve had a challenging day.” With a now-familiar motion, he drew her into his arms. “This must be devastating. It is, however, nothing that cannot be undone. You will see that tomorrow, when you will also remember you are one of the strongest, bravest, kindest, most appallingly creative people I know.”

She buried her face against his shoulder. “Oh, but Rufus, I have lied to you.”

“You have never lied to me.”

“I promised you a h-home. But it t-turns out I c-can’t even give you that.”

“Belle”—he gave her the tenderest of shakes—“now you’re just being a goose. A home is not a place. Trust me, for I have never had one before.”

She wanted to argue with him. To point out that this was utter sophistry. Because while you could make a grand case for home as an abstract concept if you wanted, a house with a partially collapsed roof, a stagnant moat, and rooms filled with dust and dark made for a terrible one. But she was too tired, and tears had rusted all her words to nothing.

So she lay next to him on an unmade bed, both of them still in their travelling clothes, weary and none too fragrant, taking what comfort she could simply from his presence. She was grateful to him for concealing whatever disappointment he felt, for not rebuking her, when she would not have blamed him if he had, but she was also terribly, terribly ashamed. Why did she never learn? Why did she always believe—or hope—she could help people? That, despite what she lacked, rejected, and recoiled from, there was still something in her that was good. She had been so sure she was doing right by Rufus. So sure that she could give him some of what he needed.

But all she’d done, in the end, was cost him the rest.