Manor of Secrets (5 page)

But Lady Diane moved first. “My youngest,” she told Beatrice, stepping between them. “My daughter.” Charlotte felt a flicker of surprise that her mother would bother to introduce her at all.

Lady Diane pointed to the pot and cups already laid on the table. “Tea.”

Charlotte heard the command in her mother’s voice.

“I prefer coffee in the morning,” Aunt Beatrice said, and didn’t move.

Charlotte gaped. It was the first time in her life she had seen someone disregard one of her mother’s orders.

Aunt Beatrice met her eye and smiled. “I’ve learned quite a bit in Italy.”

Charlotte wasn’t sure if she meant drinking coffee or her open defiance of Lady Diane. Aunt Beatrice looked so small, slight,
young
. But she didn’t have to listen to Lady Diane. Aunt Beatrice was a woman in her own right. She’d traveled the world with her husband. She’d lived alone in Italy for over a decade. She was independent.

Lady Diane sat at the table and stared at them both. Pointedly.

Obediently, Charlotte sat. Had some tea. She knew better than to ask the hundreds of questions that hurtled through her imagination and prickled the back of her throat. So she listened to the silence that reverberated between the two women until it roared in her ears, punctuated by the clinking of silverware and the gentle chime of cups and saucers.

She noticed that Aunt Beatrice ate the kedgeree. No one but Charlotte’s father ever ate kedgeree. Lady Diane hated it — the sight and the smell. Charlotte imagined herself sitting on a palm-shaded patio overlooking a tea plantation in India, eating kedgeree and listening to the distant call of elephants.

Aunt Beatrice smiled at her.

Lady Diane glared.

Charlotte gazed at the leaves at the bottom of her cup, wondering if they mapped out her future — her presentation at court next year followed by the Season with its balls and dinners and soirees? Or perhaps the dreaded finishing school first. Marriage and children? Or maybe something more adventurous. She wondered if coffee, once consumed, provided the same kind of insight.

“Charlotte.” Lady Diane’s voice interrupted her reverie. “A word.”

Her mother stood, and etiquette demanded that Charlotte and her aunt rise with her.

Lady Diane started for the door, and Aunt Beatrice moved to follow her. Lady Diane turned swiftly.

“Beatrice,” she said, “you may tour the house and grounds if you like. You’ll find that nothing much has changed.”

“I can see that you might think that,” Aunt Beatrice replied.

Lady Diane didn’t respond. She left the room without a word or backward glance, expecting Charlotte to follow without question or dawdling. But Charlotte did pause in the doorway, and looked back once at her aunt.

Beatrice cocked her head to one side and smiled wryly.
“Some things never change.”

Flustered, Charlotte followed her mother across the marble checkerboard to the sitting room that looked out over the circular drive and the ornamental garden beyond. Her mother liked to keep an eye on the comings and goings in the house. But Aunt Beatrice’s early and sudden arrival had taken even her by surprise. Charlotte noticed that her mother’s hair wasn’t entirely coiffed in the back — a shamble of curls escaped the pins as if she had pulled away from her maid in a rush to greet her sister.

“Your aunt is here for a visit,” Lady Diane said as soon as Charlotte had closed the door of the sitting room. “This puts us in a very awkward position with the shooting party.”

Charlotte nodded slowly. One extra person shouldn’t make that much difference, considering they would soon be inundated with guests.

“She’s welcome here, of course,” Lady Diane said. “But …”

Lady Diane paused. That one word contradicted the entire sentence before it. And Charlotte wondered what her aunt could possibly have done to make her so
un
welcome at The Manor.

“But I don’t want you spending too much time with her,” Lady Diane finished. “You need to pay attention to our other guests. Especially Lord Andrew Broadhurst.”

Only years of training and practice kept Charlotte from rolling her eyes. But her mother leapt onto her hesitation like a cat on a mouse.

“
Especially
Lord Broadhurst,” Lady Diane repeated. She looked Charlotte up and down as one might a new servant. Or a horse. Critically, and with instant appraisal and judgment. Charlotte suddenly worried that her own hair had been too hastily done. She fought the urge to touch it.

“He’s the heir to the earldom,” Lady Diane said quietly, almost to herself.

And being the oldest son of the Earl of Ashdown made Andrew Broadhurst endlessly attractive.

To Lady Diane.

Charlotte worked up her courage to disagree with her mother. Dispute her. Deflect her as Aunt Beatrice had.

“I’d like to get to know my aunt,” Charlotte said lamely.

“There’s nothing to know. She’s my younger sister. She has no children. And she’s leaving. Soon.”

Obviously, Lady Diane thought that was the whole story. Everything Charlotte needed to know. Her tone brooked no argument and no questions. But Charlotte’s imagination was already inventing a long and tragic history for Aunt Beatrice. Love and loss, travel and adventure. Charlotte turned Aunt
Beatrice into a lady explorer, discoverer of unseen lands and uncharted heartbreak. Returned to the family to …

What?

“You’d be wise not to listen to a word she says.” Lady Diane’s almost offhand remark interrupted Charlotte’s reverie.

Charlotte studied her mother. It was the
almost
offhandedness that alarmed her. Lady Diane was never nonchalant. She never said anything without weighing all the consequences first. The tone was too casual to be casual.

“Yes, Mother,” Charlotte said finally.

But she couldn’t just pretend her aunt didn’t exist. And even she couldn’t imagine what had caused the estrangement between the two sisters. In her mind, it became a mystery of Sherlock Holmesian proportions.

So she decided to discover what brought her aunt to The Manor. And what caused her mother to wish she were gone.

Every detective needed a sidekick. Someone clever and scrupulous with an innate everyday knowledge. A Watson.

And Charlotte knew just where to find her.

J
anie flopped into a chair in the servants’ hall just after three, and dropped her head onto her forearms on the table. Sarah, the head housemaid, tutted down at the other end. But she’d been sitting for an hour, sewing new lace onto the hem of Lady Charlotte’s ecru day dress to cover the stain left by the mud.

Janie had just finished making the next day’s bread, scrubbing the kitchen table, and washing the three copper saucepans Mollie had “forgotten” under the scullery sink.

“No rest for the wicked,” Lawrence said, resting his palms on the table next to her.

“Then Lady Diane must be a saint,” Janie mumbled into the tabletop. “And Lady Charlotte an angel.” Guilt immediately followed the words. She had always thought of Charlotte
as a small replica of Lady Diane. The nose and voice and demeanor made them appear identical, despite the fact that Lady Charlotte had brown hair and hazel eyes. Kinder eyes. Less judgmental. And that mud on her hem showed clearly that she wasn’t as straitlaced as it would appear.

“She’s pretty enough to be,” Lawrence said softly.

Janie sat up. “Don’t say that, Lawrence. Don’t even think it.”

“Why?” Lawrence sat in the chair opposite and put his chin in his hand. “Are you jealous?”

“Of someone who can’t even make a cup of tea?” Janie forced a laugh past the heat that rose in her throat. “No.”

“And here I thought you were fishing for compliments.” Lawrence sat back and stretched his legs out. His foot nearly touched hers.

“You’re fishing for something else if you make comments like that.” Janie stood, but couldn’t quite turn away from the footman’s smile.

“And what might that be?” Lawrence set his hands behind his head. He’d taken his coat off, and the fabric of his shirt tightened over his arms and beneath his waistcoat.

“Dismissal,” Janie said, gathering up the teacups. If Lawrence was right, kitchen maids were the wickedest creatures on earth; Janie felt she never had a chance to rest. “Lady Diane doesn’t allow flirting.”

Lawrence moved to help her. “With Lady Charlotte?” he whispered. He was so close she smelled soap and coconut.

“With anyone.” Janie moved away. Janie had only gotten her position as second kitchen maid because the previous girl had been caught kissing the chauffeur.

The chauffeur, of course, had stayed on.
So hard to find a good driver
.

“Then she should have only female staff, like her sister.” Lawrence followed Janie back to the kitchen, where Harry was still fiddling with the flue of the second oven. Mid-afternoon was the one time the kitchen was quiet. Briefly.

“Lady Beatrice only hires women?” Janie asked, putting the cups into the sink for Mollie.

“It’s cheaper.” Lawrence shrugged.

“But she’s richer than Croesus,” Janie said. “She could hire anyone she wants.”

“Maybe she’s like the rest of the aristocracy and only pretends to be rich,” Harry said, his voice echoing up the chimney.

“All I know is what Lady Beatrice’s self-righteous lady’s maid told me,” Lawrence said. Again he came a little too close for comfort. “She said they didn’t need men.”

Janie felt like a mouse facing a cobra. Mesmerized. Really, Lawrence’s smile was bewitching. And dangerous.

Janie struggled to raise an eyebrow. “So she didn’t submit to your charms.”

“Not yet,” Lawrence purred. “But they all do eventually.”

He seemed utterly aware of the power his blue eyes had over her.

Janie turned to stir the consommé simmering on the stove to cover her discomposure. She liked bantering with Lawrence, and she liked the attention, but she was pretty sure he wouldn’t be worth losing her job over.

Harry climbed out from behind the second oven, dripping soot and rattling tools.

“Would you ever work in an all-women household?” he asked Janie.

“Lady Beatrice’s maid did say she’s looking for a cook.” Lawrence dipped a finger in the consommé and licked it.

“I’m just the second kitchen maid,” Janie said, pushing him away with her shoulder. “I’ve nowhere near the experience.”

“Maybe she’ll steal your mother, then.” Lawrence winked.

Janie felt the foundation of her existence rock just a little.

“Out with you,” she said with a weak laugh. “I’ve work to do. Unlike some people.”

A bell rang in the hall and Lawrence tilted his head to listen to it. The bell rang again. “We’ve all got work to do,
Janie. Lady Diane needs me in her sitting room and I’m willing to bet that means tea. And perhaps some of those coconut biscuits you made earlier.” He flashed a grin before leaving the kitchen, heading for the footman’s closet and the stairs up to the marble hall.

“I hope that lady’s maid stays away from him,” Janie murmured.

“It seems no one is immune to his charms,” Harry said acidly, wrapping his tools up in a cloth.

Janie shot him a look. “Anyone would think you’re jealous, Harry Peasgood.”

Harry stretched his arms. “Me?” he said. “Jealous? Of a tall and devastatingly handsome man who can already see every rung of the ladder to his future? Second footman. Head footman. Butler. He’s set for life.”

“You
are
jealous.” And after all that talk about being an engineer and going to America.

“Only of the devastatingly handsome part.” Harry followed Lawrence’s path out of the kitchen, and when Janie went to clean the soot from under the stove, she discovered he’d already done it.

She took a cup of tea out to her mother, who sat on an upturned barrel in the courtyard gateway, looking out over the trees. The gate provided minimal shade, and Mrs.
Seward’s starch cap drooped to one side. Janie couldn’t help noticing that beneath it, her mother’s brown hair had begun to gray.

“I should be inside starting dinner, not having a second cuppa,” Mrs. Seward said, but took the tea, anyway.

“It’s the roast tonight?” Janie asked, leaning against the other side of the gate, the rough stone digging into her shoulder blade through the thin cotton of her dress. She loved discussing the menus with her mother. Talking about how the fish needed to complement the main course, how a cream soup couldn’t be served before salmon, or how a fruit dessert could lighten the palate after a heavy meal.

“Change in plan, my dear,” Mrs. Seward said, absently sipping her tea. “Lady Beatrice brought chili peppers — imported from India. We’re making curry.”

“Do we know how to make curry?” Janie asked, and didn’t add the question,
And will Lady Diane eat it?
If Her Ladyship called kedgeree foreign, what would she think of the Indian chilies?

“I’ve done it before,” Mrs. Seward said quietly, and looked out over the distant hills. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

Janie decided to let Lady Diane worry about the curry and took a moment to breathe in the scents of warm grass and dry leaves and the faintest hint of the lake in the distance.