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Authors: All a Woman Wants

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BOOK: Patricia Rice
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“What the hell is going on here?” he roared, eyeing the lot of them with disfavor.

The demon, which he now recognized as a boy, scowled
and attempted to tear free of the maid’s hand, but she merely grasped
him tighter and twisted a fist in his shaggy hair.

“I found his lordship in the kitchen,” the maid
murmured, her gaze darting back and forth between Mac and the nurse as
she pushed the tot ahead of her.

His lordship. Mac’s lip curled at the title. Marilee
and his mother coveted titles. If this bundle of rags and rage was a
lord, Mac would pay money not to be one.

“Are you the nurse?” he demanded, deliberately
shoving aside thoughts of Marilee to focus on what had to be her
children. He wouldn’t—couldn’t—believe the slut’s lies. Where the hell
could his sister and her lordling husband be?

“No, my lord.” The little maid bobbed a curtsy while
keeping a firm hold on the boy’s long, frilled shirt. He wasn’t wearing
trousers. The maid glanced apologetically at the massive woman with
hands propped on hips. “Mrs. White is.”

“That’s right, and this is me territory. Now bugger off. Ye don’t belong here.”

He most certainly did not. If he were master here,
he wouldn’t have allowed this mountain of filth into the house. Instead,
he pointed toward the back stairs and spoke in his calmest tones.
“Out,” he ordered. “Leave these premises immediately.” He turned to the
young maid, ignoring the furious Mrs. White’s gasp. “Where are the other
servants?”

“Well, I never!” the nurse fumed. “And who do ye think ye be, ordering about a respectable widow?”

The unmistakable scent of gin tainted her breath,
and Mac had to clasp his hands behind his back, prop his booted feet
apart, and glare down at her as if she were a wayward cabin boy to keep
from strangling her. “I am the children’s uncle, and if you do not
remove yourself at once, I shall heave you out the window. Understood?”

His threat must have finally been communicated. The
woman’s jowls turned a mottled purple, but she huffed and puffed and
finally swung ponderously around, muttering curses. He was under no
illusion that she would follow orders, but she’d learn. If he had to
bring a cat-o’-nine-tails with him, she would learn.

Two mobcapped heads peered around a nearby door, and
Mac pointed at the space vacated by Mrs. White. “You—out here. Explain
yourselves.”

“They’re the undernursemaids,” the little kitchen
maid whispered. Even the squirming tot in her hand had grown still and
wide-eyed as the scene unfolded.

“Why is that babe in there alone and crying?” Mac tried not to shout, though his patience hung on a rapidly unraveling thread.

“She ain’t had her milk?” one guessed aloud.

“We’s out of laudanum,” the other said helpfully.

God, give him strength. As he glanced down and
realized the small boy with the grimy face had one arm in a sling and
the same blue eyes as Marilee’s, the frayed thread snapped.

One

Somehow, all these bills and invoices had to be paid.

Beatrice Cavendish neatly entered them in her household accounts, tallied them, and placed them on her father’s desk, as always.

Except that her father was no longer there to perform whatever magic made the bits of paper go away.

Frowning away tears, wishing she could retreat to
the solace of her piano and forget the desk existed, she stared at the
stack of sorted bills.

She knew to a ha’penny how many coins remained in
the strongbox. It wasn’t sufficient for that entire stack. And quarter
day was almost upon them, so she owed the servants’ wages as well. The
desperation that had been building for nearly six months threatened to
swamp her now.

“You need Mr. Overton, Miss,” Cook said gruffly,
standing with hands behind her massive back. “The grocer worrit none
about what’s owed when Mr. Overton was about. A lady shouldn’t be
worriting over such.”

“Papa sacked Mr. Overton.” Miserably, Beatrice
counted out the coins for the grocer’s bill. They had to eat. Surely
that bill was a priority. “Mr. Overton wanted to enclose the fields.
What would happen to all our tenants if we did that?”

“The lazy no-goods would have to git off their arses—beg pardon, miss. It’s not my place to say.”

No, Beatrice thought, it wasn’t. Mrs. Digby would
never have said such a thing, but her former housekeeper and butler had
taken the small inheritance Squire Cavendish had left them and set up
housekeeping in the inn they’d purchased in town. Bea was relieved she
didn’t have to worry about the Digbys’ large salaries any longer, but
the established chain of command had disintegrated with their parting.

The bankers and lawyers had not explained how her
father’s once vast reserves of cash were to be replenished once they
were all dispensed.

Perhaps, if the Earl of Coventry were ever in
residence, she might discuss the problem with her father’s best friend.
But the Earl spent little time here.

“Miss.” From the study doorway, Mary wadded up her
apron. Something must be wrong for her to intrude. The sole provider for
an invalid mother and six younger siblings, she anxiously held to the
proprieties of her new position as upper parlor maid. Mary knew that
parlor maids should not be seen or heard by any of the family.

Not that there was any immediate family left besides
Beatrice—unless one counted Aunt Constance. She swept in once a year,
turned life upside down, then absconded for another eleven months. Bea
suppressed a momentary lapse into self-pity.

“Where is James?” she asked, referring to the footman who had joined the household shortly before her father’s death.

James’s family connection to her was so distant as
to be invisible, but she didn’t know what she’d do without his
enthusiastic—if somewhat eccentric—support. It was typical of him not to
be around when he was needed, rather like a younger, irresponsible
brother.

She’d often wondered if her father had suffered some
premonition of his death that he’d brought James home to help her out,
but her father hadn’t been a very imaginative man. No doubt he had
thought just as he said—her cousin wished to earn his living as a
footman, and they could pay better than the miserly Earl of Coventry,
for whom he’d been working.

Though she knew that affluent households often
employed impoverished relatives, she had some difficulty adjusting to a
male servant who was also a distant relative—especially one who spoke
his mind, and knew her so well that he feared no reprisal.

Her life was filled with many oddities these days.

“James is...off to see a man about a dog?” Mary whispered nervously.

Which meant James was in the privy. Cheeks flaming,
Beatrice attempted to assume an air of authority, knowing she failed
miserably. “What is it, then?”

“Mr. Dobbins’s goats do be eating the laundry, miss,
and the hounds has got loose again, and they’re chasing after the
Misses Miller. Jemmie is after them, but there’s none to mend the hole
in their pen.”

How could any one person do it all? She had a
houseful of servants who performed their duties when instructed, but
someone had to direct them. She’d never thought to order about gardeners
and stablehands and tenants and—She couldn’t even think of all that on
top of managing her nonexistent funds. How had her father done it?

Not very successfully, if the threatening letter from the bank meant anything at all.

She would sell the silver epergne. No one would miss
such a thoroughly useless piece. The proceeds would pay the staff, if
not the bank.

“Thank you, Mary. Give Jem a hand, would you?”
Remaining seated so as not to tower over her staff, Bea nodded stiffly,
mimicking Mrs. Digby’s manner with the underservants. A lifetime of
shyness paralyzed her tongue.

When Mary had curtsied and departed, Beatrice pushed
the small stack of coins across the desk at Cook. “Give these to the
grocer, if you will. And best have the scullery maid chase the goats
out, or they’ll be in the kitchen garden next.” She’d said that sensibly
and with some degree of authority. She could learn. Must learn.

“Right you are, miss.” Cook hid the coins in her
apron pocket and bobbed an awkward curtsy, then hesitated. “Miss, is all
well? I’ve got my Robby to think of, and if anything was to happen to
my position...”

“You have a place here for life,” Beatrice assured
her. Cook had always been there, like family, for as long as she could
remember, as had most of her servants.

She might seldom talk with her staff, but she knew
Robby was Cook’s crippled youngest boy, just as she knew the
twelve-year-old scullery maid was an orphan with no other home to turn
to. This was a small village, and a poor one. Opportunities for
employment were limited, and every one of her servants had some
connection holding them here. If she couldn’t pay them, they and their
families would go hungry. Most of the town depended on her apparently
nonexistent income.

Relieved, Cook nodded. “Speak with Mr. Overton,” she dared to add, before hurrying back to her usual haunts.

As the study door closed, Bea shut her eyes, and a
single tear trickled down her cheek. She’d wept until she couldn’t weep
anymore these past months after her father’s death, and again with
Nanny’s passing last week. She had few tears left in her, and at the
moment, they were all for herself.

She’d never thought of herself as a selfish person.

Pulling the embroidered pillow from behind her back,
she punched it into shape again. She’d made this for her father the
Christmas before last, and he’d sworn she was the best daughter who’d
ever lived. He’d died only a few weeks before this past Christmas. She’d
never had a chance to give him the matching footstool she’d worked on
all year. She’d thought her many gifts and accomplishments were
important to him, and that was all that mattered in her world.

Stupid her. The cold, cruel facts of life faced her
now. No one had ever pointed out to her that she was an ignorant,
overindulged spinster, beyond a prayer of changing. Of course, who was
there to point out such things? No one. Her father had liked her just
the way she was, so it simply hadn’t occurred to her that she was
singularly useless.

Like every little girl, she had once entertained
passing fancies of being beautiful and desirable, but the fact was, she
was twenty-eight years old, tall and ungainly, without hopes of a
suitor. She’d never been introduced to society, never been taught the
social graces necessary for that introduction.

Her knowledge of the outside world came from London
fashion magazines and her father’s newssheets. Nanny Marrow had written
letters from all the places she’d stayed.

Nanny Marrow! Grief washed over Bea at the loss of
the one friend who had taught her far more of the world than the
alphabet. It had been only a year since Nanny had retired in the village
and only a week since the lung inflammation took her. The hole in Bea
created by her loss kept growing wider.

Tapping her quill pen against the desk, Bea gazed
out on the lawn. If only she could find a book that would teach her how
to manage an estate, then she might learn more about her father’s
account books and figure out what was wrong. They’d never had debt
collectors at the door when her father was alive. There must be
something she wasn’t doing right.

She pulled out the bank letter again, unfolded it
for the forty-ninth time since its arrival. The sum mentioned was so
enormous, she couldn’t fathom it. Her household accounts for the year
didn’t equal a twentieth of this amount, and she couldn’t pay
them
.

If she sold every piece of silver and bit of
furniture in the house, she couldn’t pay this bill. She had searched her
father’s desk, written to every bank and solicitor represented by
crumbling documents dating back decades, with no success. Her father had
obviously thought he’d live forever. The estate wasn’t entailed, and
aside from James’s distant connection, her father had no living
relatives outside herself, which was the sole reason she’d inherited
without question.

Nervously smoothing the heavy fabric of her mourning
gown, Beatrice desperately tried to think of another solution. She had
tenants. She ought to have income. Surely she owned crops and sheep. Mr.
Overton would know. She would have to eat crow and call on him.

No, she had to do this on her own. Life was too
uncertain. Even if Mr. Overton got over his pique, he would never
willingly teach her to run the estate. He was just like Papa, thinking
women were incapable of more than tatting and sewing. And if she
objected to his methods, he’d only quit and walk away again, and she’d
be right back where she started. Every path she took brought her to the
same conclusion.

A man would never believe she could manage an estate on her own.

Heaven only knew,
she
didn’t know if she could manage an estate on her own.

Pacing the room, her full skirt rustling as it
brushed against the heavy furniture, she prayed for a miracle. She
stopped to search her father’s shelves for the millionth time, hoping
for some inspiration, but most of the books dated back to the turn of
the century. Things had changed since then.

Her father hadn’t.

Wearily, she pulled out a volume on agricultural
production and attempted to make head or tails of the lengthy lists of
which counties produced which crops and when, but it was meaningless to
her. She felt as if she’d been stranded in a foreign country with no
coins and no means of speaking the language.

What she needed was someone to teach her by doing,
as men were taught. Of course, that meant she would require a
knowledgeable man who was not only willing to teach her, but also
believed she was teachable.

Better to ask for a miracle.

BOOK: Patricia Rice
7.94Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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