Mrs. Baylis pointed out the dining room, much the same, down to the china cabinet, table, and chairs.
Anne said, “I recognize this furniture.”
“Yes, we bought it along with the house.”
Anne remembered the last time she had come to Painswick to help clean out the house and prepare for the sale. She and Fanny had each taken a few keepsakes, but most things had been sold, the proceeds paying for their grandparents’ few debts, burial expenses, and fine gravestone in the churchyard.
Mrs. Baylis then led her to the rear of the house, to the little built-on conservatory with its many sunny windows that looked out onto a kitchen garden where her grandparents had once grown vegetables, next to a hen house, and a small meadow beyond.
Spying a house across the meadow, Anne said, “I’d forgotten these windows overlook the back garden of that house.” She pointed. “I believe a schoolmaster used to live there.”
“That’s Valley View Lodge. Dr. Finch lets it now. I sometimes see him outside with his wife and child.”
Shock struck Anne like an icy wave. “His wife and child?”
“Well, I don’t know that she is his wife ... exactly. I did hear he was a single man. I usually see the child with Bess or Hannah Tufley, who work for him, I understand. But now and again I see a young woman with the child.”
“Oh?” Anne’s chest tightened at the thought of a child. Then she recalled the toy rabbit. Perhaps she should not be so surprised.
“Sorry to gossip,” Mrs. Baylis went on. “I am interested in all my neighbors, and having a new doctor in town, well, one is naturally curious.”
“Naturally.”
“Now, here. Do take a few of these roses with you....”
Anne left a short while later, curious herself and unsettled. Did Ernest Finch have a child with someone? She told herself his private life meant nothing to her. Even so, disappointment curdled her stomach.
Katherine Fitzjohn had planned a special dinner to welcome her cousins back to Painswick Court. She invited her mother to join them, but Lady Celia said she was not feeling equal to all those stairs nor to dressing for dinner.
To Anne, Lady Celia confessed that she had little appetite and could not face several courses of rich food. Anne promised to bring her some comforting broth, plain custard, and stewed fruit instead. Along with warm peppermint tea for her stomach.
Going downstairs to retrieve a tray for Lady Celia, Anne glanced into the parlour and saw Colonel Paine and Mr. Dalby having a drink together. Katherine entered wearing a dinner dress of primrose yellow with long sleeves and a falling collar. The gown was finely made, but the color did not flatter her complexion.
Anne continued belowstairs to the kitchen, which was filled with savory smells and more bustle than usual for the celebratory meal. Mrs. Pratt moved from meat spit to stove to worktable in a rapid circuit, now and again requesting something from one of the maids.
While Anne gathered the other items for Lady Celia’s meal herself, the kitchen maid, Clara, paused in her tasks to heat the broth for her.
Anne carried the tray upstairs and helped Lady Celia sit up, arranged a linen napkin over her bodice, and set the tray over her lap.
“Can you manage, or shall I help?”
“I have fed myself since childhood, Anne. I have not forgotten how.”
Thus dismissed, Anne went back downstairs for her own dinner and Louie’s as well. When she returned, Louie climbed into his small bed near the fire with a contented sigh and fell asleep. Anne read to Lady Celia for a time, until the woman nodded off too.
Then Anne read a few more paragraphs fromManagement of the Sick Chamber.
A nurse should be allowed to breathe the fresh airin the morning,and time to change her clothes,asgreat cleanliness is absolutely necessary. A cheerful and pleasant lookingwoman with a clean,neat appearance and an amiable disposition,is an appendage to the sick chamber of the utmostvalue and deserves to be esteemed a blessing of nosmall magnitude....
Footsteps and voices in the corridor announced the return of Miss Fitzjohn and her cousins to their rooms after dinner.
Rising from the armchair a short while later, Anne saw that Lady Celia’s shawl had fallen to the floor. She picked it up and went to hang it in the dressing room. While there, she peeked into Rosa’s adjoining room and found it empty, a small Bible lying on the bed.
Anne quietly opened the outer dressing room door, planning to walk to the water closet from there. Noticing movement down the passage, she hesitated on the threshold. From her concealed vantage, she saw Rosa, hand on the latch of Mr. Dalby’s room, furtively looking right and left before slipping inside.
“Foolish girl!”her stepmother’s voice rang in her mind, and Anne wondered if Nancy had felt this frustrated by her own behavior over the years.
From the conversation she had overheard, Anne knew Rosa and Mr. Dalby had met before and apparently had some sort of relationship. Even so, what was she doing entering the man’s bedchamber now? Rosa certainly did not seem like a young lady of low morals. Or was she mistaken?
