Adair felt the tears welling up in her eyes. “It is good to be home,” she said.
Within a short time Stanton Hall began to come to life again. The furnishings from the upper floors had been all destroyed in the fire, but the local craftsmen began fashioning new beds, tables, chests, and chairs to replace them. Elsbeth discovered that the chamber deep in the cellars of the hall where Jane Radcliffe had kept fabric in cedar chests still held its contents. Curtains and hangings for the bedchambers were now sewn from the fabric. The cloth had not mildewed because it had been protected by the cedar.
Much of the contents of the kitchens were still intact.
New furniture was built for the hall. The wooden shutters for all the windows were replaced. Jane Radcliffe had not liked rushes on the floor of her hall. She had brought with her as part of her dower portion two carpets that had been woven in Arabia. The carpets, however, were gone, as were the tapestries from the walls.
Adair set Albert to finding her mother’s loom if it still existed, and when it could not be found a new loom was built for her. She found the proper wools and threads to weave new tapestries in a cedar trunk in the same room that had held the materials.
Each day a few items belonging to Stanton Hall found their way back to the hall. Adair had offered positions in her service to any in the village who would serve her. Albert chose those young men who could be trained as men at arms, and put them in the custody of his cousin, who was known as Dark Walter. It was rumored that Dark Walter had Moorish blood in him, but how that had come about no one knew for certain, not even Dark Walter. Elsbeth would run the household with Albert. Together they chose a cook and others for the kitchens, and several little maidservants to help keep the hall clean. As the feast of Christ’s Mass drew near and the hall was decorated with green branches and holly, Stanton appeared almost back to normal.
Adair organized two hunts, and together with the villagers they managed to slay three roe deer and a young boar. The meat was butchered and hung in the cold pantry. Adair gave one of the deer to the village. She permitted one day a month for the hunting of rabbit and game birds, as well as fishing twice a month. The grain that had been harvested in late summer and autumn was stored in a single granary at the castle. Each family was given two measures a month, which the miller ground into flour for bread. Apples and pears had been harvested and stored, with carrots and onions.
Elsbeth had coaxed Jane Radcliffe’s herb garden, which grew in the shelter of a kitchen wall, back into existence with judicious pruning and generous helpings of ma-nure. It would produce until a hard frost sent it into a winter’s rest. A smaller garden of kitchen herbs still flourished by the kitchen door: rosemary, parsley, sage, thyme, shallots, and leeks.
Adair spent the late autumn making candles for the house, and soap. She sent to a cooper in another village to come and make her a bathtub of hard oak. The cooper returned to his own village to tell others that the young Countess of Stanton had returned to her hall, and that Stanton had come to life again. The cooper’s master, old Lord Humphrey Lynbridge, was interested to learn this fact. He had had his eyes on Stanton lands, and had hoped to eventually gain them for his family.
“Has she a husband?” Lord Humphrey asked thecooper.
“Don’t know, my lord, but the only man with any authority that I could see was her majordomo, Albert. And I didn’t hear the maidservants gossiping about any master.” The cooper shuffled his feet nervously.
“Go on about your business,” his master said, waving him away.
“What are you thinking, Grandfather?” Robert Lynbridge asked. He was his grandfather’s heir, as his father was dead.
“If the girl is unwed we could make a match with your brother. If you were not married I might make the match for you, and the Radcliffe lands would be ours.
But if your brother gets them ’tis almost as good.”
“How old can the girl be, grandfather? Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen? I do not see her guardians, whoever they might have been, allowing her to come back to Stanton alone. There has to be a husband,” Robert Lynbridge said. “Besides, Andrew feels no need to wed.
Why should he?”
“Because I say so,” the old man snapped. “I want the Radcliffe lands. Do you want them falling into the hands of strangers, Rob?” He glared at his eldest grandson, his blue eyes sharp and clearly filled with annoyance.
“If you would have it then you would have it,” Robert Lynbridge said mildly. He knew better than to argue with his grandfather. The white-haired old man was a fierce fighter. “But I think first we should determine if the girl is wed or pledged.”
“It matters not,” the old lord said. “If she is wed, the husband can meet with an accident. If she is not, there is nothing wrong with a little bride stealing, laddie.”
Robert Lynbridge laughed aloud. His pretty wife, Allis, sitting by his side, just shook her head wearily. “Let us begin at the beginning, my lord,” Rob suggested. The only advantage he had—any of them had—over
Humphrey Lynbridge was that the old man was virtually crippled in his final years. It was difficult for him to get about. Not impossible, just very hard. “I will ride over to Stanton Hall before the winter sets in, and take Andrew with me. We’ll get a good look at the girl and learn what we need to know about her and about her situation.”
“Good! Good!” his grandfather said. “Praise God you are a sensible man, Rob, and not stubborn like your brother.”
“He’s just like you,” Robert Lynbridge said with a laugh. “Exactly like you, if the truth be told, my lord.”
“Merde!” the old man protested. “He is nothing like me.”
“Who is nothing like you?” Andrew Lynbridge had come into the hall. Unlike his older brother, who was of medium height with light blue eyes and brown-blond hair, Andrew was tall with coal black hair, and gray eyes with tiny flecks of gold in them. He looked more like his Scots mother, while Rob resembled their father’s family.
“You!” his grandfather snapped.
“We look nothing alike,” Andrew agreed.
“In temperament,” Rob explained, “you and Grandsire are much alike.”
Andrew Lynbridge grinned wickedly. Like his elder sibling he knew when to back away from an argument with his grandfather.
