He’d rather have Agatha back than another inheritance. “She was Scottish?”
“Her ancestors were, and not to speak ill of the dead, but I always wondered if that was where she got her inflexible disposition.”
“You said she had an uncle?”
“Well, yes, though I doubt he is still alive. He was her husband’s uncle.”
“Why didn’t you mention that before when I asked you if I had any other relatives?”
“Because Lady Reeves warned me never to mention his name on threat of dismissal. He was estranged, after all, from both her and her father-in-law.”
“Why?”
“I asked once and got fired for it. It took months of profuse apologies from me to be reinstated, and I never questioned the lady again. But Giles Reeves would be your great-great-uncle on the paternal side of this family, the older brother of your great-grandfather, whose estate you now own. As I said, I highly doubt he still lives.”
The chaplain had begun saying prayers over the open grave. Damon noticed Mrs. Wright, Agatha’s disagreeable housekeeper, standing on the other side of the grave, crying. Damon moved to stand next to her, facing the chapel.
Agatha had been sixty at least, but Mrs. Wright was younger by some ten years. No gray was in her brown hair yet, but her austere demeanor made her look as old as his grandmother. She’d been his grandmother’s housekeeper for several decades. She might even have worked here when his mother still lived here, but that was just one of the many questions she’d refused to answer for him, so he wasn’t sure.
She was the only one left who might be able to tell him if his mother had ever come back here after she’d left Jamaica and where she was now. He’d ridden to Port Antonio as Malory had suggested and had learned the harbor did keep records, but unless his mother had given a false name, there was no record of her booking passage on any ships leaving from there the year she’d left home or any year after that. He’d visited the inns near the port in case she’d stayed at one, but they didn’t keep records that dated that far back. He’d even checked Port Antonio’s cemetery. It had been a wasted trip.
He wasn’t sure what to say to Mrs. Wright when it had been so apparent on his earlier visits that she disliked him. Perhaps he could begin by reassuring her that she could keep her job if her disposition would improve.
“Come for even more gains?” was whispered spitefully.
“What the devil does that mean?”
“For someone who didn’t know this family at all, you have gained from it rather substantially.”
He turned to face her and said just as quietly, “I would rather have gotten to know my grandmother, to have had at least one damn conversation with her where she didn’t think she was talking to someone else of her acquaintance. Do you honestly think I’m glad about her death?”
“Why wouldn’t you be? She would have hated you as much as she did your mother—if she even knew you existed, but she didn’t.”
“Why would she hate me?”
The woman clamped her mouth shut. He’d seen her do that before. It meant she wasn’t going to say another bloody word. She was beyond infuriating!
He tried to curb his anger, but his voice was still sharp when he told her, “I’m not going to fire you, despite your disagreeable nature, but I do insist you tell me what you have against me, and whatever it is, it needs to end now.”
“I would as soon leave your employ.”
“Just to avoid telling me the truth?”
“Neither you nor your mother were ever to be welcomed here,” Mrs. Wright hissed at him. “She came and wasn’t let in the door.”
He sucked in his breath and demanded, “My mother came here? When?!”
“Many years ago, but as I said, she was turned away at the door.”
“As I would have been? Because grandmother couldn’t remember her own daughter?”
“Oh, no, that was before Lady Reeves started to forget the people she knew. My lady was not a forgiving woman.”
“What did my mother do to cause such strong antipathy that it would be extended to me?”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
“Bloody hell, I told you before I don’t know where she is and you wouldn’t tell me!”
