Taking that to mean the conversation was finished, she trained her gaze out the window and watched as the scenery changed from bustling town to the countryside and rolling hills. As the countryside lengthened, she gazed upon expansive farmlands and quaint cottages.
Peeling his eyes from the paper, he looked out, “We’re close to home.”
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Whitton,” he said. “Twickenham County, to be precise. My family had held a hundred acres of land here since the Tudor times.”
She looked to the opposite window, “I have never been this way before, well, except for that night. I wasn’t able to see the surroundings.”
“And what do you think?” he asked.
Ariadne’s brows met in the middle. “If you’re expecting me not to appreciate the countryside, you are wrong. I was raised in a country seat too, but not as massive as this one. I walked to church at times and visited some tenants with Mother too.”
“Good,” he took up the paper that she assumed he must have read a dozen times already. “Then you won’t have any problem with isolation.”
Around a corner, she spotted the reason for the smoke; laundry fluttered on a line, the whiteness of the linen fitted to the tidy, gingerbread-stone cottage nearby.
Two children were playing on the front lawn with a puppy. To the left of the house, there was a pen with two cows and chickens clucking.
“It’s as bucolic as home,” she said to herself.
As they drove closer, variations of that cottage popped up with more frequency; some homes had two stories, and a few had extended farms. They passed through a town square with bustling shops and storefronts, a market overflowing with goods and food, before they went off to the east.
After a long drive, the carriage pulled up to the house, and as she assessed the house in daylight,
Eight large windows spanned the upper floor, and on the lower floor was a door in the center with three windows on either side. The house appeared both looming and impersonal, and, surrounded as it was by dense woods, so isolated as to make her shiver. There was frigidity, a barrenness about the place, and it made her shiver.
When the carriage stopped, he opened the door and descended, his back and shoulders slabs of iron. He did not look back when he stepped through the door.
He wont even help me out! How much of a blackguard is he?
“Your Grace?” A footman stood at the door with his hand open. “Please?”
She shot a look at the door before reaching out for him. “Thank you.”
As she stepped in, she found a man and two women, all clad in dark tones, but the man had a slate grey waistcoat that told he was a cut above the rest of the footmen behind him.
He was the butler—and a young man at that. Her family’s butler, Wiggins, was over sixty years of age. By her best estimation, she could bet this man was not even thirty-five yet.
The woman who stood to the side was dressed in full skirts down to her shoes. She had strands of grey hair at the temples, and Ariadne assumed she was the housekeeper.
“Your Grace,” the man bowed. “I am Allen Hunt, the butler, and these are Mrs. Clea Tulley, the housekeeper, and Mrs. Grimes, the governess .”
Both women looked to be in their fifties, while Mrs. Tulley had slate grey hair, Mrs. Grimes hair still held a burnished red to her dark hair. She almost made to curtsy but realized— she was a duchess.
“I am pleased to meet you all,” she quickly thought of what her mother would say at the moment. “Mrs. Tully, as I settle down in the next few days, I would love to meet with you and learn how you run this masterful house.”
From the smile on the woman’s face, she knew that was the best response. “Mrs. Reid, I will not intervene in how you school Lady Emily, so please, be free to communicate with her father on those matters, and Mr. Hunt, once again, I am pleased to meet you.”
She looked over her shoulder, then turned back with a wry smile. “I suppose my new husband has gone off to speak with his daughter. He was concerned about her all the journey—” she winced a little inside at the white lie. “—so Mrs. Tully, would you please show me to my rooms?”
“Absolutely, Your Grace,” she said. “Please, follow me.”
Chapter Ten
She lifted her skirts and followed Mrs. Tully up the floating staircase to the upper level and then another short staircase to a floor where every hallway had an Aubusson carpet runner and fine dark walnut doors with brass furnishings.
Mrs. Tully stopped at a door and pulled it open. “Here you are, Your Grace. I hope it does not disappoint.”
