“Do not be too excited. The carriage will be no more than a gig, and you will sit in the back.” She climbed into the bed and turned out the lamp. They lay side by side in darkness pierced by a filmy ray of moonlight slipping between the window drapes. The white plaster walls reflected that light so that the ceiling beams showed black in contrast. Two men had the chamber next to them and from the sounds were enjoying a bottle together.
“Mrs. Drable told me that you left your last position because the husband importuned you,” Minerva said.
Elise did not respond, but her head nodded.
“Was it more than that?”
She shook her head. “I feared him getting me alone, though. He touched me in ways he shouldn’t and I feared one day he would—not stop.”
Probably so. Eventually. “It is good you left. I know without references that obtaining another position is very difficult, but things will be right soon, I’m sure.” She hoped that Hepplewhite’s became successful, and that there was enough work for Elise to keep herself.
“If necessary, you can return to your village,” she added.
“I wouldn’t want to do that. There is no place for me there, except with relatives who don’t want the keep of me. There was a man who offered to marry me, but I did not want to marry him. So I came up to town.”
That twisted Minerva’s heart. She knew Elise’s situation all too well. When her uncle decided to emigrate to America, he had not offered to bring her too. He let her know the cost of it, and how taking her would delay how he established himself and his two daughters. Her future had looked bleak then, adding to the sorrow she felt at losing her cousins who were her girlhood friends. She saw herself as a governess, perhaps, or maybe in service.
Then Mr. Finley had offered for her hand, to everyone’s astonishment and relief. A love match, her uncle called it, since she had no fortune. A miracle.
She had convinced herself she wanted that marriage. In reality she embraced the idea because there was no alternative that appealed to a girl of seventeen years. Algernon was older. Thirty-seven when they wed. If she thought him handsome in a brittle, sharp way, and somewhat unctuous in his manner and speech, those were small objections that she assumed would soon pass.
For a few months their marriage had been almost normal, except in the marriage bed. He blamed her for his frequent failures there. With every attempt he treated her as if she were some lifeless vessel for his seed, and in truth that was all she felt like. His anger about his impotence infected their whole marriage and turned violent. Eventually life with him became impossible to bear. Yet bear it she did, for too long, because she could see no way out.
She calculated the fees Mrs. Oliver would pay, and how much she could give to the young woman falling asleep at her side.
Chapter Twelve
After two days at Melton Park, joining Nicholas while he rode through the farms and otherwise performed lord of the manor activities, Chase decided it was time to pick up the duties that had brought him down from town.
Since the day was fair, he rearranged the list in his head to take advantage of the bright sun and dry roads. He called for his horse, and sent word to Nicholas that he would probably not return until morning. Before he left he drew the butler aside.
“Has the local magistrate been here since the funeral, to investigate?”
The butler shook his head. “No one has been investigating here, sir.”
“I need you to take a few minutes from your duties and write down which servants accompanied my uncle down from town on his last visit. Also I want to know if he had any visitors, even neighbors. Include everyone who was here for any reason his last three days.”
The butler nodded. “A bad business, sir, if I may say so. Both shocking and sad. No one could have foreseen it.”
“Foreseen it? What do you think happened?”
The butler flushed. “I’m sure I don’t know. I was only referring to his death itself, not—that is to say, I wasn’t implying—”
Of course he was, but to say it would be to invite more questions when one of his duties was to see there were none at all.
There could be only two ways Uncle Frederick went over that parapet. Either he fell by accident. Or he was pushed. So why did he think the butler believed it might have been a third possibility, and the one no one considered—that Uncle Frederick had jumped?
No, he was wrong. One other had considered it. Peel.A conclusion that casts aspersions on your uncle’s good name.He had not paid much attention to that vague allusion, but he now realized just what Peel probably meant.
It took him half an hour just to ride to the border of the estate, and another to reach the nearest village. His destination lay beyond that, so he passed through the town down its main lane. While he circled the churchyard, he noticed some color amidst the plantings. A spot of dark blue bobbed in and out behind the branches of the shrubbery. He paused his horse and waited for the blue to become more visible, but instead it disappeared.
He scrutinized the garden, searching for not blue, but gray. No other unexpected colors showed. He moved on, laughing at himself. Minerva was in Brighton. It was ridiculous to see evidence of her wherever he went, like some green boy infatuated for the first time. Still, that blue had looked much like the blue worn by her companion, so he could be partly excused.
He wondered what she was up to in Brighton. A brief holiday, perhaps. Or she could be getting into trouble. Why did he think the latter more likely?
Outside the village he stopped and consulted his pocket map. A mile farther, and two turns off the main road, he approached a cottage of respectable size. Behind it he could see the bank of a small lake. In front of it rested a horse hitched to a gig.
He hoped that gig did not mean Mr. Edkins had a caller.
