There was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” Cordelia called.
Miss Vaughn entered the room and curtsied so lowly to Cordelia that her nose nearly touched her knees.
“I will leave you to get settled,” Penelope said, and left the room.
Miss Vaughn bowed again. “My lady.”
“You don’t need to curtsy to me, Miss Vaughn,” Cordelia said, and held out her hand once again. “But I would still like for you to shake my hand.”
Miss Vaughn beamed and eagerly took Cordelia’s hand between both of hers. “We were all very sorry for you, my lady. Hibbert is a right snob, he is.”
“In that moment I could have cheerfully killed him.”
“Most of the lower staff would have helped you, my lady.”
Cordelia tried to hold in a smile but found she couldn’t. She was relieved to find one friendly face in her new home.
“The footmen will be bringing up your trunks to the wardrobe—all nineteen of them. May I ask what’s inside?”
“Clothing, of course,” Cordelia said. “Our wedding presents will arrive in a few months. There were so many that my father had to hire a steamer to ship them.”
“I bet you have more dresses than a princess.”
“I’ve never met a princess, so I wouldn’t know. But my mother did purchase a great deal of clothing for my trousseau.”
Not that Cordelia had any say in what clothing was selected. Her mother had told her that she had “no taste” and couldn’t be trusted to purchase even a proper pair of gloves.
“You must be as rich as Croesus,” Miss Vaughn said wonderingly.
“I don’t know about that, but I have yet to visit Greece.”
Her slight jest was lost on the older woman, who shook her head in agreement.
“Good thing too. Or most of us wouldn’t have been hired in December,” she said. “You wouldn’t have believed the state of the house when I arrived. There was only the stuffed-shirt Hibbert, Mrs. Norton, Cook, and the dowager’s maid, Miss Poole. The rest of the staff had left for paying positions. Well, Hibbert had us all on our hands and knees scrubbing the house from the top to the bottom. He made me scrub the old vestibule where they say the monk’s ghost walks—I clutched my cross around my neck and scrubbed as quickly as I could.”
“Surely you don’t believe in ghosts.”
Miss Vaughn tilted her head to the side. “I wasn’t worried about the monk so much as the late earl, who shot himself in the ash grove near the house.”
Cordelia’s stomach turned unpleasantly, and she touched her chest in surprise. “Lord Farnham’s father committed suicide?”
“You didn’t know, my lady?” Miss Vaughn said, and she continued to ramble. “It was quite a to-do, because even though he was an earl, he couldn’t have a funeral service. My old mother kept saying he ought to be buried face down at the crossroads, with a stake through his heart to keep him there.”
“Why a stake if he’s already dead?”
“To keep the evil spirit from wandering.”
“Do you know where they did bury the late earl?”
“At the churchyard in Petersley Village, but there’s not even a marker on the grave.”
Cordelia released a long breath. She was absurdly grateful that the late earl was not buried at Ashdown Abbey. One ghost was quite enough; two would be entirely pretentious of any house.
“Where is my bathing room? I was hoping to have a bath. Get off some of the dirt from travelling.”
“I can fill the tin hip bath for you, my lady,” she said. “I’ll have the cook start boiling the water in the kitchen.”
