Page 36 of The Rogue and the Viscountess

“No. I have an errand. In fact, that is my maid with our cart. I’m afraid I must bid you good day.” She lifted her nose into the air, a dismissive gesture she admittedly had not had much practice with, then swept away, satisfied that her skirts made an appropriate rustle as she moved. She nearly ran to Jenny and the safety of the whiskey.

“Who was it then, mum?” Jenny asked, wide-eyed, once Prunella was steering them back the way they’d come.

“Someone I met in Newport. He knew Gwen, the new Lady Penrydd.” The title felt strange on her tongue; that wasn’t her any longer.

“He don’t seem the sort you’d associate with,” Jenny observed, casting a glance behind to see if Calvin were watching them. Several on the street were, Prunella knew. The whiskey had gained any amount of attention, with the fine, well-dressed, unfamiliar lady driving.

“He isn’t.”

Calvin Vaughn would have been welcomed in any drawing room in London, with his fashionable attire and his air of utter self-assurance, and no one would know their daughters and maids were not safe around him. Edwin had seemed the best of husbands, and yet his gambling debts had gotten Penrydd beaten and Prunella held for ransom. And Pete had administered the beating. One never knew the depths of depravity a man could hide behind a façade of charm.

But was her kidnapper also a killer?

Prunella drew the whiskey to a halt beside the low brick wall that fronted the Hungerford Almshouses. Creon bent his head and browsed the tufts of timothy growing along the wall, while Jenny gingerly, and with great suspicion, held the ribbons. Prunella pushed through the iron gate, hinged on thick pillars, and regarded the rows of rubble stone houses with their narrow windows and gabled roofs.

This was where women ended up when they had no family to support them in their age, no pension or savings to draw on. Yet according to the account book Prunella had found, the former housekeeper at Rowan Hill ought to have a splendid pension. She’d been paid well over her annual salary to leave.

Each almshouse had a small garden plot, and Mary Grist’s was neatly arranged, well-tended, and ready for harvest. Prunella knocked on the door, her stomach swaying in her middle. She knew what answer she wanted, and what answer she dreaded, but it was possible Mary Grist was out and Prunella would have no answer at all, and the not knowing might be the worst thing.

The door opened. Mary Grist had gray hair pulled back from a narrow face and the look of a woman who had been callused by hard labor. Had it been so difficult to serve in a fine house like Rowan Hill? The housekeeper peered at Prunella with suspicion.

“Good afternoon. I am Prunella, Lady Penrydd.” Foolishly, she wanted to present a card. This woman had a severe, disapproving air about her, in the manner of Lydia and Prunella’s mother, at the times Prunella had most disappointed them. “I wish to ask you a few questions about your service with the Wilkins family.”

The woman flinched. “I’ve nothing to say. Good day.” She pushed the door shut.

Prunella wedged her foot against the door jamb and winced as the portal struck her half boot. “One question only. Why were you pensioned off after the last baronet died? I’m told you served in the household for nearly four decades, beginning as a chamber maid. I would have thought Lady Wilkins would keep you during the turnover, so you might teach the new baronet how to go on.”

Mrs. Grist glared at Prunella’s foot, then Prunella’s face, her mouth pinched down at the corners. “Lady Wilkins said as it was time to end my service, and I agreed. That’s all. Good day.”

She pushed on the door. Prunella braced her hand on the portal. “Another question. If you received such a generous pension, why are you living in the almshouse?”

A furrow appeared between the other woman’s brows, but Prunella thought it was not so much anger as the pain of betrayal. “You mun ask Botley about that.”

“Who is Botley?”

The anger turned perplexed. “The butler, of course. Snake of a man,” Mrs. Grist added with a strong hint of venom in her tone.

“But Rowan Hill has no butler.”

“And why wouldn’t he scarper off, oncet he got all my money?” Mrs. Grist snapped. “No reason to stay ’less he thought he could get his own share from the beldame.”

“So Lady Wilkins bribed you to leave, and then this Botley extorted all your money.” This was turning into a Gothic mystery. Prunella wasn’t at all accustomed to intrigues, beyond keeping the amorous peccadillos of her friends secret from their husbands. “Shall I track down Botley to learn his hold over you?”

Mrs. Grist’s shoulders slumped. “You need only ask her ladyship why the household has gone through such a deal of caustic soda lately.”

“Caustic soda? For cleaning?” That was as much as she knew about the compound; it was used for washing and scrubbing, and one could purchase the white, powdery substance in great quantities at the shops.

Mrs. Grist looked truly frightened at her slip. “I have said nothing, and I will say nothing. Good day.” She put all her weight against the door and pushed with such force that Prunella thought it wise to withdraw her appendage before she became trapped.

This was an interesting puzzle. Mrs. Grist had been paid a great deal of money to leave Rowan Hill shortly after Barnaby Wilkins died, quite suddenly and having shown no prior hints of illness.

Botley, a butler serving in the house at the same time, had somehow compelled Mrs. Grist to hand over her very comfortable pension, leaving Mrs. Grist to live out the rest of her days as a pauper, paying the price for a man’s greed, and didn’t that sound a familiar tune.

Prunella hurried to the mullioned window set with many tiny tiles of glass, pushing aside a shrub of pelargonium. “One more question, and then I shall importune you no longer, Mrs. Grist,” she shouted through the window. “When did Barnaby Wilkins die?”

“Midsummer,” Mrs. Grist shouted back. “Now away with you, and stop crushing my geraniums!”

More and more interesting, Prunella thought as she untangled herself from the shrubbery. At Midsummer, Pete had been rescuing Prunella from a boat being blown apart with dung bombs. Gwen and Rhydian had married in early July, at which time Pete would have been standing before the magistrate in Newport, being excused for his crimes on account that the new Viscount Penrydd confirmed that Pete had turned against the Black Hound, and because the new acquisition of a title made it harder to hang him.