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Fighting a blush, Juliet took up the tambour. Griff and Rosalind could be so very…blatant at times. Determined to ignore their meaningful glances, she examined the puckered fabric, then pointed to some crooked stitches. “Here’s where you’ve gone wrong. This is supposed to be flames in a forge to represent the God of Fire. But you’ve made it black pudding.”
“Not black pudding,” Rosalind protested. “It’s supposed to be Olympus. I know you sketched the design as Hephaestus working his forge while Aphrodite stood by. But the God of Fire is ugly, so I changed it to Zeus and Hera. It’s supposed to represent me and Griff, after all.”
Juliet raised an eyebrow. “You can’t change designs midstream. It mucks everything up. No wonder you’re having trouble.” She began pulling out stitches, no small feat in the weak afternoon light with the chill air stiffening her fingers. “Besides, Zeus was a tyrant and Hera a nagging witch. Surely that’s no better.”
“But Zeus and Hera had children,” Rosalind snapped. “Hephaestus and Aphrodite did not.”
Juliet glanced up from the tambour. “What does that signify?”
Griff looked suddenly stony-faced, and Rosalind inexplicably blushed and glanced away. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all.”
How very odd. What was going on between those two? “I can’t salvage this mess now. I’ll sketch a new design with Zeus and Hera later, and you can start again.”
With a nod, Rosalind took back the tambour and stared glumly down at it. “I honestly don’t know how you can bear to do needlework. I find it tedious and annoying.”
“Which is exactly how I find that Shakespeare you both enjoy so much. But I do like working with my hands. It soothes me.”
And took her mind off Morgan.
Drat it all, there he went again, intruding in her thoughts.
They turned off the main road onto a smoother one. “Apparently, we’ve reached Charnwood estate.” Griff frowned. “I don’t see a house anywhere close; it must be larger than I’d realized. It’s difficult to obtain accurate information on a man who buries himself in the country and never comes into society.”
As they trundled along mile after mile, Juliet’s heart sank. Bad enough that the baron had the respect of his peers. Must he own half the land in the shire as well? This didn’t bode well for forcing him into revealing anything about his ward.
“There’s plenty of room here to hide Morgan,” Griff remarked.
“Plenty of room to hide him and plenty of wealth to feed him, clothe him, and keep him warm for a decade,” Juliet grumbled. “I thought you said Lord Templemore’s father ran the estate into the ground.”
“That’s what I’d heard. Apparently somebody resurrected it. Though it must have taken a fortune.”
An understatement, to be sure. Thick stands of pine and oak stood sentinel to the busy efforts of workmen spreading compass on ice-crusted fields. Quaint, immaculately kept dairy buildings gave way to neat, half-timbered tenant cottages. Why, the man probably had his own tannery and smithy and goodness knew what else.
“Consorting with smugglers and acquiring fortunes go hand in hand,” Rosalind quipped. “Since Morgan was connected to those smugglers somehow, perhaps Templemore is, too. He might have come by his wealth the same way you did originally, darling—by dealing in smugglers’ goods.”
“Very amusing,” Griff muttered. “But if he did, why hadn’t any of the smugglers questioned by the runner ever heard of him? They only knew Morgan, and some of them didn’t even know him. If Morgan was ever a smuggler himself, he wasn’t one for long.”
Soon they began an ascent up a low, wooded hill. When they shot out of the tree-bordered road onto a long, forbidding drive, Juliet tensed.
Worse and worse. Charnwood’s grounds were ten times grander than Swan Park’s. The coldly elegant lawns seemed to stretch on forever beneath the wintry gray skies. The formal gardens were tediously beautiful, with gravel paths and dainty bridges knitting together newly turned flower beds and manmade ponds. There was an impressive knot garden and hedge maze, too, just to emphasize that the baron was a man of consequence.
As if Charnwood Hall wasn’t enough to prove that. My oh my oh my. Only a dead woman could remain unimpressed by the sprawling ancient edifice of claret-hued brick. Compared to this stately matron, Swan Park was an upstart at her coming out.
Charnwood was the kind of eclectic great house Juliet had fallen in love with on trips to house parties. Pieces had been added here and there—a Jacobean wing stuck onto the Elizabethan core on one end, a Palladian orangery on the other. Dutch gables gilded the somber brick, and ornate cupolas perched atop the clifflike towers at each corner of the core. Every generation had stamped its own time upon the building, so harmoniously that, taken altogether, Charnwood Hall both enchanted and intimidated the viewer.
“It must require an army of servants,” Rosalind commented. “It’s a wonder his lordship hasn’t married yet. Although God help the woman who takes on the daunting task of running that household.”
“Some women would enjoy it.” Juliet’s own domestic heart certainly leaped at the thought. The challenge of it all, the accomplishment! “Wouldn’t it be positively thrilling to be the one ensuring that it runs smoothly? Turning it into a home?”
Rosalind raised an eyebrow. “Oh yes, thrilling is precisely the word I would have chosen.” Then she turned pensive. “The man is unmarried, as I recall. Wasn’t he in London when you and Helena first began attending parties? I remember talk of the newly ascended baron, though we never met him. I didn’t make the connection until now.”
“I remember that as well.” Juliet brightened. “Might he have been in town to help his wayward ward? That was right after Morgan fled from Sussex.”
“We’ll know soon enough,” Griff remarked as they drew up in front of an imposing stone entrance. Their coachman climbed down and scurried to open the carriage door and lower the steps.
A footman ran out to attend them, his face marked by surprise. Charnwood Hall clearly had few visitors. If the sudden brutal blast of cold air from the opening carriage door was any indication of Shropshire weather at this time of year, she could understand why nobody visited here in winter.
As they descended, they heard shots being fired behind the house, and Juliet wondered if that might explain the lack of visitors as well.
