Read on for a sneak peek at the next book in Jane Ashford’s charming series
Daniel set his jaw as he surveyed the piles of documents and ledgers before him and wondered if he’d ever see the bare surface of the desk again. The estate office in his ancestral home was a study in chaos. It seemed to him that records and correspondence had been flung through the door like stones skipped across water and left to molder where they landed. As with everything else, Papa and Mama had been more interested in visiting far-flung lands than in anything occurring in their own. And so the piles of paper on this desk had grown higher, the disorder had increased, and next to nothing had been done.
His father hadn’t bothered to inform him that their estate agent had left some time ago. Whether the fellow had gone out of incompetence or frustration, Daniel didn’t know. How could he? If he’d been told that Briggs was gone, he would have found a new agent at least. Wouldn’t he? But that was the point, wasn’t it? His parents hadn’t cared to tell him anything. He’d long ago stopped expecting them to. And so, when the weight of responsibility suddenly descended upon him with their deaths, it was compounded by this wretched mare’s nest. There was so much information to absorb, so many decisions to make, while the information needed to do so could never be found.
Daniel gazed longingly at the green landscape spreading outside the windows. Of course he preferred riding and shooting and fishing and lively society to tenancy reports and dry columns of numbers. Didn’t everyone?
Brushing aside the suspicion that he wasn’t entirely blameless for his predicament, Daniel picked up another thick document. Regrets and resentments were a waste of time. Things were as they were. He should be working. He began to read.
A familiar irritation rose when he was scarcely three sentences in. Lawyers didn’t want you to understand what they wrote, he’d concluded some time ago. They’d created their own twisty, impenetrable language expressly to confuse, so that you had to hire more lawyers to tell you what the devil the first ones had meant. He imagined gangs of them tittering in their fusty chambers, vying with each other to devise yet more obscure phrasing for some obvious point. Tontine, they’d cackle. Partition of messuages lands. Let’s see what they make of that!
Well, they weren’t going to defeat him; he was going to puzzle out this deed of conveyance without help or additional fees. But as he tried to push on, his brain jumped to the many other tasks awaiting his attention. Lists upon lists. The sheer volume made it difficult to focus on any one job. Particularly when the jobs were as dull as ditchwater and nearly as stagnant. What the deuce was mortmain? Sounded like some sort of fungus. When he was interrupted a few minutes later by a brisk knock on the office door, Daniel felt only relief. “Yes?”
His stately butler came through. “You wanted to be told when anyone headed for Rose Cottage, my lord. A carriage has been observed approaching the place.”
“Indeed.” Daniel dropped the document back on its pile and rose. “Thank you, Grant.”
Twenty minutes later, Daniel was riding down the avenue of trees at the front of his home and out into the countryside toward a dwelling at the far edge of his lands, once part of them but now separate under his father’s will. Finally, a mystery that had been nagging at him for months would be solved.
* * *
Dust kicked up by the horses’ hooves drifted through the open window of the post chaise, and Penelope Pendleton felt the ominous tickle at the back of her throat that heralded a fit of coughing. She swallowed repeatedly to fight it off, but the cough would not be quelled. The spasms seized her, shaking her shoulders and vibrating through her chest, making her eyes water and her throat ache. There was nothing to do but hang on and ride it out.
Her younger companion shrank away from the paroxysm. “I’m feard you have the consumption, miss. What’ll I do if you go and die?”
“Won’t,” croaked Penelope. She took a swallow of well water from a flask she’d taken care to bring. And then another. A cough tried to rise. She pushed it back. “It’s nothing of the kind,” she rasped when she could speak again. “This is just a lingering cold, Kitty. That’s all.” Which was undoubtedly true. She was certain. The smoky mills of Manchester had prolonged the irritation of her lungs. No more. And the coughing was over now, for a while at least. “I’ll soon be well here in the country. See how pretty it is.”
The Derbyshire countryside rolled away from them, lush and green under the June sun—hills crowned by clumps of trees, neat fields bounded by stone walls.
Her sixteen-year-old maid eyed it uneasily. “Are there bears?”
“Not for hundreds of years, Kitty.”
“So there used to be bears?”
“Yes, I think so, but—”
“So some might be left, hiding in the woods. Or in a dark cave maybe. Just waiting to jump out and rip your insides.” The girl clawed at the air with her hand.
“No.” Penelope made her voice authoritative. “They were all hunted down long ago.”
“Wolves? With red eyes and teeth as long as your thumb?”
Penelope shook her head. “No wolves.” Small, skinny, and addicted to drama, Kitty was a challenging personal attendant. The girl had never been out of Manchester before, and she had a dim view of vegetation. She saw every forest tree as poised to fall and “crush the life out of you.” In her mind, undergrowth teemed with monstrous things eager to sting and bite and tear. The lack of nearby shops was almost incomprehensible to her. Yet she’d wanted to come along in Penelope’s employ. Kitty had an odd sense of adventure that seemed to savor the idea of impending disaster. Her enthusiasm counted for a good deal as Penelope salvaged what she could from the wreck of her family fortunes.
The carriage bounced in a rut. Penelope gripped a strap and held on. The journey from Manchester to Ashbourne, over fifty miles of bad roads, had been exhausting. She couldn’t imagine what it would have been like without the indulgence of a post chaise. But all would be well when they reached Rose Cottage, the mysterious miracle that had descended upon her when she’d nearly lost hope. It simply had to be.
They had to stop twice for directions, but at last the chaise slowed, turned, and pulled up before their destination. Penelope pushed open the door and jumped down, her soul awash with gratitude and relief.
Rose Cottage might have been anything. On bad days she’d envisioned a broken-down hovel with gaping windows and rotting thatch surrounded by fever-ridden swamps. But in fact it was a real house, built of mellow stone with a slate roof. The central door promised decent rooms on either side, and a second story showed three windows. There were chimneys at either end. Carved stone lintels suggested age, but the structure looked sound. Yes, it was small compared to what she was—had been—used to. But that mattered not a whit these days. The source of the name was obvious. Climbing roses had gone wild in the neglected garden, engulfing one end of the building and filling the air with scent.
Penelope took the key she’d received from the solicitor out of her reticule and hurried up three steps to unlock the door. It opened on a small entry with stairs at the back and bare, dusty rooms on either side. No furniture graced the wooden floorboards. No draperies softened the windows. But Penelope had two wagons coming behind her, carrying all her worldly goods under the care of a crusty old manservant who had tended to her father and then her brother. She would soon have a bed and other necessities. Penelope smiled. Foyle would spit when he saw this place.
“Smells like old people,” said Kitty, coming in on Penelope’s heels.
There was also a dead sparrow in the fireplace on the left. But Rose Cottage was an actual house, and it really belonged to her. Penelope had the deeds in her trunk—miraculous evidence, in black and white, of her ownership. Though it was nothing like the spacious mansion where she’d grown up, the little stone building felt like sanctuary. “We will open the windows,” replied Penelope. “And scrub it clean.”
Kitty groaned theatrically.
Exploring further, Penelope discovered an extension on the back of the house, like the stem of a T, holding the kitchen. A door at one side led out to a small cobbled yard and privy. A neat little barn stood some yards away. Like the house, it seemed in good repair.
She returned to find the postilions setting down one of their trunks by the front door. “Upstairs, please,” said Penelope. Looking grumpy but unsurprised, the two men hauled the luggage up the narrow stairs.
“That one goes back here,” she said when they brought in the large hamper of food she’d packed. “In the kitchen.”
When they’d set it down, she walked with them back to the chaise and paid them off. Five minutes later, the equipage was rattling away.
“You’re letting them go?” said Kitty from the doorway. “Leaving us here all alone to starve?”
Penelope laughed. She couldn’t help it. A wild freedom she hadn’t felt in ages bubbled through her. “You saw me pack the hamper. I brought plenty to eat. And should Foyle be delayed for some reason, I believe I saw the remains of a kitchen garden beside the barn.”
“What’s a kitchen garden?” asked Kitty.
“A place where you grow vegetables. Perhaps herbs, too. We can see what we find.”
“I won’t eat stuff that comes out of the dirt!”
“But that’s where vegetables come from, Kitty.”
The girl shook her head. “They come from the greengrocer.”
“Who gets them from farmers, who grow them in the dirt. We’ll wash everything off.” Reminded of something, Penelope went back to the kitchen and tried the hand pump beside the stone sink. A bit of pumping produced a stream of water, rusty at first and then clear and clean. She sniffed and then tasted it. “Good,” she said. “We won’t have to carry water.” She removed her bonnet and shawl and set them on top of the food hamper on the floor.
Kitty gazed around the empty room. “Nothing to carry it in,” she pointed out.
“Foyle will be here soon with my things. Perhaps by tomorrow. Let’s make a fire. I saw some wood stacked by the barn.” The day was warm, but there was something homey and reassuring about a fire.
“I’ll get it, miss.”
“I can help,” Penelope said. She was going to have to learn a great many household skills that she’d never been taught. Carrying wood must be among the simplest.
Kitty held up a hand, palm outward. “It’s for me to do, miss.” Her features had taken on a stubborn cast. Penelope let her go. There would have to be a good many adjustments, some of which would offend Kitty’s intermittent sense of correctness. But not today.
The thud of hooves sounded from the front of the house. Though it couldn’t be Foyle yet, Penelope hurried out in hope.
She found a man dismounting a fine blood horse on her doorstep. Stocky, brown-haired, with blunt features and a square jaw, he wasn’t classically handsome. But somehow he didn’t need to be. He held one’s attention by the sheer force of his presence. His expression suggested that he was accustomed to deference and obedience. Penelope took a step back. The last year had made her wary of such men.
The visitor looked her up and down. Was that disapproval? It couldn’t be hostility. Unless he’d somehow received word… No. Not yet. Impossible. Penelope wondered if she’d rubbed dust on her face. Her gown was crushed and wrinkled from hours in the post chaise, but it had once been expensive.
“I’m Whitfield,” he said.
The name was unfamiliar. Penelope relaxed a little. He must be a neighbor. She would have preferred not to receive anyone until she was settled, but good relations with the community were important. “Hello, Mr. Whitfield. I am—”
“Not mister.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Rose Cottage was part of my estate until my father willed it to you,” he went on. “I’d like to know why.”
“Your father?” Penelope forgot all else as she latched on to this piece of information. The solicitor who’d tracked her down and told her about the legacy had refused to give her benefactor’s name. The bequest was anonymous, he’d insisted. If she wanted the cottage, she wouldn’t ask. And really, wasn’t gratitude rather more appropriate than questions? He’d been even more arrogant than this man. “Your father,” she repeated. “Not Mr. Whitfield.”
“My father, John Frith, Viscount Whitfield,” he replied impatiently.
He was a viscount, and he was glaring at her.
Kitty appeared in the doorway. “There’s spiders in the woodpile, miss,” she said. “Big ones.” She spread her hands four inches apart as she gazed at their visitor with open curiosity.
The tickle of a cough began in the back of Penelope’s throat. Not now, not now, she thought, swallowing frantically. But she couldn’t stop it. The spasm came. The hacking shook her.
Their visitor looked startled, then concerned. “For God’s sake, get her some water,” he said.
Kitty spread her hands. “We ain’t got so much as a bucket, sir.”
Penelope tried to say the word flask, but the coughing was too violent. She willed Kitty to remember the vessel, sitting upstairs with their baggage. Without success.
The truculent viscount put an arm around Penelope’s shoulders and urged her inside. By this time, she could think of nothing but her heaving chest and streaming eyes.
“Pump some water,” the man said to Kitty when they reached the kitchen. “Hurry up!”
Kitty jumped to obey. The man examined the stream as it began to flow. Seemingly satisfied, he held cupped hands below the spout and let them fill, then brought the water to Penelope. “Here. Drink!”
Despite her plight, she hesitated.
“The water’s good,” he added. “It’s a deep well.”
It wasn’t the water, Penelope thought; it was the curiously intimate service. But she was desperate. She bent and slurped liquid from his palms. Her lips brushed his skin as she drank. His fingertips touched her cheek, leaving a startling tingle behind. Finally, somewhat recovered, she croaked, “Flask.”
Kitty struck her forehead with one hand and ran upstairs to fetch the item. When she returned, Penelope took a deeper drink.
“You take brandy for your cough?” asked their visitor. He sounded amused and a bit scandalized.
“It’s water.” Her brother had used this flask for brandy. Not so long ago, and yet it felt like forever. She drank again. At last the cough subsided. Penelope sagged, worn out by the paroxysm.
The unexpected viscount took her arm and led her out to the low stone wall that surrounded the front garden. “Sit. You’re ill.”
There was nowhere else to rest. Penelope sat. “I’m not. That is, I have a lingering cold, which will soon disappear.”
“You can’t stay here,” he said, looking around as if he hadn’t heard her.
“Yes, I can.”
“I beg to differ—”
“Beg all you like. I’m not leaving.” It was rude, but Penelope wouldn’t be ordered about by this stranger. And no one would tear her away from her new home and sanctuary now that she had it.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Penelope Pendleton.” She waited for a sign of recognition. He showed none.
“Why were you left a house by my father?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
“Well, apparently you don’t know, and he was your father.”
This made him stiffen. “Tell me about your family. Where do you come from? Who are your people?”
Penelope went still, hearing similar demands, in harsher voices, echoing in her memory. Freely offering information had not done her much good since the killings in Manchester. Truth was scorned and twisted by powerful men—like the one addressing her, perhaps. “Must you loom over me?” she said to gain time.
But that was a mistake because he sat down beside her on the wall, bringing those dark probing eyes much closer.
A cough threatened. This time, Penelope let it come, aware that her struggles made her unwanted visitor uncomfortable. By the time the spasm was over, she’d decided that she wasn’t going to tell him anything. Not until she knew a great deal more. She sipped from her flask. “You really must excuse me,” she rasped. “I’m not prepared to receive callers.” This was her house. She had the right to refuse visitors, for the first time in endless months. A privilege she hadn’t appreciated properly until she lost it.
The irritating young woman gazed at Daniel from watering eyes. Sylphlike, he thought. That’s what she was. Damn sylphlike. He didn’t care for sylphlike women—sylphlike people, actually. They seemed to think their fragile frames were a sign of virtue, in contrast to his naturally sturdy figure. All that willowy slenderness was more likely to be unhealthy. Well, just witness the horrific cough that kept overwhelming the chit.
Miss Penelope Pendleton was pale. Her oval face was undeniably pretty, surrounded by blades of blond hair. Her blue eyes were large and clear—and not the least doll-like, he noticed. Indeed, they had the steady, stubborn resolve of a woman with something to hide. Daniel was the local magistrate; he knew that look.
She coughed weakly into her hand. Now she was being piteous on purpose, to make him feel like a bully. There were twisty corners to this young lady. Daniel felt a brush of the astonishing sensation that had run through him when she had drunk from his hands. Her lips had been so delicate on his palms. He had to find out more about her, for a variety of reasons.
“I really think I must rest,” she said.
He was betrayed into an exasperated laugh. “On what? The bare floorboards?”
“I have quilts—”
“You can’t stay here alone,” he interrupted. The thought of her curled up in a nest of bedding was all too vivid.
“I’m not alone. I have Kitty.”
“And she is what, fifteen?”
“Sixteen,” said the skinny young maid, who had not effaced herself but loitered in the open doorway of the house, watching them with frank curiosity.
“And a manservant.” When he made a show of looking around the empty garden, Miss Pendleton added, “He’s on the way with my furnishings.”
“Furnishings. Really.” She spoke as if her bits and pieces belonged in the Prince Regent’s palace.
“Nothing worthy of a viscount, perhaps. But we shall be very comfortable.” She rose and joined her servant at the top of the low steps, a clear signal that he was to depart. Daniel enjoyed ignoring it.
“I told you I can’t cook, miss,” said the maid.
Miss Pendleton’s lips tightened. They were beautifully sculpted lips, Daniel noticed. Rather full and vivid for a sylph. “I can,” she said.
Daniel suspected it was a lie. Or no, she didn’t feel like a liar. Twisty but not deceptive. An exaggeration, rather. “What are you going to do here?” he asked. “This place isn’t fit for habitation, and there’s no room for a staff.” He’d wager a significant sum that she’d grown up with a cook and butler and all the rest.
“There’s no need for you to concern yourself,” she said with the condescension of a duchess. She looked pointedly at his horse.
That’s me put in my place, Daniel thought. He discovered he was more amused than offended. On top of being frustrated, he was so very tired of not knowing the things he needed to know.
“Do you think the gentleman might see about the spiders?” asked Kitty the maid.
Daniel was beginning to like this girl. “Happy to,” he replied before Miss Pendleton could object. “I’ll send over some fresh firewood, too. Uninfested.”
“You needn’t bother.”
“Oh, I insist. It’s only neighborly.” Following Kitty around the house, Daniel vowed he was going to do far more than that, though he didn’t intend to say so. But he couldn’t let this mysterious newcomer get sicker. He had to find out first why his father had left her a house.