Chapter Six
I’d planned to call upon Helvetica Siegurdson before Miss Hammerschmidt had so enlivened—and further complicated—my afternoon. The delay meant I risked interrupting dinner preparations, though a chat with Her Grace of Ambrose might prove every bit as illuminating as any conversation I’d manage belowstairs.
Heat took a greater toll on horses than humans, so I strolled the few streets to Her Grace’s residence. The day had reached the stultifying depths of misery, when the air held dead still and warmth oppressed the spirit like a guilty conscience.
Rain on the way, which might provide temporary relief from the dust, but would make the plague of insects and humidity worse.
Her Grace received me in her garden, an enormous mastiff panting at her feet. The breed had become fashionable in the last century, the preferred canine ornament for young men. Dowagers like Her Grace of Ambrose were supposed to favor lapdogs.
“Have a seat, my boy,” she said, rising and offering me her cheek. “What is Waltham thinking, dragging you up to Town at this time of year? Though, I must say, you do look a bit more the thing.”
My mother knew everybody. Her Grace knew everybody. Duchesses of a feather might not flock together, but they were cordial allies against society’s foolishness and ill-bred behavior. The patronesses at Almack’s were one sort of social institution, while dowagers of the peerage served another, less frivolous role.
“I wasn’t sure you’d receive me.” I took my seat, wondering where in the hell that admission had come from.
“Don’t be a clodpate. I knew you when you went scampering around Caldicott Hall, wearing only a nappy that drooped to your chubby knees. How is your mother?”
What a mortifying—and comforting—image. Her Grace served hot, strong tea, lest the summer weather get airs above its station. I offered my recitation as my hostess poured out.
Mama and my sisters were thriving, Mama having retired to the seaside for the nonce. Waltham was preparing for extended travel with all the glee of a former schoolboy readying for his first term at the university bacchanal.
Her Grace listened, exuding that blend of materteral goodwill and cordial dignity that had always characterized her. Her looks had not changed in all the years I’d known her, but for more blond threaded through darker locks.
“While I am pleased to have the report,” she said when I’d duly answered the predictable questions, “you called on me out of more than gentlemanly duty. Waltham will be fine, by the way. Banter is the sensible sort, and they aren’t striplings kicking their heels away from Headmaster’s watchful eye. They will actually see some art and architecture when they aren’t sleeping until noon and enjoying foreign vintages.”
I sipped my tea, an excellent blend. “Am I that obvious?”
“Perhaps not to yourself. You’ve been home less than a year, and off His Grace goes, possibly for more than a year. You had a terrible war, not that one can have a good war, and at your age, the body often recovers more quickly than the mind. I notice you are still wearing those blue spectacles.”
She’d seen me coming up the walkway, then, because I’d pocketed my tinted eyeglasses as soon as the butler had shown me to the back terrace.
“My eyes object to strong sunlight. Other than that…”
She skewered me with a glance over her tea cup. “Other than that, you are merely skinny rather than emaciated. Your hair is paler than a Viking’s tresses when you used to sport chestnut locks. You probably jump at loud noises and dread thunder, but you are no longer subsisting on tea, brandy, and toast. You’ve given up any notion of returning to the man you were, not that Society would ever allow you to. And yet, the idea of managing the dukedom in Waltham’s absence daunts you, as well it should.”
Maybe I had come for this parade inspection of my most private concerns rather than any chat with the cook. “Society trying to tell me who I am annoys me the most. I served loyally and well. I lost a brother. I took so many risks, on my own, behind enemy lines, and never once…”
I fell silent, surprised and not a little impressed by the wrath and hurt in my words.
“Good,” the duchess said, patting my hand. “Be angry and sin not. Society can be a devil. A lot of waltzing ninnyhammers pretending to consequence that exists only in their own minds. You owe them nothing, Julian, though if you don’t have at least a biscuit, I will have to refrain myself, and these are quite good. Cook has the lightest hand with the butter.”
I took a biscuit, the better to recover from Her Grace’s broadside. Why was it my battles these days were fought over tea trays on terraces?
Though Her Grace was not my enemy. Far from it. “I’ve come to speak to your cook, actually.”
The duchess took a sweet as well. Cinnamon with a hint of other warm spices that put me in mind of Spain and Portugal, and Leander’s odd preference for nutmeg on his chocolate.
“Do tell,” she said, “and spare no detail.”
I explained, about a boy who might be the next duke, or who might be an ambitious seamstress’s scheme to perpetually annoy funds out of the present titleholder.
“And you are wondering about Lady Clarissa, too, I’ll warrant. One does. She and Harry seemed devoted, but then, appearances are deceptive, and Harry was half chameleon.”
I’d have put him closer to three-quarters, a rare asset in time of war. “The boy’s paternity does not appear to be in doubt. Mrs. Danforth, the late Mrs. Waites, the present Miss Dujardin, Lady Clarissa, and even this Miss Hammerschmidt are all happy to accept that Harry left a son behind, but the matter is either of no importance to them, or they benefit from the boy having a ducal connection.”
“So you seek to discuss Harry’s months of leave with Siegurdson, a neutral observer. She will likely tell you exactly how much salt he preferred on his eggs, but little beyond that. The kitchen is a passion with her, not merely a place to earn a wage. What does Miss West make of this matter?”
“Miss West?”
Her Grace smiled like a cat greeting the unsuspecting resident of a mousehole. “You rode out with her, Julian. You were nearly engaged to her. At the Makepeace house party, you were observed to be quite cordial with dear Hyperia. She and Lady Ophelia came up to Town for Lord Reardon’s art exhibition with you and Waltham. I’ve commissioned a portrait from Reardon, by the way, and I do not expect the young genius to work in silence.”
Before the paint had dried, Her Grace would know at what age Reardon had cut his first tooth, if any young lady had caught his fancy, and a good deal of the territory in between.
“Miss West,” I said, “is concerned that a little boy has lost both his father and the woman presenting herself as his mother. She cautions me to focus on that fact when matters of coin and social repercussions threaten to distract me.”
Her Grace motioned with her hand, and a footman appeared as if from thin air. The dog, who’d been panting, chin on paws, for the duration of the discussion, looked up.
“William, you will please ask Cook to present herself in the library,” Her Grace said. “She will be appalled to have supper preparations interrupted, offended to be expected abovestairs with no notice, and fretting over some sauce on the boil. Tell her a guest would like to compliment her on her biscuits. We won’t keep her long.”
The footman—a strapping Adonis in summer livery—bowed. He apparently knew better than to wink or offer a cheeky riposte when I was on hand, but I had no doubt Her Grace enjoyed the sincere affection of her staff.
Did I enjoy that same affection? Arthur did, though they were mindful of his station and his insistence on a degree of privacy, but their loyalty was to him, not simply to his coin.
“You would do well to heed Miss West’s advice,” Her Grace said when William had departed on his errand. “Consider how badly a small boy needs to know the truth about who his antecedents are and what fates they met.”
That was, if not a warning shot, something close to it. I did not know my father’s identity, and my mother hadn’t seen fit to tell me—if she knew. Lady Emily Cowper was said to dwell under a cloud of uncertainty similar to my own, and the mystery merely added to her cachet.
“A child can adjust to what can’t be changed,” I said, feeling a bit resentful. What sort of ally made allowances for my horrible war, but threw my dubious paternity in my face?
“Dear boy, you know not what became of your brother. You have some notion, some suspicions, and a few theories, but Harry disappeared like a thief in the night, as I hear it, and you have no idea why he went so willingly to his death. Leander is just a lad, and all he knows is that his parents are gone. He won’t make sense of that either easily or quickly.”
Another salvo, and I could not exactly return fire.
She rose. “Come along, pup.”
For an instant, I thought she was addressing me, but the mastiff lumbered upright, sniffed my hand as I stood, and looked askance at Her Grace.
“Siegurdson will receive you in the library. Wax eloquent about her biscuits, and she might forgive you for the summons. I will absent myself, but you must call upon me if I can be of aid in any capacity.”
When I bent to kiss her cheek, she pulled me in for a quick, fierce hug.
“One should not speak ill of the dead,” she said, letting me go, “but it’s so typical of Harry to leave a mess behind. Spares tend to be restless and put-upon by nature, and Harry was no exception, God rest him. Please give my regards to your mother, and be patient with His Grace. He will be fine, I tell you. Just fine, and possibly even better than fine for shaking the dust of London from his feet.”
She swanned off, loyal canine at her side, and I resumed my seat, feeling as if I’d just survived something very like an ambush, or an encounter that shaded closer to a proper welcome home.
Helvetica Siegurdson was beautiful, and she was clearly accustomed to men gawping at her. I had expected a thick-waisted, be-jowled, draft horse of a woman who could wring a goose’s neck with a twist of her wrist and wield a cleaver as precisely as a Cossack wielded his saber.
Such a cook might be jolly, but she was nobody to trifle with.
Miss Siegurdson was nobody to trifle with either, though she communicated her formidableness with serene composure, unblinking blue eyes, and a spotless cap over her shining blond tresses. Her features were striking in the angular, uncompromising tradition of the Norsewoman, and her complexion would have been the envy of any young lady in her first Season. She was tall and not-dainty, and abundantly feminine as well.
“You don’t look much like him,” she said, folding her arms and considering me. “Lord Harry was full of good cheer, always poking his nose into my kitchen. You would not be so presuming.”
“You can tell that from my appearance?” She hadn’t mentioned that Harry had been dark-haired, while my own locks were struggling to qualify as blond, after having gone completely white.
We were both on our feet in the cool, dim library that looked out over the garden. The door was open, as propriety demanded, but Miss Siegurdson struck me as a woman who would speak her mind and damn the state of the doors.
Which was precisely what my inquiries needed, when so many others were bent on obfuscation.
“The eyes tell the tale,” she said, putting a finger to the soil of a potted fern. “Lord Harry wanted everybody to think that war was a grand lark, that winter in London left him restless and bored.”
“He doubtless was restless and bored.”
She took a pitcher from the sideboard and set about watering the half-dozen ferns. A footman would tend to them on his appointed rounds without realizing that excessive heat might leave them thirsty. Miss Siegurdson had anticipated the oversight and was remedying it.
“His lordship was haunted,” she said, finishing with the last fern. “War was eating at him, and he tried not to let his older brother see it.”
That sounded… accurate. Typical of dealings between Harry and Arthur. They carried separate burdens, neither imposing on the other for support. Harry had done likewise with me in Spain unless exigencies demanded that he compromise.
Clodpate. For the first time, I considered that arrogance might well have been the indirect cause of Harry’s death.
“Shall we sit?” I asked, gesturing to a pair of reading chairs.
My suggestion seemed to amuse her, but she heeded it, despite the difference in our stations. “What do you want to know, my lord? Supper will not prepare itself, and I’ve sent my undercook home to her parents for the month.”
A month’s leave was generous. “I want to know anything you can tell me about Lord Harry’s leave that year. A small boy has been presented to me as Harry’s son, conceived while his lordship was in London, but details are few and contradictory about both of his parents.”
She considered the portrait holding pride of place above the empty hearth. A mastiff very like Her Grace’s current pet sat at the late Duke of Ambrose’s booted feet, man and dog both exuding a sort of dignified pugnacity.
“I learned to cook good English beef that winter,” Miss Siegurdson said. “Really cook it—sauces, presentation, wines… A roast is no great feat, but I had to range well past that. Lord Harry said if he never ate another rabbit, partridge, or goat, he’d die happy.”
I doubt Harry had died happy, and diet hadn’t figured in the matter. “He wanted beef?”
“Beef, beef, and more beef. I know the officer’s messes were supposed to feature regular servings of beef, and Wellington would not allow foraging, so his lordship’s choice intrigued me.”
Wellington had not allowed pillaging , and yet, particularly after broken sieges, pillaging and worse had occurred to the resounding disgrace of the whole military.
“Lord Harry’s duties often took him out of camp,” I said, which Miss Siegurdson had apparently deduced from his menu preferences. “What else can you recall?”
“He was out a lot while on leave too. London was very social that winter, thanks to the Regency Bill. I thought his lordship would go home to Sussex for Christmas—what soldier doesn’t want to be home for Christmas?—but his older brother remained in Town, and so Lord Harry bided here as well.”
Her question, about a soldier being within a day’s journey of home and not even peeking in at his birthplace, struck me as her most perceptive observation thus far.
Which was saying something. “Did his lordship favor any particular company?”
Miss Siegurdson looked around the library, a room she likely hadn’t been in but once or twice before.
“Lord Harry had me send some stollen to Lady Clarissa Valmond on two occasions. Said she liked it, and he owed her an apology over some social misstep. He went to the opera from time to time, though I gather that was more of an excuse to sit with his fellow officers and drink. He went to services about every other week. On Boxing Day, he made the rounds of those also on leave. He met with his solicitors and complained about them loudly.”
All of this sounded like vintage Harry. “He sat in your kitchen and aired his woes?” Had he sat on her bed and aired his woes?
The first hint of a smile drifted from Miss Siegurdson’s eyes to her lips, and ye gods… beauty and benevolence beaming from one female countenance. Five years ago, she would have been barely an adult, by polite society’s standards, and in her kitchen, Harry would have found warmth, good food, sympathy, hot tea on frigid afternoons…
“He aired his woes in my kitchen, in the library, in the mews. But the grousing was supposed to be good-natured. Mrs. Bleeker saw that at once. His lordship was setting us at our ease, pretending he was chafing to get back to Spain, pretending he was making merry for want of more interesting pastimes in uniform.”
“Mrs. Bleeker was…?” I should know. I’d come across the name previously, but no bells were ringing.
“The housekeeper. Very conscientious and capable.” High praise, from Helvetica Siegurdson. “His lordship hacked out with his friends, played cards, did the Christmas open houses, but Mrs. Bleeker said what he truly wanted was slippers warmed by the hearth, good brandy for a nightcap, the fires kept going in his bedroom. He wanted peace, quiet, and creature comforts. She made sure he had them in abundance, and I made sure he had beef three times a day, if that was his wish.”
I could not ask, Did he have you as well? But I saw a possible resemblance to Leander about the eyes.
“Did any particular ladies provide him the kind of creature comfort officers on leave are notorious for craving?”
She dropped her figurative portcullis, raised the drawbridge, and shuttered the castle windows. “Do not be impertinent, my lord. I am a cook, and a good one. I remain belowstairs because I like it there.”
She’d rapped my knuckles with her figurative wooden spoon, hard enough to bruise.
“I am not questioning your morals, Miss Siegurdson. If Harry had a son, that son has—or had—a mother. One of the candidates for that honor recently expired of consumption and would have been somewhat ill when Harry was on leave. I cannot see him… Well, suffice it to say, her claim is unsubstantiated.”
Miss Siegurdson was at least listening to me.
“Another candidate,” I went on, “had five years to thrust a hand into the ducal coffers on behalf of her son and is only coming forward now, thus rendering her claim suspect as well. Lady Clarissa is a possibility, albeit a remote one, and she would never admit to having had a child out of wedlock, any more than she’d hide being the mother of the legitimate ducal heir. Need I go on?”
“Isn’t three possibilities enough?”
“No, unless one of the three is truly the boy’s mother. If Harry kept a chère amie here in Town, I’ve yet to discover her particulars. I’m hoping that you, a footman, the coachy, somebody will recall Harry’s movements closely enough to shed light on the matter.”
Then too, I planned to spend the evening communing again with Harry’s account book, and I had yet to pay a call on the clerks at Doctors’ Commons.
“I’m sorry I cannot be of more assistance, my lord. Your brother was an unhappy fellow. The footmen might recall more than I do, but only Charlie Cummings is still in service, and he’s gone to the country with his employers.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I ran into him at market last month, and he was buying provisions for the travel hampers. Off to Derbyshire, I believe.”
She could probably tell me what he’d purchased, in what quantity, and how much he’d paid for the food, but nothing of my brother’s intimate companions over the relevant winter. I hadn’t held out much hope to the contrary, but apparently I’d held out some.
“Then thank you for your time, Miss Siegurdson, and if you recall anything else that might be remotely pertinent, please send for me at Waltham House. We are prepared to deal very generously with both the boy and his mother.”
She curtseyed and headed for the door.
“One other question,” I said.
She turned slowly. From a less self-possessed woman, I would have called her posture wary.
“What of the housekeeper? Mrs. Bleeker. Where might I find her?”
“She took a new post when Town grew more crowded in spring and Lord Harry returned to Spain. I don’t believe she was engaged as a housekeeper. Perhaps as a lady’s companion in a lesser household. I haven’t seen her in years.”
Another curtsey, and then I was left alone in the library with the disapproving duke and his disapproving dog. I followed Miss Siegurdson from the room just as a rumble of thunder sounded in the distance.
The reverberations, so like cannon fire, no longer entirely unnerved me. I made a forced march back to Waltham House nonetheless, and dashed through the door just as the first fat drops of rain speckled the dusty flagstones.