Page 5 of Secrecy (The Chaplain’s Legacy #4)
A fter leaving Tom to his work, Tess’s post chaise wound its way further into the hills, passing Corland Castle and the small village surrounding it without stopping. Some while later, they passed Eustace’s house at Welwood-on-the-Hill, making Tess wonder all over again about his connection to Miss Rochester. Another thought occurred to her, as they rattled past the gates of the estate. Given the time she had left Pickering, it was perfectly possible for the girl to have reached Welwood in time for dinner. Had she, then, come here for her evening engagement? But Eustace was a single man who had never been known to host parties for ladies as well as gentlemen. He would have needed his mother or one of his sisters to act as hostess, and that seemed unlikely. He had never done so before, and with the family in its present disarray, it was surely impossible. It was a mystery.
It was late the following day when they arrived at Harfield Priory. Tess had often stayed there, for her mother had liked to send her to visit relations — ‘It will broaden your horizons, dear,’ she had always said, but Tess suspected it removed her from her mother’s presence. She had not expected to have children at all, and had never quite known what to do with Tess. It was easier, therefore, to dispatch her here and there, and leave her to be raised by others.
The Priory was one of Tess’s favourite places. Unlike Corland, which looked medieval but was actually modern, Harfield was truly ancient, with a great hall dating back to the original manor house, a chapel that had been part of the abbey, and a multitude of odd, mismatched wings with long, dark passages and unexpected stairs. Best of all, it was tucked into a narrow valley, so even the garden was all changing levels and tightly winding paths. It was a place where a secretive girl could hide away indefinitely.
The butler, who seemed as ancient as the house, emerged wreathed in smiles. “Miss Tess! What a delightful surprise! We were not expecting you, I think?”
“No time to write, Jeffries. Is all well here?”
“Very lively, at the moment. Lady Rennington is here, and also Lady Woodridge, and we’ve had both Lord and Lady Farramont visiting, but they’ve both left now. I expect the ladies will tell you all about it. Good day, Betty, Harold. You know your way, of course. I’ll have your usual room made up, Miss Tess. Come inside, do.”
The great hall was pleasantly cool. The Priory was a nightmare of draughts and perpetually chilled rooms in winter, but in summer it was a relief to be inside after the heat and dust of the road.
“The ladies are in the Blue Parlour, Miss Tess,” Jeffries said. “Will you see them first, or go to your room?”
“I had better see them at once,” Tess said. “Just in case they decide to throw me out.”
Jeffries laughed at this little jest, but Tess was not entirely joking. Lady Tarvin was Aunt Caroline’s sister, and a kindly soul, who treated Tess as if she were her own niece, but Mrs Edward Harfield, the mother of the present Lord Tarvin, was not quite so tolerant. It was not clear to Tess which of the two was in fact the mistress of Harfield, the widow of the former Lord Tarvin or the mother of the present one, but it would never do to be backward in any attention, or to take her welcome for granted.
She followed Jeffries along a multitude of passageways to the Blue Parlour. Three ladies sat there, looking up with surprise as the door opened.
“Miss Nicholson, my lady,” Jeffries said, leaving Tess in no doubt as to who he regarded as the mistress of Harfield.
Aunt Caroline rushed across the room to wrap her in a perfumed embrace. “Tess! Dear girl, what a delightful surprise! I thought you were staying with a friend somewhere.”
“So I was, but after three weeks I felt like a change of scene and Corland is…” She hesitated. What could she say of Corland that would not distress Lady Rennington?
But Aunt Caroline took up the idea at once. “Oh, indeed, Corland is a very dismal place just now. You are very sensible to stay away from there. Your poor mama is inconsolable, so even your presence could not bring her any comfort, those investigators are turning the place upside down, and then there is the Dowager Countess, still lingering. It is not a healthy atmosphere for a young girl. I just wish I could bring Olivia out of there, but she will not leave her father, the dear girl. Myrtle, is not this a delightful surprise?”
Her sister Myrtle, Lady Tarvin, agreed that Tess’s unexpected arrival was indeed a delightful surprise. The two ladies fussed over her until she almost felt guilty for her devious plan. Almost, but not quite.
The third lady present, Mrs Edward Harfield, merely nodded to Tess and made some commonplace remarks, without enthusiasm, but it was enough. Tess would not be thrown out on her ear. Satisfied, she retired to her room where a bath was already being filled for her. She had bathed and swaddled herself in a robe when there was a brisk knock on the door. Before Betty could reach it, the door opened and a head peeped round.
“Tess! How lovely!”
Tess’s cousin Josie was the eldest of the three daughters of Lord and Lady Rennington. She had taken her time to marry, settling eventually on Viscount Woodridge, the heir to an earldom, but hers was a love match and she exuded contentment. Tess wondered sometimes what it must be like to marry for love, when the loved one was also highly eligible. There would be no compromises needed in such an arrangement, no need to convince a reluctant father to agree to the match, no quibbling over a dowry. How pleasant that would be!
Josie came fully into the room, and pulled over a chair to sit beside Tess. “You look tired, cousin,” she said. “But then it is only six weeks since your father’s death, and you must feel it dreadfully, especially with that shocking will. Marry a gentleman, indeed! And to leave you a fortune, but only on such conditions! It is the outside of enough. I feel for you, Tess, truly I do.”
That was as neat a way of accounting for her tiredness as any other, and no need to mention five o’clock starts and scrubbing floors.
“Thank you, Josie. How are you? And the baby?”
Her face softened. “Gerard is a darling, and I love having him all to myself. However, my mother-in-law is to leave Throxfield in a day or two, and it will be safe for me to go home again.” She gurgled with laughter. “But until then, it will be delightful to have you here. We are all still catching our breath after Izzy blew through — you know what Izzy is like. It will be charmingly peaceful with you here.”
The evening brought another opportunity to try to determine who was the real mistress of the Priory.
“Dinner is served, my lady,” the butler said.
“Thank you, Jeffries,” Mrs Harfield said, immediately assuming the position of hostess. “Shall we go through, ladies?”
Lady Tarvin merely smiled, while Lady Rennington and Josie exchanged amused glances.
Josie’s prediction that Harfield Priory would be peaceful was rather too true for Tess’s taste. Dull was another word for it. The five ladies struggled to manage a simple conversation at dinner. After asking in a desultory fashion after Tess’s stay at Helmsley, for clearly the information that she had not been there at all had not filtered through from Corland, there seemed no other safe topic of conversation. Everything at Corland was too dreadful for discussion in a civilised dining room, it seemed.
Happily for Mrs Harfield, there was the latest letter from her son in London to be shown off, for she carried it even at dinner. Edward, the 4th Lord Tarvin, was twenty-seven years old, and according to his mother, the most eligible bachelor in town. Apart from the Priory, he owned his father’s estate of Hunsworth Hall, as well as a highly desirable London house in Grosvenor Street, and had an income of twelve thousand pounds a year. Tess would even grudgingly admit that his mother’s description of him as ‘the handsomest man one ever saw’ was not entirely erroneous. But the perpetual scowl of disparagement that usually graced his features did nothing to improve his looks, and his manners were cold and unfriendly, as if he disapproved of the world and everything in it.
She was amused to discover, however, that he had successfully exiled both his mother and his aunt from town this year, by telling them that he would never attach a suitable young lady with the two of them constantly at his side. So here they sat, trying to pretend that they were not bitterly missing the whirl of society in town, while he wrote a weekly letter to report on his progress in the delicate business of finding the next Lady Tarvin.
“I do like the sound of Lady Henrietta,” Mrs Harfield said. “The daughter of a marquess! That would be a splendid match, indeed, and she sounds most attractive. ‘Modest and well-mannered… most accomplished on the harp and pianoforte, and sings, too.’ Does not she sound most agreeable?”
“What is her dowry?” Lady Tarvin said.
“He does not mention… oh, no, here it is. Ten thousand. Well, that is not very much, is it? He could do much better than that.”
“Miss Amsworth is the most well dowered, is she not? Was it fifty… no, sixty thousand.”
“Oh yes, but only a plain Miss, not even an Honourable. Edward is a baron, after all, and must marry into the nobility.”
“Has he seen Lady Anne this week?” Lady Tarvin said. “I liked the sound of her. A spirited rider, which would suit Edward better than all these modest, well-mannered girls.”
“Oh, no , dear!” Mrs Harfield said. “We must have a quiet girl, who will not disrupt our lives too badly. Let me see… the Honourable Miss Brock, Lady Susan, Miss Smith— What is he doing looking at a Miss Smith? She cannot be— Ah, here it is. He called upon Lady Anne and invited her for a drive in his curricle, but she had a prior engagement and was unable to accept. How disappointing for her! But perhaps next time, although she sounds a little too lively for Edward. He is not, in general, a lively boy himself.”
That was a sentiment with which Tess could entirely agree. Tiring of all this talk of eligible young ladies, she said, “Why does he need to marry just now — or at all? He is only twenty-seven, after all, and could easily wait a few more years. Many men do, after all. It is not as if the barony would become extinct, is it?”
Both Lady Tarvin and Mrs Harfield shuddered. The previous baron had been one of three brothers, and having no issue himself, the middle brother’s son, an only child, had inherited. But until he married and produced a son of his own, his heir was the son of the youngest brother, a thoroughly disreputable man, by all accounts.
“Allow Jack’s boy to inherit? Never!” Mrs Harfield said robustly. “He was ramshackle his whole life and even though he had the good grace to die young, he married a wife as bad as himself, and he has left behind an entirely ramshackle family.”
“It is just as well he died young,” Lady Tarvin said, smiling. “With seven children in nine years of marriage, who knows how many they would have ended up with, and Joanie not even forty yet. Still, given that Matthew and I had none at all, and you and Ted only the one, Alvira, perhaps it is just as well. As Tess says, at least Edward has an heir — three heirs, in point of fact.”
Mrs Harfield moaned slightly. “But Tostig , my dear sister! Whatever sort of name is that for a baron? And the younger ones no better — Oswin and Halbert. It is all very well for Joan to call that strange son of hers Ulric, for that was her first marriage and nothing to do with us. But when she married into a baron’s family, she should have taken thought for the future and given the boys, at least, sensible names. John, like their father, or other good, solid English names. Charles, Henry, William, Richard. Or from the Bible — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.”
“Nebuchadnezzar,” Tess said. “Ichabod. Hezekiah. Mephibosheth.”
Josie laughed. “Yes, there are some very odd names in the Bible. Is anyone going to eat that last chantilly cake? I still have a little corner that it might conveniently fill.”
“Dear me, Josie, have you not eaten sufficient yet?” Lady Rennington said faintly.
“Those of us with a baby to feed are perpetually hungry,” Josie said cheerfully, as Tess pushed the plate nearer to her.
“That is what wet nurses were invented for,” Mrs Harfield said disdainfully. “At least then you would be able to sleep at night.”
“Oh, but I adore babies when they are so tiny,” Josie said, with a sigh, as she took the last cake. “Gerard is so warm and sweet and lovely, and he will become a grubby little boy with scraped knees all too quickly. I could not bear to hand him over to anyone else just yet.” She devoured the cake in two swift bites. “I believe I could manage another mouthful of the orange jelly.”
Tess laughed and reached for the dish, but the older ladies all sighed and shook their heads.
***
T ess was too shrewd to reveal any part of her plan prematurely. For three days, therefore, she explored the gardens of the Priory in the mornings and sat demurely in the Blue Parlour with her needlework in the afternoons. If there was an outing to call on neighbours, or shopping in Durham, she obediently went along too. When Josie received word that her mother-in-law had left and it was safe to go home, Tess helped her pack and waved her away in a little train of coaches for her house high on the cliffs to the east.
But there came a day when nothing else was planned, and Tess ventured to take a step towards her objective.
“If there is a carriage unwanted today, might I go and call upon Mrs Jack?” she said casually at breakfast. “I should not like her to think I am ignoring her.”
“That is a kind thought. One would not wish to be backward in any attention,” Lady Rennington said. “I should call, too, since I have not been since shortly after I arrived here. Josie came, and what with one thing and another, poor Joan went quite out of my head. It will serve as a farewell. We shall both go, Tess, dear.”
“Farewell? You are leaving?” Tess said, surprised. “Returning to Corland?”
Lady Rennington looked somewhat conscious. “Not that, no. I thought I might visit the cousins at Lochmaben.”
“ Scotland? But why?”
“Oh… the duchess invited me,” she said, waving an arm vaguely in the air. “And I do not like to outstay my welcome here.”
“I thought you would have gone to Josie, if you do not wish to go home,” Tess said. “Or Izzy, perhaps.”
“Izzy is travelling,” Lady Rennington said. “There is no knowing where she is, but she is not at home. She left her carriage here, as well as her maid, her footman and half her luggage, and just… vanished. You know what Izzy is like. But I have a feeling that she might end up at Lochmaben, and if she does, there I shall be. As for Josie, she does not need me. But I should like to see Mrs Jack before I leave, so I shall come with you, Tess, dear.”
Tess did not mind that. There was plenty of time and she had no wish to ‘rush her fences’ , to use an expression of her father’s. She rarely bothered to ride, and certainly not to hunt, so jumping fences was not a thing she ever did, but she understood perfectly about not rushing at things. She had rushed rather over Tom, pushing him into going to her father to ask for her hand, and look what had come of that. Not only had Tom been thoroughly chastised for his presumption, but he had not even managed to winkle the vital information out of her father of how much her dowry might be. And her father had gone straight out and changed his will, to hobble her entire future.
Or so he believed. She smiled as she thought about it, for if her plan came to fruition… Slowly and carefully, that was the way to do it. Step by cautious step.
Mrs Jack Harfield, the widow of the third Harfield brother, suffered the usual difficulties of those married to younger brothers. Jack had had no estate of his own, no career or income beyond the charity of his brothers. The eldest brother had inherited the title, the Priory and a fine income. The middle brother had married a woman of wealth with an estate of her own. Jack had never taken thought for the future at all, and thus had left his widow in relative poverty.
Holly Cottage was not quite so small as its name implied, but containing, as it did, Mrs Jack and her seven children, her son from her first marriage, a couple of spinster relations to help with the children, and an ever-varying array of servants, it always felt to Tess like an over-full asylum. There was not a room in the house free from chaos, or a chair unmarred by discarded sewing or a broken toy.
Mrs Jack and the spinsters rushed around collecting up this and that to make room for the two visitors to sit down, then the spinsters disappeared to the kitchen to arrange for tea, and, Tess suspected, to whip up a batch of biscuits or a cake, for there would be none in the house.
For a while, the usual pleasantries were exchanged. Mrs Jack said nothing about the shocking events at Corland Castle. One would imagine that a murder, followed by the disinheritance of the earl’s entire family, might be worthy of some comment, but she was entirely absorbed by the doings of her own family. As one child or another, or more often three or four at once, barrelled into the room, inevitably knocking over some ornament-strewn small table, or tripping on a badly laid rug, their mother would smile fondly.
“Ah, Oswin! Such a fine boy, although he will run into things. He lost a couple of teeth only last week. Dear Isolda! She is learning the pianoforte, you know. Do play something for us, darling. Elfleda! Have you torn your gown again?” Laughing, she added, “Such an energetic girl! Aldith, do bear me company, child. She is not quite out yet, but she is becoming quite the young lady.”
Aldith, a well-grown girl of fifteen, did indeed sit still for perhaps two minutes, long enough to display her tousled hair and a gown sporting a multitude of stains. Mrs Jack’s gown was none too fresh, either, and the younger children all looked as if they had spent a week living out of doors. The spinsters came in eventually with a tray of tea, and as Mrs Jack poured, Tess thought it time to move closer to her objective.
“And how is Ulric, Mrs Harfield? I have not seen him for an age.”
Her perpetually anxious face softened. “Ulric is well, as always. Nothing ever ails him, thank God. He is at Myercroft today, but on market days he helps out at the Queen’s Head and of course Dan Smith could not do without him. Any difficult beast, and Ulric is sure to be sent for.”
Tess nodded and said all that was proper. Ulric’s affinity for horses was legendary — in fact, it was the only interesting facet to his character, for he had suffered an unfortunate incident as a baby when an inebriated nurse had dropped him on his head. The poor boy had never been right since. Still, he had inherited Myercroft from his father, which was let to tenants but with the proviso that he might stable his extensive collection of horses there. A good proportion of the income from the house went to funding his hacks and hunters. In his spare time, he acted as ostler at the coaching inn, and helped the smith.
Ulric was not likely to put in an appearance, so Tess set her sights on the three eldest daughters. Before the half-hour visit was over, she had arranged to bring journals showing the latest fashions to the eldest, a novel for the middle sister and some music for the third. She left well satisfied with her progress.