Page 50 of The Gentlewoman Companion (The Gentlewoman #4)

Chapter Twenty-Five

L ouisa did not allow Lord Halverton’s servants to accompany her all the way to Stillwater. She left them at an inn nearby and continued alone with Nimbus, her cart, and her trunks to the cottage. It felt important to enter the cottage alone.

After freeing herself from Mr. Savage, she should have come straight to Stillwater.

Though she would never regret the time she’d spent with James and Lady Halverton, she wished their paths had crossed after she’d come to terms with the mistake of her attempted elopement and healed from the pain it had caused her.

But without them, she may never have managed her way through it—a strange, exquisite paradox.

Stillwater, squat, white, and thatch-roofed with green shutters, was smaller than she remembered. Using more strength than should be necessary, she pushed open its creaking arched door. A cat-sized rat stared at her from the center of the room, unmoved by her presence.

“Help! Help me! Is no one here?” Her shouting had no effect upon the rat. Nor on anything or anyone else.

“Mrs. Green?” she called, though the rat’s presence indicated the emptiness of the house.

Behind her, Nimbus hawed.

“We shall not be defeated by a rat,” Louisa told him. “Not even this very large specimen.”

She stomped into the cottage, yelling and waving her hands.

The rat scurried off, but its absence offered little comfort.

Louisa imagined a multitude of beady-eyed creatures waiting in the shadows, sharpening their claws.

She grabbed the poker from the fireplace and held it out while taking stock of the room.

Blades of light streaked through closed shutters, revealing a thin layer of dust on the floor.

White sheets covered sparse furnishings.

Wood piled in a neat pyramid beside the fireplace called attention to the damp December air penetrating the house.

Inside the kitchen, little clawed footprints made a sooty trail to a great bag of wheat.

Bundles of herbs hung on the wall, and the hearth was framed in pots and pans.

A broom and a basket of rags lay in a corner.

Louisa would tidy up. But first, she needed supplies. And rat poison.

Town lay only a short walk away and would not require Nimbus, who’d had his share of travel. Outside, Louisa led the donkey to a small stable.

“It’s clean here. And look! Hay for you.

” At least there was that. She checked it for mold and, finding it good, grabbed a bucket for water.

In the rear garden, a spring bubbled into the small pond that gave the cottage its name.

Louisa made several trips to and from the reservoir until Nimbus was thoroughly irrigated, then set to picking his hooves.

A shot of thunder rattled the wood structure. Rain pelted the roof. Louisa turned toward the door and watched the deluge fall in blinding layers.

Nimbus nuzzled Louisa’s back. She turned and wrapped her arms around her sweet donkey.

She swallowed hard. “I hate to leave you, but I must remove my trunks from the rain.” After securing the door behind her, she ran, water assaulting her in sharp, cold blades.

In the front of the house, her possessions sat steeping in mud.

She tried to pull the largest trunk toward the house, but her fingers slipped over rain-slicked wood.

Switching to the opposite end, she pushed, sliding the heavy trunk by inches until her boot skidded on slimy ground, driving her knee into gravel.

If she did not get the things into the house, all her clothing would be as ruined as the soiled gown she wore.

A thunderclap startled her. Fright provided strength to move the trunk indoors.

She shoved the remaining two trunks into the cottage, then limped to the hearth in search of the tinderbox.

At least she had learned how to start a fire.

Her fingers, white with cold, struggled to maintain a grip on the flint.

She blew on her hands, then struck until the char cloth budded with a flame sufficient to ignite the pile of shredded bark.

As the fire flickered to life, she found a thick dressing gown and removed her wet clothing.

A clean rag lay in a basket. She tore it into strips and cleaned and bandaged her bloody knee.

Wrapped in thick, finely embroidered linen, far too elegant for the humble cottage, Louisa collapsed atop a portmanteau and breathed through her tears. Why had she insisted upon coming here alone? She was no match for rats or thunder or heavy trunks.

She must not think such thoughts. Life was not so hopeless. Probably.

Her stomach grumbled.

Who was she fooling?

If the Greens had vanished, and it appeared they had, who would manage the few acres around the cottage?

Who would bake bread? She lacked skills for a life that required practical knowledge.

Clever philosophies did not satisfy hunger.

Alone—save for Nimbus and the rats—hungry and cold, how would she survive?

Tea.

There must be some in the house. She began opening canisters: beans, a little flour, the remains of a sugar block, a quantity of mace.

No tea. When she had visited the cottage as a child, her mother had made peppermint tea from the garden.

Among the dry herbs, Louisa found a large bundle of dry mint.

With a candle, she lit the kitchen fire and watched gold ribbons lick the splintered edges of the logs.

Water! Blast. Why had she not thought of that while tending to Nimbus?

She groaned. To go outside when she was just becoming warm! Draping herself in an oilcloth that lay over the kitchen table, she ventured outside with a pail. She filled the bucket to brimming and returned to the house, soaked through once again.

But the tea, once prepared, fortified her enough to tidy the cottage. She tied a length of cloth from the rag basket over her hair and began scrubbing the kitchen in the murky darkness of the storm.

Suddenly a suffocating cloud of smoke billowed into the kitchen. Louisa followed it to the parlor, where the dark haze was so thick she couldn’t see and stubbed her toe on a trunk. She doused the fire with dirty water and returned to the kitchen, shutting the door behind her.

Covered in ash and smoke, heavy with fatigue, Louisa considered moving to one of the upstairs bedrooms to sleep but did not want to risk another smoking chimney.

Or find a rat. Inside a small room adjoining the kitchen was a bed where the Greens must have slept.

She retrieved a few things from her trunk, including the bar of rosemary soap Lord Halverton had gifted her, and put them in the room before pulling a white sheet from the bed, revealing a sagging mattress covered in a rag quilt.

Unable to resist, she reclined onto the hard tick mattress.

It was itchy, and a lump cut into her hip.

She inhaled the soap. Mama, where are you? I thought you would meet me.

But the room was too cold, even for the comfort of memories.

L ouisa woke in a freezing room. The fire was out.

She wrapped the blanket around herself and gasped when her stockinged feet touched the icy stone floor.

Her rigid fingers fumbled with the shutters’ latch.

When at last she opened the window covering, the sun, already above the trees, lit the earth in profound apology for the previous night’s storm.

She washed as well as possible using cold water and dressed in a favorite walking gown and a double pair of wool stockings. In the kitchen the rat prowled beside a bag of grain.

“Out! Out, out, out!”

After a full hour preparing the fire, fetching water, and checking on Nimbus, she consumed three cups of tea and was finally warm. She wrapped herself in a cape and set off for town.

The briny air of Wadebridge smelled like home.

Situated up a gentle slope, Stillwater Cottage lay a ten-minute walk from the market.

Louisa followed the road downward, stopping at a familiar old church to orient herself.

The River Camel, which cut Wadebridge in half, murmured nearby but out of sight.

Instead of responding to the call of the river, Louisa turned left and soon found herself surrounded by stalls selling everything from eggs to ale.

Not since living at her childhood home had she roamed alone, and never in so public a place.

She fought against the urge to slouch or obscure her face with her cape, though certain everyone would notice a young gentlewoman wandering the streets unchaperoned.

She bought a hand pie, feeling conspicuous as she pulled a coin from her reticule and handed it to a woman who held a babe on one hip.

Neither that woman nor anyone else spared a glance for Louisa.

Still, she secluded herself in an alley to satisfy her complaining stomach.

Afterward, she approached the woman from whom she’d bought the pie. “Excuse me. Where might I purchase rat poison?”

The woman handed a pie to another customer and said, “You need a cat. Richard!” She yelled over her shoulder. A man appeared. “This woman needs a mouser. Go fetch her a kitten, will you?” Richard ambled off. “He was going to drown each one, but I forbade it.”

“How old is the kitten? Will it be of any use now?”

“Four months and catching everything that scurries. I’ll be here ’til four o’clock. Come back before then.”

Louisa agreed and set about her next task, eventually stepping inside a milliner’s shop where a half-dozen women browsed and gossiped. They turned when she entered.

“Good morning, Miss. What can I help you find?” A woman addressed her from behind a counter.

“Merely information. I am Miss Louisa Thorpe, come to stay at Stillwater. I found the cottage empty. Do you know where Mr. and Mrs. Green went?”

“Mr. Green has been in the churchyard these two months. Mrs. Green went to live with her sister in Wales.”