Page 63 of The Ladies Least Likely
She had likewise freshened the upholstery of the delicate Queen Anne furniture with embroidered motifs and marginalia taken also from various medieval manuscripts.
The effect called up a lost, dark age of beauty and deprivation with hints of wildness lurking beneath the trappings of civilization.
Amaranthe could be certain there was no other drawing room in all of Britain like hers, and the thought pleased her immensely.
“I am Miss Illingworth,” Amaranthe answered, “and I am glad you like my art. These are copies I made from medieval books, mostly poems of romance.”
Why she introduced the topic of romance, she couldn’t say. The children dutifully regarded their surroundings over their bowls of soup. Their guardian watched Amaranthe.
“You are Illingworth’s sister,” he deduced.
“How kind of you to notice.” She had no idea how to address him. He’d made no introduction to her.
“You look a great deal like him,” Ned said.
“So we are often told, thank you.”
“He won’t let me take lessons with Ned.” Camilla frowned.
“How rotten of him,” Amaranthe replied. “Does your governess at least teach you on topics you find of interest?”
“I don’t have a governess. I have—well, had a nurse.”
Grey blinked at her in surprise. “Millie, what happened to your nurse?”
“Gone for days, Grey.” Camilla stared back at him with wide eyes. “She got word her da was ill and had to go do for him. She said she’d come back, but…” The girl’s eyes fell, and she crammed a slice of cake into her mouth as consolation.
“Who is looking after you, Lady Camilla?” Amaranthe asked softly.
She gulped. “Huey and Ned.”
Grey put down his tea. He appeared at complete loss for words. Any aggravation Amaranthe felt over his thick-headedness evaporated at the look of horror upon his face.
“Where are all the servants?”
The children looked at one another, and a long silence ensued.
“How long have you been without proper meals?” Amaranthe asked.
Camilla bit her lip and appealed to her brothers. The young duke stared into his dish of tea. Ned struggled not to cry.
The little girl straightened her shoulders. “Cook left two weeks ago.”
“Ralph’s run round to the cookshop for us,” Ned said, “but now there’s no more coin and…” He trailed off.
“There are a great many things missing from the front of the house,” Grey said, but his tone lacked accusation. Instead his voice sounded carefully bland. Amaranthe wanted to slap him. How dare he care about ducal furnishings when the children were clearly in desperate straits?
Young Hunsdon shook his head. “That wasn’t Ralph who stole Papa’s things. I don’t think it was any of the others either. Nurse said they wouldn’t risk charges, even if they weren’t getting proper wages.”
Grey no longer looked cavalier. He looked like someone had planted him a facer and laid him out cold. “Popplewell,” he said, the way one would utter a curse.
“Who is Popplewell?” Amaranthe asked. Was her brother employed in a house frequented by criminals?
“The land steward for the various estates,” Grey said grimly. “He appears to have absented himself from the country, along with—never mind. Where has Sybil been all this time?”
“We haven’t seen her ladyship in weeks, sir,” Ned answered. “Left with a great fuss and bustle, you couldn’t conscience the amount of luggage, but it’s been a treat to move about the house without giving her the headache, I must say.”
Amaranthe sagged in her chair. “Your mother is gone, the servants abandoned their posts, the house has been robbed—and my brother has noticed nothing of your distress in all this time?”
The young duke lifted his chin, and Amaranthe gleaned that whatever this boy had been raised to be, it was not soft.
“We did not think it the thing to trouble our tutor with our sorry circumstances. And the duchess is not our mother.”
Amaranthe tried to grasp the situation. These three children had been hiding in their home for days, only a footman for protection, knowing nothing of the world or how to shift for themselves.
Derwa, though no older than Camilla, would have lasted for weeks in the same situation, but Derwa knew how to cook, clean, shop, and do laundry.
The old duke’s children had been raised to know nothing but social etiquette and pride of place.
“Mr. Joseph will be troubled right enough when his wages aren’t paid,” Ned said glumly. “Leastwise, that’s what Nurse said.”
Camilla sniffled. “Huey said we couldn’t impose upon him, seeing as he’s only the tutor, but we didn’t know where else to go. Ned asked his address once, when they were studying the history of London.”
Ned turned on her with indignation. “How did you know about that?”
Camilla lifted her chin in a gesture much like her brother’s. “He said he wasn’t supposed to give me lessons, but he never said I couldn’t listen .”
Amaranthe twined her hands together, noticing a stain of gold along her thumb. The three children fell to arguing among themselves about who exactly had proposed they appeal to Mr. Illingworth for aid.
The man they called Grey cleared his throat. “I wonder,” he said, “that no one proposed sending for me .”
Silence fell. Amaranthe glanced at his face and saw that, while he kept his tone neutral with great effort, his towering rage had returned in force. At the children? A hot, protective instinct filled her chest.
She was forever leaping in and taking up unfortunates, and Joseph was forever scolding her for it.
He’d get an earful from her, when he returned, about what had been going on at Hunsdon House beneath his very nose.
He was very likely to get an earful from this Grey person as well, and lose the position that had finally given him some hope for a future.
For the moment, her greater ire was directed at the man before her.
What kind of guardian had no notion that his charges had been left without supervision?
Without food, however that happened in a duke’s house of all places?
No doubt he was too busy sporting around town in pursuit of his own pleasures to take any notice of those who depended upon him.
His poor wife must be utterly neglected, were any woman fool enough to fall for that handsome face and the complete lack of soul it concealed.
Eyde slipped into the room, her wool cloak snug around her shoulders, and bobbed a quick curtsey to Grey. “No sign of Mr. Joseph at the Smyrna today, mum,” she whispered to Amaranthe. “A man at the Orange said he’d talked of going to a meeting.”
Amaranthe hadn’t known that. Her ire deflated. She was hardly in a position to chide Grey for neglect when she couldn’t attest to the comings and goings of her own brother. Still, at least no one within her household was going hungry. She hoped.
“Thank you for checking, Eyde. It’s all right if Joseph can’t be located at present. Mr. Grey is here to take the children in hand.”
The expression on Grey’s face as he turned to her almost made Amaranthe laugh out loud.
The man was as helpless as Joseph, who would forget his hat if Amaranthe were not there to hand it to him on his way out the door.
But while Joseph was often abstracted due to weighty matters on his mind, he wasn’t negligent or cruel.
Amaranthe wasn’t prepared to make the same allowance for Mr. Grey.
“I cannot take the children to my rooms,” the man exclaimed. “I have no accommodations for them.”
“I expect you shall return them home, Mr. Grey, and install a staff capable of proper supervision and care,” she said, exasperated.
“But there isn’t anyone!” Camilla cried. “Unless you’ll come with us?”
“Me?” Amaranthe exclaimed.
“And perhaps your cook?” Ned added hopefully.
Young Hunsdon did not immediately deny this request, the surest sign that he shared his siblings’ feelings but was too proud to say so.
Ralph the footman poked his head in the door. “I can get the coach ready in a trice, mum,” he said to Amaranthe. “I just sent it ’round to the Blue Posts and set a boy to watch the horses.”
Grey, too, looked at her with an expression of distrust, suspicion, and pride warring with helpless appeal.
He also was too proud to ask for help, and if it had simply been on his own behalf, Amaranthe would have denied him in an instant.
But the children, with crumbs over their smart suits and Lady Camilla’s neat apron, gazed at her with desperate longing.
“For heaven’s sake,” she said. “There must be a housekeeper.” A duke’s household had to run to a staff of dozens. “Underbutler? Kitchen staff?”
Ralph shrugged. “The housekeeper skipped off right after Cook, and when the rest of the staff learned they weren’t to get their wages, they all went back to the agency.”
“The agency?” Amaranthe said.
“Aye, mum,” Ralph answered. “The duchess turned off all the old duke’s staff when his lordship died, so’s she could hire her own people.
But she has a hard time keeping ’em, you see, and is always sending to the agency for new.
The butler came last quarter, and the housekeeper brought on right before him. ”
“Have you seen Popplewell?” Grey asked, his voice grim.
“Him shot off last month with everything he could carry, and no one’s seen the tip of his nose since,” Ralph said.
“Or Sybil,” said Grey.
Ralph nodded. “No sign of Her Grace in nigh a month, sir, but she took quite a bit with her when she left. Said she needed furnishings for her house in France.”
“Leaving no one to look after the children?” Amaranthe asked, incredulous.
“Lady Millie’s nurse said she’d stay on for board wages, but then she got word that her pa was poorly.” Ralph shrugged.
“And that left you.”
Amaranthe poured a cup of tea and passed it and a generous slice of cake to the footman. A clear violation of protocol in a duke’s house, but this was her home, and who knew when Ralph had last eaten, considering how gratefully he took the offering.