Rexanne Becnel (19 page)

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Authors: The Matchmaker-1

BOOK: Rexanne Becnel
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Olivia did not seek her bed until well after midnight, and even then she lay awake a very long time. They’d found Mr. Hamilton asleep in the kitchen, rattling the rafters with his snoring as he sat at the table, his head resting on his folded arms. A pot of soup kept warm on the banked fire and dishes laid out on a serving tray gave testament to some efforts at a welcome. But otherwise they’d been left to their own devices.
Mrs. McCaffery had been in a fury, quite ready to knock the chair right out from under the hapless old fellow. But Olivia had sent her a stern look. “It appears he is all done in. We can certainly see to our own needs for one night.”
Unfortunately, the entire upper story of the rambling stone house seemed not to have been touched in a decade or more. Cobwebs hung from the dark exposed ceiling beams, draping them with dreary gray. A thick layer of dust coated the wood plank floors and gathered in the corners like the filmy clouds of her memory, shrouding the rooms and everything that had ever happened in them. The furnishings, too, were shrouded in dust covers, very likely the same ones placed there when they’d moved to London fifteen years ago.
As she’d trudged down the long upper hallway, Olivia had hardly known where to start, and on one level, she’d been a little afraid. She would uncover more than mahogany tables and rosewood settees in the days to come. But wasn’t this what she wanted?
Even the bed linens had been musty. But that, at least, had provided her a starting point. While Sarah had fetched water from the kitchen, Mrs. McCaffery had wielded an old straw broom with a vengeance, and Olivia had located a trunk of fresh linens—fresh if you considered fifteen years of cedar and rosemary scenting fresh.
It was two hours before they’d bedded down, Olivia in one
of the guest chambers and Sarah and Mrs. McCaffery in her old nursery, and they’d all been utterly fagged out. Yet still her eyes remained stubbornly open.
Tomorrow Mrs. McCaffery would see to the hiring of at least half a dozen house servants and begin a thorough top-to-bottom cleaning. Meanwhile she would play steward and check on the stables, the brew house, the animal pens, the fencing and well house …
She yawned. There was also that rutted section of roadway that needed repair. And was the roof sound? And the gutters? There was so much to learn, and so much that required her attention, and less than a week to get ready.
It started to rain, a gentle pelting against the leaded windowpanes. A familiar sound, from her childhood, she realized. When she snuggled into her pillow, her nose twitched at the decades-old scent of rosemary. The rain began a harder rhythm, a regular downpour that was nonetheless pleasant. Once more she yawned and felt the wonderful lassitude of sleep steal over her. She hoped Neville was not caught out in the rain …
Across the river, less than a mile away as the crow flew, Neville stood in the open window of his study, staring out into the rain. He held a pipe in his hand, though the bowl had gone cold. Still, the pleasant fragrance of tobacco smoke lingered in the air, a fragrance that would forever remind him of his father—and his mother. For it was she who had always brought the pipe and tobacco pouch to his father after dinner. An altogether unimportant detail of their lives until examined over the distance of too many years and too much loss. Would a woman ever perform such a simple loving task for him?
Would Olivia Byrde do it?
He stared out at the rain and let the steady tattoo of a thousand raindrops wash through his mind. It drowned out his fears and all his anxieties, and allowed him, for a few moments at least, the luxury of imagining a different sort of life for himself. Olivia greeting him with open arms and a warm kiss, as Maisie greeted Bart. Olivia dousing the evening lamps, then beckoning him up the stairs to the master’s chamber. Olivia
letting her magnificent hair down while he unfastened the buttons of her gown.
His fist trembled around the pipe as lust rose hot and hard to overtake him.
God, yes, he could envision such a future for himself, making love to Olivia, to his wife, until dawn, then falling asleep with her in his arms.
A crack of lightning lit the sky momentarily, then left the world even darker in its wake, and he frowned. Eventually he would fill his nights with Olivia. But for this night and the ones just ahead, nothing had changed. He must manage as he always had: hard work during the day; planning and reading at night; and now his father’s pipe.
But no liquor. He’d made his decision and he meant to stick with it, no matter how difficult it proved to be. No ale or whisky or brandy or wine. Not anymore.
He took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled and leaned out past the window into the weather that grew steadily worse. He’d better relight his pipe and pull out the account books, for it looked like a long night ahead for him. A long and lonely night.
COME the morning, with the air washed clean by the overnight storm, the magnitude of the work ahead of them showed more clearly than ever. More depressingly. On the way downstairs Olivia peeked into the several other bedchambers, the ones she must prepare for next week’s houseguests. Even the master’s chamber, which she meant her mother to use, looked completely untouched since her childhood. Billowing ropes of dust, the faded damask window and bed draperies, and the telltale trail of mouse tracks painted a picture of neglect and, unaccountably, of sorrow.
Olivia closed the door to the room that had been her parents’ private domain, then leaned for a moment back against the door. When she’d suggested this journey to the estate left to her, she’d not anticipated this assault on her memories, nor upon her emotions.
She stared down the hall. One part of her mind ticked off a list of tasks and weighed which to tackle first, then second, and so on. But another part of her examined the strange state of mind she found herself in of late. She’d been fine en route to Doncaster. Once there, however, once accosted by the drunken Lord Hawke, everything had begun to unravel.
But that only proved what she already knew. He was a bad influence on her, and if she were wise, she would keep a healthy distance away from him. Not that she hadn’t known that from their very first encounter. But in Doncaster she’d allowed herself the luxury of baiting him—and being baited by him. An error, she now saw, caused by ego and pride and no small amount of righteous anger. But she was wiser now—
notwithstanding those weak moments when she’d gazed upon him sleeping on the carriage seat opposite her.
She straightened, then repositioned the pins of her apron and patted her hair, tightly drawn back from her brow and twisted into a bun. She had too much to do to waste time considering her unwise attraction to Neville Hawke. If she stayed busy—and stayed well away from him—she would manage just fine.
A sharp voice and a sudden crash drew her head around. Mrs. McCaffery. Then another voice, an angry old man’s. Olivia started for the stairs. It was going to be a very long day.
What she found was the grizzled Mr. Hamilton, awake now, with a pot raised in his hand, facing down a fiercely scowling Mrs. McCaffery. Two women cowered behind the old fellow while Sarah peeked wide-eyed past the irate housekeeper.
“ … such a shoddy household as I’ve never seen! It’ll be you thrown out on your ear, you old goat!” Mrs. McCaffery shouted. “Get out of my way, and those pitiful charwomen behind you too!”
Mr. Hamilton only raised the cast-iron pot higher. “I’m warnin’ you, Bertie McCaffery. Get away from here. You got no call to be givin’ orders in this household!”
Bertie? Olivia’s alarm eased a bit. Mr. Hamilton knew the starchy Mrs. McCaffery as Bertie?
“You’re the one as hasn’t got the right,” the steely-eyed woman shot right back at him.
“Me? I’ve got ev‘ry right!” he sputtered, turning red in the face. Then spying Olivia in the doorway, he drew himself up and with a smug smile at “Bertie” set the pot down with a clang. “Good mornin’ to you, Miss Livvie. ‘Tis glad I am t’see you safely arrived.”
“You slept right through her arrival,” Mrs. McCaffery said with a snort. “The bedrooms were a shambles. No water. Dust on everything.”
“Please, Mrs. McCaffery.” Olivia held up one hand. “We’ve much to do, and casting blame will neither lighten our task nor speed its solution.”
The housekeeper hiked up her chin, crossed her arms, and shifted her glare to Olivia. “Never tell me you’re going to ignore this shirker’s vast failings and allow him to—”
“I’m no shirker, you old battle—”
“I am in charge here!”
Everyone drew back at Olivia’s unladylike bellow. That she stamped her foot and planted her fists on her hips for emphasis seemed to impress the four servants.
From Sarah, however, it drew only a giggle, which she promptly smothered when Olivia fixed her with a sharp look. “You may begin your tasks by stripping the bed linens from all the beds, Sarah. All of them. Starting now,” she added when Sarah opened her mouth to object. Then Olivia turned on the servants.
Mr. Hamilton made a hasty bow that looked painful in one so bent and gray. “Welcome back, Miss Livvie. ’Tis a bonnie lass you’ve become.”
Olivia graced him with a curt nod. “We’ll see about that. Who do we have behind you?”
Mrs. Wilkins was the cook, a beefy but meek-looking woman of indeterminate age who bobbed and nodded but kept her mouth wisely shut. Mr. Hamilton’s sister-in-law, as it happened. The work-worn lass behind her was their niece, a girl of simple mind but willing disposition who gave Olivia a lopsided grin that revealed several large gaps where teeth ought to be. Milly’s grin turned into a muted “Ouch,” when Mrs. Wilkins gave her a pinch. When Olivia sent Milly to start the laundry fires, the girl scurried off, smiling her relief to escape the tension in the kitchen.
“Now,” Olivia began. “Mrs. Wilkins, I’d like you to prepare a soup or stew or some other such this morning, something that will not require too much of your attention. For today we clean. All of us,” she added, glancing pointedly at Mr. Hamilton.
And so they did. Every curtain and rug was hauled out of doors and draped over fences, clotheslines, and even sturdy shrubs. Mrs. Wilkins sent word to two of her sisters, and by noon a small army of women appeared, each of them eager to
earn a coin or two in service at Byrde Manor. By mid-afternoon every window gaped open, spewing pillows and mattresses airing out. One team of women dusted and swept, while another group followed them wielding soap and mops and scrub buckets.
The previous night’s storm had dissipated into a fair day, allowing the washing to dry without mishap. Olivia toiled alongside the other women, forgoing her desire to explore the grounds. Only when the sun inched down in the western sky and the hired women began the half-mile trek back to the village and their own households did Olivia pause.
“Three of the women are willing to do day work, but I’m still in need of two live-in girls,” Mrs. McCaffery said, fanning herself as they perched wearily upon a bench outside the kitchen door. “And a couple of lads to see to these pitiful gardens.” She fanned harder with the pleated kitchen fan. “If I were you, Olivia, I’d give serious consideration to finding a steward who attends a mite better to his duties than does Donnie Hamilton.”
Donnie, was it? Olivia glanced curiously at Mrs. McCaffery. “How long have you and Mr. Hamilton known one another?”
The woman’s lips twitched, then pursed in disapproval. “Too long. I’d have thought the old coot dead by now. By rights he should’ve died in boyhood—he was that wild. A hooligan then, and a ne’er-do-well ever since.”
Smiling, Olivia swept her palm across her damp neck, lifting several stray curls that stuck to it. “The fault lies less with him than with me.”
Mrs. McCaffery made a huffing noise. “I’d hardly think—”
“Now, Mrs. Mac. How many times have you remarked on the need for a tight hand with underservants?”
“Yes, but he’s no underservant.”
“He’s had no guidance to speak of from me or my mother or any of her solicitors. Other than the twice-yearly accounting of income and expenditures, we have left him entirely to his own devices.”
Mrs. McCaffery snorted. “You’re just makin’ excuses for him, and don’t think I don’t know it.”
“Perhaps. But I intend to give him the opportunity to redeem himself. If he does his duties well, then he will retain his position.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
Olivia smiled and patted the indignant woman on the knee. “Coming back to Byrde Manor has been unsettling for all of us. Mr. Hamilton. Me. Even you. And I suspect it will be especially so for Mother. But in time I believe we shall all be the better for it. This is my home,” she added, startled by the sudden quiver of emotion in her voice. Still she went on. “My childhood home. I was happy here once upon a time. I want to be happy here again.”
“Ach, child.” Mrs. McCaffery covered Olivia’s hand with her own red-knuckled one. “You will be. In time you will be.”
The next three days passed in a blur of polished brass fittings and crystal lamps, of oiled wood floors and waxed furniture, of washed windows, and cleaned-out gutters, and scrubbed-out chimneys and flues. Mrs. McCaffery commanded the servants with a fervor that would have done a colonel in the Royal Guard proud.
As the house began to rise from its neglected condition, Olivia turned her interests to the estate it commanded. Of all the outbuildings, the stables were the best maintained, for when it came to horses, Mr. Hamilton’s interest coincided precisely with her own, even though there were few animals housed there. The rest of the grounds, however, were completely overrun, practically a thicket surrounding the house, like the vining thorns around the castle in the childhood tale of the sleeping princess.
Under her watchful eye three lads labored long hours, slashing away at dead brush, aggressive weeds, and overgrown shrubbery. They rediscovered slate paths, repaired stone walls, and unearthed treasures Olivia barely remembered, but which Mrs. McCaffery clearly did.
“Come April these rhododendron will bloom again,” the housekeeper assured Olivia.
“I hope so.” Olivia scrutinized the manor’s forecourt. The driveway was at least passable now. The holes and ruts in the carriage court were daily being filled. A few shrubs in the matching cast-iron planters beside the front steps and the place might actually be termed handsome, she decided—if not by town standards, at least by country ones.
The two women stood there a few moments in silence, while the hum of work proceeded around them. A wheelbarrow squeaked as a young man fetched a load of gravel across the yard. An ancient pony whinnied at the corral, calling to Mr. Hamilton for its afternoon treat.
Mrs. McCaffery’s eyes narrowed as the old steward hobbled across her line of vision, heeding the animal’s call. “He ought to be ashamed to show his face around here,” she muttered.
“He’s done everything I’ve asked of him,” Olivia countered. “With good grace, I might add.”
“Harumph,” was the only answer she received.
Olivia flexed her back. She was tired and hot, and she needed a reprieve. “I think I shall take a walk down to the river. I won’t be long.”
“You should take someone with you.” Mrs. McCaffery rose reluctantly from the wooden bench rediscovered in a rose garden grown amuck but newly sheared.
“You needn’t accompany me. I know you’re tired.”
“I was thinkin’ of Sarah. Where has that child got to? Sarah!” she cried in carrying tones.
In short order Olivia and her sister were trekking down the curving drive, accompanied by the old dog, Bones, who’d become as completely enamored of Sarah as she was of him.
“He’s smart as can be,” Sarah boasted. “Watch this.” The girl patted Bones’s head and waved a stick in front of his face. “Fetch, Bones. Fetch.” Then she flung the stick as far ahead of them as she could.
Bones watched the stick tumble end over end, then land in the middle of the drive. But he did not evidence any indication of fetching it back.
“Smart as a whip,” Olivia wryly echoed her sister.
“Just you watch,” Sarah protested. “You’ll see.”
Sure enough, when they reached the stick, old Bones nosed it around, looked up at Sarah, and yelped once. “Fetch,” she repeated, and he did.
Sarah took the stick from him amid much petting and hugging, and even planted a kiss on his graying forehead. The dog wriggled and wagged his doggy pleasure, whacking both Olivia and Sarah with his eager tail.
“A stupid dog would run like a fool, exhausting himself on the hottest day ever,” Sarah said, as they resumed their walk. “But Bones knows how to pace himself. A lesson,” she added pointedly, “that you’ve yet to learn.”
“So you say. But you overlook the fact that I have infinitely more energy than this ancient mutt, not to mention a world of responsibility.” Olivia scrutinized her sister, attired in an everyday dress protected by a sturdy apron. “For all your complaints, you don’t look any the worse for wear.”
As they approached the front gate Sarah picked up another stick and tossed it clean across the road. “If I never have to hang wet, tangling bedsheets and curtains out to dry for as long as I live, it will not be soon enough.”
Olivia laughed at the girl’s puckered expression. “Should I interpret that to mean you enjoy polishing silverware?”
“No! Nor brass knobs. Nor crystal. Do you know how many crystals hang upon that dining room chandelier? Do you? Well, I do. One hundred sixty-eight!” She heaved another stick. “This isn’t even the sort of house that’s supposed to have crystal chandeliers.”
“Be glad there’s only one,” Olivia retorted. But she smiled fondly at her sister. Despite her complaints, Sarah had been a great help, for the hired women did not dare shirk their responsibilities when the entire family worked so hard beside them. Olivia tucked a stray curl into one of the girl’s bedraggled plaits. “What do you say we take a dip in the river?”
At once Sarah’s eyes lit up. “I say yes.” They stared at each other a moment, then in the same instant, both of them made a mad dash across the road. With their skirts held high, their laughter unfettered, and poor Bones baying in their wake, they
plunged into the shady grove that separated the road from the river beyond.

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