The Widow of Larkspur Inn (9 page)

But I’ve no idea how much it’s going to cost to refurbish the house
, Julia thought, mentally counting the money again. How could she know, until all the rooms had been examined and cleaned? And her children’s futures lay in making the
Larkspur Inn
presentable to lodgers who were accustomed to quality.

The driver grunted from beneath the trunk. “Where d’ye want this?”

This is our home. We have to stay.
Julia shot a questioning glance to Fiona. But where indeed should the luggage go? She wasn’t even sure which bedrooms they would choose for their own yet.

“How about in here?” Fiona suggested. “We can always move everything later.”

“Yes, that’s fine,” Julia said to the coachman. “But why don’t you rest before unloading the others?”

“Want t’make Shrewsbury before lunch,” the driver replied. When he was gone, accompanied by Philip to hold the door for him when he returned with another load, and while Fiona went to look for the lantern room, Grace pointed to a sheet-covered form in a familiar shape. “Look, Aleda!” she exclaimed. “That looks like a piano. You’ll be able to play for us.”

“I’m not touching anything in
this
house … ever,” her sister sniffed.

Julia squelched the sharp words that rose in her throat.
She just needs time to get used to the idea.
Mercifully, a few minutes later the doorway they had walked through earlier became brighter and brighter, until Fiona appeared carrying two paraffin lamps. “I found a lantern room just inside the courtyard door,” she said, placing one on each side of the chimneypiece. “Candles, paraffin, and gallons of oil. We’ll have enough light for months to come. And I’ll bring more lanterns in here when we’ve uncovered the tables. A little light always makes a room more hospitable.”

This fact lifted Julia’s spirits, but the girls still huddled close to her with dazed expressions.
Give them something to do
, she thought when Philip had returned and the coachman was gone.
It’ll keep their minds occupied
. And today was as good a day as any for the children to understand that the days of having servants attending their every need were over.

“Look, children, I’ve a little chore for you,” she said.

“Chore, Mother?” Philip said, but the puzzlement was across all three faces. Julia sighed inwardly, recalling the two times she’d explained to the children that their help would be vital to making the
Larkspur
a success. It still obviously hadn’t sunk in, for now all three sets of eyes had drifted over to Fiona.

Aleda was the only one with enough bluntness to voice what they were all thinking. “But why can’t Fiona do it?” There was no animosity in her voice, just the incomprehension of a child who’d taken it for granted all her life that children amused themselves and servants did the work.

“Because Fiona can’t do it all. And she and I need to see how the other rooms are laid out.” Moving over to a sofa-shaped form, Julia took up a corner of the sheet and snatched it aside. A cloud of dust overwhelmed her nostrils and brought on a fit of sneezing.

“It’s better to fold the sheets aside, ma’am,” Fiona said tactfully as Julia wiped her eyes with her handkerchief. The maid demonstrated, lifting a corner of the cloth and making a series of folds until a Georgian tea table with cabriole legs was uncovered. “We should go through the sheets later to see if any are worth salvaging. The others we can cut up for cleaning rags.”

“See?” Julia said with forced cheeriness after blowing her nose. “The rooms won’t look so frightening when the furniture is uncovered. You can busy yourselves with that while Fiona and I decide where we’re to sleep.”

Aleda’s face fell again. “It’ll take years and years to clean this old house. Why don’t you hire more servants now?”

“And why don’t
you
stop complaining!” Julia snapped, her nerves strained to the limit. Immediately regretting her burst of temper, she walked over to put an arm around Aleda’s young shoulders. The girl buried her face in Julia’s side.

“Yes, in time we will,” she said softly. “But it’s never going to be like it was in London. We’re going to have to learn to do some things for ourselves.”

“I
hate
this place! I want to go back
home
!” Aleda said amidst muffled sobs.

“I know you do,” Julia murmured as she smoothed the girl’s auburn hair and allowed her to cry while the others looked on with long faces. Close to dissolving herself, she thought,
If you could have looked ahead to the future, Philip, and seen the tears of your daughter … would you have thrown our future away so recklessly?
“But I give you my word, we’re going to make a home out of this place.”

When Julia had calmed Aleda somewhat, she and Fiona got the children started on the task of uncovering the furniture. But no matter how carefully they folded the sheets aside, dust scattered into the air. It was Philip who came up with the idea of taking handkerchiefs from the luggage and tying them around their faces highwayman style.

The ground floor consisted of two main corridors. Along the corridor running west to east and forming the long part of the “L” were the scullery, kitchen, and a sizable dining room ending at the main hall. Facing those rooms from across the same corridor were the pantry, a back staircase, the short courtyard corridor they had entered the house through, the cook’s and housekeeper’s chambers, water closet and lavatory, and a main staircase that ended at the hall again.

Another corridor ran north to south from the hall. Julia was following Fiona down it when the front bell clanged. Automatically Fiona turned in her tracks, but Julia switched the lamp she was carrying to her other hand and touched the maid’s arm. “It’s about time I learned how to answer my own door.”

Crunching dried leaves with her feet, Julia hurried back into the hall, where the children were staring with uncertain expressions at the front door. Like herself, they’d been raised to take for granted that servants answered doors without exception.
We’ve a lot of habits to unlearn,
she thought on her way past them. “It’s all right, children,” she assured them, picking up her reticule from the exposed tea table and taking out her keys. She tried three keys on the chain before one unlocked the front door, but she finally swung it open to find four people standing upon the stoop.

“Good day, madam,” said an elderly gentleman with fresh pink cheeks and clear blue eyes. He switched the cane in his right hand to his left and lifted a bowler hat from his balding head. “I’m Vicar Wilson, and this is my daughter, Henrietta, our housemaid, Dora, and our gardener, Luke. We’ve come to offer our assistance to Gresham’s newest residents.”

“But we’ve barely just arrived,” Julia said after a second of stunned silence. “How did you know …?”

“News travels fast in a small village, madam.”

The daughter, a sturdily built middle-aged woman with brown sausage curls peeking from her bonnet, nodded down at the basket in her arms. “And we brought you some lunch.”

“Firewood too,” said the gardener, doffing a billycock cap.

Julia could see part of a small gardening wagon behind him, heaped with split logs.

“The nights and mornin’s still got a nip in ’em. And if ye don’t mind me lookin’ out back for a ladder, I’ll see to opening those shutters.” A gap between his front teeth caused “shutters” to come out with a faint whistle.

Dora, a young woman in apron and lace cap, simply gave a quick bob. Julia put a hand up to her cheek and tried to imagine Reverend Douglass, her former rector at Mayfair, condescending to helping someone with housework. Or even herself doing the same just weeks ago.

“Why, I don’t know what to say,” she finally told them.

“‘Come in’ will do very nicely,” the vicar said, smiling.

As it turned out, Vicar Wilson was very familiar with the layout of the
Larkspur
, having been a close friend of Ethan Banning, its previous owner. The vicar was kind enough to take up a lantern and offer a tour.

“That would be wonderful,” Julia told him, and even the children managed some enthusiasm this time. They left from the hall again, along the corridor that Julia and Fiona had started to explore. This passage had rooms only on the south side—the first was a small library, then a storage room. Three bedrooms were next.

“These are the family quarters,” the vicar explained.

“Downstairs?” Philip asked.

The old gentleman smiled. “In the coaching inn business, the proprietor has to keep a sharp eye on the goings-on of the establishment.”

There were six bedchambers upstairs that would hopefully lodge people instead of spiders one day, a linen room, storage room, water closet and bath, and a sitting room. In the attic were also six bedchambers—smaller because of the slope of the house—but surprisingly well insulated and each with a fireplace and garret window. Julia opened one door and gasped at finding another water closet. She had expected those on the two other floors that Jensen had mentioned, but even her house in London hadn’t provided such an amenity in the servants’ quarters.

“Ethan Banning was a thoughtful man,” the reverend said with an amused little smile. “When the water closets were added, he decided that the servants should have one as well.”

“It makes sense to me.” Julia smiled back at him.

Hours later, when the foursome were on their way back to the vicarage with a promise to return the next day, Julia put aside her dusting cloth long enough to wander down the family corridor with an appreciative eye. At Julia’s insistence, Fiona was assigned to the housekeeper’s quarters, which would hopefully be cleaned by tomorrow evening.

“Just until we’ve time to ready the maids’ rooms in the loft,” Fiona had finally relented. “You’ll need this chamber when you can hire on a housekeeper.”

Julia had smiled at Fiona’s statement, made totally without guile, and hoped the time would indeed come when she could afford to pay a housekeeper’s wages—and she already had a certain young Irishwoman in mind for the position.

She ran her fingertips lightly along the inside cobwalls of the family corridor. They felt slightly damp from the scrubbing she and Dora had given them earlier. The vicar’s maid had had to teach her how to use a broom on cobwebs, and then how to clean one section of the wall at a time before moving on. Such a deceptively simple-looking chore had caused Julia’s back to ache and arms to feel leaden, but she was so determined not to draw attention to her lack of skills that she’d pushed herself on. And learned something with the effort. How startling it was to discover the sense of satisfaction that could be experienced while wringing out a cloth in a bucket of warm sudsy water!

So much had been accomplished today. Even the vicar, hindered as he was by rheumatism, and Philip by his sprained finger, did what they could to sweep away some of the neglect of the past eight years.

Beds were made in the children’s rooms, cobwebs swept away, and wood fires now snapped in the fireplaces, warding off the evening chill. Best of all, unshuttered windows gave vent to the remaining evening sunlight.

Julia stopped in the doorway of the girls’ room, where Aleda and Grace had helped Fiona unpack their trunk. A pinkish conch shell, gathered by Aleda at Brighton Beach, sat on a dresser top alongside her delft blue music box, a framed photograph of both girls seated atop a pony, and Grace’s book of fairy tales. Two dolls shared a small crib on the floor near Grace’s side of the bed, next to the sparrow’s lard tin.

She was so glad that she’d allowed the children to pack some treasures from their old rooms, even though luggage space had been tight. The abrupt change in their lives was softened by these familiar reminders.
It’s closer to looking like a home,
she thought.

True, there was still much work left to do. She and Fiona would be sleeping on divans in the hall until their rooms could be cleaned. Most rooms on the ground floor, including the kitchen, still needed serious attention. The upstairs floor and attic hadn’t even been touched, and with the children starting school on Monday, their help would be unavailable for the better part of the weekdays.

But we’re here, and not out on some London street
. What had Saint Paul written in the Scriptures?
In whatever state I am in, I have learned to be content
. So that meant if contentment did not come naturally, it could be learned.

Julia went to the window at the end of the family corridor and stared out of the freshly scrubbed glass. The sun stood poised to dip behind the brown mass of Anwyl. Its downward way was marked by clouds of every sunset color—flame, purple, pink, violet, and all the tints of gold.
I am not happy, Lord,
she prayed silently. Philip’s death and then the discovery of his betrayal were wounds she felt so deeply in her soul that she wondered if she would ever know joy again.
But with Your help, I will learn how to be content
.

Chapter 6

The Worthy sisters had retired to their cottage by the time Julia walked across the dark lane after the family had suppered on the remaining roast beef sandwiches from Henrietta Wilson’s generous basket. She was weary to the bone and had yet to take a bath, having removed only the worst of the grime from herself. But the two elderly women were her nearest neighbors, and she wanted to start out on good terms with them.