None of which she could share with the Countess of Beckcott.
“Your father wants you in a good position, one with security as well as status.”
“He also wants me out of his care. I am, as he so politely phrased it, a burden on the family.”
“Would you prefer he hid the truth of your situation from you? You cannot expect your brother to keep you eternally supplied with clothes and food when he will have his own family to see to.”
“You speak as if Papa is already dead.” Clara stiffened, a horrific thought seizing her. “Mother?”
Honora turned to look out the window of the carriage.
“Mother, what are you hiding from me?”
Her mother remained silent as the carriage slowed, drawing to a halt.
“Mother?”
The footman opened the door, and her mother prepared to get out. “We will speak of this later.” Holding on to the footman’s arm, Honora stepped down and out of sight.
Clara gathered her skirts, once again feeling as if her life had been jerked from her hands and set upon an unstoppable path.
“Michael,” she whispered as she pushed out of the carriage. “Please hurry.”
*
Tuesday, 9 August 1825
The former Broxley Estate, Maidstone, Kent
Half-past eleven in the morning
“Thisis whatyou referred to as needing ‘a bit of a cleanup’?”
As if prompted by Michael’s words, a clay tile slipped free from the gabled roof of the main stable, clattered across the other tiles and crashed to the stone pavement a mere fifteen feet from where he and Robert stood. He turned to glare at his brother, reaching into his topcoat pocket for a handkerchief to press over his mouth and nose.
Robert did the same. “It helps somewhat if you breathe through your mouth.”
“Somewhat.”
Robert shrugged one shoulder. “Apparently they released the stable boys a few days before selling the last of the livestock.”
“Smells more like a few months.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Apparently that blow to your head blocked your sense of smell.”
Behind them, their own carriage, from which they had recently alighted, waited, the team of four blacks moving restlessly as their coachmen stood patiently. Their valets, along with the two footmen who had accompanied them, had unloaded their possessions and disappeared into the house. The sound of hammer on stone drew Michael’s attention, and he looked over his shoulder at the main house, where scaffolding had been erected on two sides, and workers were prying free cracked and crumbling stucco from the neoclassical façade of the mansion. “Is the roof sounder on the house, or do we need to tell Booth and Fletcher to move our trunks to an inn?”
Robert growled. “That roof is fine. The house is in better shape, and I have already replaced the staff. Many of them worked here before and know the house intimately. So you will be well taken care of.Thisroof is fine as well.” He gestured at the stable building.
“Not for long, if it keeps shedding tiles.”
“It’s not—”
“Lord Robert!”
A man rounded the corner of the main stable, his dark brown cotton suit and loping stride pegging him as the land steward. Reddish brown hair poked from beneath a woolen hat, which he doffed quickly, touching his forehead at the same time as he approached the brothers. He bowed slightly at the waist as he halted in front of them. “I was not expecting you back so soon.”
