Mrs Greer was on her feet at once. Violet remained where she was, studying the books. The housekeeper waited a moment then was gone.
Chapter ten
Lady Thornwick
Violet
Violet sat in the stillroom with the inventory book open on her lap and a jar labelled CALENDULA–1822 in her free hand. The room had been scrubbed and aired and put in order over the past three days by Mrs Greer’s particular handpicked maid, and every surviving jar of the late duchess’s making was now arranged on the shelves in the order Mrs Greer believed orderly, which was alphabetical. Violet had asked, when the work was begun, that the jars be left exactly as the late duchess had left them. She had been told politely that they were now exactly as they ought to be.
She had not pressed the point. The late duchess grouped her preparations by complaint rather than by ingredient, which Violet had suspected from the labels, and which made the alphabetical scheme an inconvenience that any working herbalist would quickly want undone. She would put it right herself, jar by jar, as she came to know what each contained. Nothing had been thrown out. That order, at least, had beenfollowed. She could see, on the lower shelf, jars labelled simply HAROLD’S COUGH and HENRY’S SHOULDER and IT and several others which were of no use to anyone living except her.
She turned the calendula jar in her hand and uncorked it. The smell was faint, almost gone. Eight years was a long life for an unguent. She corked it and set it back upon the shelf in its alphabetical place, beside the bergamot oil that had been still further gone.
Footsteps came along the corridor. The maid, Bessie, looked in at the door without entering, because the stillroom was the duchess’s room now and she had not yet been invited to cross the threshold.
“Your Grace. Mr Patten asks if you would come up. There is a woman at the front door.”
“A caller?”
“He thinks not, Your Grace. The lady is claiming to be your mother.”
Violet was on her feet before she had quite registered the words.
She went up the service stair, lifting her skirts. By the time she reached the head of it she could hear voices in the entrance hall, low but firm. Mr Patten’s voice, and another voice, lighter and quicker, and unmistakable.
“…do not require an appointment to call upon my own daughter. I should think the situation perfectly plain. The girl I have been speaking to was incapable of taking a message, or you would have had me announced an hour ago—”
“Madame, if I might—”
“Lady Thornwick to you. Send your housekeeper—”
Violet crossed the marble in five quick strides and put her hands on her mother’s shoulders.
“Mama.”
Her mother was wearing her good travelling cloak, which is to say the one without holes, and a bonnet that had been respectable twenty years ago, and she had brought a quantity of mud in with her from the street. Her hair was coming down on one side. She looked at her daughter and her whole face opened.
“Violet.”
The hands went around her, and her mother held her hard enough that the bonnet slid further back on her head.
“Mama. Why did you not tell me you were coming?”
“I came on the morning coach from Highgate. I have a great deal to tell you. This gentleman here, I think it is Patten, was kind enough to attempt to send me away. I have explained the situation, and I should like a cup of tea.”
“Of course, my lady.” Patten had the grace not to glance at the mud on his marble. “I shall send up at once.”
“And the garden. I should like to see the garden. Violet, dear, do you have a garden? In London, I never know.”
“There is, Mama.”
“Then we shall begin there.”
She tucked her arm through Violet’s as though they were going in to dinner at Thornwick. Violet walked her through to the back of the house, and Patten, who had been a butler in this house for only three years, watched them go without a word.
The garden was small compared to the vast country estates of nobility Violet had seen, but she considered its presence in a London home a miracle.
A long rectangle behind the wall of brick, with paths of fine gravel and beds in the formal Italian style. The herbaceous border ran along the south wall and was, at this season, mostlybare. The beds were still brown but for a scatter of crocuses, the first thing to bloom since the year turned. A bay laurel stood in a great urn near the kitchen door. The mulberry at the end of the lawn likely had been there since the reign of the third George.
