Lady Bertridge was gazing round her drawing room, no doubt wondering what on earth would take that much time to put in order.
“Aunt,” Lord Bertridge said, “we would not take you away from the entertainments of the season, though we will forgo them ourselves.”
“What are entertainments compared to this? I know my duty to my family. One must do one’s duty, regardless of the inconvenience.”
“But certainly,” Caroline said, “the ladies of the society must also have a claim upon you. I understood the duchess takes Lady Isabel to London this season. Surely she will require your good counsel.”
“It will be a blow to the ladies, naturally,” Lady Easton conceded.
The duchess, never one to miss a chance to entertain herself, waved her hands and said, “Nonsense, I will carry on well enough with the other ladies’ assistance.”
She silently cautioned herself not to roar with laughter as she watched the blood drain from Lord Bertridge’s face. A very ordered house was coming his way.
“There, you see?” Lady Easton said. “It is settled. By the by, can that clock really be right?”
By the time she and Clara had been led up to their rooms to change for dinner, Lord and Lady Bertridge looked like two people on the verge of being struck down by a runaway carriage. It was a sort of dread, sprinkled with the sad acceptance of what was to come.
At dinner, they appeared quietly resigned. Though, the duchess was not certain Lady Easton had marked their changing attitudes. As far as she could tell, Clara presumed her relocation to the house was a matter of some delight.
The duchess had directed the conversation to the subject of Lady Isabel in a gambit to stop Clara from interrogating her hostess on the status of this or that thing in the household.
“She is a good sort of girl,” Lord Bertridge said. “She seems intelligent and speaks with good sense, not at all like her sister who is now married. That one is rather discombobulated, while Lady Isabel appears very steady.”
“She plays beautifully,” Caroline said, no doubt having a better idea of what the duchess was interested in. “She is well-mannered and exceedingly lovely. Her looks are very elegant. Her features are delicate, her hair is a wonderful auburn, and she has the complexion a redhead tends to have. She wears a bonnet with a very large brim and I have guessed she fears freckling.”
“That sounds most intelligent,” the duchess said gravely. “I would not prefer a freckled lady, though I will admit Miss Alcott seems to wear them with some aplomb.”
The duchess was pleased to hear that her new charge was very elegant. She had assumed it, but it was pleasant to have it confirmed.
“I do not know what her father thinks of, or whether he thinks at all,” Lord Bertridge said.
“I understand little of what he says,” Caroline said. “But smiling and nodding seems to be sufficient.”
“His estate, though,” the lord said. “Why he does not do something with it, I cannot understand. He’s got plenty of land and a good forest. With all of that, as far as I can tell, he’s only managed a small patch for a vegetable garden. He’s gone into a downward spiral—he does not have the means to employ people to do the work and will never have the means unless he employs people to do the work. Now he’s mortgaged and I do not know where the situation will end up.”
“Does he not have rents coming in?” Lady Easton asked.
“His last tenant left him years ago, finally tired of being mistreated. The earl looked upon his tenants as a personal bank. Whenever he needed funds, which was often, he tried raising the rents. At one point, a crowd of them threatened to burn his house down if he came round again.”
“He sounds dreadful. Though, one wonders that he does not have some relative or other who might step in and bolster him until he was back on his feet again,” the duchess said.
“I believe he has, and they have stepped in often. EvenIhave offered to lend him the funds to set the place right, but he’s refused,” Lord Bertridge said. “I do not like to see a neighbor, an earl, fall into such abject circumstances and I outlined an entire plan of farming, dairy, and forestry. No tenants, though. There would be no rational reason to revisit that fiasco.”
“I do not know if it would be wise to lend such a person any money,” Lady Easton said. “But on what basis does he refuse you?”
“It’s hard to know exactly,” Lord Bertridge said with a bemused smile. “He said something like: ‘What?Here? Cows! Work, don’t you know? Goodbye.’”
The duchess gripped her fork. Good grief. She must get Lady Isabel away from this lunatic with all haste. Further, it appeared as if he spoke just as he wrote. She would take Lady Bertridge’s advice and simply nod and smile.
After dinner, the duchess and Lord Bertridge had played piquet, which the lord lost consistently as he was too busy admiring his pretty wife. That pretty wife glanced at her lord from time to time and smiled encouragingly, all the while listening to the series of requirements Lady Easton must see from the poor lady’s servants. The ordered baby must land in an ordered house.
Now, a new day had dawned. The duchess had impatiently waited for breakfast to arrive to her room and for Lady Bertridge’s maid to dress her. Once that was done, she’d made her departure without wasting another moment.
She’d left the house with Lord and Lady Bertridge rather forlornly waving her off, while Clara was too busy inside to bother with it. Last the duchess had seen her, Clara was interrogating the housekeeper and pointing out a cobweb she found behind a sideboard.
Lord Bertridge’s house was about to go through an unlooked-for transformation.
As for Lord Somerdon’s house, it had once been very grand. It still had the bones of a great house, large and staid, made of gray stone. However, roof shingles were scattered on the gravel and there were even some broken windows on the uppermost floor. A fountain in the center of the circular drive was covered in lichen and its basin filled with brackish water. The duchess presumed there had at one time been flower beds on either side, but they were now just a collection of overgrown weeds.
