Cordelia had gone to bed laughing over the improbable demise of Mr. Denbrow and the even more improbable second careers of her brothers-in-law.
Chapter Twenty
The morning foundCordelia hard at work, ignoring Chester’s shouts of murder from the drawing room. It was a bit harder to ignore Tattleton’s retort, which was along the lines of, “Do not tempt me, you heinous bird.”
Tattleton himself knocked on the library door and entered. “Lady Cordelia,” he said, “a messenger has brought this for you and claimed he must wait for an answer. It is very untoward, I think, to demand an answer. He would not be moved though and the earl is not in the house to ask his opinion of it.”
“Do give it over, Tattleton,” Cordelia said laughing. She could not imagine who would have written requiring an answer right away, but for Miss Anne Garrow, a neighborhood spinster who looked upon the scheduling of a sudden afternoon tea as a countywide emergency.
She tore it open. It was not from Miss Garrow.
It was from two people as yet unknown to her—the Duchess of Castleton and her daughter, Lady Theodora Highbury.
Goodness, this was Lord Hamill’s mother and his younger sister who was due to come out next year.
Cordelia scanned the letter.
Lady Cordelia Bennington—
I and my daughter, Lady Theodora, have been assured by my son, Lord Hamill, that we are not too forward in this invitation. We are planning a house party for the 14th,scheduled to run a fortnight, and Lord Hamill singled you out as a lady it would behoove Theodora to know.
Were you to be so gracious as to accept our invitation, we would quite naturally expect you to bring along someone of more mature years to supervise your visit, whether that be the earl or Lord Darden who I am both acquainted with, or Miss Eloise Mayton, who I understand is a very pleasant lady. Quite naturally, bring your maids and valets—we have ample accommodations for them.
We do hope you might condescend to attend us. We will have all sorts of activities to entertain the ladies, while the gentlemen will have plenty of sport to engage in. I will personally plan for the ladies, and the duke, my son, and his friend Lord Harveston will plan for the gentleman.
We are not so very far from your estate, being at our summer estate in Devonshire, just north of Thorverton. We would send one of our carriages and the trip could be done in a day.
Respectfully, we have directed our groom to wait for your answer.
Lady Theodora and I do hope we will see you in our house very soon.
Georgianna Castleton
Cordelia reread the letter. No, she did not reread it exactly. Rather, her eyes were glued to the one phrase—“my son and Lord Harveston.”
“Goodness,” she said to herself. “Lord Harveston is there.”
“Is he still at the house, then?” Tattleton asked. “I did not think the garden would take as long as that.”
“The garden?” Cordelia said, not having the first idea of what the butler was talking about.
Tattleton nodded. “After the family departed Portland Place, he turned up for your at-home day. Certainly, Lord Harveston does not write to you directly?”
“No, of course not. But he was there? At Portland Place? Just after we left?”
Tattleton nodded. “After being apprised of the circumstances, he helped pack up Lord Darden’s things, then insisted on having the key to the garden gate so he might bring in his own fellow to repair that goat’s…modifications. I was not so certain I ought to have given the key to him, but the earl saw no harm in it when I told him of it.
Cordelia smiled. He’d fixed up the garden after Lord Darling’s rampage. That was a very singular thing to do.
“I have since had a letter from Mr. Bramwell,” Tattleton went on. “He is the butler next door on the right. He says the garden is looking very well and a fellow comes by once a week to do the weeding and pruning.”
She leapt up. “Where is Papa?”
Tattleton seemed very taken aback by her swift reaction to hearing the neighbor’s assessment of the garden. “My lord has gone to the south field to check on how that goat is getting on with the cows,” Tattleton said.
“Tell that messenger to wait, Tattleton. I must see Papa and get permission to go to a house party. Do not allow him to leave. Give him ale, or biscuits, or…you will know best what to do with him, but do not let him leave!”
On her way out the back doors that led to the fields, Cordelia stopped at the bottom of the staircase. “Aunt! Aunt, where are you?”
