Page 91 of An Inconvenient Vow

She noticed the first of the large carved trunks being heaved out the back of the nearest wagon. “Well, it looks rather like your furniture from Ganford Chase,” she said slowly. “But…” She whipped around to gaze at the second cart. “Is that a bed frame?” she gasped. “Jeffree, if that is your bed, it will never fit.”

He ignored her, carrying on into the house, and Sabina turned smartly on her heel to follow him inside.

“My uncle is visiting us on the morrow,” he said to her over his shoulder. “You will have to offer him some sort of refreshment.”

“The duke? Here?” Sabina heard a gasp and turned to see Penny hovering nearby, wide-eyed with excitement. “Penny, do you suppose you could bake some tarts in his honor?”

“Oh yes, milady!” Penny bobbed up and down and fled from the room, no doubt to get started on perfecting her recipe.

Jeffree had already started up the stairs, so Sabina followed hot on his heels. He made straight for the master bedroom and stood just inside the doorway, his hands on his hips.

“What are you looking at?” she demanded.

He did not answer for a moment, then he turned and looked at her hard. “It will fit,” he asserted.

“Your bed?” she snorted, catching his meaning. “It will not. An entire family could fit in that thing without touching. Three generations!”

But he was already striding back down the corridor, having made up his mind. Sabina threw her hands up in the air. He was impossible, truly. If he was sending that monstrous oversized bed up her stairs, then she supposed she would have to tidy the narrow cot away that she had used the night before. She started stripping off the covers and folding them into a tidy pile.

“What are you doing?” His voice made her jump, for he had reappeared in the doorway.

Sabina looked up. “I thought—”

“Leave that,” he said abruptly. “I’ve brought others to do that.” She straightened up. “Come. And stick close to me.” He frowned. “We have much to organize this day.”

Sabina nodded, trailing after him and feeling rather dazed. Down in the courtyard, the first of the wagons was still only partway unpacked. “What are all these?” Sabina asked, gesturing toward a pile of rolled-up textiles.

Jeffree glanced at them without much interest. “Naseby packed those,” he said. “They are tapestries and such which are not currently being used at Ganford Chase. If you do not like them, we can send them back.”

Sabina’s eyes widened. “I am sure they will be most useful,” she said thinking of the newly patched walls in the dining chamber which needed covering up. She made at once to start sifting through the heavy canvases, looking for the largest and most vibrant colored. When she had picked out four that she thought would be large enough to cover the entirety of the Great Chamber walls, she had them carried inside.

“I might have to interrupt Penny’s kitchen work,” she murmured as two men unfurled the first tapestry and held it up against the wall for her approval.

“Why?” Jeffree asked.

“To garner her opinion,” Sabina answered, tapping her chin. “I do not know if these tapestries look well together. This one seems to depict an allegory of sorts, in a theme of greens and blues. Does it not contrast rather ill with the one we placed on the opposite wall?”

Jeffree turned to face the other wall now covered in a hanging predominantly of bold reds and yellows, showing a group of lions prancing around a striped pole. “Does it matter?” he asked.

“As to that, I would have supposed you more of a judge, than I,” Sabina admitted. “My taste is not considered anything special. In such matters, I usually defer to Isemay’s opinion.”

“Is your sister considered such an arbiter of taste?” he sounded skeptical.

“In our family, yes.”

He shrugged. “In your own house, I say the only question should be whether you like to look upon it or no.”

Sabina turned back to the allegorical tapestry and considered it. Four women stood under three blossoming trees holding caskets in their hands. “Do you know the fable it illustrates?” she asked with sudden misgiving. Jeffree shook his head; he was already moving toward the door.

“So long as it is not anything irritating like ‘How to measure the true worth of a woman’ or something of that nature,” Sabina murmured darkly as she hurried after him back outside.

“You need to direct them where everything is to go in the house,” he said coming to a halt before the first cart.

“This cannot all have fitted into your own two rooms,” she commented, glancing over the vast array of wooden carved furniture being unloaded from the carts. There seemed even more of it, now it was not neatly piled on top of each other.

He crossed his arms. “I thought I said, Naseby had some of it taken out of storage.”

They gazed in silence at the scene of activity in front of them as men staggered under the weight of the heavy pieces.