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“Lord have mercy!” Adams said in a shocked voice. “Well, the bishop wouldn’t have it, of course. How could he allow such a thing after all?”
“And then?”
“She didn’t turn up for the funeral. Ran away, taking only her big black horse with her, and left a rude, nasty note. They thought she might have run off with that native prince, or whatever he calls himself, but he didn’t know where she’d gone either.”
“She might have been murdered by those savages over there, and heaven knows what else! My poor lady!”
“Well, it’s not as if Lady Fanny really knew her, is it?” Unknowingly, Mrs. Jenks paraphrased Sir Edgar’s parting words to his wife. “We’ll just have to wait and see what happens, I suppose.”
In a subdued voice, Adams murmured, “Call me heartless, if you like, but I can’t help thinking it’ll be a blessing if she doesn’t turn up.”
Mrs. Jenks put the letter back carefully, exactly as she had found it.
“I’ve been thinking the same thing myself, and I’ll not deny it,” she admitted. “We’ve got enough to keep us all busy without having to worry about some young foreign-brought-up female with wild ways disrupting the whole household!”
Only Mary, the youngest parlormaid, ventured to speak up on behalf of the young woman whose imminent arrival formed the topic of discussion belowstairs that night.
“I don’t understand their ways,” she sniffed to Alice, who shared her bed in their poky little attic room. “Fancy a mother not wanting her own daughter to live with her, and letting them say all those wicked things about her too.”
“You’ll never understand the gentry, so don’t even try,” Alice said wisely.
“Well, I hope she does come, after all,” Mary persisted. “Be like a breath of fresh air, I’ll be bound!”
“Yes, or a gale!” said Alice. “I’ve heard tell them foreigners treat their servants worse than slaves—and didn’t you hear what Mrs. Jenks was telling cook, about this Lady Rowena being a hard little creature with no heart? Better count your blessings, my girl. Now turn over, do, and stop tossing so. Remember we have to be up by five to light the fires!”
The subject of Lady Fanny’s errant daughter was soon dropped as a topic of conversation when there were no more letters from India and no more hysterics on the part of Lady Fanny herself. Cardon House settled back into its usual routine, and Sir Edgar was heard to mention a holiday in Paris in the near future.
And then, one late spring morning, the clanging summons of the front doorbell hurried Briggs the butler into his dark jacket, grumbling as he waved aside the new footman who was busy polishing the large brass urn that stood in the hallway.
“Never you mind. I’ll get it, since I’m dressed already. And you had best disappear into the kitchen, my lad, and put on your jacket, in case it’s someone important.”
The bell clanged again imperatively, causing Briggs’s features to settle into lines of doleful severity.
“Now, who could that be so early in the morning? The racket will wake them if it’s kept up!”
Still grumbling, Briggs hurried down the long, imposing hallway to the front door. Whoever it was was mighty impatient!
“I knew right away it could be nothing but bad news—or trouble!” he reported later in the servants’ hall.
But words could hardly describe Briggs’s emotions as he opened the door and saw the apparition who stood there, small, booted foot tapping impatiently on the step. His usually impeccable poise deserted him; his mouth dropped open.
“I hope this is Cardon House?”
The accents were unmistakably those of a lady, clear and self-possessed; but the appearance of the young person who had spoken certainly did not fit such a description.
She wore a shabby black velvet riding habit, the skirt shockingly ripped on one side, exposing a slim, booted ankle. A hat that reminded the stunned butler of a man’s bowler hat was perched on her head, and from beneath it strands of black hair straggled untidily. There was even what looked like a smudge on the young person’s cheek—Briggs could think of no other way to describe her.
Realizing that he was being eyed questioningly from under frowning dark brows, Briggs drew himself up and pronounced in his most forbidding accents:
“I beg your pardon?”
“I asked you if this was Cardon House. Good heavens, why does everyone I have so far met in England make me repeat the questions I ask?”
The young woman pulled the bowler hat impatiently off her head as she spoke, and her hair, which had been untidily stuffed beneath it came tumbling over her shoulders.
“This is Sir Edgar Cardon’s residence when he is in London, miss, but I do not think…”
“Good.” She cut him off impatiently. “Then the directions I received were correct, after all. If you will see that my horse is taken around to the stables and fed, I think I can manage to carry my portmanteau inside myself.”
