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Oscar braced his elbows on the desk and frowned at the packages. “I think that whoever sent these diamonds probably sent them to the wrong address. At some point, they will realise the courier made a mistake and will most probably send someone to fetch them.”
“Well, we can’t do anything right now. I can’t send them back to Bingham without being certain that it was him who sent them. Let’s just see who turns up,” Tahlia sighed as she pushed away from the desk. “If someone arrives, hand them over. If not then we will need to make a decision about what to do with them because they can’t stay here.”
“I hate it here,” Cecily declared suddenly. “It is so confusing.”
The maid shrugged sheepishly when Oscar and Tahlia looked at her.
“What? It is. It is cold and crowded. While I will stay for as long as you need me, I won’t half be glad to get back home. It’s too noisy, and this house is too blasted big, that fog thing is awful. Not only that, but the streets are so over-crowded that going anywhere on foot is downright impossible.”
“Don’t swear,” Oscar chided in his most fatherly manner.
Cecily, who was only just entering her twenties, mumbled an apology. She made a valiant attempt to remember her place in the house, and lapsed into a stoic silence.
It was difficult for Tahlia to chastise her given that her supposed butler was seated quite comfortably in a chair opposite her while they talked. Theirs was a most unusual arrangement indeed but, in the country there was little call for pomp and circumstance. The basis of the moral fibre of the aristocratic realms of London existed on manners, and social etiquette the majority of which Tahlia found wearisome at the best of times.
In contrast, life the country was far less formal, especially with an energetic little boy in the house. Nobody had the time or the energy to bow or curtsey whenever they entered or left the house. Nor could they be bothered, and it didn’t matter to Tahlia one jot.
“Cecily, I need you to get your shawl and come with me. I have to go to see the solicitor this morning. I intend to ask him to oversee the
sale of the house on my behalf, and arrange for the removal of my uncle’s belongings I don’t want. Once I have collected the papers Henry left with him for me, I can spend the next couple of days going through my uncle’s things and decide which items to keep. They can be parcelled up and taken back to Rutland with us. I also need to go to the bank and empty the safe deposit box. Then we are free to go home. It will take a few days to get back to Rutland. Overall, I don’t want to be away for any longer than two weeks in total. So, we need to get a move on if we hope to get through this lot before we go.” She waved toward the contents of the desk before them.
“Going home can’t come a day too soon,” Cecily replied fervently.
“What do you want to do with the diamonds? They can’t stay out on the desk like that for the world to see,” Oscar reminded her.
“Put them in the safe for now,” Tahlia ordered.
She parcelled both parcels back up in their original packaging. It wasn’t difficult to identify which set was which; the packaging of the nicer set was in the worst wrapping. Then, for the second time that morning she went in search of her shawl.
“Come along, Cecily. I need you to chaperone me,” she called as she climbed the main staircase.
A smile lit her face when she heard Cecily’s groan of discontent from behind her, but she didn’t slow her pace. Time was of the essence and, now that another problem had been dealt with, she was even more determined to deal with all of the others.
CHAPTER THREE
Later that morning, she climbed down from the carriage and studied the windows of the solicitor’s office. It looked formal and stuffy even from the outside; and slightly creepy when it was shrouded in the gloom of the smog filled morning.
Tahlia turned to Cecily.
“When we are in there you must remember that we are in London now. Everyone is required to adhere to a certain level of etiquette. The first and foremost requirement of which is that maids do not speak.”
“What? At all?”
Cecily was so peeved at the notion that Tahlia forgot she was in public, and Cecily was her maid, and grinned.
“Not at all,” she warned her. “Not unless you are spoken to. Take a seat on the chair they show you and sit still. Don’t fidget, put your hands in your lap, and wait until I have finished. They will ignore you because you are there to chaperone me.”
“I may as well be a piece of meat,” Cecily grumbled, clearly put-out at being such a nonentity.
She visibly jumped when a dapperly dressed gentleman suddenly loomed out of the fog toward them. The steady tap-tap of his cane against the cobbles was muffled by the dank atmosphere and only heightened the strangeness of their creepy surroundings.
“I want to go home,” Cecily moaned.
Tahlia silently agreed with her, but studied the façade of the solicitor’s office with renewed determination.
“Let’s get this over with. Then we can go back to uncle’s house and make a start on sorting through everything. The more we can do today, the less we have to do another day.” Tahlia wasn’t certain who she was trying to convince, herself for her maid.
“Amen to that,” Cecily replied.
