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Chapter Twenty-Two
“Every fresh trouble in life shows the human character in another point of view.”
Private Education: A Practical Plan for the Studies of Young Ladies.
Elizabeth Appleton. 1815.
Agardener swept autumn leaves from the parterre paths, Neptune appearing as though arising from an ocean of copper, and as the disobliging afternoon south wind gusted through the beech hedge, another wave broke over the gravel.
This day had brought forth crisper weather, the leaves now abandoning hope on summer, their emerald-green veins withering to tan.
Mutters and yawns emanated from Mari who sat at the schoolroom desk scribbling French verb conjugation, and Isabelle smothered a yawn of her own. At five this morning, a shriek had awoken her and, having stumbled through the connecting door, she had found Mari sitting up in bed fully clothed for the day.
“Oh, Miss Beaujeu,” she’d cried in distress. “I don’t remember dressing!”
Isabelle had perched on the bed and hugged her. “No need to fret, ma petite, for you’ve saved a lady’s maid the work. And your bows are neater than ever.”
And so the nightwalking had been laughed over and forgotten.
Earlier this afternoon, from this same window, they’d watched as a pale-faced Miss Pritchard and her father had departed the house, the duke mounting a magnificent grey gelding to accompany their carriage.
A letter had been popped under her chamber door from Miss Pritchard, tendering her apologies but Isabelle bore no ill-will towards her. As she had told the duke, a society daughter’s lot was not a simple one. Should they stumble on the marriage mart and their guardians be unsympathetic, then their futures could be precarious, reliant on largesse.
Now the Llanedwyn ancestral home was silent and still.
For it suffered the absence of its master.
Hallways appeared too vast without his striding figure.
Devoid of direction, Morgan ambled, Mrs Pugh yawned and guests lolled in the drawing room reading passages from Mrs Bluemantle’s The Housekeeper of Castle Clermont.
Little did the duke realise, but he was the heart and soul of this dwelling. Not uninteresting as he’d claimed but a vital element, without which, it ceased to function as it should.
Isabelle thought mayhap a last hour of pianoforte practice for Mari might help lift the mood as this silence gave her the–
A shriek rent the corridors so piercing that her charge put a finger in her ear and wiggled it about.
“That’s Lady Bronwen,” Mari bemoaned. “She’s hoping that Uncle will hear her all the way from the Caernarfon coast and come galloping back to attend to her woes.” Mari stabbed her quill into its holder. “I must ask how she achieves such audibility. I can imagine it rather useful for an actress. Unlike French verbs.”
“We ought to see what the matter is.”
Mari closed the inkwell. “Do we have to? The last time it was because her dress had a crease in it. I think I’d prefer to conjugate verbs.”
“True, perhap–”
The door clattered open, and both of them gasped at a figure in ebony-black, arms aloft and features scrunched.
Only Mrs Pugh.
“You’d best come quick like. There’s trouble brewing.”
They both frowned, then followed her swishing skirts down the corridor, past the stairwell and across into the guests’ wing.
A crush of ladies had gathered around a bedchamber door, those same shrieks still emanating.
“Do you think she breathes through her nose at the same time?” Mari asked, but Isabelle shook her head as they approached the door to ascertain what all the commotion was about.
The young ladies parted a little and she could see the bedchamber was in a shambles, dresses strewn and a mirror cracked.
