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“May I show you to your rooms, your lordship?” Mrs. Holly asked, apparently feeling that a sense of decorum needed to be put in place for the new lord of the manor after calling him a dear boy.
“Thank you, Mrs. Holly,” he said, nodding goodbye to the others and following her up the main stairs.
Once they were out of earshot of the others, however, he stopped her. He was certain the rooms Mrs. Holly was taking him to would be the viscount’s rooms, but they had been his father’s. William had never set foot in them before and didn’t want to now. “I believe I would prefer to stay in my old room for the time being, if you don’t mind.”
“But—oh, of course.” She nodded in understanding. “As you wish.”
Mrs. Holly looked older—not as old as Grimshaw, to be sure, but there were lines on her face and about her eyes that hadn’t been there before, and there were more than a few threads of silver running through the brown hair that peeked out from beneath her cap.
“Luncheon will be ready in an hour, allowing you time to refresh yourself, if you like, my lord,” she said. “In the meantime, I’ll have tea sent to your rooms. Ah, and Mr. Heslop asked me to inform you that he would join you here this afternoon, if that meets with your approval.”
“He’s not staying here, then?”
“No, my lord; he elected to stay in the village, at the George and Dragon.” She curtsied and turned to leave.
“Mrs. Holly—”
She stopped and turned back. “Yes, my lord?”
“Mrs. Holly,” he repeated, extending both hands out to her. “I remember many times, in the not-so-very-distant past, when you chose to call me names, such as rascal and scamp and others of a similar nature. Let’s not overdo the ‘my lording,’ then, shall we?” He smiled and dipped his chin, waiting for her reply.
“Oh, you!” she said, clasping her hands at her bosom, and—Good heavens, William thought, she wasn’t about to cry again, was she?—“You were always such a handsome little boy and a good boy, too, and just look at you! All grown up and as handsome a man as was ever born.” Her tears did fall then, and she pulled her handkerchief from her pocket once again and dabbed at her eyes while William patted her on the shoulder. “It is so good to have you back home at Farleigh Manor, Master William, where you belong.”
“It’s good to be home.” It wasn’t entirely, not really, but now wasn’t the time for expressing such a sentiment.
He excused himself from her and ventured on alone to his old room, which was located at the end of the same wing as the viscount and viscountess’s suites of rooms. He’d had little opportunity to inhabit it since leaving for Eton. It smelled of a mustiness that came from disuse, which would explain why Mrs. Holly had initially been taken aback when he’d said he preferred to stay here. She must have had the viscount’s rooms prepared for him. Knowing Mrs. Holly, however, she’d have his bedroom aired and ready for him by the time he retired to bed that evening.
The room looked exactly as he remembered it. The counterpane and curtains were the same ones from his boyhood, made of dark-blue brocade meant to assist in hiding the dirt that was inherent to young males. The same painting still hung on the wall across from the bed—a simple landscape he himself had painted while at Eton. His desk. His bookcase.
He crossed to the desk and opened the top drawer on the left, removing the object wrapped in cloth that lay inside. It was the small family portrait of him and his parents that had been commissioned when he was ten.
He carefully unwrapped the painting from its cloth and was immediately thrust back in time. There was his beautiful mother, young again, sitting in an ornate chair, with William at her side and his father standing behind her, arrogant swine that he was. William had begged his mother to have it painted so he could take it with him to Eton, and by some miracle, his mother had gotten his father to agree. William’s mother had done her best to shield him from his parents’ increasing hostility toward each other, but William had sensed that much was wrong within their family.
And then she had died.
He ran a single finger gently over the image of his mother before rewrapping the painting in the cloth and placing it back in the drawer. Perhaps one day he would be able to look upon it with objectivity and not with stabbing pain and anger, but not yet.
The maid, Sally, arrived then with the tea tray. He thanked her and sat near the window to drink it. From what he’d observed so far, the manor was in better condition than he’d expected, but then, he’d expected it to be entirely derelict. Perhaps he had misunderstood the tone of Mr. Heslop’s letter. Perhaps the viscountcy’s assets weren’t in a dire state after all. Perhaps—despite his father’s costly vices and decades of finessing those vices into an art form—things weren’t as bad as he’d feared.
It struck him that his father’s steward was not among the employees and servants he had greeted earlier. That wasn’t a particularly promising sign; granted, the man may have simply tired of dealing with his father and gone on his way.
Well, he would have his answers soon enough. This afternoon, in fact. He decided to spend the rest of the remaining hour before luncheon in his room unpacking his belongings rather than asking Grimshaw or the new footman to do it. He’d always seen to such personal needs himself, and there was plenty of other work for the others to do without his adding to it.
Besides, it might be the last time he would have an hour of peace and quiet to himself for a while.
* * *
At precisely two o’clock in the afternoon, Mr. Heslop, a man of middle years, arrived from the village and suggested to William that they adjourn to his lordship’s study. As a boy and even as a youth, William had never been in his father’s private rooms and had been in the study only when his father was meting out punishment—not that William had required much discipline growing up. Or maybe he had, and his mother and the servants had hidden that fact from his father whenever possible. At any rate, William had eventually learned to pay special attention to the sorts of activities his father had praised and those that had merited a caning, though there had not necessarily been anything amounting to consistency.
William doubted his father had actually spent much time in the study himself. He had left most things in the care of his steward, whose small office in the back of the house near the kitchen underscored the type of priority his father had placed on the day-to-day running of the estate. Today, the study was surprisingly tidy—the desk straightened with papers neatly arranged on top. His father had been meticulous in many ways—his appearance, for example—yet erratic and impulsive in others. He would have considered anything having to do with income as beneath him, unless it had to do with spending that income. William had never been able to understand him.
Stop crying, boy. You will never win if they can read your face.
“Would you care for tea?” he asked Mr. Heslop. “Or a brandy, perhaps?”
“No, thank you,” the solicitor replied. He sat and leaned his leather letter case against the leg of his chair. “I hope you will forgive me,” he continued. “I’m afraid I allowed myself certain liberties of access to your father’s papers upon his death. Because of the disarray I saw here when I arrived, I also brought in my clerk, who assisted me in putting things to rights.”
That sounded more like the father William remembered. “You could not have waited until I arrived?” he asked.
