AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I am not so certain it’s a great idea.”
Isabel nodded. She’d take the win where she could, and in terms of redecorating the house, she’d definitely won.
“May I return to my paper now?” He raised his brow.
Isabel nodded with a smile. “You may.”
* * *
Isabel returned from their outing to the village a few hours later. She felt exhausted, although she’d ended up doing nothing. And perhaps that was the reason for her exhaustion.
When she was acting as a mistress at Gage’s estate, she often went to socialize with the tenants, and she always came back feeling reinvigorated and full of life. Speaking to villagers, coming up with plans, helping people—these were the things that kept her alive. On Vane’s estate, everything seemed to just suck the life out of her.
It was the same as the tiring trip from London to Vane estate when Millie had ignored Isabel the entire trip.
That was it. Being ignored and feeling invisible was entirely too soul-crushing.
When they had arrived at the village, the tenants had surrounded their master and talked to him without stopping. They had conveyed their concerns, expressed their excitement, and asked for his advice, all the while showering him with compliments and inviting him for tea.
Isabel had tried to interject a couple of times, but nobody seemed interested in what she had to say. A few moments later, Isabel had found herself on the periphery of the growing crowd of people eager to talk to their master.
They loved him. At least that fact gave Isabel a tiny bit of peace. If the tenants loved him, he was a fair master. But this thought did not give her as much relief as she thought it would.
After their duty was done, Vane had left for a meeting with his manager, and Isabel sauntered toward the kitchen. She needed to come up with a new menu for the week and hoped she wouldn’t commit another mistake.
She made her way to the door of the kitchen but stopped cold as she heard the conversation beyond the wall.
“Everything the new mistress does is the worst,” a woman’s voice said.
“Did you hear?” another woman chimed in. “She had footmen carry her things out of the mistress’s bedroom in the middle of the night and moved to another wing!”
“How odd! Why move?”
There was a sound similar to a snort. “Probably away from the master after nearly poisoning his daughter.”
“A duck!” the third voice intervened, and the laughter followed.
“Why move to another wing? There weren’t any empty rooms in the family wing?”
“No, she just wanted to exert her power over the poor footmen as they dragged her belongings from one part of the house to another!”
Laughter sounded again, and Isabel felt sick to her stomach. She’d moved to another wing because it was the cleanest and the simplest chamber. And since she’d walked along with footmen, she hadn’t thought it was a big issue. Apparently, it was.
“I wish she’d just stop trying. The first one didn’t care, but at least she wasn’t in the way,” the first woman continued.
The matter Isabel had wanted to discuss with the housekeeper forgotten, she rushed out of the house. She wanted to be as far away from this estate as she could.
Isabel dashed through the garden and only stopped when she reached an old structure.
The stables.
Good. She needed to clear her head.
So she asked the groom to saddle a horse and galloped away, wherever the hooves of the beast would take her.
