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“You’re letting them go?” said Kitty from the doorway. “Leaving us here all alone to starve?”
Penelope laughed. She couldn’t help it. A wild freedom she hadn’t felt in ages bubbled through her. “You saw me pack the hamper. I brought plenty to eat. And should Foyle be delayed for some reason, I believe I saw the remains of a kitchen garden beside the barn.”
“What’s a kitchen garden?” asked Kitty.
“A place where you grow vegetables. Perhaps herbs, too. We can see what we find.”
“I won’t eat stuff that comes out of the dirt!”
“But that’s where vegetables come from, Kitty.”
The girl shook her head. “They come from the greengrocer.”
“Who gets them from farmers, who grow them in the dirt. We’ll wash everything off.” Reminded of something, Penelope went back to the kitchen and tried the hand pump beside the stone sink. A bit of pumping produced a stream of water, rusty at first and then clear and clean. She sniffed and then tasted it. “Good,” she said. “We won’t have to carry water.” She removed her bonnet and shawl and set them on top of the food hamper on the floor.
Kitty gazed around the empty room. “Nothing to carry it in,” she pointed out.
“Foyle will be here soon with my things. Perhaps by tomorrow. Let’s make a fire. I saw some wood stacked by the barn.” The day was warm, but there was something homey and reassuring about a fire.
“I’ll get it, miss.”
“I can help,” Penelope said. She was going to have to learn a great many household skills that she’d never been taught. Carrying wood must be among the simplest.
Kitty held up a hand, palm outward. “It’s for me to do, miss.” Her features had taken on a stubborn cast. Penelope let her go. There would have to be a good many adjustments, some of which would offend Kitty’s intermittent sense of correctness. But not today.
The thud of hooves sounded from the front of the house. Though it couldn’t be Foyle yet, Penelope hurried out in hope.
She found a man dismounting a fine blood horse on her doorstep. Stocky, brown-haired, with blunt features and a square jaw, he wasn’t classically handsome. But somehow he didn’t need to be. He held one’s attention by the sheer force of his presence. His expression suggested that he was accustomed to deference and obedience. Penelope took a step back. The last year had made her wary of such men.
The visitor looked her up and down. Was that disapproval? It couldn’t be hostility. Unless he’d somehow received word… No. Not yet. Impossible. Penelope wondered if she’d rubbed dust on her face. Her gown was crushed and wrinkled from hours in the post chaise, but it had once been expensive.
“I’m Whitfield,” he said.
The name was unfamiliar. Penelope relaxed a little. He must be a neighbor. She would have preferred not to receive anyone until she was settled, but good relations with the community were important. “Hello, Mr. Whitfield. I am—”
“Not mister.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Rose Cottage was part of my estate until my father willed it to you,” he went on. “I’d like to know why.”
“Your father?” Penelope forgot all else as she latched on to this piece of information. The solicitor who’d tracked her down and told her about the legacy had refused to give her benefactor’s name. The bequest was anonymous, he’d insisted. If she wanted the cottage, she wouldn’t ask. And really, wasn’t gratitude rather more appropriate than questions? He’d been even more arrogant than this man. “Your father,” she repeated. “Not Mr. Whitfield.”
“My father, John Frith, Viscount Whitfield,” he replied impatiently.
He was a viscount, and he was glaring at her.
Kitty appeared in the doorway. “There’s spiders in the woodpile, miss,” she said. “Big ones.” She spread her hands four inches apart as she gazed at their visitor with open curiosity.
The tickle of a cough began in the back of Penelope’s throat. Not now, not now, she thought, swallowing frantically. But she couldn’t stop it. The spasm came. The hacking shook her.
Their visitor looked startled, then concerned. “For God’s sake, get her some water,” he said.
Kitty spread her hands. “We ain’t got so much as a bucket, sir.”
Penelope tried to say the wordflask, but the coughing was too violent. She willed Kitty to remember the vessel, sitting upstairs with their baggage. Without success.
The truculent viscount put an arm around Penelope’s shoulders and urged her inside. By this time, she could think of nothing but her heaving chest and streaming eyes.
