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“That sounds like the massive old bed in the east wing. Supposedly, royalty slept in it.”
“Really? Which royalty?”
“I don’t know.”
Penelope bent over the page, her blue eyes alight with curiosity. As always, Daniel enjoyed the enthusiasm in her expression. “Let’s see, who would it have been in 1693?” she asked.
Daniel ransacked his brain for school history lessons. “William and Mary? Wait, I think one of my several times great-grandmothers was a crony of Queen Anne’s in her youth.”
“Really? Perhaps she left letters, or even a diary.”
“Well, if she was like the rest of my relations, she never threw anything out.” Daniel remembered something else. “Her husband, or son, fought under Marlborough in France.”
“These stories should be recorded in a family history.”
“There’s another job for you then,” said Daniel. “I might have consigned much of this to the next Guy Fawkes bonfire.”
“You wouldn’t have!” Penelope looked sincerely shocked.
“Probably not,” he admitted. “More likely I’d’ve left them where they were in the attics and shoved the piles of paper down here in with them.”
“How can you not be fascinated?” Penelope asked.
“I’m interested when you tell me,” he replied. “It’s the hours of sifting through dusty documents I can’t bear.”
“I’m going to put together a history,” she said. “You can tell me about the portraits in the gallery, can’t you?”
“I know their names and a bit about most of them.”
“And I’ll find the papers they left.” She looked triumphant.
“The house of Frith is very lucky to have you.” Daniel enjoyed her flush of pleasure, as well as his success at distracting her from their unwelcome visitors. He had no illusion that he’d disposed of that matter, however. And indeed, later that day he received a letter from the Foreign Office agents, delivered by a neighborhood boy on a pony. Daniel took it off to the library to read in private.
The language was less insolent than the bewhiskered man had dared face-to-face, but also more formal. Daniel was required to hand over his mother’s papers, they informed him, under the law of the land. As they cited no specific edicts, he didn’t worry much about that pronouncement. But the veiled references they made to Penelope enraged him. The notebooks must not be “left to fall into dangerous hands.” They must be kept from “those whose loyalty to the crown had been put in doubt.”
Briefly Daniel enjoyed imagining the agents’ reaction if they’d seen Penelope deciphering parts of the notebooks in London. Apoplexy seemed the least of it. He toyed with the idea of having her translate all of his mother’s entries for her family history. But in fact, he didn’t wish to cause any problems for his country. And he could see that a government records office probably was the best place for the notebooks. He simply hated the way they were going about it, and the continuing threat hanging over his wife. He knew it nagged at her. He was determined to do something about it.
Daniel wondered if Macklin had returned to London. He’d said he would be back by now, and the earl was a critical element in the plan Daniel had formulated. He’d left a letter for Macklin at his town house. It was to be hoped that the older man was even now acting on Daniel’s request.
Eighteen
“You do the honors,” said Daniel.
Penelope took hold of the valve handle and turned. Water streamed out of the spigot and into the big tub. Wisps of steam demonstrated its heat. “It works,” she said.
“Did you think it wouldn’t?”
“No, but it still seems like a miracle.” She shut off the tap, then turned it on again. “Hot water at a touch. We did it.”
“Mostly you,” said Daniel.
“Mostly Henry Carson and his helpers. They did the actual work.” Penelope stopped and started the water again, delighted.
“Of course the tub hasn’t been tested as yet. In action as it were.”
Their eyes met, and each saw reflected the scene they’d imagined—a figure rising, naked and glistening, from the steaming bath. “True,” replied Penelope.
“We should do that.”
