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Julia brightened at once. Cards would be better than this dreary sitting about.
“Must you play tonight?” Mama said. “I thought for once we might just have a little music and conversation.”
“Johnny will be off to Cambridge on Monday, so we must make the most of him,” Pa said. “Julia, you’ll play, won’t you?”
“Willingly, but have we time? It will take an hour, at least, to track down a footman, and then the fellow will disappear into some subterranean maze for another hour, and if he manages to locate a card table, there will be no cards. It will be past midnight before we sit down to play.”
“Really, Julia!” Mama said, laughing. “How you love to exaggerate.”
“Do I? You told Keeble this afternoon that we would want the tea tray at ten, you rang for it at ten and where is it? How hard can it be to prepare a tray of tea on time?”
“Never mind the tea,” Will said. “We have port and brandy enough, and who needs tea, anyway? Tasteless stuff. As for a card table, we need no footman, for we explored thoroughly for all the essentials of existence while we were waiting interminably to be fed. Look!” He brought forward a small side table from a corner of the room, opened and turned the lid and there was a perfect card table. “And there are cards in the drawer, you see?”
“Are there fish, or must I fetch some money?” Julia said.
“Again, we are prepared, for we have our own fish, conveniently placed to be ready when wanted. In the cupboard over there, you will find Great-uncle Rowley’s set, which he very kindly left to Johnny when he departed this mortal realm, if you remember.”
“With the words,‘He has won them all from me many times over, so he might as well keep them,’if I recall,” Julia said.
“He was a terrible card player,” Johnny said, grinning, as he drew chairs to the table. “There, you see? Who needs footmen? Perhaps we should run over to the kitchen and make our own tea. What do you say, Mama?”
“We might have to do that,” Aunt Madge said, as the clock struck the half hour. “Look at the time! Half an hour late already. You will have to talk severely to them, Lizzie.”
“I do wish you would call me Elizabeth,” Mama said fretfully. “It is my proper name, after all. I do not mind Harry shortening it, for that is a husband’s privilege, but I do not want the world to do so.”
“Jack Glover always called you Lizzie,” Madge said.
“He is my brother, and has known me since I was a baby. There is no doing anything about that. But my first husband’s family never called me anything but Elizabeth, or Mrs Haygarth in public. They were always most correct.”
Aunt Madge huffed, and said grudgingly that she’d do her best, but she didn’t hold with it, and if there was no tea to be had, she would go to bed. And off she went, lips pursed as usual. Rosie asked if she might retire, too, and after a long discussion, she and Angie, and Mama too, all went to bed.
The card players sat on until after midnight in great contentment, steadily depleting the decanters, and not in the least worried that the tea tray never did make an appearance.
~~~~~
In the port-infused atmosphere of the night before, a firm plan had been made between Julia and the three men to make a complete circuit of the grounds the next morning. Their two hundred acres, the attorney had informed them, had a boundary of almost three miles in length, perfect for a leisurely stroll. Their enthusiasm was somewhat dampened the next morning by steady rain. Fortunately, the business of obtaining washing water and dressing took so long that the rain had stopped altogether by the time they set out.
“Now we have only an hour until breakfast,” Will said crossly, his breath clouding around him. “Hardly time for a thorough look at our new domain.”
“We can walk briskly,” Pa said cheerfully. “No penance in this chill air.”
“There’s no need to hurry,” Julia said, “for breakfast will doubtless be late. Nothing else has run to time, after all.”
“Aye, true enough,” Pa said, chuckling. “Lord, if I’d run my warehouses on such dilatory lines, I’d still be scratching around for bales of wool in Yorkshire and wondering if I could pay the coal merchant on Lady Day.”
“It is outrageous,” Will said. “No hot water again today, and what did arrive was late. Lester says they are all in disarray below stairs, hardly knowing where anything is. You would think they were new in service. He is quite disgusted with them, but then he has very high standards.”
“They will settle, in time,” Pa said easily.
“I could settle them in two shakes of a lamb’s tail if I were allowed,” Will said darkly.
Pa shook his head, smiling. “Ah, you always were impatient, even as a boy. You could barely wait to be born, and your poor Mama only just made it back home before you were announcing yourself loudly. Arrived before the midwife, you did.”
Will smiled ruefully. “I expect I just wanted to get on with life. There’s so much pleasure to be had in this world, why would I not wish to join it as soon as I could? But seriously, Pa, someone needs to do something about the servants. They are more than dilatory, they are downright insolent, if you ask me. They enjoy keeping us waiting. Let me talk to them.”
“No, no, no, you must leave it all to Lizzie. Her house, her servants, you know. She’ll have a quiet word here and there, just point them in the right direction, you know the delicate way she has, and all will be as right as rain before long. Well, shall we walk down the drive first?”
The air was cold and damp, but there was not the bitter chill to which Julia was accustomed in Yorkshire. Under the bare-limbed trees lining the drive, a few brave snowdrops shyly bent their heads.
