AllFreeNovel
Share Us
That was puzzling. There was nothing at all in the library to entice Camilla inside, for there was not even a fire lit. Julia walked down the passage to the library door, but it was closed, with no indication that anyone had passed that way. Confused, she hesitated, wondering if perhaps she had been mistaken. Perhaps Camilla had gone round the corner to Pa’s office?
But then, while she dithered, she heard a sound from inside the library. She could not say what sort of sound it was, but it sounded almost like a moan, as if someone were in distress. Resolutely she opened the door and went inside.
Near the fireplace, a candelabrum burned on a table, casting a little pool of light, but the rest of the room lay in deep darkness and nothing else could be distinguished. The sound came again, very close at hand, followed almost at once by, “Shhh!” Silence fell, although Julia thought she could detect breathing.
“Camilla? Are you all right?”
Silence.
Julia carefully made her way to the candelabrum, only banging her shins once on a footstool. Lifting the light high, she scanned the room, then slowly moved towards the spot behind the door where she had heard… something. A noise, a voice hushing someone or something and then breathing.
There was nothing behind the door, only one of the ornate pillars found in several of the rooms. But wait! A crack in the wall… a gap… a door, carefully decorated to blend into the wall, but now slightly ajar.
Julia wrenched it open, to see the startled faces of Lord Charles and Camilla.
“What are you doing?” Julia cried, holding the candelabrum high.
Lord Charles gave a strangled cry, turned and fled into the darkness behind Camilla, up a winding stair that Julia had known nothing about.
Camilla calmly rearranged the bodice of her gown which had become disordered. “Well, what a spoilsport you are, Julia. Can’t a girl have a little fun without you screeching all over the place?”
“But he’s already married!” Julia said. “He can’t help you.”
“No, but— Oh, never mind. You’re such a simpleton, you wouldn’t understand. There, I shall have to do. Shall we go back to the withdrawing room? And don’t tell a soul, all right? Especially not your mama.”
“She’d be horrified by what you were doing.”
To Julia’s amazement, Camilla laughed. “She’d be horrified you interfered, more like. Come on, I’m dying for some tea.”
15: The Morning After
The rest of the evening passed in a blur. There was music and then cards, and after some interminable time the carriages were ordered. There was no more conversation with Mr Plummer, but Julia could not think about him when Camilla and Lord Charles were so much on her mind.
After a sleepless night, she awoke with heavy eyes and aching head.
Pa took one look at her at breakfast, and said, “What you need, young lady, is some fresh air. Do you want to walk down to the village with me? I have men in at Mr Green’s cottage attending to the roof, but you can have a chat with Mrs Green and see if there’s anything else they might need. I’ve never had tenants before, so I’d like to take good care of them.”
“I always thought the landed gentry had tenant farmers,” she said.
Pa chuckled. “Aye, so they do, but Sir Owen kept all the farm land for the Manor, and kindly gave me the cottages and houses, which bring in a trifling amount of rent and need all manner of repairs to make them habitable.”
“So he bamboozled you?”
“No, no. Nobody bamboozles me, puss. His attorney was suspiciously vague about the properties, so I sent my own man to look into it before I agreed to the arrangement, and then reduced the price accordingly. It suits me, though. Floors and walls and roofs I understand, but farms are beyond me. If I had farmers, I’d need a bailiff to deal with them and it would be all too easy for bamboozling to be going on right under my nose, and me none the wiser. You’ll come then, will you? It’s raining a bit, but you won’t mind that.”
Julia didn’t mind at all. They walked briskly down the drive to the village, spending an hour at the cottage as Pa climbed happily up and down ladders while Julia sat in Mrs Green’s front parlour drinking cheap tea and eating biscuits, as assorted small children wandered into the room, giggled and ran away again. Mrs Green smiled fondly at them, and when Julia asked her how she managed with so many children, she just said, “Ah, but they’re darlings, aren’t they? And the older ones help with the youngsters, so they’re no trouble at all.”
As they walked back home, Pa said, “Did you find out what they might need?”
“Meat, mainly. They only have meat on Sundays and then it’s usually cheeks or trotters or some such, that we only have as a side dish. They’d enjoy some cutlets or a leg of mutton, perhaps. And decent tea,” she added, pulling a face.
“What do they live on, without meat?”
“Cheese. Eggs, I expect, to judge from the chickens in the garden. Bacon. They raise a pig every year to salt away for the winter, although some years they can’t get a piglet. I expect they’d like coal, as well. It was poor stuff they were burning. Are all your cottage tenants so poor?”
“No, but Green had a fall, seemingly, and broke his arm, so now he can only do odd jobs. Maybe I can find work for him at the Park.”
“He could wind all the clocks. There are dozens of them, and no one ever remembers to do it until they stop. The eldest child is nine or ten, so he could help in the kitchen. Mrs Sharwell is always grumbling that she’s run off her feet.”
