Page 8 of Miss Delightful
“Mrs. Sidmouth is off t’ market, and we’ve only the one room to let. If you… Oh, it’s you, MacKay. Wot yer want?”
“Let us in, Sally. This is Melanie’s cousin, and we’ve come to collect the last of her effects.”
The maid stepped back. “Not much to collect, sir. Mrs. Sidmouth will want ye to write out a list of what ye took so there’s no bother later. She’s canny like that. How’s the boy?”
“He’s with me,” Mr. MacKay replied. “Appears to be thriving.”
The maid grinned. “Ye’ll teach him yer Rabbie Burns songs and have him swillin’ whisky in no time. I suppose I can let ye into Melanie’s room. Been a couple people come by to see it, but Mrs. Sidmouth didn’t care for neither of ’em. They poked around a lot, though it’s just a room, iddn’t it?”
She chattered about the tribulation of three flights of stairs, her auntie’s chilblains, and the threat of snow as she led Dorcas and Mr. MacKay up to Melanie’s room. The chamber itself was chilly and dim. Neither the fire in the grate nor any candles had been lit.
The bed was a pathetic little cot, the wardrobe missing half its doors. The spindle-backed chair near the window had no cushion, and the hearth rug was threadbare and coming unraveled. Everything was painfully neat, which made the lack of any comforts all the more pitiful.
“Where is her rocking chair?” Mr. MacKay asked. “I bought her a rocking chair.”
“And it were beautiful,” the maid said. “I took a turn in it, before she sold it. That chair never made it up the first flight of stairs, Mr. MacKay. A man came by and give her coin fer it.”
Dorcas opened the wardrobe door. “And her blue wool shawl?” Dorcas had knit it herself, using her smallest needles and the softest wool she could find. “I made John a blanket to match as well.”
The maid edged toward the door. “I wouldn’t know, ma’am. I’d best be about me duties. It’s laundry day. Shoulda been Monday, but the laundresses had to do up all the linen at some grand house having a winter ball, which I never heard of such a thing before. We’re all at sixes and sevens.”
“Sally, where’s John’s cradle?” MacKay had not raised his voice, but the maid came to a halt two feet shy of the door.
“Sold.”
“Did Melanie sell it?”
“Aye, to the same man.”
MacKay peered out the window, which was grimy with coal smoke. “Describe him.”
“Pleasant to look at, but shifty eyes. Sandy hair, mustache, middlin’ tall, middlin’ decent. Mrs. Sidmouth didn’t like him, but then, she don’t like nobody, ’cept you, of course, Major.”
Dorcas closed the wardrobe’s only door, a pathetic gesture in the direction of Melanie’s privacy. The poor woman hadn’t possessed half a wardrobe’s worth of apparel. Closing the single door thus hid her entire store of clothing from view.
“Why does Mrs. Sidmouth like Mr. MacKay?” Dorcas asked.
“He’s handy,” Sally replied with the eagerness of one preparing to wax eloquent. “The market pony sprung a shoe, and Mr. MacKay got it off him without laming the little bugger. The boiler weren’t working in the laundry room, and he fixed that, and when the flues are stuck, or the window won’t open, he knows exactly how to deal with ’em, but he don’t bust nothin’. Mrs. Sidmouth hates it when the gentlemen boarders force the windows and locks and whatnot and break everything.”
“A useful sort of man,” Dorcas said.
“Most useful, and he could charm that baby, no matter how fretful the lad—”
“Sally.” MacKay’s tone was mild, and yet he conveyed a rebuke. “You are needed in the laundry, I believe.”
“Aye. Filthy laundry doesn’t do itself, does it?” She sketched a curtsey, sent an admiring glance in Mr. MacKay’s direction, and withdrew.
“Tell me about the blue shawl,” Mr. MacKay said. “When did you send it along?”
“September, when the nights became chilly. I’d already sent John’s blanket, and the wool was such a pleasure to work with, so soft in my hands, that I decided to make the matching shawl. I sized it generously, to keep Melanie’s knees warm, or to be used for extra bedding, but it’s not in her wardrobe.”
He peered under the bed, then opened and closed the drawers of a rickety bureau. “No shawl, no blanket. Maybe she kept them in the boarders’ parlor.”
“We need to inventory what’s here first, don’t we?”
“Mrs. Sidmouth send you Melanie’s clothes and to blazes with the rest. No cradle, no rocker. I assumed those were up here in her room. Melanie and I always met in the parlor, and it never occurred to me…” He gazed around the dingy little chamber, his eyes bleak. “I should have checked. I should have asked Mrs. Sidmouth or Sally. I should have known something was amiss.”
“I did not even meet with Melanie in the parlor. I communicated with her through the post and sent along packages and coin that way. When I came by yesterday to fetch the baby, Mrs. Sidmouth brought him out to my coach.”
