Page 13 of Grasp the Thorn
Whenever the rain stopped for more than a few minutes, he left them to walk over to Thorne Hall. “I am no builder,” he told Rosa, “but I’ve learned a few things in the last year or two. I need to get some idea of the number of local men I’ll need to hire when my work crew arrives from Liverpool, and that depends on what can be saved, and what must be demolished.”
He made copious notes in a small notebook, which he transcribed into a large ledger each evening.
Father was comfortable with him, which was a blessing, since Mr Gavenor took over all of the embarrassing personal services, at least when he was home.
“He’s a good lad, this man Lord Hurley sent,” Father said. He had never lost the habit of speaking in front of the servants as if they were deaf, and he was convinced Mr Gavenor was a servant, though some days he thought him a valet or footman from Thorne Hall, and others he went further back in his memories to his days at Cambridge and even to his childhood.
At least twenty times a day, he asked Mr Gavenor his name, and each time received the patient reply, “They call me ‘Bear,’ sir.”
Father usually called her Rosie, though sometimes even that dearly loved name escaped him.
“Rosie is short for Rosemary, which was my mother’s name,” she explained to Mr Gavenor after dinner one evening, while Father dozed in his chair. “I am told I look a little like her. And, of course, I am much the same age as she was when she died.”
Rosa and Mr Gavenor relaxed in separate chairs on either side of the hearthrug. Rosa held a glass of blackberry cordial, and Mr Gavenor, a glass of brandy.
“You must have been just a little girl,” Mr Gavenor said.
“Eleven. It has been nearly twenty-five years and I still miss her. So does Father, of course. She was the great love of his life.”
Mr Gavenor took a sip of brandy, his long fingers caressing the glass. “Did you come to live at Thorne Hall after she died?”
“Oh no. My father was librarian there when he married Mama, and Lord Hurley gave them private apartments in the library wing. I grew up at Thorne Hall.” An only child, she had a playmate and companion in her mother. Lord Hurley and her father kept busy about their own affairs.
Her mother and both men insisted that she was a lady, and she was not allowed to play with the children on the local farms. Nor was she welcome at the only other home within easy reach that had a child of a similar age. No one had ever explained the source of the feud between Threxton Grange and Thorne Hall, but Rosa knew the futility of asking to play with the boy and two girls growing up in that family. Instead, she peopled her world from her imagination. Her friends were the portraits and animal heads on the walls of Thorne Hall, and the people in the books in the library that was her father’s charge and passion.
Then Mama died. For months beforehand, she had been teaching Rosa the tasks that made up her daily life, and her last words to her daughter were, “Look after your father.”
“I was eleven,” she repeated. “Old enough to take charge of our apartments. Old enough to make sure that Father remembered to eat and had everything he needed to do credit to his position.”
Mr Gavenor seemed about to speak, but changed his mind and took another sip of brandy.
Rosa hastened to add, “He has always been so absorbed in his work, you see.” She took a small mouthful of blackberry cordial and let the rich flavours seep across her tongue. The role of audience had always been hers. An interested listener was a new experience and seduced her into explaining, “Lord Hurley and Father built the library between them, but Father was the one who loved the books for what they contained. Lord Hurley was a collector. He wanted the oldest, the rarest, the most unusual. He wanted to boast to other book lovers about the treasures he had found. Father wanted to understand the people and times the books described, and the people who wrote them. Lord Hurley used to say they made a good team, for Lord Hurley had the money to indulge Father’s passion and Father had the knowledge to make Lord Hurley’s reputation.”
“It sounds like a lonely life for a young girl,” Mr Gavenor observed.
Was she lonely? She missed her mother, of course, but she had always been alone except for the servants, her parents, and Lord Hurley. “I had the servants for company, and I spent a lot of time in the library. Father taught me Greek and Roman so that I could transcribe his notes for him. Hebrew, too, before his mind began to fail. We even used to take our meals in there. Father found it hard to leave the library when he was on the trail of something new. Lord Hurley would join us sometimes, and he always had amusing stories to tell.”
“You said you moved to Rose Cottage eight years ago. Was that when your father could no longer care for the library?”
Rosa shuddered. “He almost set it on fire,” she said. “He had always been forgetful. I really did not realize how bad he had become until the night he set every candle he could find burning in the library. If Lord Hurley had not wanted to check a reference, one of them might well have caught a drapery or paper… He and Father woke me, arguing. Father insisted Lord Hurley was trying to burn the books, which was nonsense, of course.”
Once again, Mr Gavenor said nothing.
“We tried to keep him in his apartment. Lord Hurley appointed a footman to follow him everywhere. He grew more confused about where he was and when. In his own mind, he and Mama were young again. He began to wander at night, looking for Mama, or perhaps for something else. In the end, Lord Hurley gave us the cottage so I could keep him safe.”
‘Gave,’ she said, but not in writing, according to Pelman. Bear knew that the new Baron Hurley had succeeded his great uncle six years ago. He’d told Bear that he’d been to see the estate once. “It was a disappointment, I don’t mind telling you, Gavenor. I knew my uncle was a warm man, but most of his fortune was tied up in books. The money pretty much went up in smoke the night my uncle died. The whole library wing was gutted.”
The fire had not killed Hurley, who had been found in his room on the undamaged side of the house. “The shock of the fire,” his successor thought, though Bear wondered how the old lord had known about the fire if he was on the other side of the house, and why he stayed in his bed chamber if he did know.
Had Neatham anything to do with that fire? As if prompted by his thought, Miss Neatham said, “Of course, when Lord Hurley died, we lost the servants he sent to look after us, but I have managed well enough. Except, once Father no longer had a footman sleeping in the same room, he used to wander when he woke in the night. That is how he hurt his back. He’d go to Thorne Hall, looking for the library or Lord Hurley or Mama, and two years ago, he was upstairs in our old apartments when the floor collapsed.”
Her eyes filled with an old grief and she lowered them, put her glass down and picked up the piece of sewing lying atop her workbasket.
Bear still wondered about the fire, but she clearly needed a change of topic. “A new gown?” he asked, nodding toward her busy hands.
“Yes, for Mrs Raby at Three Oaks. Her Sunday-best gown. I promised it to her for next weekend, and I still have four more long seams to go.” She glared at the fabric as her busy needle darted in and out.
So, Miss Neatham, born to the gentry, scholar of Greek and Latin, raised in the biggest manor house in the neighbourhood, took in sewing for farmers’ wives. Bear managed to keep a frown from his face, but not by much. Lord Hurley and Neatham had not done well by Miss Neatham.
