Page 25 of A Housekeeper for the Earl of Drinkwater
“It is good to see you thinking of happier things, my lord,” the careworn butler said, taking the letter from Edward for posting. Then, he reached into his pocket and pulled out another letter. “This came today, from the employment agency.”
Edward nodded slowly, taking and examining the envelope; he would read the letter before retiring.
“There is much yet to mourn,” he said. “But I shall try to think of Lady Caroline and the happiness that brings me.”
Clarke’s smile widened.
“Very good, milord,” he said, bowing. “I shall post this straightaway.”
Chapter Eleven
“Please, do not cry, Miss Serena,” Whitton said as Serena bade him goodbye at the coach stop, wiping tears from her cheeks.
Serena sobbed.
“I am sorry,” she said. “This is just so much harder than I expected it to be.”
The butler embraced her, and she squeezed him tightly. She feared it was the last time she would ever see him, and that made her sob again.
“This is just the beginning of something new,” he said. “A chance for a new adventure, for all of us. Do not think of it as the end of something. Think of it as a brand-new start.”
Serena nodded, stepping away from the butler. He was smiling, and his eyes were sincere, but they, too, shone with tears. She laughed as he turned his face away to wipe at them.
“Are you struggling to heed your own words, Whitton?” she joked through her sobs.
He cleared his throat, his already rosy cheeks becoming redder.
“Not at all, Miss Serena,” he said. “A bug flew into my eye.”
She laughed again as more tears fell. Never before had she experienced so many emotions all at once, and she was sure she never wanted to again.
“I will miss you, too, Whitton,” she said, patting his arm and trying to smile.
The butler grinned, and one of his own tears fell, as well.
“I am expecting you to write to me, as I shall write to you,” he said. “We must not lose touch, Miss Serena, even if I am no longer your father’s butler.”
Serena smiled fondly at him.
“You have long since been more than a butler,” she said. “To me, you have always been a friend.”
Whitton stiffened, sniffling and blinking rapidly.
“Let us try not to cry any more, then,” she said, her heart both warmed and breaking. “This is a new beginning, remember?”
But as the coach took her away from her family home for the very last time, it felt like anything but a new beginning. It felt like the death of everything she’d ever known and loved, and the end of any kind of life she understood.
The grief she felt certainly suggested that was the case, and all she could do was continue to cry quietly so as not to disturb the other passengers. Eventually, she cried herself to sleep.
***
As the dog cart turned into the driveway of what the driver told her was Chimneys, the grand estate of Lord Drinkwater, Serena’s mouth fell open.
The drive was so overgrown that the horses pulling the cart had to slow their pace and whinnied in protest the whole way, as the driver had them weave through great potholes and chunks of broken stone that had fallen from once-grand statuary. The untrimmed hedges towered over them, the grass was as high as her head, and when she finally saw the mansion, she gasped.
The plants were slowly taking over the grand home itself, as well as the grounds. There were Wisteria vines and ivy rampaging up the walls to the roof, quite out of control. There were broken windows and faded curtains, and the once-white walls were now a mixture of brown mold and moss green, and encrusted with dirt.
And yet, despite its decrepit appearance, Serena could easily see how the beautiful the mansion must have once appeared. She wondered what could have happened to the estate of a wealthy earl to bring about such desolation.
