Page 8 of A Housekeeper for the Earl of Drinkwater
Edward turned to Emily, pointing to his mother.
“Watch over her,” he said. “You are excused from any other duties, unless I specifically need you for something else. Do not leave her side except to fetch things for her. And if she awakens, tell her of my arrival and come and find me at once.”
The young maid nodded, once again giving him an awkward curtsey while balancing the tea tray.
“Yes, milord,” she said, then looked pointedly at the tray. “What shall I do with this?”
Edward looked at Clarke.
“I shall carry the tray, Emily,” he said, gently taking it from the maid’s hands.
Edward nodded curtly, following the butler from the room without another word. They walked silently down the hall until they reached his bedchambers. He could tell immediately, from the way the door hung limply on its hinges, that his room was in the same condition as the rest of the house.
The butler stepped aside, allowing Edward to enter before him. His heart fell as he looked around the room in which he had spent his youth.
“Dear God,” he breathed, shocked at the state of the manor truly setting in at last. “What in the hell has happened?”
The butler tried to speak, but Edward did not hear. Many of the shelves on which he had once proudly displayed his boyhood treasures had come loose from the walls. Beneath the dangling shelves lay the ruins of the crystal and porcelain figures Edward had collected since he was a boy. As if mocking him, one of the shelves snapped as he stared at it, tumbling to the floor with a loud thud.
The few shelves that were still intact held figurines that had been utterly neglected. Time and extreme temperatures had cracked and faded them beyond recognition. To his horror, a scrawny mouse appeared and skittered across one of the shelves, searching vainly for a meal.
When Clarke tried to shoo it away without dropping the tea tray, it glared at him with ravenous, beady eyes, ready to pounce on the closest thing to food it had probably seen in ages.
Edward intervened, retrieving a book from the tall, rotting bookshelf nearby. The book fell to pieces in his hands and disintegrated when he threw it at the mouse. But the crumbling spine struck the creature, and it scurried away. He numbly motioned for the butler to sit with him at his desk.
But as he pulled the wooden chair away from the desk, it broke into pieces beneath his grip. He stared at it dumbly, looking at Clarke, speechless.
“Come, let us sit by the window, milord,” the butler said gently, gesturing to the armchair standing between the bed and the window. “I will stand.”
Edward nodded, sitting gently in the dusty chair. Only when it did not immediately collapse under his weight did he begin to relax.
“Clarke,” he asked, shaking his head. “What the hell is going on?”
The butler sighed, putting down the tray and pouring them both a cup of tea. As Edward reflexively sipped his, wincing at its heat, Clarke clasped his hands in front of him. Even before the butler spoke, Edward knew it was going to be bad news.
“Your brothers are dead, milord,” he said bluntly.
Edward choked on his tea, hurriedly putting the cup on the table and coughing into the sleeve of his jacket.
“I beg your pardon? What did you say?” he gasped.
“Your brothers are dead, milord,” the butler repeated with obvious distress.
Edward stared at him in shock. “Both of them? But . . . how? When? What happened?”
The butler retrieved a letter from his pocket and held it out.
“Please, milord, you had better read this,” he said.
Edward shook his head, staring at the ominous letter as though it were diseased.
“Just tell me what it says,” he said. “Please.”
The butler nodded, putting the letter back in his pocket.
“Your brothers were due to return from the war on the same day,” he said. “Your parents received a letter stating as much, and they were thrilled. But, on the day your brothers were due to arrive home, this letter came instead. They were both killed in a skirmish, just as the troops were leaving the battlefield to pack up and return home.”
Edward shook his head in disbelief. More than six months before he’d left the military, he’d heard of a group of British soldiers being ambushed under the same circumstances. Never would he have guessed that his brothers were among them.
