Page 51 of The Rake's Daughter
What would make him do such a thing? Izzy wondered. Did Lord Salcott perhaps have a tendre for Clarissa and do this to gain her approval? The idea disturbed her a little. Lord Salcott wouldn’t be right for Clarissa at all. Besides, it would be unethical, surely, for a guardian to make advances to his ward, at least while she was under his legal control. No, he wouldn’t do that. He was the sort who prided himself on doing the correct thing.
She glanced at her sister, who’d found paper, pen and ink and was writing back to Nanny. “Perhaps Lord Salcott did it to please you.”
Clarissa snorted and didn’t even look up. “Me? I’m not the one Lord Salcott never takes his eyes off. Face it, Izzy, he was just being kind.”
Izzy sniffed at that. The man was a mass of contradictions. She refused to think about him anymore. She glanced at the clock on the overmantel. “Let’s finalize our plans in the summerhouse after supper. I don’t want old busybody Treadwell seeing what we’re doing.”
Clarissa looked up from her letter with an expression that was part excited and part apprehensive. “I can’t believe we’re really going to do it.”
“We most definitely are, and it’s going to be utterlysplendid.” Izzy grinned to herself. And Lord Salcott was going to be absolutely furious.
***
The cottage door opened, and a small, tidy, white-haired woman peeked curiously out at Leo. She looked him up and down and the air of puzzlement on her face deepened. “Can I help you?”
He bowed slightly. “Good afternoon. Mrs. Purdey, I presume. My name is Leo Thorne.” He’d decided not to use his title. It tended to have a strange effect on some people. When the woman didn’t respond, he continued, “I’m here enquiring about a woman and her daughter who used to live in this village—a Miss or Mrs. Burton and her daughter Isobel.”
The old woman’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Oh aye?”
“I was told at the village inn that you might be able to help me.”
She sniffed, unimpressed. “Is that so? By old Abel Miller, I’ll be bound. And they say women gossip.” She gave him another searching look, glanced beyond him at the carriage waiting in the road and the groom tending his horses, and pursed her lips.
For a moment Leo thought she was about to refuse to talk to him. And for a fleeting moment he hoped she would. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the sordid details of Isobel Burton’s childhood. But he had to know.
Then the old woman sighed and gestured for him to enter. “You might as well come in then, sir.” It was a grudging invitation. Country people were usually very hospitable.
Leo had to bend his head to avoid knocking it on the lintel. She ushered him into her front parlor, a small, cramped, scrupulously neat room. It smelled of beeswax. There were fussy little china ornaments arranged on every highly polished surface. She waved him to a chair and badehim sit himself down. Her manner was businesslike, rather than friendly. Perhaps he should have used his title after all. She offered him tea, which he refused.
“What is it you want to know, sir?” She sat stiffly, twisting her apron between gnarled fingers.
“What can you tell me about Miss or Mrs. Burton and her daughter?”
“Louisa Burton, the mother, is dead. She died some ten or eleven years ago. As for young Isobel, I have no idea where she is now. A gentleman took her away on the day of her mother’s funeral, never even gave the child a chance to say goodbye—her uncle I was told.”
“Her uncle?” He’d had no idea she had an uncle. Nobody had ever mentioned it.
“Her mother’s brother, I understand. He didn’t exactly introduce himself to the likes of me—though I was one of the few people who attended the funeral. Now if that’s all...” She made to rise.
Leo didn’t move. “Could you tell me about how they lived?”
“It was in the cottage over yonder.” She gestured.
“I didn’t say where, I said how.”
She sat back, her eyes narrowed. “Why do you want to know? It’s all in the past.”
Leo waited. Two could play at the waiting game.
Her lips compressed. “Abe filled your ears with nasty gossip, I suppose.”
“He suggested a reason why young Isobel stayed with you every Thursday night when her mother had a visitor. And why she was able to pay her bills on a Friday.”
“I wouldn’t believe a thing Abel Miller said,” she declared hotly. “He’s a nasty old hypocrite. It’s all sour grapes, sir. Louisa Burton was a lovely young woman, and half the village men were panting after her, including Abe Miller hisself!” She snorted. “But she wouldn’t have a bar of anyof them. She were a lady. And if her little daughter stayed with me on Thursday nights, what of it?” Her jaw jutted belligerently.
Leo waited.
“She were a decent, gently-raised lady fallen on hard times,” Mrs. Purdey continued, her tone defensive. “When she first came here, she didn’t know how to light a fire, how to cook, how to plant a garden to feed her and the babe. But she worked at learning it, oh yes, how she worked. No hoity-toity airs and graces there, no fussing about her soft little hands getting rough from hard work, for all she was as beautiful as a sunrise—and she was. Never seen a lovelier woman in all my life.”
