Page 9 of A Fearless Heart
But Gabe kept to the tasks he was assigned, all too aware that he was being watched. At the moment, he continued to prune the low hedges, hoping he was doing it correctly. Any of his family or his old school friends would laugh to see him now. Mr Gabriel Albion Maximus Courtenay, son of Lord Hargrave…scrabbling in the dirt like a medieval peasant?
Luckily, no one he knew would ever see him like this. If they did, he’d have to silence them. And Gabe didn’t like to do that except when it was absolutely the last option.
When he finished his tasks for the day, he made his way to the kitchen and the hall where all the servants took their meals. The kitchens of Calderwood provided some of the best food he’d ever tasted. On the first day there, he was impressed with the generous portions. He’d been in situations before that allowed him to see how servants were treated, and in some houses, they were practically starved due to the landlord’s stinginess. But at Calderwood, the servants all ate like kings. Granted, there were far fewer servants than just a couple months ago. Gabe found out at his first dinner there that Mr Rundle had actually advertised several positions in the London papers, so Gabe let everyone assume that’s what brought him to Calderwood.
That was his first and last stroke of luck on the assignment so far. Despite keeping his eyes open, and questioning the other servants very subtly, he hadn’t learned what he needed to know.
After he sat down that evening, Gabe was offered a brothy soup that tasted so good he could have cried. The accompanying bread was crusty and covered in seeds and crushed herbs, and he was fairly sure he devoured a whole loaf on his own.
“You eat up, now,” the cook advised him. “The lady is very particular that everyone in the house be well fed.”
“She ought to take her own advice,” the maid named Martha muttered. “Wasting away, she is. Her father wouldn’t have stood for it.”
“Hush, now!” The cook, a stout woman of about fifty years old who hailed from Oswestry, would not tolerate any harsh word or complaint about her mistress.
It was odd, Gabe thought, that half the servants fled the house because they thought she might be a murderess, but the ones who remained thought she was a saint.
Mr Rundle walked in. “Where is Vernon? The lady’s dinner will get cold! You there, Mr Court. Can you look outside and find the footman?”
Gabe straightened up, sensing an opening. “I could, but would it not save time if I were to take the tray up myself, sir? I promise I’ll not track dirt on the floors.”
Mr Rundle narrowed his eyes, then sighed. “Aye, why not. Everything else is topsy-turvy, so why should we not have an gardener serving meals to the mistress! What a time.” But giving in, he gave Gabe precise instructions for where to go to deliver the tray.
As he walked past her, Gabe complimented the cook on the meals he’d had so far, and she blushed like a schoolgirl. “Away with ye,” she said, waving a hand.
“Just the truth, ma’am. Can’t believe the mistress would miss a single dish you make, ma’am.”
“Oh, I know all the foods she likes best. The late lord said she was the greatest treasure in the house and ought to be treated as such. But ever since her father passed, she’s been a shadow of herself. Can scarce keep down a cup of tea. Take that tray up and leave it at her door. Knock once, and don’t linger. She’ll pick up the tray after you’ve gone.”
Gabe nodded, and grabbed the tray. It was a good thing he’d made the effort to change into clean clothes for dinner. He’d never had the opportunity to see the main part of the house before. A flaw in the plan of being hired as a gardener was that he had no business inside. But it wasn’t as if he exactly had the credentials to get hired as a lady’s maid…
As he walked, he took in everything, committing it to memory.
The house was massive, and dead silent. Gabe wasn’t a fanciful person, but the phrase “quiet as a tomb” rang through his mind, and he almost looked over his shoulder, expecting a ghost to be hovering there.
The shade of the late Lord Calder, whether real or not, oppressed the whole estate of Calderwood. Gabe had wrangled the story out of the other servants within a day. The lord had come in from riding one afternoon, went to his sitting room in his comfortable leather armchair to enjoy his usual predinner brandy…and never got out of the chair. When he didn’t answer the bell for dinner, his daughter, Lady Arcadia, had gone to find him, and discovered him stone dead.
She’d been in deep mourning ever since. And unfortunately, some locals (out of sheer spite, Cook assured him) started a rumor that she killed him, thus creating a cascade of mischance. Servants left the house. Visitors stopped calling. The lady of the house stopped going out to town. The result of her removal from local society meant that more servants left, and even fewer people called, and the lady soon refused to leave the estate.
With her commitment to a wardrobe of somber colors, and her predilection for moping in gardens at midnight, it was perhaps not surprising that some folk were now whispering that she was a witch.
“Have you ever heard such blather?” Mr Rundle had cried during one dinner. “We are at the vanguard of the nineteenth century, and yet people still see witches and goblins around every corner.”
Martha declared in response, “Of course the lady’snota witch. An Osbourne would never dabble in witchcraft. The old lord wouldn’t hear of it.”
Gabe did not believe in anything himself. But if the lady wanted to avoid being thought of as a witch, or an eccentric, or a murderess…she might want to light a couple candles in these gloomy halls, or wear a shade lighter than black.
He set the tray down, and knocked once. “Your dinner, my lady!” he called.
There was no response from the other side of the door. He remembered the warning not to linger, but this was too precious a moment to miss out on. Perhaps he could see inside her room, or even speak to her, if the moment seemed right. He retreated several paces and slipped into a room on the opposite side of the hall. From there he could just see the lady’s door, with the tray in front of it.
The door creaked open. Gabe couldn’t see anyone but he had the sense that someone was looking out. Then a shape emerged—Lady Arcadia, with those big brown eyes darting around as though a mob was about to attack her.
She bent over and picked up the tray, backing up into her room. Then the door was pushed closed and he heard the distinctive scrape of a key in the lock. He hadn’t been able to see a single thing. It was as if her room was unlit. Oddly, the scent of witch hazel drifted through the hall.
He frowned. Why did this woman secure herself in her own room as if she were already a prisoner? How the hell was Gabe ever supposed to get close enough to her to win her confidence, let alone discover if she was the notorious poisoner of London’s elite?
Chapter 6
