Page 52 of The Soldier's Scoundrel
It was the easiest thing in the world, cozying up to a fellow servant at a country house, especially at a party as sparsely attended as this one. The poor bastards were bored senseless, especially the ones who were used to a busy London household. Wraxhall’s valet, a young man who cheerily introduced himself as Fred Harley, greeted Jack’s arrival as a drowning man might view a floating piece of timber, only more so.
They were in a room off the kitchens where Harley was merrily extolling the virtues of a particular formula for boot black. “It’s the beeswax that makes it so fine. I can write down the receipt, if you’d like.”
Jack hoped he’d never have occasion to polish a pair of boots or anything else for the rest of his life, but he thanked the man and accepted his offer. “You’re young to be a gentleman’s gentleman,” he added. “But you keep Mr. Wraxhall in fine trim.”
Harley beamed. “He’s an easy gentleman to work for.”
“We should all be so lucky,” Jack said darkly. He had no compunctions about slandering Oliver’s character, partly because it was Oliver’s fault that Jack was standing in the still room at Branson Court in bloody Kent, but also because defaming his purported master would be the best way to get Harley to talk about his own employer. “I hate to speak ill of the man,” Jack lied, “but I’ll say that he’s sowing plenty of wild oats right now.” He pursed his lips in an approximation of moral outrage, consciously imitating Sarah. “Women,” he said in a sinister tone, figuring that this could do Oliver’s reputation no harm.
“Oh dear,” Harley said, plainly hoping to hear salacious details. “Many of them?”
Jack only nodded his head grimly in the hope that the younger man would fill the silence with gossip of his own.
“Mr. Wraxhall has no such vices,” Harley said, possibly disappointed. “And I’ve been with him since before his marriage.”
Jack ran his fingers along a row of upside-down jam jars, all awaiting this summer’s fruits. “He married some kind of heiress, didn’t he?” He examined one of the jars, as if it were more interesting to him than gossip. “I suppose he had to. Heaven knows Mr. Rivington will need to find a wealthy wife when he finally settles down.” Between that and the rumors of Oliver’s insatiable appetite for female companionship that Harley would surely spread, Jack thought he could keep Oliver away from the clutches of matrimony for a good while. Although he preferred not to consider how much that mattered to him.
“I wouldn’t say Mr. Wraxhall had to marry an heiress, exactly,” Harley said, keeping his voice low enough to avoid being overheard by any other servants who passed by the open door to the still room. “He had what Mr. Smythe, the butler, called a small independence. Enough to live on.”
“But not enough to live like this.” Jack gestured to the house around them.
“No, but he never paid me late, even before his marriage. Besides, he scarcely touches the money she brought with her.” Harley paused in the stirring of his bootblack, as if he suddenly realizing he had said too much.
Jack pretended he hadn’t noticed anything. “My wages are always late, when I get paid at all,” he lamented. “And when you think of all the times I’ve had to drag him home from bawdy houses, all the gin I’ve cleaned off his waistcoats . . .” He shook his head, letting his voice trail off ominously.
Harley looked both shocked and delighted, and since he had given Jack valuable information, he would be rewarded with stories to tell belowstairs. Jack regaled him with tales of Oliver’s dissipation—flinging linens about, leaving loaded pistols where one would least expect them, disappearing for days at a time and then reappearing with a host of opera dancers who needed bed and board.
No, there would be no young ladies clamoring after Oliver when Jack was through.
God help him but this was an awkward business. If Mrs. Wraxhall had staged this house party in an effort to put herself on the map as a hostess, her plan had not been a success. Oliver didn’t know how many invitations Mrs. Wraxhall had sent, but there were a bare half dozen guests at Branson Court.
One of the guests was Mrs. Wraxhall’s mother, Mrs. Durbin, a shrewd lady who had few pretensions to gentility. Within a quarter of an hour of meeting Oliver, she informed him that her father had been a grocer and her grandfather a costermonger, as if daring him to snub her.
He didn’t take the bait. After spending a few weeks in Jack Turner’s company, Oliver knew when he was being baited.
“I dare say, now that you’re here, the ladies will start trickling in,” Mrs. Durbin said at the breakfast table on Oliver’s first morning at Branson Court. She and Oliver were the only guests who had come down. “An earl’s son. What a coup for Lydia,” she said in a tone that made it clear she was not even slightly interested in earls’ sons or social coups.
Oliver glanced up from the freshly ironed London paper a footman had brought him. “Ladies?” he asked, not quite following.
“Well, obviously. A bachelor from a good family? The vicar has three daughters, you know,” Mrs. Durbin explained between bites of kippers.
“I’ll take that under advisement,” Oliver said, faintly startled by the lady’s forthrightness.
“My son-in-law will let you hide in the library with him. He may even still be sober, at this hour.”
How on earth could nervous, painfully correct Lydia Wraxhall be this woman’s daughter? Oliver had to hand it to Mrs. Wraxhall. Another lady might have tried to keep such a mother hidden away in order to bury her own common roots. Either Mrs. Wraxhall cared less for society’s opinion of her than Oliver had supposed, or she had guessed that meeting her mother would prevent people from imagining a far more vulgar parent lurking in the north. Or perhaps Mrs. Durbin had simply invited herself.
He didn’t even seriously consider the possibility that Mrs. Wraxhall had invited her mother out of filial fondness. That was something else that time with Jack had taught him—always distrust sentimental motives.
“What are you doing here, Mr. Rivington?” she asked, startling Oliver with how similar her train of thought was to his own. “You don’t seem to be on intimate terms with my daughter or her husband. I imagine you have a dozen better places to be.” Oliver opened his mouth to say something vague and complimentary about his hostess, but Mrs. Durbin spoke first. “I received a letter that a man named Rivington was visiting Pickworth, near my own home.”
A letter! Now, who in Pickworth would have informed Mrs. Durbin of their visit? Miss Barrow? It had to have been her, Oliver guessed, remembering that Mrs. Durbin had given Alice Barrow the use of that charming cottage. Jack had been certain that this put Miss Barrow in the old lady’s pocket, and he must have been right.
“Yorkshire is lovely this time of year.” Oliver didn’t think for a minute that he had tricked the woman into believing that he had traveled north to enjoy its dubious climate.
“She’s in some kind of trouble. Don’t think I can’t tell. I’m her mother.” She gestured at him with a fork. “She looks like death warmed over—she’s not yet twenty five but you’d never know it. He sits in his library drinking, she frets and paces. There ought to be a baby by now, but there isn’t. I may be an old woman and you may be a gentleman, but let me tell you, my boy, if I find out that you’re part of the reason my daughter is unhappy, you’ll pay for it.”
She delivered that message in a quiet voice, but Oliver had no doubt that at least one footman had overheard and would no doubt tell the tale to great success belowstairs. Oliver shuddered to think how amused Jack would be.
