Page 7 of The Lawrence Browne Affair
But he found none of those things. All the rooms outside of the tower that held Radnor’s study were in various states of ruin. No attempt had been made to stop the progress of decay. The house had simply been given up as a lost cause. All the doors Georgie opened led to rooms as bad as the one he had slept in last night. Some weren’t even furnished at all; others smelled of damp and mushrooms.
Finally, he smelled bread baking. Thank God. A few paces later he heard voices, then arrived on the threshold of the tidiest room he had seen yet in this shambles. It was a small kitchen for this size house but neat as a pin. Two women were having what looked like a comfortable coze near a blazing fire. One of them, a girl of maybe eighteen, combed out her golden hair while an older woman shelled walnuts.
Georgie cleared his throat and both women leapt to their feet.
“We’re decent women!” said the walnut-sheller, walnuts and baskets skittering all over the flagstone floor.
“I’ve got a knife,” said the hair-comber, producing a small blade from the depths of her apron.
“I’m George Turner.” He held up his hands as if in surrender and tried to sound like the sort of man decent women didn’t need to fear, which was no more than the truth. “I’m to be Lord Radnor’s secretary.” He gave a slight bow and his best smile. “I apologize for having taken you unawares.”
“Flimflam.” This from the walnut-sheller again, a stout woman of about five and thirty, dressed in a tidy gray cotton frock and sturdy-looking cap. “His lordship has no secretary.”
“Which is why he’s engaged me,” Georgie offered. “Will you tell me what time supper is served?” Since arriving yesterday, he hadn’t had anything to eat but some bread and cheese he had tucked into his pocket at the inn, and that had been finished hours ago.
More staring, and then the women shook their heads.
“If I were you, I’d put up at the inn,” the older woman said. “This house ain’t fit. Rats. And worse.”
“Yes, so I’ve gathered.” The room where Georgie had slept last night had been little better than a barn. Bone tired from days of traveling, he had managed to fall asleep despite musty-smelling bed linens and the unmistakable sound of mice in the straw mattress. A younger Georgie might have gladly bedded down for another night in far worse accommodations: mice didn’t bite much, at least not compared to rats. But his time living—and thieving—among the gentry had gotten him used to beds that didn’t have creatures living in them and sheets that didn’t make him sneeze. “But it’s cold and dark, and I’m not leaving this house tonight, or indeed until I complete my employment with his lordship.”
The women exchanged a glance. “There’s some bread over there,” the older woman said, gesturing with her chin to a tray bearing cold meat and a few loaves of bread. Neither woman moved.
Georgie thanked the women and helped himself to a loaf of bread, temporarily giving up his hope for a hot meal as a lost cause. Then he bowed his way out of the kitchen as suavely as he would have left a duchess’s drawing room a few short weeks ago.
CHAPTERFOUR
After another day of organizing dirty papers, Georgie despaired of ever enjoying a decent meal, a proper fire, or a tolerable conversation. Radnor grunted or, when pressed, emitted a grumpy monosyllable. Twice, a tray bearing cold ham, bread, and apples appeared mysteriously outside the study door, and Radnor fetched it in as if this were an utterly unremarkable event. Georgie helped himself to an apple, and Radnor stared, as if it hadn’t occurred to him that his secretary required feeding.
This wasn’t the only time Georgie felt Radnor’s intense gaze. Perhaps it was because the earl had been alone for so long that another human’s presence was a novelty worth noticing. Perhaps it was Georgie’s own isolation at Penkellis that had him hoping those penetrating stares had more behind them than curiosity. But Georgie had too much practice deceiving others to be able to deceive himself. He darted a glance at where the man sat with his absurdly huge boots propped up on his desk, one muscled arm hooked behind his neck. He wanted Radnor. Badly. And, if those stares meant anything, Radnor wanted him at least a little in return.
Perhaps Penkellis had more to offer than a couple of candlesticks.
At some point in the evening—it was hard to say precisely when because none of the clocks kept proper time, but it was after they had burnt through several candles—Radnor wordlessly got up, strode into the adjacent room he used as a bedchamber, and slammed the door shut. Georgie interpreted this to mean the day’s work was done.
Georgie stood and stretched, stiff and restless from so many hours sitting still. Despite the late hour, he was too fidgety to sleep. He’d take the opportunity to explore Penkellis. No, explore wasn’t quite the word. Browse, more like. As a child, he used to loiter outside the butcher’s shop, eyeing roasts and joints he could never afford, planning what he’d buy in the dimly imagined future where he had enough coin.
That was what he did as he twisted through the dusty corridors of Penkellis; he planned what he’d stuff his pockets with when he finally went back to London. What would he bring to Mattie Brewster to bargain for his life, for his family’s safety? A rolled-up painting? A couple of silver candlesticks? None of it would be adequate to purchase his freedom, so this was just as much a game of make-believe as it had been when he was a child.
He’d have to search the study more carefully, find out whether the earl really had something he was worried thieves might take. Georgie was conscious of a nagging sense of shame when he thought of duping the earl. Before he could berate himself for the miserable state of his pigeonholes, his foot went through a rotten piece of floorboard.
“Blast!” he muttered. This house was beyond simple dilapidation. There was something decidedlynot rightabout this place. He had always enjoyed solving puzzles, and Penkellis—and its master—seemed a puzzle very much in need of solving.
What a bloody waste to let a house like this rot. Radnor ought to be ashamed, but then again he took no better care of himself than he did the house. He hid in his tower, surrounded by disorder and decay, utterly alone.
Georgie could hardly stand it and was working up a righteous anger when he pushed open a set of double doors.
“Oh hell—” His words caught in his throat.
It was a library. Or, rather, it had once been. A window had blown out, and Georgie could see ivy trailing into the room, creeping onto the tall bookcases. Everything about this room was wrong. It smelled of the sea and loamy earth, not like an indoor place at all. A shaft of moonlight shone through the broken window, illuminating a toadstool growing out of the floor.
It wasn’t the decay that was so troubling as much as the way the strangeness of the place warped one’s expectations. A specter could float by and Georgie wouldn’t be in the least surprised. He’d wave to it, wish it good evening.
Even the sounds didn’t belong: an owl called from far too short a distance, and wind rustled through bare trees only yards away. And further off, the sound of something like hoofbeats and carriage wheels, but it couldn’t be, since the roads all bypassed Penkellis. It wasn’t as if his lordship expected visitors, Georgie reflected gloomily.
He crossed the room, blindly reached for a book, and found himself holding what was little more than a handful of pulp. Still gripping that sad corpse of a book, he turned on his heel and marched upstairs.
Lawrence had very nearly fallen asleep when he was startled to full consciousness by a pounding on his door.
