returning to her aunt’s bedside to chafe at her hands. Even though a fire was burning in the hearth it was making little impact upon the chill that pervaded this room. Her aunt’s hands remained cold, and her face still retained that horribly worrying grey tinge.
After waiting in mounting irritation for what must have been at least twenty minutes, she began to wonder if the bell-pull actually worked. They had not been quartered in the best part of the house. Even trotting behind the footman, with one eye kept firmly on her aunt, she had noticed that the corridors up here were uncarpeted, the wall hangings faded and worn with age.
This was clearly, she decided in mounting annoyance, all that an indigent, untitled lady who was the mere aunt of a cousin of the Earl warranted by way of comfort!
But then her aunt finally opened her eyes.
‘Helen?’ she croaked.
‘Yes, dear, I am here.’
‘What happened?’
‘You…had a little faint, I think,’ she said, smoothing a straggling greying lock from her aunt’s forehead.
‘How embarrassing.’
Her aunt might feel mortified, but the pink that now stole to her hollow cheeks came as a great relief to Helen.
‘You will feel better once you have had some tea,’ said Helen. ‘I have rung for some, but so far nobody has come.’
Lord, they must have been up here for the better part of an hour now! This really was not good enough.
‘Oh, yes,’ her aunt sighed. ‘A cup of tea is just what I need. Though even some water would be welcome,’ she finished weakly.
Helen leapt to her feet. Though the room was small, somebody had at least provided a decanter and glasses upon a little table under a curtained window. Once her aunt had drunk a few sips of the water Helen poured for her and held to her lips, she did seem to revive a little more.
‘Will you be all right if I leave you for a short while?’ Helen asked. ‘I think I had better go and see if I can find out what has happened to the maid who was supposed to be coming up here.’
‘Oh, Helen, thank you. I do not want to be any trouble, but…’
‘No trouble, Aunt Bella. No trouble at all!’ said Helen over her shoulder as she left the room.
But once she was outside in the corridor the reassuring smile faded from her lips. Her dark eyes flashed and her brows drew down in a furious scowl.
Clenching her fists, she stalked back along the tortuous route to the main hall, and then, finding it deserted, looked around for the green baize door that would take her to the servants’ quarters.
She did not know who was responsible, but somebody was going to be very sorry they had shoved her poor dear aunt up there, out of the way, and promptly forgotten all about her!
The scene that met her eyes in the servants’ hall was one of utter chaos.
Trunks and boxes cluttered the stone-flagged passageway. Coachmen and postilions lounged against the walls, drinking tankards of ale. Maids and footmen in overcoats clustered round the various piles of luggage, stoically awaiting their turn to be allotted their rooms.
Helen could see that there must have been a sudden influx of visitors. She could just, she supposed, understand how the needs of one of the less important ones had been overlooked. But that did not mean she was going to meekly walk away and let the situation continue!
She strode past the loitering servants and into the kitchen.
‘I need some tea for Miss Forrest,’ she declared.
A perspiring, red-faced kitchen maid looked up from where she was sawing away at a loaf of bread.
‘Have to wait your turn,’ she said, without pausing in her task. ‘I only got one pair of hands, see, and I got to do Lady Thrapston’s tray first.’
The problem with having a Frenchman for a father, her aunt had often observed, was that it left Helen with a very un-English tendency to lose her temper.
‘Is Lady Thrapston an elderly woman who absolutely needs that tea to help her recover from the rigours of her journey?’ asked Helen militantly. Even though a very small part of her suspected that, since she was the Earl’s oldest surviving sister, Lady Thrapston might well be quite elderly, she felt little sympathy for the unknown woman. She was almost certain that Lady Thrapston was getting preferential treatment because of her rank, not her need. ‘I don’t suppose she dropped down in a dead faint, did she?’
The maid opened her mouth to deny it, but Helen smiled grimly, and said, ‘No, I thought not!’ She seized the edge of the tray that already contained a pot, the necessary crockery, and what bread the kitchen maid had already buttered. ‘Miss Forrest has been lying upstairs, untended, for the best part of an hour. You will just have to start another tray for Lady Thrapston!’
‘’Ere! You can’t do that!’ another maid protested.
‘I have done it!’ replied Helen, swirling round and elbowing her way through the shifting mass of visiting servants milling about in the doorway.
‘I’ll be telling Mrs Dent what you done!’ came a shrill voice from behind her.
Mrs Dent must be the housekeeper. The one who by rights ought to have made sure Aunt Bella was properly looked after. It was past time the woman got involved.
‘Good!’ she tossed back airily over her shoulder. ‘I have a few things I should like to say to her myself!’
It was a far longer trek back up to the little round room with a heavy tray in her hands than it had been going down, fuelled by indignation. She set the tray down on a table just inside the door, feeling the teapot to see if it was still at a drinkable temperature.
‘My goodness,’ said Aunt Bella, easing herself up against the pillows. ‘You did well! Did you find out what was taking so long?’
‘It appears that several other guests have arrived today, and the servants’ hall is in uproar.’
Her aunt pursed her lips as Helen poured her a cup of tea which, she saw to her relief, was still emitting wisps of steam.
‘I should not be a bit surprised to learn that everybody has arrived today,’ she said, taking the cup from Helen’s hand. ‘Given the fact that we have only two weeks for all of us to make our petitions known, while Lord Bridgemere is observing Christmas with his tenants. And it is only to be expected,’ she added wryly, ‘that without a woman to see to the minutiae things are bound to descend into chaos.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Only that he will not have either of his sisters acting as hostess,’ Aunt Bella explained. ‘Absolutely refuses to let them have so much as a toehold in any aspect of his life.’
‘He is not married, then?’
Her aunt sipped at her tea and sighed with pleasure. Then cocked an eyebrow at Helen. ‘Bridgemere? Marry? Perish the thought! Why would a man of his solitary disposition bother to saddle himself with a wife?’
‘I should have thought that was obvious,’ said Helen tartly.
Her aunt clicked her tongue disapprovingly.
‘Helen, you really ought not to know about such things. Besides, a man does not need a wife for that.’
Helen sat down, raised her cup to her lips, took a delicate sip, and widened her eyes.
‘I simply cannot imagine where I learned about…men’s…um…proclivities,’ she said. ‘Or why you should suppose that was what I was alluding to.’
‘Oh, yes, you can! And I do not know why you have suddenly decided to be so mealy-mouthed.’
‘Well, now that