won’t go down well with Mrs Winterley though, you mark my words.’
‘So noted,’ Chloe said and went downstairs to do her duty.
Stupid to feel as if a knife had been stabbed in her heart at mention of Lord Farenze remarrying, as he must to beget an heir. Best not to think where she would go next until the mourners left either. Lord Farenze wouldn’t keep her on and she couldn’t stay even if he wanted her to, but there was a deal of work before she could walk away with her last duty to her late mistress done.
* * *
Luke signalled at the waiting footman to close the doors behind them against the icy easterly wind and missed Virginia’s imperious command to come on in do, lest she expire in the howling gale he was letting in.
‘Thank you, Oakham,’ he said, seeing the butler had set chairs near the blazing fire and offered hot toddies to Eve and Bran to stave off the cold. ‘I would wish you a good day, but we both know there is no such thing right now.’
‘Indeed not, my lord,’ the elderly manservant replied with a sad shake of his head that said more than words.
Even over the mild stir of activity Luke caught the sound of Mrs Wheaton’s inky skirts and disapproving petticoats as she descended the grand staircase and tried to pretend neither of them were really here. So, she steeled herself to meet the new master of the house, did she? Luke admired her courage even as he wished it would fail her and his senses sprang to attention. Even in buttoned-up mourning array she was hauntingly lovely, but close to she looked even more drawn and weary. Feelings that seemed far more dangerous than simple desire kicked him in the gut and he wished her a hundred miles away more fervently than ever.
‘Good day, Mrs Wheaton,’ he greeted her woodenly. ‘Please show my daughter and her maid to their rooms, then see their luggage is sent up.’
‘Good afternoon, my lord; Miss Winterley,’ she replied with an almost respectful curtsey in his direction.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Wheaton,’ Eve said with a smile that seemed to relax the stubborn woman’s air of tightly wound tension. ‘I’ve heard so much about you. Great-Aunt Virginia was always full of your daughter’s quaint sayings and doings when she was a babe and she sounds a bright and lively girl now she’s at school.’
‘By “bright and lively” folks usually mean a limb of Satan, into every piece of mischief she can find. If the girl is anything like you were at that age, Miss Eve, Mrs Wheaton has my sympathy. I could fill a book with the things you got up to when you were a child,’ Bran said dourly.
Luke concluded Bran liked Mrs Wheaton for some reason and, whatever the facts of Eve’s birth, Mrs Brandy Brown was the closest thing to a mother his Eve had. He was grateful to the diminutive dragon for loving his daughter fiercely after losing her husband, then her own babe soon after birth, but he wished Bran would show her usual distrust of any servant likely to look down their noses at such a unique ex-nurse and ladies’ maid. The last thing he needed was closer contacts between his family and the Wheatons, but, if she diverted Eve from her grief, he supposed he would have to endure it.
‘My Verity is on pins to meet you, Miss Winterley, and Lady Virginia told her lots of exotic tales about the castle you live in and the wild Border Reivers who once fought over it. As my daughter persuaded her teachers I need her to come home, she will be here as soon as a carriage can be spared to fetch her,’ Chloe said ruefully.
A smile softened her generous mouth and lit her violet-blue eyes to depths of enchantment that would make a poet quiver with excitement when she talked of her only child. Even Luke’s workaday imagination wanted to go on the rampage when a red-gold curl escaped her black-trimmed housekeeper’s lace bonnet and threatened to curl about her heart-shaped face. Given freedom, her rebellious auburn locks would kiss her forehead with escaped fronds of red-gold fire. Or maybe they would lie in loose ringlets down the refined line of her long neck and on to white shoulders revealed by a gown cut to show off her womanly charms... Poetry be damned, the woman was a temptation to pure sin and never mind the romantic sighing of buffle-headed dreamers who ought to wake up to the realities of life.
‘She’s probably right,’ Eve was insisting softly and Luke had to rack his brains to recall who she was and what she was right about. ‘Papa would have it I should stay in Northumberland and sit out Aunt Virginia’s funeral, but that would only make me miss her more. Your daughter has lost a good friend, Mrs Wheaton.’
‘And you are a wise young lady, Miss Winterley.’
‘Oh, I doubt that, but you must call me Eve, ma’am.’
‘I can hardly do that if you insist on calling me so and it would be considered sadly coming in a housekeeper to address you by your given name.’
‘Then will you do so when we are private together? And I think we could resort to my rooms and send for tea now, don’t you? We must discuss how best to go on over the next few days and I’d rather not be Miss Winterley-ed all the time we’re doing it.’
Listening to his remarkable daughter do what he couldn’t and coax Chloe Wheaton upstairs to join her for tea and some gentle gossip, Luke sighed and met Oakham’s eyes in a manly admission: they didn’t understand the restorative power of tea or small talk and probably never would.
‘I have refilled the decanters in the library, my lord, or I could bring some of his late lordship’s best Canary wine to your room. I believe Mr Sleeford and his father-in-law are currently occupying the billiard room.’
Taking the warning in that impassive observation, Luke murmured his thanks and made his way up the nearest branch of the elegant double stairway. He entered the suite of rooms Virginia had insisted he took over as the one-day master of the house a year after Great-Uncle Virgil died and was glad Mrs Wheaton had ordered fires lit in all three rooms against his eventual arrival.
He was grateful for the warmth and sanctuary the suite promised him tonight, despite his reluctance to use it at first. With so many people gathering for his great-aunt’s funeral he must savour any peace he could get over the next few days.
* * *
As they sipped tea and discussed arrangements for the household over the next few days, Chloe wondered why Miss Evelina Winterley hadn’t been permitted to stay here during the decade Chloe had lived here. Lord Farenze and his daughter always joined Lady Virginia in Brighton or Ramsgate for several weeks every summer, but his visits to Farenze Lodge were so fleeting he rarely stayed so much as a night, let alone long enough to uproot his daughter and bring her with him. Fury flashed through her as the familiar notion she was the reason he had kept Eve away until now fitted neatly into her mind.
It was true that scandalised whispers spread through the neighbourhood when she first came here as Virginia’s companion-housekeeper, with a baby daughter and no visible husband all those years ago. If only they knew, she decided bleakly, weariness threatening to overcome her once more. She fought it off by using her anger with the new master of the house to stiffen her backbone, for she might be about to leave this place, but she intended to do it with dignity intact.
‘Lady Virginia told me I would like you if I ever had the chance, Mrs Wheaton, and I feel I know you already,’ Eve Winterley said as she refilled a teacup and passed it to her maid without even needing to ask if she would like seconds after their long journey.
Such closeness between mistress and maid should not surprise her, she supposed, but Chloe recalled Lord Farenze’s attitude to those he considered beneath him and contrasted it with his daughter’s more liberal one. Reluctantly she decided it spoke well of him that he was so relaxed about Mrs Brown’s role in his daughter’s life, then did her best to forget him for a few blissful moments.
‘And I’m very glad to meet you, Miss Winterley, even at this sad time.’
‘You will miss Lady Virginia as badly as any of us after being her friend and companion for so long,’ Eve said sincerely and for a long moment all three women sat thinking about how odd their lives felt without that vivid presence. ‘Although this is a beautiful