Page 3 of Never Tempt a Widow

The troubled look deepened. “I do, thank you, sir. I don’t like to bother you in your time of sorrow.” She scrubbed at a red chilblain on her knuckle, then put her hands on her hips.

“I hate to say it.” Her voice rose. “I don’t like to speak ill of any other creature, but Nancy Radford is a right piece.”

He stepped back. Nancy was the wetnurse he’d employed to care for little Edgar. “What do you mean? She seems in rude health to me, and she does her job.”

“But when she’s not at the manor, my lord, she’s down there in the snug with the other lush women. And she always has a costrel as wants filling with one of my fruit gins ‘afore she leaves. I didn’t want to say nothing, as her coin’s good, and a body has to put meat on the table, but I don’t like her looking after your little boy, sir, not with his mama dead and all, and you with all your business and the law to deal with.”

His jaw clenched. Nancy was a sot, was she? How could he not have noticed? Ever since he’d first employed her, he’d put her ruddy complexion down to a sanguine humour, and outdoor working as a harvester in the summer. Or had he just told himself that because he’d been too consumed with melancholy to examine her more closely?

“I see.” The taproom had gone quiet. Glancing around, he saw several faces turned in their direction.

“It’s true, sir,” said a man with lank grey hair hanging down to his shoulders. “I’ve had to help carry her out of here on occasion.”

“Aye,” agreed another, who Rowland recognised as the local farrier. “The moment your child be asleep, she is down here as fast as Old Nick for a warming drop, and when she’s no time to sit with us, she’ll take her liquor back up with her. Begging your pardon, m’lord.”

Rowland hid his chagrin. He’d failed his son—and everyone but him knew of it. A fine Lord of the Manor he’d turned out to be. It was time to change. Felix was right—he needed to shake off the misery and look about him, take stock, put all to rights and think about the future. It’s what Lavinia would have wanted him to do, sweet girl.

“Your concern is noted. Thank you, Letty. I’ll have a word with her directly. I wonder if her husband knows the extent of her current carousing—he might not be too keen on his own child supping gin with its mother’s milk.”

He took a large swig from his tankard. “Much obliged to you all,” he informed their audience.

Thankfully, the taproom babble began again. Having condemned Nancy Radford, the throng was happy to continue with prior conversations.

“A word will help, certain sure. But if you need another to nurse the young lord, I’ve just the one for you.”

Rowland cocked an eyebrow. Had he not trusted Letty, he might imagine self-interest. The replacement wetnurse would turn out to be the wife of a cousin, or a niece, or some near relation of hers.

The landlady continued, “Widow Castles has just lost a babe.”

“Widow Castles?”

“Aye. The young widow as you bought the horse from.”

“Saxon?” He had no idea. His head groom had completed the sale on his behalf, but he couldn’t have been happier with his new steed.

“Yes, sir. Her baby died a week ago—of the putrid fever. She is that dismal, having lost her husband last year and now her tiny daughter. She’ll have milk still and it’ll do her a world of good. And you, too, if you don’t mind me saying.”

Felix tugged at his sleeve, drawing him away from the table, then leaned in close. “Not sure I’d advise hiring and firing servants at the whim of a tavern wench, Rowland.”

“A respectable innkeeper, Felix, if you please. I wouldn’t usually, I grant you, but I have great faith in Letty Grand. She’s a no-nonsense worker and keeps this rabble under her thumb, even when they’re in their cups. It takes a stalwart woman to do that. Besides, I’ll not have a lush caring for Edgar—would you if it were your son? What if she should drop him, knock his head against the door frame, let him choke on his own wind? I’ll look into this Mrs Castles at the very least—if only to please Letty.”

“I don’t know why you feel you must pander to the whims of common folk.” Felix’s voice had a sour edge to it.

“Because I’m an uncommon nobleman. You could do worse, you know, than listen to the opinions of those below you in social stature. They know their own trades well enough, for all they’re rough about the edges. You might learn a thing or two.”

“You could be right,” Felix responded, with surprising good humour. He was a good friend, was Felix, and had become even more so since Lavinia’s death. Young, vital, blinkered as a carthorse in some ways, but in others, still open of mind and heart and eager to learn.

“Very well. With your approval, I’ll hie me to Mrs Castles, wherever she may be. Perhaps you’ll do me the favour of getting back to the Hall and seeing what Mrs Radford is up to. You spend enough time with a tankard in your hand, that I’ll wager you can spot a sot at a thousand paces.”

“Nothing would please me more.” Felix winked at him. “And if Mrs Radford is found to have a costrel about her person or to smell of drink, I’d be most happy to kick her out into the frost.”

“No need for that.” Alleyne, his steward, could settle the woman’s wages and deal with any backtalk. He could deal better with servants than Felix and stood less chance of making a lifelong enemy of the wetnurse. Her removal might prove only temporary if Widow Castles didn’t come up to scratch.

He shook away the thought. Mrs Castles was a young widow who’d just lost her baby. She’d jump at the chance to come up to the house and nurse Edgar.

As things turned out, he couldn’t have been more wrong.