Page 30

—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London

Chapter 10

The household was up and stirring well before first light. By the time Nate had dressed and found his way to the kitchen, the room was warm and bright and once again filled with cooking smells—bread and sugar and coffee, not the rich dark coffee with the creamy head he’d learned to make at the old soldier’s side, but a passable drink for a cold morning.

He joined Miranda at the table in the alcove and accepted a cup from pimply Avis. Miranda looked bursting with news.

“How are your feet?” he asked.

She made a little frown. “Fine. Mrs. Wellby gave me sticking plasters and these little half boots. I dare say I’ll do much better today. Do you know she’s read all of Mrs. Raby’s books?”

“Show me,” he said. Yesterday, he’d imagined sleeping with her in the hayloft of a barn with their cloaks for blankets and his arms wrapped around her for warmth.

She swished her skirts aside and stuck out her feet.

“I approve,” he said. Tonight, maybe, she would lean against him in the stage as they made their way back to London.

“You approve! Hah!” she said. “Mrs. Wellby says these little boots once belonged to the lady of the house, and a very fine lady she is.”

He tried the coffee, found it too weak for his taste, and put the cup down. He hoped Miranda had not given them away to the housekeeper. “Listen, Miranda, you must be careful what you say to her.”

“I know. I’m not a peahen. Mrs. W offered us a ride back to the village in the estate gig.”

There was nothing suspicious in the offer that Nate could see. Probably, Mrs. Wellby just wanted them to be gone. After the first wave of kitchen activity subsided, she came for them. “Now, you two, let us examine the record book for your relation. Follow me.”

She led them under the servants’ stair through a door into a short dark passageway. At the other end, they stepped into a great hall with a floor of wide polished oak planks and bright with morning light from windows high above them. With the closing of the servant door, they left the good kitchen smells behind. Instead the place smelled of wax and lemons and cold ashes. Mrs. Wellby strode the length of the hall while Nate and Miranda hurried to keep up. At the other end they came out into a smaller hall dominated by a dark staircase, skirted its base, and entered an oak-paneled library with a large desk and tall glass-fronted bookcases. Miranda inched closer to him, so that one side of him was warm, the other cold.

Mrs. Wellby took a key from the ring at her waist, opened one of the cabinets, and turned to Nate. “Now which years should we examine to find your relation?”

Nate swallowed. Miranda touched his sleeve. If anything would make Mrs. Wellby doubt their story, it would be this. “Let’s begin with ’06, ma’am.”

Her brows lifted, but she turned back to the cabinet and pulled a large red volume from the shelf. She laid it open on the desk and flipped through the pages until she reached one with Lady Day, March 25 written across the top. Leaning over the desk, Nate could see the faint lines that divided the page into four columns. Down the center column a fine sloping hand had written the names of persons serving the household and their positions. To the right a column listed the sum each person had received on that date, the first quarter day of the year.

Mrs. Wellby drew her finger down the page and stopped. “Why, here he is, your relation!” Her voice was full of surprise.

Nate resisted punching a fist in the air. At least one part of their story appeared to be true.

“He was a footman.” She kept her finger moving down the page and down the facing page as well. “No one else listed here remains in service today, but Nanny Ragley lives nearby. She might be able to tell you something of that time and your relation.”

“May I look, ma’am?” Nate asked.

Miranda shot him a glance for his presumption, but Mrs. Wellby stepped aside. Nate read through the other names on the Lady Day page, the Johns and Thomases and Alberts and the Annas, Sallys, and Pegs who had served the family and their two or three pounds of quarterly wages.

He turned to the page for the next quarter day and carefully read the names again. The list of servants remained the same except shorter. There was no Adam Pickersgill. Nate checked again and found another missing footman, Geoffrey Gibbs. He closed the book. It was curious that two footmen had disappeared from the book between March and June of 1806.

“Well, that’s good news, brother,” Miranda said. “We know our relation was here.”

Nate looked up and found Mrs. Wellby watching him closely. “Twenty years is a long time,” she said. “You have no information about any house where Adam might have been employed since then?”

Nate shook his head. “If we may, ma’am, we’d like to speak to Nanny Ragley.”

“Of course. I visit her myself once a week with a basket of baked goods from the house. Would you be willing to go in my stead today? Her cottage is not far, and Matthew can take you in the gig.”

“Oh yes, thank you, ma’am,” Miranda said.

* * * *

Nanny Ragley’s one-up/one-down cottage stood along a rutted single-track road next to a copse of beech trees. A low weathered white fence surrounded a small garden. The door lintel sagged under the weight of bare rose canes. A few speckled hens foraged around an oak butt for rainwater, and in the far corner of the yard Nate could see the little shed that housed the necessary screened by a large leafless bush.