1818_Isabel Read online

  “Yes, you may think I’m a madwoman. I did as well, when we lived there.” Olivia stood, then walked to the writing desk and pulled a large, leather-bound stack of papers from a drawer. “And that is why I intend to remain in London and why I agreed to pass it on to you now. I still urge you to stay on with us here, my darling, at least until you can be assured that you won’t have to walk through the front door alone.”

  “I won’t be alone. I’ll have Jane with me.”

  “Your companion is not a protector. Not unless she can wield a musket.” Frowning, Olivia reached down for Isabel’s tea and set it aside as well, then took her granddaughter’s hands and turned them palm up. “And no, I don’t think you’ll require a musket. I’m merely… I’m getting to be an old woman, so don’t mind what I say. Only do be cautious. As I said, the house affects everyone differently. You may not like what it does to you. But for better or worse, it’s now yours.”

  With that, she set the papers onto Isabel’s palms. They felt heavy, but then keeping a house within the female line of a family had taken a considerable amount of paperwork through the years. A rush of excitement swept up her spine as she clutched the bundle to her chest. A house, a mansion, abandoned for ten years and all hers. Hers, to shape and guide, to put her own stamp upon. And the magic of Nimway Hall, the mysterious orb and the bountiful crops and the ancient Balesboro Wood that confused foes and aided friends, the place of wizards and ladies of the lake, knights in shining armor – it belonged to her now. Finally.

  “I should tell you,” her grandmother went on, releasing her hand and turning for the morning room doorway, “when I decided to write you, I had our solicitor hire a new steward for Nimway Hall. I would have preferred to leave you with Prentiss in charge, but now I’m discovering that he may have become a bit eccentric in his later years, and a property as large as Nimway Hall certainly can’t manage without a steward. No sense in you arriving to see a tumbled ruin or overgrown garden.”

  Oh. A steward. Of course there would be one, but for heaven’s sake, her grandmother might have waited another month or two and let the new guardian of Nimway hire her own. How could it be her home if someone else, some random man hired by random men, had barged in before she could ever arrive? A man who would no doubt have a criticism for everything she attempted and who’d probably already seen to everything she’d wanted to do herself. “Do I have to keep him on?”

  “The steward? Of course not. But Mr. … what was it? Ripple? Dripple? At any rate, he presently knows more about Nimway Hall than you do. And if we – I, at least – go about hiring and sacking employees willy-nilly, people will think us frivolous. Will think me frivolous. So please keep that in mind.”

  “Will he answer to you, or to me?”

  “Well, you, of course. Though I did hire him. Just listen to his suggestions and keep my reputation in mind before you sack him and hire someone else. I don’t doubt your enthusiasm, but you’ve run a household – not an estate. There is a difference. Believe me. Now. You will be staying for luncheon and dinner, I hope? Or are you in such a hurry to leave that you don’t even have a moment for goodbyes?”

  Isabel set aside the bundle of papers and stood to hurry over to wrap her arms around her grandmother’s slender waist. “I am never in that much of a hurry, and I never will be. I know you have your doubts, but I don’t.”

  Olivia put a finger beneath her granddaughter’s chin and kissed her forehead. “And that is why I’m worried.”

  2

  Patience is a virtue,” Adam Driscoll recited under his breath, the fiftieth time he’d done so since awakening that morning. It had begun with his left boot going missing, and hadn’t improved since then. Nodding at the barrel of a man behind him, he wrapped the heavy rope around his leather-gloved hands. “Ready? One, two, three, pull!”

  Slowly, groaning and reluctant, the millstone in front of them left its partner and lifted an inch or two into the air. With each coordinated heave on the rope, it rose another fraction. The old thing weighed close to two tons, but the mill helped the valley prosper. It needed to be repaired, and thankfully the farmers who lived on the Nimway Hall property knew that.

  “I need at least a foot, or I won’t be able to reach in to grind off that ridge,” the stonemason they’d brought in from Glastonbury grunted, putting his fingers over the lip – which seemed a highly unwise thing to do given the path the four weeks of Adam’s stewardship had taken.

  “Mr. Reynolds,” Adam panted, planting his recovered boot – which had thankfully been located behind the wardrobe, of all things – against the straw-covered stone floor and taking in another inch of rope, “I do not recommend—”

  The wooden crossbeam snapped in two. Even as the thunderous sound registered, the rope went slack in his hands. Adam went over backward, falling hard on the quartet of farmers behind him. Before he could even pull breath back into his lungs, he forced himself to his feet, expecting to see the stonemason’s hand crushed between the two massive burrstone slabs.

  Instead, the ten-fingered Tom Reynolds crouched down, picked up a piece of discarded straw, and stuck it between his teeth. “You need a sturdier pulley rig, I reckon,” he observed.

  Adam brushed straw from his backside and tried not to cough as the mill dust rose and twirled around them. They’d bound together three eight-inch-thick tree trunks. The cross beam should have been sturdy enough to lift the entire mill, much less the runner stone. He’d assisted; the rig had been well made. The other men, including Phillip Miller, the aptly-named miller, had begun cursing and making signs against the evil eye. And they were sending sideways glances at him again.

  As much as he wanted to proclaim his innocence in the fiasco, Adam had begun to realize over the past four weeks he’d resided at Nimway Hall that they didn’t doubt his competence. They doubted his presence, and his luck. And there wasn’t much he could do about that except to persist. This property was worth it. The position he’d found for himself was worth it.

  He made his way through the flour dust and the wreck of the pulley system to crouch beside the crossbeam. They’d used fresh-cut timber because it would be more likely to flex and bend than break. He would have been tempted to call it deliberate, except he could see absolutely no sign of a saw or blade mark.

  “Will you be putting me up tonight, then?” the stonemason asked, leaning over him.

  Adam straightened. For the first time the muscular-armed mason’s aloof expression faded, and he took a half- then a full-step back. “Patience is a virtue,” Adam repeated to himself, and straightened his fingers. “Yes, Mr. Reynolds. I’ll have a room waiting for you at the Two-Headed Dragon. I’ve been told it’s the finest inn in Balesborough.”

  “I reckon that’ll do for me, Mr. Driscoll. Thank you.” He narrowed one eye as he continued to chew on the straw sticking out from between his teeth. “That was a fine contraption. It should have worked,” he offered after a moment.

  Yes, it should have. And the plan to smoke the bees out of the attic should have worked, but that had only gotten him stung three times and sent the creatures into two of the servants’ rooms as well as the large storage room up there. He could hear them humming above his head in the evenings. Re-setting the iron railing that bordered the back terrace should also have been a simple task, but a freak rainstorm had poured so much water into the concrete mix that it wouldn’t set. That hadn’t been his fault, except that as the property’s steward, he evidently should have known better than to make the attempt.

  “The Hall won’t like you poking about,” Simmons the butler had informed him. His reply that the Hall would like being readied for its owner’s return had been met with an even more concise, “No, it won’t.” Evidently, either the butler had precognitive abilities, or his unending dour predictions occasionally bore fruit.

  Stripping off his gloves and noting another blister on his left palm, Adam sent the miller and two others to find more suitable logs for another attempt in the morning.
The farmers seemed perfectly content to return tomorrow, but then Adam had the sneaking suspicion that they anticipated seeing what might go wrong next more than they did seeing the millstone repaired. After all, the harvest wouldn’t be ready for another month or two, at best. They had time to be amused.

  Outside, he shook more grain dust out of his hair and collected his mount. With a cluck, he sent the big chestnut gelding east in the direction of the steep escarpment and Nimway Hall above.

  Off to his right, Miller the miller guided two heavy plow horses more southerly toward Balesboro Wood for the additional lumber they would need tomorrow. All of the farmers and other residents on the substantial acreage owned by Mrs. Olivia Harrington had been friendly and cooperative, if doubtful of his success. They acknowledged that some upkeep and repairs were needed, and they’d been swift to offer assistance – and opinions, of course.

  None of them – and he considered himself a fair judge of character – struck him as being duplicitous or underhanded. The accidents and misfortunes presently thwarting him didn’t seem to be either malicious or intentional. In a sense, though, his inability to explain any of it left him even more frustrated. None of this lay beyond his experience or his abilities; in fact, as he’d made his initial assessment of the estate after his arrival, he’d thought bringing it back to its former glory would be simple.

  The Harringtons had only been away for ten years, and the house had maintained a reduced staff for that time. The former steward, Mr. Prentiss, had apparently decided that challenging the house would be unwise, but money had clearly gone toward general maintenance as well as toward keeping up the mill, the community vegetable garden, and the irrigation systems, and the farms had prospered even without their landlord’s presence. And yet.

  He let the chestnut set its own pace, and they ascended the narrow, twisting trail up the face of the escarpments at a walk. He’d seen carts navigate the path, but he would hate to have to do it at night or in bad weather.

  Nimway had both long history and care showing in every beam and cornice, along with a warmth that reminded him of his own home. But here, all that history kept eyeing him, unsettling him whenever he even considered making repairs. Strictly speaking he was an intruder, but at least he was an invited one. And he had nothing but admiration for what he saw around him.

  He could always uninvite himself, but he refused to give up after only four weeks. He was a fourth son; fighting for things had become nearly second nature. And employment like this, at a place like this, wasn’t likely to come along again any time soon, if ever. And certainly not for a man of five-and-twenty.

  At eighteen, just as he’d decided that, as the fourth son of a minor baron, he had what amounted to a choice between the priesthood and the army – which meant choosing the army – his uncle had turned over a carriage and broken one leg beyond healing. The physician had removed it above the knee. For the subsequent seven years, Adam had served as the Franklin Park steward, its guardian, and the confidante of his seven younger female cousins. Just six months ago, Margaret, the oldest cousin, had come of age and found a husband who thankfully had been competent enough that just in the past fortnight he’d taken over the steward position.

  Adam sent the chestnut along the southernmost pathway, the one that bordered the edge of Balesboro Wood. It would add an additional thirty minutes or so to reach Nimway Hall by this route, but he needed those moments to figure out where they’d erred with the pulley so it wouldn’t happen again. Purple and red splashed the western sky behind him, and a trio of does stepped into the meadow then retreated again when they caught sight of him.

  He’d enjoyed directing Franklin Park in a way he’d never expected. Given his circumstances, however, owning acreage of his own seemed supremely unlikely. He’d therefore thought it fortuitous that just as he’d found himself replaced at Franklin, the solicitor father of an old friend had written to inquire if he was available to take up a newly-vacated position at Nimway Hall.

  Adam had barely paused long enough to pack a trunk. Now, however, he wasn’t so certain that “fortuitous” had been the correct word. In fact, despite his determination to succeed at something here, over the past few days he’d begun to wonder if resigning might be in the best interests of everyone involved. Tom Reynolds might have been badly injured today.

  He shook himself. Coincidence. The offer of employment – a coincidence. A stewardship position coming available also happened to be very rare. A steward tended to serve until he was too old to do so, at which time a son would assume the position. It was almost a commoner’s version of a title inheritance. The one at Nimway Hall had been unusual both in the fact that the previous steward had conveniently expired in the village’s cemetery, and that he had no sons and hadn’t suggested anyone else to succeed him. Adam knew he wasn’t likely to run across another such opportunity.

  And if the circumstances of his employment were coincidence, then so were the misfortunes that had plagued him since his arrival. The nonsense wasn’t anything he’d done, and it therefore had no reason to continue. All it would take was a bit more determination. And he had that in spades.

  Just how long he might have remained pondering his future while the sky darkened around him he didn’t know, because as the path joined with the road that wound from the manor house and back through the wood, something caught his attention.

  A lone owl hooted, and he shook himself back to the present. He’d best turn back to the manor before the staff could think he’d fled – giving him something else to explain. A second owl joined the first, then a third, and a fourth.

  Adam pulled up the gelding. In a moment the entire wood reverberated with “Hoo-hoo”. The hairs on his neck lifted. What in the world would upset every owl in Somerset? A fire? He narrowed his eyes scanning the edge of the forest, but no light caught his eyes. He didn’t smell smoke, though the sky was too dark now for him to see it.

  His mount sidestepped, chuffing nervously. Tightening his hand on the reins, Adam reached down his free hand to pat the beast on the neck. “Easy now, boy.”

  Then, light did catch his gaze. Firelight, but contained, floating and blinking, drifted toward him. Two lights, then four, bobbing as they approached. The owls stopped. The wood seemed to hold its breath, silent and still and waiting. No crickets, no frogs, broke the silence.

  As he watched the lights moving closer, a light breeze touched his face. In the same moment, a pair of crickets began chirping off to his left, and he realized what the lights must be. Carriage lamps. A coach, approaching through Balesboro Woods.

  Of course it was a coach. What the devil else would it be? Blowing out his breath, he kneed the gelding off the worn road as the vehicle emerged from the wood. “Nimway Hall?” the black-clothed driver asked as they drew even.

  “Follow this road, about half a mile on,” Adam responded. “Who comes?”

  “The Hall’s mistress.”

  Olivia Harrington? Adam wheeled the gelding to follow the coach. Behind him, a lone owl hooted once more. He slowed, listening, but the sound echoed into silence without being repeated. The disturbance, whatever had unsettled the birds of prey, seemed to have ceased. Nevertheless, he kept glancing over his shoulder all the way back to the well-lit hall.

  As the coach stopped before the front portico Adam dismounted, handing the reins to Toby as the lad ran up from the stables at the rear of the house. The boy gawped, wide-eyed, as the coach driver flipped down the steps and the plain black door swung open.

  At the same moment the ancient butler, Simmons, appeared from somewhere to hold out his hand. Adam had known the man for a month and had never seen him move that quickly. A yellow-gloved hand reached out from the coach’s cavernous darkness, fingers curling around the butler’s. Then a foot, sheathed in a dainty yellow walking slipper, emerged, followed by a yellow and green muslin walking dress patterned with tiny red flowers, then a massive yellow bonnet that obscured everything above the woman’s shoulders.


  Both feet touched the ground, and Adam stepped forward. “Mrs. Harrington? I wasn’t expecting you. I’m—”

  She lifted her head, and the words stopped in his throat. As far as he knew, Olivia Harrington was a grandmother, a woman of at least middle age. The deep-gray eyes looking up at him didn’t belong to a grandmother. And neither did the deep brown curls of burnished mahogany that framed her temples. “Mrs. Harrington is my grandmother,” she said, in well-educated tones, her accent touched by something he couldn’t quite put a name to. “I am Isabel de Rossi. And you would be Mr. Dingle?”

  “Driscoll,” he corrected. Evidently neither of them had expected the other. “Adam Driscoll.”

  “Ah, yes. Driscoll.” She sent her gaze down to his boots and back up again.

  Abruptly he realized the sight he must look. “I must apologize,” he said, brushing at his coat. “As I said, I wasn’t expecting anyone.” He cleared his throat. “Simmons, she’ll be wanting the master bedchamber. And inform Mrs. Dall we’ll have two more for dinner.”

  “Miss de Rossi,” Simmons intoned, bowing and nearly knocking Adam aside. “I knew your mother well. How fares Miss Charlotte?”

  Isabel smiled, thankful for all the tales her mother used to tell of Nimway Hall and its residents, and for the moment to think about something other than the annoying man who was already giving orders on her behalf when she could speak quite well for herself. “Simmons. My mother speaks of you often. She and my father are both quite well, thank you.”

  The butler’s cheeks colored beneath his shock of white hair. “I’m honored that she remembers me. A fine young lady, she was.” With a blink he snapped back to attention. “Will, see that the mistress’s things are brought up to the master bedchamber. And have the room opened. We cannot have her sleeping on furniture coverings and dust.”