“Lady Catherine Monfort, Edward Wellingford’s aunt.”
The slovenly servant trudged away. There were further noises offstage, perhaps a slap, then a door slamming. There were back stairs. Perhaps someone had gone up. After considerable time, someone came down, hand trailing upon the bannister.
“Lady Catherine Monfort?”
She could have been a pretty lady. In her thirties somewhere, rather more late than early. Her hair was red as a bonfire, and her chest as white as chalk. Both owed much to alchemy. Both could have benefitted from washing. Still, the expression on her face was open and concerned.
I nodded politely, wondering who this apparition was. “Come to visit my nephew, Edward.”
“You hadn’t heard!” She reached out her arms toward me with genuine compassion. “Oh, how dreadful. You didn’t know that Edward had died.”
“Died?” I asked stupidly. It had never occurred to me that Naughty Ned could die. Not so soon. Not in such a short time. Sweet man, dead? Is kindness and compassion rewarded so? “Not dead?”
“When the plague returned,” she nodded. “In sixty-one.”
“Year of our Lord,” I murmured, putting out a hand to catch myself.
“Thirteen sixty-one,” she said. “Yes. I am his widow, Lydia. We had only been married a short time when he died. But that was almost six years ago. How could you not have heard?”
“I’ve been away,” I said, wondering where the intervening years had gone. I had left in fifty-one. “Far away. In … the Holy Land.”
“A pilgrim,” she chirruped. “Do come in,” she took my arm. “Oh, what a shock it must be.”
We went into the little sitting room. It had been my room, with chairs in it, not wainscot chairs against the wall, but real chairs one could move about, with carved arms, made for me by a man who worked for Lord Robert, given me as a wedding gift. They were still there, still with the cushions I had worked when I was pregnant with Elladine. Sadly soiled and worn, those cushions. The fireplace was deep in ashes. Everything was dirty and ragged. Evidently this lady, like my aunts, did not hold with soap.
“His daughter?” I asked. “Little Elly …?”
“Elladine? Oh, she survived, yes indeed. Very healthy child, she was. Is, I should say, though she’s not a child any longer.”
“How old …?”
“Elladine would be what? Sixteen? Seventeen? Hard enough to keep track of my own, such an army of them.”
“Your own?”
“Gloriana, that’s the eldest. Then my oldest son, Harold. Then my second son, Bertram. Then Griselda. Then comes Elladine. Then the two Edward and I had together. Twins. Catherine and young Edward. Your nephew Edward named them. Why, I just thought! Catherine must be named after you?”
I nodded again, feeling lost. Possibly Edward had named his second daughter after his aunt. And possibly the twins were not Edward’s children at all. “You were a widow when you married Edward?”
She threw her arms wide, miming woe. “Twice, now. Oh, it’s very hard to bear. Very hard, Lady Catherine. Lord Robert died early in the year, then Janet and the children. Then the youngest brother, Richard. Then, soon after we were married, Edward himself. All of Wellingford has fallen to me. I’ve the care of all of it to see to, and no one to help!”
If her two sons were older than Elladine, then she should have some help. “Your sons,” I suggested weakly.
“Mere children,” she waved her hand to suggest something inconsiderable. “Striplings. Caring for nothing but gaming and the hunt. Boys. Mere sweet boys.”
“Your daughters?” I suggested, a little more strongly.
“So talented,” she said. “So very musical. And such graceful girls. A little tall, perhaps, but then so is a willow, and nothing is more graceful, moving in the wind.” She mimed wind, swaying at me. “But then, I’m forgetting myself. You must be famished? Thirsty? Weary? I didn’t see your carriage?”
“I rode,” I said. “Hired a horse in … in …”
“East Sawley?” she suggested.
I nodded, inventing. “Two horses and a man to carry my box. Sent them back again.”
And she was dismayed. “Then you plan to stay? Not that you aren’t welcome. Oh, you’re very welcome. It’s just such very short notice.”
I gestured vaguely, signifying that I would make do. “There’s an extra room, surely.”
“A very little one,” she assented. “Over the kitchen.”
It was the warmest room in the house. The one I had used as a nursery after Elly was born. There was a narrow bed in it, as I remembered. Though, after sixteen years …
We got my box. I carried it myself. There seemed to be no one else to carry it. The bed was still there, full of mice. The whole room was very dirty. Why was my whole history one of being given dirty rooms to occupy? “If you’ll send me up a serving maid or two,” I suggested.
“Serving maid,” she said vaguely, as though she should know the word but had forgotten it. “Maid?”
“Women. Who clean rooms, who sweep floors.”
“Oh. Of course. Yes.”
As we had come along the corridor, I had noticed that the little linen room was shut, just as I had left it when I had gone away with the key in my pocket. The key was still in the deep pocket of my cloak where I had thrust it when I left. Though it seemed a wild hope, I went back to the closet and tried the key. Inside were sheets and covers and two clean ticks, and pillow cases and the extra pillows I had made when we killed the geese the last fall I had been in the Dower House. The mice hadn’t been at it, or if they had, the chunks of black hellebore root scattered along the shelves had poisoned them. The cupboard hadn’t been opened in all those years! No one had wanted to break it open; perhaps there had been no locksmith available. Perhaps Lydia had simply been too lazy to bother. The linens still smelled faintly of lavender as I carried sheets
