governess plodding up the well-worn staircase?
Catching her gaze on him, he grinned, and she stumbled on the last step at the landing. Cheeks heating once more, she hurried up the stairs to the schoolroom.
Chapter Three
Jerome smiled as he turned from the doorway. An interesting woman, this governess. She was elegant, she was refined, yet one glance from him flustered her. He did not think it was an act. Could it be she was merely a pawn in his uncle’s game? Or was Caruthers more of a liar than Jerome had suspected?
Next to him, the little housekeeper bobbed a curtsey. “How long will you be staying, then, Mr. Everard, you and your family?”
Now here was a determined female if he’d ever met one. Her silvery eyes were narrowed, her snowy head cocked, and he’d have guessed she had already taken his measure and found him lacking. Still he smiled at her. “I’m not certain, Mrs. Linton. A week at the least. I hope that won’t be too much trouble.”
Her annoyance was evident in the way she tightly clasped her plump hands. “Certainly not, sir. We generally have dinner at six. Will that suit you?” Her look pinned him in place as if daring him to countermand a sacred tradition.
He generally ate much later in town, but he saw no need to enforce his requirements here so soon. Besides, eating at six would still give him a few hours for some reconnaissance of his own. “Perfectly. Thank you. In the meantime, perhaps you’d be so good as to point me to the estate records.”
With those thick, white brows, her frown was nearly as fierce as her gaze. “Records, sir?”
“Yes. Someone must keep track of the goings on here at Dallsten Manor. Where does the steward keep his information?”
She snorted. “Dallsten Manor has no steward. If it’s facts you want about the estate, you’d best speak with Miss Walcott. Now, I’d better see to those rooms you’ll need. Will there be anything else, sir?”
So Miss Walcott kept the records. An odd role for a governess, but then maybe everyone here at Dallsten Manor performed more than one function. Still, records had to be kept somewhere. Perhaps he could find them while Miss Walcott was busy.
He thanked the housekeeper again, and she hurried from the room as if she couldn’t wait to do his bidding or leave his presence. She passed Richard and Vaughn in the entry hall, pausing long enough to eye them and then move on, shaking her head. The footman trailed just behind them, for all the world as if he’d been herding them like a sheep dog.
“Thank you, Todd,” Jerome said as his brother and cousin crossed into the library. “That will be all.” He had the satisfaction of shutting the library door in the fellow’s face.
“Not very welcoming, are they?” Richard drawled before going to seat himself in the chair Adele Walcott had vacated. “The horses are stabled. The groom seems competent enough.”
“There’s a kitchen door and a side door from the south tower,” Vaughn reported. “Both were locked. The footman caught up with me in the back garden.” He fingered the hilt of his blade as if wishing he’d made better use of it.
“Well done,” Jerome said, glad Vaughn hadn’t been granted that wish. He returned to the desk. At least he could start with these papers. Rifling through them, he saw they were loose pages from the most recent estate book, the income and expenditures marching down the page in neat rows. He bent closer.
An orderly hand had written these, nothing like his uncle’s ungainly scrawl. The notes chronicled wool sheared from sheep and sold at profit, tithes received from tenants, costs for candles, for food. And what was this? New gowns for the governess? Didn’t the cost to gown a governess generally come out of the governess’s wages? And since when did governesses require silk and fine wool?
“How long do we plan to rusticate here?” Richard asked. Jerome looked up to find his brother watching him with a frown.
“Until we learn the truth,” Vaughn reminded Richard, prowling around the room like a lion on display in the Tower Zoo. “You know I’ll only stay until we can see the estate secured in the proper hands. Then I can go after whoever killed Uncle.”
“We do not know anyone killed Uncle,” Jerome said with what he hoped was a mix of determination and compassion.
Vaughn shook his head, causing several strands of pale blond hair to come loose from his queue and hang on either side of his narrow face like moonbeams. “It was murder, Jerome. He told no one where he was going. We have only the word of the doctor who returned the body that he’d been in a duel. And if it was a duel, don’t you think he would have had me second him?”
Richard stretched his legs closer to the fireplace as if finding even the throne too small. “Uncle made some enemies over the years. That’s hard to deny.”
Vaughn paced from shadow to light and back again. “So many that his valet fled in fear the night of his death, and I have yet to find the fellow. I should be in town, hunting him down.”
“But your family needs you here,” Jerome reminded him. Vaughn’s temper had been running hot since Uncle’s death. While Jerome hoped to be able to wrap up matters quickly, he still intended to see to it that they stayed away from town long enough for that temper to cool.
“Have you learned anything yet?” Richard asked.
“Very little,” Jerome replied, leaning a hip against the corner of the mahogany desk. “I’ve met the governess, Miss Walcott. She seems oblivious to the requirements of Uncle’s will.”
“She can’t be,” Vaughn put in. “She must have a part in this. Why name her in the will otherwise?”
Jerome shrugged. “I agree with you that she should seem more pleased by uncle’s demise if she was behind the change in the will, but she seemed sincere in her grief. She says he was much admired. According to her, Uncle was a doting father who visited several times a year.”
Richard’s frown deepened. “Impossible. He was never away long enough to get to Cumberland and back.”
They had cause to know. The three of them had ridden hard for over three full days, changing horses as they went, to reach Carlisle and make enquiries, a good part of another day along rutted country roads to find the manor. Jerome had no doubt that when Benjamin Caruthers realized they’d headed north without him, he’d be right behind, but he wasn’t a young man, and couldn’t maintain the same pace of travel. Besides, he’d come in a heavy traveling coach that was slower than a man on horseback.
“We weren’t with Uncle every minute,” Jerome reminded his brother. “He could have sired an entire family of daughters while we were away at school. And the last few years, he tended to keep to himself more and more.”
“You mean you avoided him more and more,” Vaughn said. He stopped in the sunlight, a dark figure against the brightness. “You never could appreciate his habits.”
Richard exchanged glances with Jerome before turning to eye their cousin. “His habits included every possible indulgence, with little regard for legality or even decency. You’ll pardon me for wanting better.”
Vaughn stepped out of the light, but his eyes narrowed. “He could practice
