his coat. That comforting emotion was immediately whipped from her as she anxiously noticed Beryl’s neat, black-uniformed figure sidling up to Samuel by the hall table. But they both appeared fully occupied attending to guests’ cloaks and gloves and quite oblivious and uncaring of each other.
A grateful sigh escaped. Any further embarrassing domestic situations and she was sure she would scream or weep. Instead she stifled a wry laugh at the very idea; such selfish indulgence was a luxury, and there would be no more of those.
Having cordially shaken hands with his old acquaintance, Sir Peter turned back to the warmth of the drawing room. Victoria received a friendly, slightly inebriated grin as he passed.
‘Thank you once again, Lord Courtenay, for being good enough to attend Daniel’s funeral. I hope the weather improves for your safe journey home.’
David inclined his dark head, acknowledging her civil good wishes, even though they held the same arctic quality as the air outside. His eyes reluctantly shifted from her face to gaze at something distracting behind her. ‘One of your servants seems a little upset,’ he mentioned impartially.
Victoria felt a stinging surge of blood heat her cheeks. So Beryl and Samuel had not contained their differences, not even for the five short minutes that would have been necessary for David Hardinge to have taken his leave. Narrowed blue eyes scanned her pink, tense face as he said, ‘You already know about it…?’
The hint of mild concern in his tone snapped up her glossy black head. She had no use for his pity and would have liked to tell him so. Instead she murmured stiffly, ‘Yes, I do know, thank you,’ while wishing the floor would open up and swallow her…or this taciturn man who assuredly never tolerated tantrums from his domestics.
Pride aided her swift composure. ‘It has been a very sad time for us all. My husband was well liked and respected by the servants…by all who knew him.’ It was a quite truthful prevarication. The rustling of Beryl’s stiff skirts as she scurried away was all that broke the ensuing silence.
‘I believe I’ve been remiss in not yet offering condolences on your loss, Mrs Hart,’ David eventually said. ‘Was he a good husband?’
Grey and blue eyes linked then strained. ‘I’m sure there was never better,’ Victoria quietly stated, and something about the way he found that cool sincerity amusing twisted her stomach.
He extended a hand in farewell and she allowed him one of hers for the briefest moment. His smile quirked sardonically as she exactly matched his reaction to her touch earlier. Then all that was left with her in the hallway was an icy draught and a dusting of snowflakes melting on the marble flags.
The sun was lost early today, Victoria realised glumly as she glanced out through the casement window in Hartfield’s small library at the clouding sky. She finished totting up the column of figures in the household accounts before pushing the ledger away from her and laying the quill back on the blotter. It mattered little how many times she did the sums; the balances never looked any healthier. But she had made economies before; it was simply a case of cutting back a little further.
Daniel had always praised her housekeeping skills, in the early days of her undertaking the task, marvelling at the way she could make do and mend, bargain with tradesmen and generally pinch a penny until it squeaked. As he’d grown weaker, she’d known he no longer had strength enough to worry or enquire as to how she did.
She had no idea where her talents for parsimony came from: until her marriage she’d had no experience of household budgeting or hiring servants or paying wages. But she had been reared on thrift. Her father had never been a generous man where she was concerned—either in his time, his affection or his coin.
She withdrew her mother’s locket from the pocket of her serviceable serge gown and laid it on the blotter. A finger traced the carved gold surface before she opened it with gentle reverence and looked at the miniature portraits of her parents. The likenesses had been painted shortly after their marriage, some twenty-eight years ago. Her father was strong and handsome, his hair as black as her own, despite the fact that he was then in his forties, and his eyes bright and alert. Her mother looked serene: her luxuriant auburn tresses swept back from the delicate bone-structure of her ivory-skinned, heart-shaped face. She had been more than twenty years younger than her husband.
Whenever Victoria feasted her hungry eyes upon the beautiful mother she had never known, she understood how awful it must have been for the man who’d doted on her to have lost her. She understood why her father resented her; why she had grown up shunned as an unwanted burden rather than a cherished child. For her mother had relinquished life in order that Victoria could have hers and she knew her father had found that impossible to forgive. The sad irony was that her late husband had lost both his new-born daughter and his first wife in childbed and had cherished Victoria as his child-wife.
In her early years, her dear aunt Matty had done her best to substitute herself as the mother Victoria had never known. She had also upbraided her brother many times for his coldness and neglect of his only child. Victoria had overheard their cross words on occasion, and knowing she was causing her father that family pain too had served only to turn the screws of the awful guilt that racked her. And she marvelled at her aunt Matty’s temerity. For she had been, during their days in Hammersmith, an impecunious widow reliant on her brother’s charity, and to scold him as she did, and on another’s account…
Matilda Sweeting’s life had never been easy. She had married a penniless scoundrel who purported to be a naval officer, given birth to a son and been widowed all in the space of two years. Despite her wastrel husband having frittered away all his own money and then hers too, Matilda had managed to retain her pride and her sanity. And then when her only son, Justin, had disappeared in his sixteenth year, she had again drawn on that unbreachable resilience to overcome the disaster. He had been press-ganged, or so they believed, for there was no other credible solution to his disappearance some eleven years ago in the vicinity of the London dockland. Matilda spoke rarely of him now, but when she did it was as though he was alive and well but just too busy and successful to visit yet awhile.
Victoria focussed again on her parents’ youthful, attractive faces. There had been a lot of heartache for the Lorrimers in the past twenty-five years. A troubled sigh escaped as she dwelt on her father’s dementia. Heartache wasn’t yet over.
A bar of warmth gilded her clasped hands on the desk as the sun escaped cloud. She turned her dark head to the window. The bitter winter was extending into late March but had not prevented spring bulbs spearing the frozen ground. The sight of yellow and mauve crocuses interspersed with snowdrops bobbing their drooping heads prompted a wistful smile. The sky was clouding again already, slowly obliterating the lucid sunlight, but she resolved to go. Each afternoon in the hour between finishing her bookkeeping duties and organising preparation of the evening meal, she would walk the short distance to the chapel and tend her husband’s grave.
‘I thought I might find you here.’
Victoria started, gasped and twisted about so quickly that she almost pitched forward onto her knees. She shielded her eyes as she peered up at the man standing a few paces away on the shingle path. He stepped jerkily forward, belatedly steadying her with a meaty hand.
‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Hart; I didn’t mean to frighten you,’ he earnestly apologised. ‘Samuel said you’re to be found here most afternoons. I…I needed to speak with you…’ He looked at the grave, the pretty arrangement of pastel spring flowers atop the cropped grassy mound. ‘I apologise for intruding on a private moment…I just…I’m afraid it is important….’
Victoria banged earth from her gloved hands. ‘Please don’t
