LITMIR.BIZ

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lovely, don’t you think?’ Eve asked with a guileless look Chloe didn’t quite trust.

      ‘Exquisite,’ she said carefully.

      ‘No wonder Aunt Virginia couldn’t bear to leave when Uncle Virgil died, although I believe Papa was very worried about her when rumours went about she had run mad with grief, wasn’t he, Bran?’

      ‘Indeed he was, the poor lady.’

      ‘Papa says he wondered if she should still live here for her own sake then, but she couldn’t abide Darkmere and refused to set foot in our house in Kent. Papa could hardly evict Mrs Winterley from the Dower House there, so he let the subject drop when Virginia bought the house in Hill Street and we all went on very much as we were, or so I’m told, since I was but a babe in arms at the time and don’t remember.’

      ‘Her ladyship thought the Kentish house old and dreary and she said most of the chimneys smoked, so I doubt she would have wanted to live there, even if the Dower House was vacant,’ Chloe said, hoping her dislike of Mrs Oswald Winterley didn’t show.

      She wouldn’t want to live within a day’s drive of the lady herself, given the choice, and, as Mrs Winterley reluctantly resided in the Haslett Hall dower house, instead of the fashionable London town house she thought Luke Winterley owed her, for some reason nobody else could fathom, Virginia had avoided Haslett Hall like the plague.

      ‘Papa had several chimney stacks rebuilt when he took over the Farenze estates, so I doubt any smoke now. He won’t have climbing boys used in any of our houses and if the sweep says they’re too small or crooked to use brushes on, he has the stacks rebuilt until they can be done that way without sending those poor little boys up into the dark to choke or get stuck.’

      ‘My little brother was put up chimneys when hardly old enough to walk and he didn’t live to see his tenth birthday. His lordship’s a good man,’ Mrs Brandy Brown insisted and Eve Winterley agreed then watched Chloe with expectant eyes.

      ‘To oppose such a practice he must be,’ she said as tactfully as she could and tried to pretend he meant no more to her than any good man would.

      Liar, a more truthful inner Chloe prodded her uncomfortably, but somehow she would make it true. Ten years ago she had longed for gruff and embittered Luke, Lord Farenze, with every fibre of her being. At seventeen she’d been little more than a wilful, embittered child though; it took her daughter’s dependence on her to force her to grow up and realise she couldn’t have what she wanted and keep her self-respect.

      Chloe sighed at the familiar tug of hot warmth she’d felt at first sight of the viscount in possession even today. No, it didn’t matter. Whatever she felt changed nothing. She only had to keep out of his way and stamp on any wayward desires left over from that heady time for a few more days then she would be free of him.

      Yet this infernal tiredness was dragging at her like a pall and threatened to spin her back into dreams of forbidden things if she let her control slip. First there would be the old fantasy of the Chloe she should be—if life was fair. A charming, alluring lady who could win, and hold, the passionate devotion of gruff Lord Farenze as they danced off into a rosy future. An image of him; his expression impossibly tender as he made it clear how desperately he longed for her with every fibre of his cynical being, shimmered like a mirage.

      Horrified, she snapped her nodding head upright and righted her empty teacup before it slipped from her slack grip and shattered. Oh, heavens, had she muttered any of that out loud? She met compassion instead of horror when she plucked up the courage to meet her new friend’s eyes, so perhaps not.

      ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying so, Mrs Wheaton, but you need a nap,’ Mrs Brandy Brown told her.

      Chloe shivered at the thought of nightmare-haunted snatches of sleep she’d had since her beloved mistress died. ‘You must know how long a woman can go without sleep from your experience when Miss Evelina was a baby, Mrs Brown,’ she forced herself to say instead of admitting the turmoil had awoken old memories that haunted her dreams until she avoided her bed as if it was stuffed with thistles.

      ‘Aye, some nights the poor little mite cried as if her heart was broken and it was all I could do not to join her,’ the tiny, forceful little woman agreed with a rueful, loving look for the girl who seemed so equable nowadays it seemed hard to believe.

      ‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Chloe said with a picture of her own struggles to calm a restless and furious baby when Verity was teething, or ill, or just plain fretful and she felt about as useful as a tailor’s dummy, making her very glad those times were over for both their sakes.

      ‘His lordship used to put his little miss into a pack on his shoulders and carry her for miles over the moors until she slept at long last. I’d stay behind, telling myself they were quite safe and he could see like a cat in the dark and knows the paths across his land like the back of his hand until I fell asleep too, whether I wanted to or not. You had to cope with all that on your own and run this great house at the same time. It sounds as if you got through it stoutly enough all these years, but we’re here now, so at least you can have a rest when you need one,’ Bran told her with an earnest nod that disarmed Chloe and made her wonder if it might be bliss to lay her burdens down and do as she was bid after all.

      ‘Indeed you must, Mrs Wheaton,’ Eve told her with some of her father’s authority sitting quaintly on her slender shoulders. ‘Sleep is the last thing on my mind after hours shut up in that stuffy carriage dozing because there was nothing else to do—how about you, Bran?’

      She gave the comfortable bed in the slip of a room the other side of the dressing room, reserved for a maid if her mistress wanted one close, a significant look and her maid nodded her approval of the unspoken idea. It looked just right for an afternoon nap if Chloe did happen to be as bone weary as she obviously looked.

      ‘I had a nice doze on the way to Bath this morning, as you know very well, Miss Eve, since you’ve been twitting me about it ever since.’

      ‘How disrespectful of me, but I think we should wrap ourselves up in cloaks and shawls to walk in that pretty Winter Garden I saw from the window on the half-landing. I’d like to stretch my legs and it would do us good to air our wits before it gets dark. Nobody will disturb you if I order them to leave our unpacking until we return, Mrs Wheaton, and Bran and I will soon have everything arranged when we get back. I can be very finicky about the disposal of my things when occasion demands and nobody will interfere.’

      ‘She can indeed, Mrs Wheaton,’ Bran agreed smugly and Chloe felt weariness weigh down as she wondered if she dare risk her dreams for once.

      ‘You would wake me the moment you came back in?’ she asked and heard her own words slur with tiredness, as if she’d been fighting it so long it now had to win.

      Lord Farenze was here to shoulder the responsibility of the estate and the ageing staff and she would rather sleep than think about him.

      ‘If you can sleep through madam here ordering me about, you’re a better woman than I am,’ Bran said, then followed her young mistress from the room.

      Chloe barely managed to slip off her shoes, unhook her gown and slip out of it before falling fast asleep the moment her head hit the pillow.

      ‘Lasted as best she could until help came, if you ask me,’ Bran observed softly as soon as she and her young mistress were finally clear of the house unseen and able to speak freely.

      ‘Poor lady,’ Eve replied carefully.

      ‘Aye, she seems like one to me as well,’ Bran mused and met Eve’s speculative gaze with a thoughtful frown.

      Bran did not believe a fairytale lay behind whatever made a lady become a housekeeper. Even if a story started out with garlands of roses and fairy dust, it rarely ended so in the stark light of day in Brandy Brown’s experience.

       Chapter Three

      Luke

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