Clutter was everywhere—saddles and hats, boots and farm implements, a half-carved tree trunk that was apparently in the process of being fashioned into a stool, an open sea chest piled haphazardly with bedding. The furniture was strewn with clothing, whether clean or dirty Caroline couldn’t tell. The wide plank floor sported a circular path of caked mud that ran the circumference of the room, clearly marking the path where the house’s inhabitants habitually walked. To the left of the door, a narrow staircase climbed steeply upward, the wall side of each tread providing space for a collection of piled objects. The air in the house bore a decided chill, and over everything there was a layer of dust. A musty smell, combined with an odor of onions that must have been part of the previous night’s dinner, assaulted her nostrils. Wrinkling her nose against the smell, Caroline took a cautious step forward. If she had ever possessed such a house, it would have been spotless. She could not imagine anyone, not even such barbarians as the Mathiesons clearly were, letting a dwelling get into such a state.
In the next room she could hear Matt talking in a low voice to Captain Rowse. Certain that she was the subject of their discourse, she was of no mind to let them discuss her without her presence. Picking her way through the miscellany of items littering the floor, she at last reached her destination. Pausing in the
doorway, she glanced around the room. As she had feared, the kitchen was a disaster.
A ridiculously tiny fire flickered in the huge fireplace that filled half of one side of the room. Made of creekstone that was blackened to the ceiling from lack of regular cleaning, it clearly, from the smoke that stung her eyes, needed its chimney swept. A collection of dingy-looking pots hung forlornly over the hearth, which was heaped with ashes from previous fires. In here the odor of smoke overlaid the memory of onions. The plain board table in front of the fire had been cleared, but the floor had not been swept, and the crude wooden plates, though scraped (as far as she could see), were piled in a pail near the door along with pewter mugs and spoons. Apparently someone had meant to take them outside for washing but had forgotten or found some other task more worth his attention.
Matt stood with both arms crossed over the back of a chair, leaning forward as he talked to Captain Rowse. The captain, looking well satisfied, was in the act of rising from the bench beside the table as Caroline appeared. Both men, glancing at her, abruptly broke off their conversation. After a barely perceptible hesitation, Captain Rowse took a swallow from his mug. It must have contained a particularly tasty kind of ale if his lip-smacking appreciation of it was any indication.
“ ’Tis glad I am that this matter has been settled so beneficially.” Captain Rowse put the mug down and nodded at Caroline in a way that was now entirely friendly. “Matt’s taken care of the cost of your passage,
Mistress Wetherby. I hope there’ll be no ill feeling between us.”
“Not at all,” Caroline said coolly. Her hands tightened on Millicent as she squashed the urge to let him know just what she thought of his treatment of her aboard the
Dove
. At the least, Captain Rowse had made it clear that he held her in contempt. His attitude had caused the sailors and her fellow passengers to treat her almost as a pariah. Would he really have turned her over to the magistrate to be sold as a servant had he not received the money he was owed? Looking at him, bluff and beefy and good-humored as he now appeared, she knew that had Matt repudiated her, he would have. Caroline felt a sudden welling of gratitude toward her frowning brother-in-law. Immediately she forced the emotion back. Such feelings made one dangerously vulnerable, and that was one thing she meant never to be again.
“Good, good!” Captain Rowse’s tone was just a shade too hearty. Caroline regarded him, unsmiling. In place of the banished gratitude sprang a nearly overwhelming sense of relief. She was free of him and his ship, free of the uncertainty of not knowing what awaited her at her journey’s end. The anxiety that had been her constant companion for the six weeks of the voyage was a thing of the past.
“Oh, by the by, this is yours, then, if you want it.” Fumbling in the pouch that hung at his side, Captain Rowse extracted the peacock brooch. Lips tightening, head high, Caroline held out her hand for it. With a quick look at Matt, who curtly nodded permission, the captain dropped it onto her palm. Her fingers closed
tightly over the jewel. Worthless or not, it was her last link to her father. A pang smote her heart as his well-loved face rose before her mind’s eye, but she refused to allow herself to acknowledge the aching. Even her grief for her father she meant to put behind her. In this new land, she would start her life afresh. She would simply refuse to allow herself to remember England and all that had happened there.
But for those few seconds her fingers tightened convulsively around the brooch. Millicent squirmed, and Caroline set her down. Then she tucked the brooch into her waistband. When she had the chance she would store the ornament in her trunks, and not look at it again.
“I’ve no love for animals in the house,” Matt said. He straightened and regarded Millicent, who was sniffing cautiously at an overturned milk pail, with suspicion.
Caroline laughed, the sound brittle as she still fought to suppress the sorrow that she would not allow herself to feel.
“What harm do you imagine my poor cat will do, pray? She’s far cleaner by nature than others who live here.”
Matt’s frown darkened as Caroline’s glance swept around the room with obvious disdain.
Captain Rowse cleared his throat, looking from one to the other uneasily.
“Well, now that all’s settled happily, I’d best be getting back to my ship,” he said.
Matt nodded. Giving Caroline a quelling look, he escorted the captain from the room. There was the
murmur of their voices, and then Caroline heard the door open and shut. She wandered around the kitchen, increasingly appalled as she encountered spiderwebs and dust balls and clear evidence of mice, which Millicent sniffed with interest. For a woman who loved to cook, as she did, such an ill-kept kitchen was an abomination. What manner of people were these, who possessed so much and clearly valued it so little?
When Matt returned, Caroline was standing near the fireplace, peering disbelievingly into a pot that was half-filled with some food that had been charred to no more than a burnt offering. Without seeming to notice her disgusted expression, he crossed to a covered wooden bin in the corner. Millicent, who sat on top of it, tail twitching, put her ears back at him. With an impatient mutter he shooed her away.
“This in here is corn meal,” Matt said, lifting the lid briefly to give her a glimpse of the contents before shutting it again. “There’s meat and suet in the smokehouse around back, butter and cheese in the spring. ’Tis out behind the smokehouse. You’ll have no trouble finding it. Flour is in here”—he lifted the lid of another bin—“and we’ve apples and potatoes in the larder. Anything else you need, ask. It’s probably around somewhere.”
He paused, shoving a piece of harness out of his way with his foot without ever seeming to consider that it had no business being jumbled in a heap on the kitchen floor in the first place. “We’ll work through nuncheon, as we’ve lost so much time, but by sunset we’ll be ready to eat. There are six of us, and except
for Davey we’ve big appetites. I hope you were telling the truth when you claimed you could cook.”
Then, before Caroline could say aye, nay, or maybe, he turned on his heel and started for the door, apparently meaning simply to leave her to it.
7
“H
old just a minute, if you please!” Caroline’s voice quivered with ire. “You surely do not expect me to prepare a meal in this—this pigsty!”
His back stiffened at her words, and he turned around to eye her measuringly.
“If the accommodations do not suit your ladyship,” he said with an edge to his voice, “you have my permission to clean them up.”
Caroline laughed. “It would take six women working all day every day for a fortnight to clean this mess up! I will not cook in filthy pots, nor serve a meal in a kitchen so dirty that I cannot even see out the windows! Even to make this one room minimally decent will take the rest of the day! If I am to prepare an edible meal by sunset as well, I must have help!”
“Lazy, are you? I should have expected it.”
“I am not,” Caroline said through her teeth, “lazy!”
Matt lifted an eyebrow, but before he could reply there was the sound of the outside door opening, and the solid thump of something heavy hitting the floor. Matt turned and headed into the front room, where Daniel was carrying inside the last of Caroline’s trunks.
“You told me before you left this morn that you’d
quite finished building the calving shed,” Matt said abruptly.
“Aye.” Daniel straightened, eyeing his brother. “What of it?”
“Good. As there is nothing else urgent requiring your attention, you may spend the remainder of the day helping the duchess here around the house. She requires assistance cleaning, she says, because the place is such a pigsty.”
Daniel looked aghast. “Clean house? But, Matt …!”
“Look to it.”
With that Matt walked past his brother and out the door. Daniel swiveled to stare after him, then turned slowly back to look at Caroline with an expression of such dismay that, had she been in a better frame of mind, she would have been hard put not to laugh.
“I know naught of women’s work.” There was a hollow note to Daniel’s voice.
“ ’Tis obvious that all of you know naught of women’s work,” Caroline ground out.
“ ’Tis planting season.” There was an apologetic note to Daniel’s voice. “Usually the place is not so bad.”
“Oh?” Caroline raised her eyebrows. “If the floor has seen a broom anytime this past six months, I’ll count myself surprised. But there’s no point in bewailing what’s done. If you will carry my trunks in to where I am to sleep, we will get started. The kitchen first, I think, as it’s the most urgent—and the dirtiest.”
“Well, now, there’s another problem,” Daniel said. “I’ve no notion where you’re to sleep. There’s four
bedchambers abovestairs, but Davey and John share one, Thomas and Robert another. I’ve the third, and Matt the fourth.”
“Then you and Matt will just have to share, won’t you?” Caroline smiled with false sweetness. “For I’ve no intention of sleeping in the stairwell!”
“But there’s only one bed in each.” Caroline could already see that Daniel was a man to whom improvisation did not come easily. “I doubt Matt would take kindly to sharing a bed with me. We’ve shared one before, and he said he’d sooner sleep with a grizzly. I would, too.”
“Bother Matt!” Caroline snapped, then sighed, knowing herself defeated. “Very well, just carry my trunks abovestairs so that they’re out of the way. We’ll sort it out when
Matt
returns.”
Her mockery of the way he spoke of Matt as some kind of supreme being either sailed completely over Daniel’s head or didn’t bother him. In any case, he looked relieved as he hefted the first of the trunks and started up the stairs with it.
By the time he had finished, Caroline was already busy. She had discovered a small keeping room off the kitchen that held a variety of supplies as well as a washstand. The mirror above the washstand was tiny, allowing her to see only a portion of her face at a time, but it was enough to permit her to repair the worst of the ravages wrought by her encounters with the farm’s livestock. She washed her face and hands, pinned up her hair, and—with a mental sigh of regret for the ruination of her best gown—set to mucking out the kitchen. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about
further damaging her dress. With a section of hem tucked into her waistband to hide the rip, the dress was acceptable for the work she intended doing, but the jagged tear rendered the garment unsalvageable. It would undoubtedly soon find its way to the ragbag.
“What do you want me to do now?” Daniel asked dismally from the doorway. Caroline set him to building up the fire, then had him carry the cooking utensils to the stream, where they had to be scraped until their bottoms were reached and then scrubbed with sand. Toiling side by side with him, arms plunged deep in icy water, Caroline struggled to dismiss the sense of unreality that assailed her whenever her mind wandered from the task at hand. Was this really she, Caroline Wetherby, the toast of a hundred smoky gaming hells, who worked with cold-benumbed fingers at such a homely chore? How all the men who had clamored in vain to bed if not wed her would laugh if they could see her brought so low! Yet, strangely, she was content to have it so. Honest labor seemed suddenly far preferable to the deceit which, were she honest, she would admit had long been her stock in trade. For years she had been little more than her father’s shill, the glittering enticement he had used to lure fools for his fleecing. Marcellus Wetherby’s victims had ogled his beautiful daughter covetously while he palmed a card or produced an overlooked ace, never realizing until their purses were considerably lightened that they were not to be consoled for their losses in the way they had imagined. Though until her father’s final illness she had been subjected almost nightly to lecherous eyes and bawdy suggestions, physically he had kept
her safe. He had been a rogue, but not so much a rogue as to permit the forced dishonor of his own flesh and blood. But as she had grown up and become more aware of exactly what those leering men thought of her, she had felt soiled. In this new land, she need never endure such again, and the knowledge heartened her. She would turn her hand to the most backbreaking of tasks, so long as she could hold her head high in the doing.
“Is this good enough?” Daniel asked, exhibiting a well-scoured pot. Brought abruptly back to the present, Caroline nodded approval, glad enough to focus once again on the work at hand.
Despite his initial reluctance, Daniel proved to be an able worker. When that chore was completed, Caroline set him to lugging the farm implements scattered about the house back to the barn where they belonged while she sorted clothing into piles according to its need for washing, mending, or pressing. Nearly every item required some sort of attention, and as she surveyed the size of the piles she wanted to groan. Keeping six males in decent wearing apparel was clearly going to be a never-ending task. But it was one she could do, and do well.