Bound By A Scandalous Secret

Chapter Three

Ross enjoyed the dinner more than any he could recall in recent memory. Genna regaled them with stories about the house and their childhood years. She made those days sound idyllic, although if one listened carefully, one could hear the loneliness of neglected children in the tales.

Still, she made him laugh and her sister, too, which was a surprise. Heretofore Lady Tinmore had lacked any animation whatsoever. Dell was worse, though. He’d turned sullen and quiet throughout the meal.

It had never been Dell’s habit to be silent. He’d once been game for anything and as voluble as they come. He’d turned sombre, though. Ross could not blame him. He simply wished Dell happy again.

In any event, Ross was eager to take a tour of the house with the very entertaining Genna.

After the dessert, he spoke up. ‘I propose we forgo our brandy and allow Miss Summerfield her house tour. Then we can gather for tea afterwards and listen to Lady Tinmore play the pianoforte.’

Dell would not object.

‘Very well,’ Dell responded. He turned to Lady Tinmore as if an afterthought. ‘If you approve, ma’am?’

‘Certainly.’ Lady Tinmore lowered her lashes.

She’d never let on if she did object, Ross was sure.

‘What a fine idea! Let us go now.’ Genna sprang to her feet and started for the door.

Ross reached her just as the footman opened it for her. She flashed the man a grateful smile and fondly touched his arm. These servants were the people she grew up with. Ross liked that she showed her affection for them.

They walked out the dining room and into the centre of the house, a room off the hall where the great staircase led to the upper floors.

‘Where shall we start?’ Ross asked.

Genna’s expression turned uncertain. ‘Would you mind terribly if we started in the kitchen? I would so much like to see all the servants. They will most likely be there or in the servants’ hall. You may wait here, if you do not wish to come with me.’

‘Why would I object?’

She smiled. ‘Follow me.’

She led him down a set of stairs to a corridor on the ground floor of the left wing of the house. They soon heard voices and the clatter of dishes.

She hurried ahead and entered the kitchen. ‘Hello, everyone!’

He remained in the doorway and watched.

The cook and kitchen maids dropped what they were doing and flocked around her. Other maids and footmen came from the servants’ hall and other rooms. She hugged or clasped hands with many of them, asking them all questions about their welfare and listening intently to their answers. She shared information about her sisters and her half-brother, but, unlike her cynical conversation with Ross about her siblings, all was sunny and bright when she talked to the servants. So they would have no cause to worry, perhaps?

‘Lorene—’ she went on ‘Lady Tinmore, I mean—asked me to convey her greetings and well wishes to all of you. She is stuck with our host, I’m afraid, but I am certain she will ply me with questions about all of you as soon as we are alone.’

Ross remembered no such exchange between the sisters, but it was kind of Genna to make the servants believe Lady Tinmore thought about them.

Finally Genna seemed to remember him. She gestured towards him and laughed. ‘Lord Rossdale! I do not need to present you, do I? I am certain everyone knows who you are.’ She turned back to the servants. ‘Lord Rossdale begged for a tour of the house, but really only so I could see all its beloved rooms again and make this quick visit to you. I am told little has changed.’

‘Only the rooms that were your parents,’ the housekeeper told her. ‘Lord Penford asked for a few minor changes in your father’s room, which he is using for his own. He asked for your mother’s room to be made over for Lord Rossdale.’

Ross turned to the housekeeper. ‘He needn’t have put you to the trouble, but the room is quite comfortable. For that I thank you.’

Genna looked pleased at his words. ‘We should be on our way, though. I am sure Lady Tinmore will wish to return to Tinmore Hall as soon as possible, so we do not overstay our welcome.’ She grinned. ‘I am less worried about that. I’m happy for our cousin to put up with us for as long as possible. I am so glad to be home for a little while.’

But, of course, it would never be her home again.

There were more hugs and promises that Genna would visit whenever she could.

Ross interrupted the farewells. ‘Might we have a lamp? I suspect some of the rooms will be dark.’

A footman dashed off and soon returned with a lamp. Genna extricated herself and, with eyes sparkling with tears, let Ross lead her away.

When they were out of earshot, she murmured, ‘I miss them all.’ She shot him a defiant look. ‘No doubt you disapprove.’

‘Of missing them?’

‘Of such an attachment to servants,’ she replied.

He lifted his hands in protest. ‘That is unfair, Miss Summerfield. What have I said or done to deserve such an accusation?’

She sighed. ‘You’ve done nothing, have you? Forgive me. I tend to jump to conclusions. It is a dreadful fault. After this past year mixing in society, I learned to expect such sentiments. Certainly Tinmore would have apoplexy if he knew I’d entered the servants’ wing. No doubt that is why Lorene stayed away.’

‘Does your sister disapprove of fraternising with servants as well?’ He would not be surprised. She seemed the opposite of Genna in every way.

‘Lorene?’ Her voice cracked. ‘Goodness, no. But she tries not to displease Tinmore.’ She shrugged. ‘Not even when he could not possibly know.’

‘What shall we see next?’ he asked, eager to change the subject and restore her good cheer.

‘I should like to see my old room,’ she responded. ‘And the schoolroom.’

They climbed the two flights of stairs to the second floor and walked down a corridor to the children’s wing.

She opened one of the doors. ‘This was my room.’

It was a pleasant room with a large window, although the curtains were closed. She walked through the space, subdued and silent.

‘Is it as you remember?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘Everything is in the right place.’

‘You are not happy to see it, though.’

She shook her head. ‘There is nothing of me left here. It could be anyone’s room now.’ She continued to walk around it. ‘Perhaps Lorene knew it would feel like this. Perhaps that is why she did not wish to come.’

He frowned. ‘I am sorry it disappoints you.’

She turned to him with a sad smile. ‘It is odd. I do feel disappointed, but I also like that I am seeing it again. It helps me remember what it once was, even if the remembering makes me sad.’

Ross had rooms in his father’s various residences, rooms he would never have to vacate, except by choice. For him the rooms were more of a cage than a haven.

‘Let us continue,’ she said resolutely.

They entered every bedroom and Genna commented on whose room it had been and related some memory attached to it.

They came to the schoolroom. She ran her fingers over the surface of the table. ‘We left everything here.’ She opened a wooden chest. ‘Here are our slates and some of the toys.’ She pointed to a cabinet. ‘Our books will be in there.’ She sighed. ‘It is as if we walked out of here as children, probably to run out of doors to play.’

‘To become Boadicea?’ Ross remembered.

She smiled. ‘Yes! Out of doors the fun began.’ She clasped her hands together and perused the room one more time. ‘Let us proceed.’

They peeked in other guest bedchambers, but she hesitated when they neared the rooms that had been her parents’. ‘I certainly will not explore Penford’s room.’ She said the name with some disdain.

‘You seem inclined to dislike my friend,’ he remarked.

‘Well, he might have let us stay here a while longer.’ She frowned.

‘Dell only inherited the title last summer. I believe your resentment belongs to his father.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Oh. I did not know.’

Dell might not desire him to say more. Ross changed the subject. ‘I have no objection to your seeing your mother’s bedchamber,’

She recovered from her embarrassment and blinked up at him with feigned innocence. ‘Me? Enter a gentleman’s bedchamber accompanied by the gentleman himself? What would Lord Tinmore say?’

‘This will be one of those instances where Lord Tinmore will never know.’ He grinned. ‘Besides, for propriety’s sake we will leave the door open and I dare say my valet will be inside—’

Her eyes widened in mock horror. ‘A witness? He might tell Lord Tinmore! We would be married post-haste, I assure you.’

She mocked the idea of being married, so unlike the other young women thrown at him.

Her expression turned conspiratorial. ‘Although I am pining to show you something about the house, so we might step inside the room just for a moment.’

With no one else would Ross risk such a thing, for the very reason of which she’d joked.

He opened the door and, as he expected, his valet was in the room, tending to his clothes.

‘Do not be alarmed, Coogan,’ he said to his man. ‘We will be only a moment.’

‘Yes, Coogan.’ Genna giggled. ‘Only a moment.’

‘Do you require something, m’lord?’ Coogan asked. ‘I was about to join the servants for dinner, but I can delay—’

‘We are touring the house and Miss Summerfield wishes to show me something about the room,’ Ross replied. ‘Stay until we leave.’

Ross was glad to have a witness, just in case.

She stepped just inside the doorway and faced a wall papered in pale blue. She pressed on a spot and a door opened, a door that heretofore had been unnoticed by Ross.

‘We’ll be leaving now,’ she said to his valet and gestured for Ross to follow her.

They could not have been more than a fraction of a minute.

As soon as he stepped over this secret threshold, she pushed the door closed. Their lamp illuminated a secret hallway that disappeared into the darkness.

‘My grandfather built this house so that he would never have to encounter his servants in the house unless they were performing some service for him. He had secret doors put in all the rooms and connected them all with hidden passages. The servants had to scurry through these narrow spaces. We can get to any part of the house from here.’ She headed towards the darkness. ‘Come. I’ll show you.’

* * *

Dell remained in the dining room with Lorene until they’d both finished the cakes that Cook had made for dessert. Their conversation was sparse and awkward.

He’d never met his Lincolnshire cousins, knew them only by the scandal and gossip that followed the family and had no reason to give them a further thought. He’d not been prepared for the likes of Lorene.

Lovely, demure, sad.

When he and Lorene retired to the drawing room, he was even more aware of the intimacy of their situation. What had he been thinking to allow Ross and the all-too-lively Genna to go off into the recesses of the house? Why the devil had Tinmore not simply refused the invitation? Why send his wife and her sister alone?

He realised they were standing in the drawing room.

She gestured to the pianoforte. ‘Shall I play for you?’

‘If you wish.’ It would save him from attempting conversation with her, something that seemed to fail him of late.

She sat at the pianoforte and started to play. After the first few hesitant notes, she seemed to lose her self-consciousness and her playing became more assured and fluid. He recognised the piece she chose. It was one his sister used to play—Mozart’s Andante Grazioso. The memory stabbed at his heart.

Lorene played the piece with skill and feeling. When she came to the end and looked up at him, he immediately said, ‘Play another.’

This time she began confidently—Pathétique by Beethoven—and he fancied she showed in the music that sadness he sensed in her. It touched his own.

And drew him to her in a manner that was not to be advised.

She was married to a man who wielded much influence in the House of Lords. Dell would be new to the body. Ross was right. He needed to tread carefully if he wished to do any good.

When Lorene finished this piece, she automatically went on to another, then another, each one filled with melancholy. With yearning.

The music moved him.

She moved him.

When she finally placed her hands in her lap, they were trembling. ‘That is all I know by heart.’

‘Surely there is sheet music here.’ He looked around the pianoforte.

She rose and opened a nearby cabinet. ‘It is in here.’ She removed the top sheet and looked at it. ‘Oh. It is a song I used to play.’

‘Play it if you like.’ After all, what could he say to her if she stopped playing? His insides were already shredded.

She placed the sheet on the music rack, played the first notes and, to his surprise, began to sing.

I have a silent sorrow here,

A grief I’ll ne’er impart;

It breathes no sigh, it sheds no tear,

But it consumes my heart.

This cherished woe, this loved despair,

My lot for ever be,

So my soul’s lord, the pangs to bear

Be never known by thee.

Her voice was clear and pure and the feeling behind the lyrics suggested this was a song that had meaning for her. What was her ‘cherished woe’, her ‘loved despair’? He knew what his grief was.

She finished the song and lifted her eyes to his.

‘Lorene,’ he murmured.

There was a knock on the door, breaking his reverie.

The butler appeared. ‘Beg pardon, sir, my lady.’

‘What is it, Jeffers?’ Dell asked, his voice unsteady.

‘The weather, sir,’ Jeffers said. ‘A storm. It has begun to snow and sleet.’

Lorene paled and stood. Dell stepped towards the window. She brushed against him as he opened the curtains with his hand. They both looked out on to ground already tinged with white. The hiss of sleet, now so clear, must have been obscured by the music.

She spun around. ‘We must leave! Where is Genna?’

‘I sent Becker to find her,’ Jeffers said.

‘Well done, Jeffers. Alert the stables to ready the carriage.’ Dell turned towards Lorene. ‘You might still make it home if you can leave immediately.’

Lorene placed her hands on her cheeks. ‘We did not expect bad weather.’

Dell touched her arm, concerned by her distress. ‘Try not to worry.’

‘Where is Genna?’ she cried, rushing from the room. ‘Why did she have to tour the house?’

* * *

Genna led Ross through dark narrow corridors, stopping at doors that opened into the other bedchambers. On the other side, the doors to the secret passageways were nearly invisible to the eye. While they navigated this labyrinth, sometimes they heard music.

‘Lorene must be playing the pianoforte,’ Genna said.

The music wafting through the air merely made their excursion seem more fanciful.

It was like a game. Ross tried to guess what room they’d come upon next with the floor plan of the house fixed in his mind, but he was often wrong. Genna navigated the spaces with ease, though, and he could imagine her as a little girl running through these same spaces.

She opened a door on to the schoolroom. ‘Is it not bizarre? The passageways even lead here. Why would my great-grandfather care if servants were seen in the nursery?’

‘I wonder why he built the whole thing,’ Ross said.

She grinned. ‘It made for wonderful games of hide and seek.’

He could picture it in his mind’s eye. The neglected children running through the secret parts of the house as if the passages had been created for their amusement.

‘It even leads to the attic!’ They came upon some stairs and she climbed to the top, opening a door into a huge room filled with boxes, chests and old furniture. Their little lamp illuminated only a small part of it.

Ross’s shoe kicked something. He leaned down and picked up what looked like a large bound book.

‘What is that?’ she asked, turning to see.

He handed it to her and she opened it.

‘Oh! It is my sketchbook.’ Heedless of the dust, she sat cross-legged on the floor and placed the lamp nearby. She leafed through the pages. ‘Oh, my goodness. I thought this was gone for ever!’

‘What is it doing up here?’ he asked.

‘I hid it for safekeeping and then I could not remember where it was.’ She closed it and hugged it to her. ‘I cannot believe you found it!’

‘Tripped over it, you mean.’ He made light of it, but her voice had cracked with emotion.

When had he ever met a woman who wore her emotions so plainly on her sleeve? And yet...there was more she kept hidden. From everyone, he suspected. With luck the Christmas season would afford him the opportunity to see more of her.

She opened the book again and turned the pages. Illuminated by the lamp, her face glowed, looking even lovelier than she’d appeared before. Her hair glittered like threads of gold and her blue eyes were like sapphires, shadowed by long lashes. What might it be like to comb his fingers through those golden locks and to have her eyes darken with desire?

He stepped back.

For all the scandal in her family she was still a respectable young woman. A dalliance with her would only dishonour her and neither she nor he wished for something more honourable—like marriage.

The time was nearing when he would be forced to pick among the daughters of the ton for a wife worthy of becoming a duchess. Not yet, though. Not yet.

She looked up at him. ‘What should I do with it?’

‘Take it, if you wish. It is yours.’

Her brow creased. ‘Would Lord Penford mind, do you think? He might not like knowing I was poking through the attic.’

He shrugged. ‘I cannot think he would care.’

She stood and, clutching her sketchbook in one hand, brushed off her skirt with the other. ‘We were not supposed to take anything but personal items.’

He pointed to the book. ‘This is a personal item.’

She stroked it. ‘I suppose.’

He crouched down to pick up the lamp. ‘In any event, we should probably make our way back to the drawing room.’

She nodded.

He helped her through the door and down the stairs. She led him through the secret corridor down more stairs to the main floor where they heard their names called.

‘Genna! Where are you?’ her sister cried.

‘Ross! We need you!’ Dell’s voice followed.

Genna giggled. ‘They must think we have disappeared into thin air.’

‘Does your sister not know of the secret passageway?’

‘She knows of it, but we really stopped using it years ago.’ She paused. ‘At least Lorene and Tess did.’ She seized his hand. ‘Come. We’ll walk out somewhere where we will not be seen emerging from the secret passageway.’

They entered another hallway, and Ross had no idea where they were.

‘This is the laundry wing.’ She led him to a door that opened on to the stairway hall, but before stepping into the hall, she placed her sketchbook just inside the secret passage.

‘Genna!’ her sister called again, her voice coming from the floor above.

‘We are here!’ Genna replied, closing the door which looked nearly invisible from this side. ‘At the bottom of the stairs.’

Her sister hurried down the stairs, Dell at her heels. ‘Where have you been? We have been searching for you this half-hour!’

Genna sounded all innocence. ‘I was showing Lord Rossdale the house. We just finished touring the laundry wing.’

‘The laundry wing!’ Lady Tinmore cried. ‘What nostalgia did you have for the laundry wing?’

‘None at all,’ Genna retorted. ‘I merely thought it would interest Lord Rossdale.’

‘I assure you, it did interest me,’ Ross replied as smoothly as his companion. ‘I am always interested in how other houses are run.’

Dell tossed him a puzzled look and Ross shook his head to warn his friend not to ask what the devil he was about.

‘Never mind.’ Genna’s sister swiped the air impatiently. ‘The weather has turned dreadful. Jeffers has called for the carriage. We must leave immediately.’

Genna sobered and nodded her head. ‘Of course.’

Jeffers appeared with their cloaks and Ross hurriedly helped Genna into hers. As they rushed to the front door and opened it, a footman, his shoulders and hat covered with snow, was climbing the stairs.