The Silver Lord

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George sighed, twisting in his chair to face the other man. “Is it your quarters? The food?”

“Nay, nay, Cap’n M’Lord, they all be more than fine,” said Leggett hastily. “Fancy beds like them for the likes o’ us, eh?”

“Then what the devil ails you, man?”

Leggett gave another contemplative puff to his cheeks. “It be the lady, the one what we saw in the village. She be the same one what lives here, don’t she?”

“Miss Winslow has been the housekeeper here at Feversham for some years, yes,” said George, weariness sliding into testiness. “Not that she’s any concern of yours.”

“But she do be our concern, Cap’n M’Lord,” said Leggett doggedly. “Everywhere’s we look about this house, her mark be there. Womenfolk don’t like having their ways changed, and if she be staying here with us, why—”

“I will address that question when and if that happens,” said George curtly. “Until then Miss Winslow’s likes and dislikes will have no bearing on my orders, or your duty. Do I make myself clear, Leggett?”

“Aye, aye, Cap’n M’Lord.” Leggett snapped to attention, the tray still awkwardly balanced in his hands before him as he backed through the doorway, yanking the door shut behind him.

Which was, for once, exactly the response that George had desired, and with a muttered oath he sank back into his armchair, swirling the barely-touched brandy in his glass.

How in blazes could he tell his men what Miss Winslow would do next when he hadn’t the faintest idea himself? For what must have been the thousandth—no, the millionth!—time he thought back to that strange, wonderful, dreadful conversation in the burying ground.

Matters had begun badly enough, with no letter from blasted Potipher to ease his way, and making the two of them spit and start at one another like cats there in the middle of the lane, for all the village world to gawk at. He’d tried to make it right with the earrings, and had had that humble piece of gallantry twisted around and tossed back at him. Without thinking, he’d next taken her arm: another mistake, touching her that way, and one she’d soon corrected by vehemently pulling free.

Then, finally, to punish him all the more, she’d dragged him off to stand in the sorrowful center of the burying ground. Wasn’t his news likely to be disagreeable enough to her without him having to deliver it surrounded by a sea of ancient graves?

And yet he could not forget how she’d looked when he’d first seen her again, calling to him there in the lane as he’d climbed down from his horse. Her hair had been uncharacteristically disheveled and her cheeks were flushed from the wind, her lips were parted from her haste, and those red gimcrack ear-bobs were swinging merrily from her ears. Perhaps it had been only a trick of the pale-gray sunlight washing over her face, but once freed of the house, she’d seemed younger, more at ease. She’d also, almost, seemed pleased to see him again.

Until, that is, he’d explained his reason for being there.

Even then the conversation hadn’t gone as he’d expected. She’d thought she had to leave, and he’d told her she could stay: fair enough, true enough. But somehow they’d begun speaking of their childhoods, the sort of funny, flirtatious, touching little conversation that he’d never had with any other woman, or man, for that matter.

In that short time, only a handful of sentences, really, he’d learned her name was Fan, not just the formal Miss Winslow. He’d learned she had spent far too much time among adults, just as he himself had been sent to sea and a man’s world when he’d still been a boy. He’d learned that she could snap that defensive wall back in place around herself in an instant, and he’d learned—once again—that he still could not speak of his father.

And he’d learned that no matter what clauses the Trelawneys had put into their contracts, he was the one who now wanted her to stay on at Feversham, just as she was the one who most decidedly didn’t. Not even Brant, with all his much-vaunted experience with women, would be able to make sense of this mess.

Glumly he stared into the glass in his hand. It was all the fault of this wretched, so-called peace with France. If he’d stayed at sea, where he belonged, where he knew what to do and what to say, then none of this would have happened. He would have remained a happy man, plagued only by storms and high seas and enemy gunfire instead of a ramshackle house and a beautiful gray-eyed housekeeper.

So thoroughly was he regretting his carefree past that he didn’t hear the first knock on the door to his bedchamber, or even the second. But the third—the third he heard.

“Come,” he barked without turning, certain it was Leggett. “It better damned well be important this time, you impudent old rascal.”

“It is important, Captain My Lord,” said Fan Winslow, “and I promise not to take more of your time than is necessary.”

Instantly George lurched to his feet, sprinkling brandy over his waistcoat and the floor.

“Fan,” he began without thinking. “That is, Miss Winslow. Yes. That is to say, ah, at this hour, ah, I believed you to be someone else.”

“I am only myself,” she said. “I’ve never pretended otherwise.”

“Where have you been?” Even George knew enough of women to see she’d been crying, her eyes puffy and red-rimmed. “No one has seen you for hours. I’ve been concerned, damned concerned.”

“Thank you, Captain My Lord,” she said, pointedly not answering his question about how she’d passed her afternoon. She held out a large ring of keys towards him. “I’ve come to return these to you as the new master.”

“Hold now, there’s no need for that,” he said, wincing inwardly at the heartiness in his voice. “You keep those for now.”

“Why?” she demanded, somehow still managing to put an edge in the single word even with her face and eyes soft from tears—tears that, he was quite sure, she’d never let slip and shed before him.

“For all the reasons I said before,” he said. “Because Feversham’s your home. Because you belong here. Because I’ll need your knowledge of the house while making improvements.”

“Because the Trelawneys’ solicitors told you you must.”

“Because I wish it this way.” He reached out and placed his hand over hers with the keys, gently pushing both back towards her. “Because it is right.”

She stared down at his hand over his. This time she didn’t pull away, and though she was silent, he could sense her warring with herself, fighting her own judgment.

“Because,” he said. “Damnation, Fan, because you belong here.”

She raised her gaze to meet his, letting him glimpse that same vulnerable, lonely girl he’d discovered earlier in the graveyard, the one that was so carefully hidden behind the guise of the stern, competent housekeeper. He felt her turn her fingers against his, not to grasp the ring of keys more firmly, but to find the comfort of his touch.

“Because you want me to stay?” she whispered, the depth of her daring bright in her eyes.

“Because I want you to stay,” he repeated, and to his confused surprise he realized he’d never wanted anything more in his life. No, that wasn’t exactly true. What he wanted more was to take her into his arms, to feel the roughness of her woolen gown and the softness of her skin and learn how her hair would come undone and spill over his arm as he turned her face up towards his to kiss her. That was what he wanted even more.

But though he was known as a brave man, with medals and gold braid on his coat to prove it, he wasn’t brave enough to kiss her that boldly, not now, not yet. Instead he raised her hand, the keys jingling together, and pressed his lips to the back of it, closing his eyes to savor the scent of her wrist there at the edge of her sleeve, to feel the strength and the gentleness of her neatly curled fingers.

That was all, and for this evening that would be enough.

He wanted her to stay, and now she would.

Chapter Five

Sleep did not come easily to Fan that night, and by the time she heard the old case clock in the front hall chime four, she doubted she’d closed her eyes for more than a quarter of an hour altogether. It was not that the newcomers to Feversham had made noise to keep her awake—they were all in bed and asleep long before she’d doused her own candlestick—but simply the knowledge that she was no longer alone in the house was enough to make her toss and turn and worry herself into exhaustion.

Add to that the scene of George kissing her hand in his bedchamber—his fingers cradling hers as gently as if they’d been made of spun glass, his lips warm against her skin, the way he’d murmured her given name—playing over and over in her memory, and she doubted she’d ever be able to find peace in sleep again.

George. A saint’s name, the name of kings, and now the name of Feversham’s new owner. But oh, when did she begin thinking of him like that, as George instead of the string of his titles? She was his housekeeper, his servant, not his friend and certainly not his lover. To address him with such familiarity would be the one more slippery step downward to her own ruin, with no way ever to climb back.

That kiss on her hand had been another. Why, why hadn’t she pulled away with the same decisiveness that she’d mustered when he’d taken her arm in the village? Could she only protest when there were others watching? Or was she so weak that she’d cared more for that shiver of heady pleasure that came from his touch? So weak that she’d welcome his attention even after he’d confessed that he’d kept her here only because the Trelawneys had ordered it?

So weak, or was she simply that lonely?

With a groan of frustration she pushed back the coverlets and rolled from the bed, reaching for the flint to light her candlestick. There seemed little point in trying any longer to sleep, and besides, no matter how early it was, she could always find much to do. She’d squandered yesterday afternoon aimlessly riding Pie along the flat stretch of the beach at low tide, looking for a possible new rendezvous spot of the Company that was off Feversham land and trying to sort her muddled thoughts. But all she’d succeeded in doing was wasting time that she could ill afford to waste, and making herself even more miserable in the process.

She blew the coals in her fireplace back to life, and hooked the kettle over them to heat water for tea while she dressed. With only herself in the house, she’d fallen into the habit of cooking and eating here, in her bedchamber, rather than lighting fires in the enormous kitchen hearth. Her aunt would have been horrified, accusing her of living in one room like some wretched poor cottager, but Fan had found cooking for one below stairs too bleak and solitary, her father’s tall-backed chair at the oak table too painfully empty.

That would change now. She wasn’t certain exactly how many men George had brought with him, but she could guess that, being men, they would be expecting their breakfast when they woke. It would be a new challenge, no doubt, but she was ready to take it, especially with this early a start on the day.

But she did wish she knew what George liked for his first meal so she’d be able to please him. Was he the sort of gentleman who eased himself into the day with a dish of milky tea and a plate of raisin buns, or did he prefer to make a hearty conquest of his breakfast, with the sideboard laden with meats and pies, pots of butter and marmalade and rafts of toast? She would have to learn his preferences, in this as in everything else.

Swiftly she washed, dressed, and braided her hair while she sipped at her tea, then took the candlestick to light her way and hurried down the back stairs to begin the kitchen fire. A single, mournful bong from the tall clock echoed her footsteps: half past four.

Early, yes, but not as early as Fan had believed. Even on the stairs she could hear the sounds of pans crashing together and a man’s off-key singing and swearing, one blending seamlessly into the other. She could also smell the scent of roasting meat, and see the bright, flickering light from the fire, a large and wasteful fire, too, from the brightness of it. She frowned, determined to stop such blatant disregard for the cost of wood, and marched sternly into the kitchen.

And stopped abruptly at the sight before her. What her poor, dear aunt would have made of this in her kitchen!

Looming over the hearth was a stout older man with one leg missing below the knee, the stump supported by an elaborately carved wooden peg turned like a newel post at the base of a staircase. The man had no hair left on the top of his head, but from the nape he still could grow the gray queue that hung down the middle of his back, nearly to the strings of the leather apron tied around his barrel-shaped waist. In his hand he brandished a long-handled meat-fork like a kitchen-king’s scepter, and beneath his bristling white brows was no welcome for Fan at all.

“What d’ye be gawkin’ at, missy?” he demanded.

“And what are you doing in my kitchen?” she demanded back, settling her hands on her hips. Not only was the man making free with the hearth and larder, but he’d also changed things that hadn’t been changed in Fan’s lifetime: the woodbin had been shifted from one side of the room to the other, the ancient black iron kettle with the mended handle had been replaced by one of new copper, and twin rows of new blue-and-white chalkware plates now filled the shelves of the Welsh dresser in place of the familiar battered pewter chargers. “What is your name?”

“I be John Small, His Lord Cap’n’s cook and warrant officer of His Majesty’s frigate Nimble, and twice the man as any you’ll ever know,” said the man, jabbing his fork at a chicken roasting on a spit over the fire. “Who the devil be you?”

“I am Mistress Winslow, the keeper of this house,” she said warmly, giving an irritable little shove at a packing-barrel filled with wood shavings and more new dishes, “and I have no love for ill-mannered old men, whomever they pretend to be. Why are you here at this hour, meddling where you don’t belong and waking the house with your blasphemy and caterwauling?”

“I be makin’ His Lordship’s breakfast, as even a fool in black petticoats could see if she used her eyes for seein’.” With the long-handled fork, he turned the strips of bacon sizzling in the iron spider, one deft twist of his wrist that kept the fat from splattering into the coals.

“As for this hour or that hour,” he continued, without deigning to look her way, “why, it be smack in the middle o’ morning watch, and if His Lordship’s not to go begging for his eggs and bacon, but to have them proper, when he wakes, then this be the hour when they gets made.”

Fan flushed, for this was not how the morning was to have begun. Here she’d contrived a pleasing dream of surprising George with a fine-made breakfast, while this dreadful old man had already done so and better, and in her own kitchen, too, making her feel like a lazy, worthless slug-a-bed in the bargain.

“Now if you wish to make yourself useful, missy,” continued Small, cracking four eggs in quick succession into the glossy sheen of melted butter waiting in another pan over the coals, “then there’s His Lordship’s chocolate still waiting.”

“I am not here to take orders from you,” said Fan tartly, but still she looked to where he was pointing with his fork. On the table sat a tall, cone-shaped contraption like a pewter coffeepot without a spout or handle, but with a long wooden paddle that protruded through a hole in the lid. Beside it on a trivet sat a pan of steaming milk, and a dish of grated chocolate.

“Get along with it, missy,” he said impatiently. “Put the chocolate into the mill, then the milk, slow and easy, to keep out the lumps. His Lordship don’t care for lumps in his chocolate, not at all.”

Fan studied the chocolate mill warily. No one she knew drank chocolate, not with tea so readily available, and she’d never seen a chocolate mill before this one. Not that she wished to admit that to John Small.

“I don’t take orders from the kitchen staff,” she said defensively. “As Feversham’s housekeeper, I give them.”

The man’s eyes gleamed. “That don’t be it at all,” he said, his contempt palpable. “Do it now? Nay, it be that you don’t know how to make chocolate, do you?”

“Of course I do,” she said swiftly, though of course she didn’t. She lifted the lid on the mill and poured the milk inside, around the wooden paddle, and then the chocolate, before she snapped the lid down tight. She reasoned that somehow the chocolate must be blended with the milk, and taking the mill in both hands, she gave it a tentative shake.

“Do you be daft, missy, or only pretending to make a righteous idiot of yourself?” Small yanked the mill from her hands and set it on the table. He centered the handle of the paddle between his palms and rolled it briskly back and forth until the milk and chocolate became a frothy, fragrant mixture. “There now, that be how fine London gentlemen drink their chocolate.”

“But this isn’t London,” she protested. “This is Kent.”

“Oh, aye, and I be needing you to explain the differences?” He snorted as he deftly flipped the sizzling bacon in the skillet. “I’ve seen cockle-shell galleys with better kitchens than this. Where’s your proper stove, I ask you? Cookin’ over a fire like this be well and fine for grannies and cottagers and such, but if His Lordship expects grand dinners for his mates, then a proper Robinson range we must have.”

“Perhaps you should be making do with what you have rather than pining after what you don’t,” said Fan defensively, striving to keep her voice from turning shrill with frustration. She’d no more knowledge of what “a proper Robinson range” might be than of how to operate a chocolate mill, and the more John Small ranted and railed, the more ignorant she felt.

She couldn’t deny that Feversham had grown shabby under the Trelawneys, but the kitchen had always been sufficient for her aunt and her mother and a score of other cooks before them, and to hear it attacked now by this one-legged old sailor—why, it seemed disrespectful and wrong.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t be looking to change everything just for the sake of changing,” she said, “not when—here now, where are you going with that?”

A beardless young sailor with a calico kerchief tied around his head and his arms full of firewood stared blankly at her.

“There’s plenty of wood in the woodbin already without you traipsing in here with more,” she said. “Besides, dry wood like that costs good money, and we’ll not be wasting it keeping a great roaring fire all the day long in the kitchen. Take it back to—”

“Stow it here in the woodbin, Danny,” said Small as easily as he’d arranged the breakfast tray. “No use runnin’ short o’ twigs, is there?”