As she stepped out on to the landing she could hear a vigorous altercation coming from the spare room. She pushed the door open to find Miss Prudhome, one finger raised to wag under Jethro’s nose and the lad himself, somewhat white but determined, with one leg in his breeches and one out. His large shirt covered him with perfect decency, but he still blushed scarlet at the sight of Hester.
‘Jethro, what are you doing out of bed? Get back this instant.’
‘That is exactly what I have been telling him, Hester.’ Maria sounded thoroughly flustered. ‘But he insists.’
‘Do you want us to put you back to bed?’ Hester threatened, advancing on the lad who managed to negotiate the other leg of his breeches and backed away from her.
‘Miss Hester, my shoulder feels better if I’m not lying down, honest it does,’ he protested.
‘The doctor said you were to rest for a week.’
‘I can do that downstairs. Please, Miss Hester, I’m going out of my mind, stuck up here. I can sit in the kitchen, quiet-like, and read my book.’
‘Very well, but only if you promise that if Miss Prudhome thinks you look tired or unwell and orders you back to bed, you go with no argument. Now, is that a promise?’
‘Yes, Miss Hester.’
‘Then finish getting dressed.’
‘Only if you ladies go out. I’m not seven, Miss Hester!’
‘Er, no. Of course not. Come along, Maria, and leave Jethro to finish dressing.’ Hester managed to keep a straight face until they were out of the door. ‘Poor Jethro, I do feel he has a hard life sometimes in a household of women. Perhaps Parrott will not mind if he walks over to the Old Manor one day soon for another talk.’
They reached the kitchen to find Ben Aston the handyman propping up the door into the yard and chatting to Susan. He straightened up as Hester entered and knuckled his forehead. ‘I came round in case there was anything you needed doing, Miss Lattimer, what with last night an’ all.’
‘What about last night?’ Hester kept her voice calm with an effort.
‘All the lights on back here, thought perhaps you’d had the burglars or som’at.’
‘Burglars? Goodness, no. Young Ackland was very unwell in the night and we were up for most of it brewing hot possets and warming bricks and I don’t know what else. But it is good of you to be concerned, Aston. How come you were around at such an hour?’
‘Up early to a sick cow, Miss Lattimer,’ he answered glibly.
Poaching, Hester translated to herself. It just went to show how difficult it was to keep anything secret in a village.
‘Now you are here, you can finish turning out the sheds in the yard. Let me have a look at everything you find, but I expect most of it will have to be burned. Then sweep them out and check the roofs for leaks, if you will please.’
They were finishing their belated breakfast to the sound of thumps as Aston tossed a seemingly endless mountain of junk out into the yard when Mrs Dalling arrived for her day’s work at the Moon House. Hester had come to an arrangement with the two village women recommended by Mrs Bunting that they would take it in turns to come in daily on five days of the week for the rough cleaning, the washing, to prepare vegetables for meals and to make bread. In this way, most of the heavy work was taken care of and the household had their privacy by the evening.
Hester and Maria took themselves off to the drawing room, leaving Susan organising Mrs Dalling and Jethro seated in the big Windsor chair by the range with a cushion behind his back and Mr Parrott’s book on his knee.
Hester picked up a pile of bills and her accounts book and Maria started to rearrange a winter bouquet of evergreens on the mantel. But she seemed disinclined to concentrate on the task.
‘What do you think Lord Buckland will do if he finds Sir Lewis with a black eye?’
Hester frowned at the butcher’s account. ‘Is it possible we consume so much stewing steak? Sir Lewis? I have no idea; presumably his lordship has arrived at some plan.’
‘Will he call him out, do you think?’ Miss Prudhome stood, one limp ivy frond in her hand, an excited glint in her eye.
‘I have no idea, Maria. Probably he will do nothing to disclose our suspicions. Now, please, do let me concentrate on these accounts.’
‘Perhaps he will hit him again.’ This seemed to gratify the genteel companion to a surprising degree. ‘He most certainly deserves it.’
‘Yes.’ Hester nibbled the end of her quill abstractedly. The image of Guy, standing over a cowed and beaten foe who had been felled to the ground after a spirited flurry of blows, was a stimulating one. The fantasy developed rapidly to the point where the earl strode over and took Miss Lattimer in his arms, passionately embracing her and raining kisses upon her upturned face.
Hester pulled herself together to find a large blot on her account book. This must stop. It was dangerous folly she was deluding herself with-the one thing that was certain in the life of Miss Hester Lattimer was that no respectable alliance with any gentleman was possible. To fall in love with an earl could have only two endings: heartbreak or the acceptance of a carte blanche.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN