Scott nodded. “I know. What I don’t know is why you have been acting as butler at Houghton Manor at all. I cannot imagine it was a condition of Gillian being welcomed there.”
“It wasn’t,” Mrs. Brownlow said. “And it wasn’t my idea.”
That eliminated two possible origins of the arrangement.
“We lost our home,” Mr. Phelps said. “I found a place where Gillian would be looked after and cared for. But I had nowhere to live. To take up residence at Houghton Manor myself would have been scandalous, as Mrs. Brownlow and I had both lost our spouses.”
“That makes sense.” Scott motioned for him to continue his explanation.
Mr. Phelps folded his hands on his lap, assuming what would have been a very casual, unconcerned demeanor if not for the tension around his eyes. “I needed a job that either paid enough for me to afford a roof over my head or provided one itself. No matter what I chose, I would be casting a shadow over Gillian’s eventual arrival in Society. And no matter where I settled, I would be parted from her. The situation was, I assure you, a dismal one.”
“I can imagine.”
Mrs. Brownlow took up the retelling. “My butler had only just chosen to leave his post after thirty years, something I happened to mention in a letter to Mr. Phelps. I hadn’t meant it as an offer of employment or a hint, but he took it that way.”
“I knew how a household was run, though I hadn’t personally overseen the running of it,” Mr. Phelps said. “No one on the staff had met me yet. Houghton Manor is a bit isolated, and Mrs. Brownlow did not often have guests.”
“And you felt you could take on the role with minimal complications?” Scott guessed.
“I was more drawn to the fact that I would be able to be where Gillian was. I wouldn’t have to miss the rest of her growing-up years.”
Ah. “Did you tell her your motivation for accepting the position?”
“Not at the time,” he said. “But I have since. I don’t know that it helped.”
Scott didn’t want to antagonize the man, but these very logical explanations crashed against the heart-wrenching memory of Gillian weeping in his arms, and he knew he couldn’t leave some things unsaid. “She has told you that she wants you to be her father, that she has missed you. I don’t know if she has admitted to you that the rejections she endured at the hands of Society were rendered more powerful by theyearsof rejection she had already experienced from you.”
To his credit, he looked heartsick and regretful.
“She was pondering ways to still have you in her life, despite the need for you to continue on in this vein. And then you came on this journey and were introduced to the entire area, to everyone who will one day be her neighbor and friend and associate, as Mr. Walker, butler at Houghton Manor. You eliminated any hope, any possibility of your visiting her here as her father.” Scott looked very briefly at Mrs. Brownlow so she would realize part of this lay at her feet. “No one bothered to ask her whether the arrangement would suit her or how she felt about it. Once again, she carries the weight and bears theconsequences of decisions that were madeforher. Is it any wonder, really, that she struggles to trust people?”
“She trustsyou,” Mrs. Brownlow said. “She told me so.”
“And Iloveher. I’ve told her so.”
Mrs. Brownlow smiled, a bit of the weight in her expression lifting. Mr. Phelps’s reaction looked more like relief.
“She needs her father in her life,” Scott said. “The three of us are going to sort out a means of making certain she has that, in whatever capacity we can manage.”
“Do you want me to dismiss him?” Mrs. Brownlow asked.
Scott looked to Mr. Phelps. “Do you want to be dismissed from your position?”
“Being a butler is the only thing I have been remotely good at for a decade,” Mr. Phelps said. “And I’ve enjoyed the work.”
“And is there nothing else you could imagine yourself doing? Something that would allow you to be Gillian’s father again?”
“I’m not qualified to do anything else.” Mr. Phelps held his hands up in a show of frustration. “And securing a new post would require references, which would require revealing who I am and what I’ve been doing.”
Which would cause the very damage his shows of indifference to Gillian were meant to have prevented.
“What if,” Mrs. Brownlow asked, eyes narrowed in thought, “there were another position available that required someone who knew how to run a household but who also understood how to interact with and guide Society types? And suppose that position, which would normally require references, did not, in this instance, require them?”
Scott watched her closely. It sounded ideal yet also seemed entirely unlikely. Mr. Phelps looked equally unsure.
“I have given thought to your plans for Thimbleby,” Mrs. Brownlow said. “And I know you don’t actually want to leave Sarvol House. But there is too much to be done at Thimbleby.Short of you living there and running it yourself, you perhaps could manage the thing if you found someone who knows how to organize the servants and knows how to fill the role of the resident gentlemen in between tenants.”
Oh heavens.Scott’s mind began spinning. “To do that, the person chosen could not be the butler.”