Marrying the Mistress. Juliet Landon

she kissed me daintily on both cheeks, casting her eye over my black outfit with the grey squirrel fur up to my ears. For all her fair, petite, middle-aged looks and elfin ways, she was as tough and sensible a businesswoman as any in York, with the typically dour sense of humour that can poke fun at what is difficult to accept. ‘No, dear,’ she said, without a hint of levity, ‘but we’re selling fur muffs and knitted gloves like hot cakes, so we can’t have our customers getting overheated, can we?’

      ‘And fur-lined capes? Those fur hats, too?’

      ‘Fur-edged handkerchiefs,’ she replied, deadpan.

      ‘No!’

      ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘Come and see.’

      ‘It’s not warm enough in here either,’ I said, entering the large workroom where women sat at the oak table, each with a mound of fabric before her, reels of cotton on revolving stands, pincushions and tapes, scissors, lamps and lace edgings. They looked up and smiled, all of them swaddled in woollen shawls and fingerless mittens. The windows were white, patterned with ferns.

      ‘No coal delivery this week,’ Prue said. ‘We’re having to eke it out. I can’t keep the fire going all night any more, and now the pump is frozen.’

      ‘I’ll send some coal across. Get cook to make some soup.’

      ‘That all adds to the costs, you know.’

      Faces looked up, grinning slyly. Prue never starved them.

      She followed me into the fitting room, draped with discreet pale curtains and peopled by miniature figures on shelves wearing the latest Paris modes. In here, I paraded gowns before our best customers, where they called me ‘Madame Helene’, impressed by my French pronunciation and having no qualms about our poor relationship with France. War or no war, French modes were all the thing, and our supplies of silks and lace was wondered at, bought, but never queried.

      ‘Brierley came about the will,’ I told Prue, quietly.

      I told her what had been said. She listened, unruffled.

      ‘Then go to Stonegate and collect them,’ she said.

      ‘Go now. You don’t need a key. Go in by the kitchen door. If you delay till Friday, it’ll be too late.’

      ‘Do I care enough to go and help myself?’ I asked.

      ‘Of course you do. Go! Mr Monkton’s servants will let you in.’

      She steered me through into the shop festooned with fabrics where customers were being attended at the long counter. ‘Good morning, Mrs Barraclough. Miss Fairweather. Lady Bess, good morning to you.’ She flicked a fair eyebrow at me and ushered me out into the snow, closing the door, setting the bell tinkling again.

      At Stonegate, it was easy enough to pass through the ginnel into the courtyard and from there to the kitchen door. The cook, butler and coachman were there, huddled round the fire, surprised but not unwelcoming. I explained my mission and was led courteously up the back stairs into the echoing hall. ‘Would you like some assistance, Miss Follet?’ said the butler. ‘Or would you prefer to be alone?’

      ‘To be honest, Mr Treddle,’ I said, ‘I’m not even sure I ought to be doing this. Mr Brierley said to make a list, but I really don’t… well, you know.’

      ‘I understand perfectly, ma’am, and I feel sure Mr Monkton would too. May I suggest that you place your possessions on your bed, and I will personally wrap them and have them conveyed to Blake Street later on today. Would that do, do you think? That way, you’ll not have removed them, will you?’

      ‘Thank you, Mr Treddle. That will do perfectly.’

      ‘Very good, ma’am.’ He bowed, leaving me alone and feeling as strange as I had at my first entry, seventeen years old and on the cusp of something new. Yet again.

      Upstairs, the sour smell of medication had gone and the tables had been cleared of the usual healing clutter. My silver pill box, brought from my old home, was still in his bedside drawer, yet even now I hesitated to take it. Smoothing the grey fur coverlet, I sat down on his bed as I had so often done to comfort him, to talk, to watch him sleep. Dear Linas.

      The door, left open, gave on to a wide landing and the curve of polished elm, and if my eyes had not been closed by memories, I would have noticed, long before my return to the present, the tall great coated figure who had come to stand just inside the door frame.

      I started with a gasp of shock, only half-believing.

      ‘Miss Follet,’ he said, softly.

      I took a breath, summoning my matter-of-fact voice. ‘Oh…you! You’ve saved me a journey. I was going to pay you a visit today.’ He looked less weary, I thought, wishing my heart would not be so feckless.

      ‘In this weather? I should hope not. Was it urgent?’

      ‘Mr Brierley came. You must know, surely.’

      ‘And?’

      ‘There are things to be discussed.’ Glancing at Linas’s open drawer, I explained. ‘He wanted me to give him a list. I don’t do lists of possessions. I’ve lost too many possessions for that.’

      ‘I don’t blame you. Was there something in the drawer? Treddle told me why you’re here.’

      ‘Well…yes. That pill box. It was my father’s.’

      ‘Then take it.’ When I did not, he walked over to the drawer, removed the pill box and gave it to me. ‘There. Now, what else is there?’

      ‘You don’t mind?’

      ‘Why should I?’ he replied, wandering across the room with his hands clasped behind his back beneath the greatcoat. ‘My staff are not going to know what belongs and what doesn’t when they start next week.’

      ‘What do you mean…your staff?’

      He stopped his wandering and turned to face me with a searching look as if he was deliberating what to say. Yet again, I felt that this must be the prelude to some unwelcome news. ‘Some of my staff from Abbots Mere. The house belongs to me now.’ Then, as the shock dawned upon my face, he added, ‘Oh, dear. Brierley didn’t tell you? It was remiss of him to keep you in the dark. The staff you saw downstairs will remain, and the housekeeper too. I can use a house in the city as well as one outside it.’

      What a fool I was. Why could I not have drawn more realistic conclusions about this? Guessing the answer to my next query, I asked it nevertheless. ‘So who owns the one I live in on Blake Street? Mr Brierley said I would maintain the right to…’

      ‘To live in it as long as you wish. Yes, that part was not in the will, but Linas and I agreed it between us. It belongs to me, you see. It always did. I lent it to Linas for your use.’

      My guess had been correct. My arms prickled, but not with the cold. I stood up and closed the drawer with a snap. ‘If I’d known that…’

      ‘You’d what? Have refused to live in it?’

      ‘I had thought…hoped…that Linas would provide me and his son with a roof over our heads, at the very least. Now, I cannot even sell it to make ends meet.’ I could not deny that one of my main reasons for wanting to bear Linas’s child was to do with the security it would bring. It had, as it happened, brought much more than that, not least being great happiness to his last few years. I had never regretted that part of the experience.

      ‘You don’t need to make ends meet, Miss Follet. I intend to continue paying all the running costs, as I have done since I lent it to my brother. You won’t have any more expenses than you did before, except personal ones for which Linas has left you a modest sum.’

      ‘You…you paid for its upkeep? And servants too?’

      ‘Well, of course I did. Linas didn’t have many extravagances, apart from…’