Page 36 of The Tart's Final Noel
“You said you were living in your granny’s house.Is that true?”Waiting until Parsons took a seat, Damien took the mug Rafe handed him and sipped.
“Oncet was hers, long time ago.Didn’t look like no one there.Didn’t see no reason not to use it.Thought maybe old man Bartlett bought it for Rose when granny passed.”Parsons warily accepted the drink handed him.
“When did you get here?”Rafe didn’t offer Brydie a drink but glanced toward the kitchen door.He’d be wanting to oversee dinner preparations.
“Only day a’fore you brought me food.”Parsons bowed awkwardly at Brydie.“Mighty appreciative.I hoped Rose would feed me, help me find work.”
“But you didn’t visit her.”Brydie wasn’t ready to forgive him for his shocking assault on her person.He may have learned to survive by attacking first, but he shouldn’t have been stealing chickens.
“Like I said, there was gentry all about.I thought I’d catch Rose at the henhouse of a morning.”He glared at her.“Then you showed up.”
“Decent folk knock on doors, not lurk in henhouses.You’re back in civilization now.You have to behave civilly.”Brydie opened the kitchen door and noted with relief that Kate had the ladies assembling a cold collation.Expecting hot food out of the new staff was asking too much.They might learn to take initiative in time but not yet.
“You haven’t seen Willa since she was a young girl?Twenty, thirty years?”Damien asked, taking his mug to a table.“Did you write to her, let her know you were coming?”
“I don’t write.She don’t read.What’s the point?Either she takes me in or she don’t.”He took a defiant drag on his ale.
Parsons passed that little test, Brydie thought.But she didn’t doubt he was related to Willa.In a closely-knit rural village of blue-eyed blonds and red-haired Irish, the Willoughby’s square faces, black eyes, and coarse hair stood out.“What brings you here now?”
He shrugged uncomfortably in his ill-fitting coat.“Earned enough to take sail home from that hellhole, but oncet I got here, couldn’t find a place to hire me.”He flashed the branded hand exposing his conviction.“I thought maybe I could help Rose, if the old man weren’t still around.”
“Bartlett?”Rafe asked.“He’s your uncle?”
“Rose’s uncle.We share a ma, not a pa.He hates my guts, says I’m a scoundrel.But if nobody gives me a job, how’m I supposed to eat?Not all of us was born well equipt.”Parsons didn’t even look up.Defeated, he sipped his ale.
“You know we just buried Miss Willoughby?”Brydie was tired of skirting around the subject.She was hungry and wanted to be in the kitchen.
“I worked that out when that fine fellow in t’other room tried to punch me for not attendin’ her funeral.Unless you want to throw me in a cell for bein’ ignorant, I guess I’ll just be movin’ on.”
“Not if we arrest you for killing her.”Rafe swigged his ale.
Terrified, Parsons heaved up from the table.
Damien shoved him back down.“Or you can stay here and help us find out who did.Do you know a Geoffrey Cooper?”
This was one of those times when Brydie knew she and Damien were meant to be together.Her cautious heart filled with love, and knowing the interrogation was in good hands, she sailed off to help Kate direct the kitchen ladies in preparing luncheon.
Nineteen
Rafe
At the end of a long,miserable day, Rafe dragged a chair from the pub to set before the dying embers of the lobby fire.He needed a few good leather chairs here, like the ones in the manor.He didn’t know if he’d ever be able to afford even third-hand ones.Dreaming of a fancy posting-inn wasn’t the same as building one from the bottom up.
He desperately missed Verity’s wise assurances.
They’d allowed Parsons to stay at the inn with the promise of finding him work in the morning—if only to keep him around for questioning.Rafe had no idea if that was the right thing to do, but Brydie hadn’t pressed charges.
Fletch had left to pick up the post in Stratford.Kate had taken her children and Brydie home.Damien was still dragging shelves and tables into a room down the east hall, setting up his office on the ground-floor.With more rooms than guests, the inn didn’t need ladies’ parlors or private dining or whatever the damned room had once been.The bloody inn was a village all on its own.
He'd been mad to invest all his earnings in a sprawling, ramshackle, medieval barn.With Verity at his side, it had made sense.He’d wanted Verity.She’d wanted a home.She’d been raised in a huge mansion and deserved better than a cottage.So he’d given her a barn.And she’d quite rightfully taken the first opportunity offered to move into the manor.
All those years on his own and now he longed for the company of a banty hen of alady.He wanted to hear her clucking about this and that.Worse, he wanted to know what the little imps were equal to.In his years of fighting across the Continent, he’d never given children any thought, but now she’d put the notion in his head, he could imagine the inn full of little gingers raising a ruckus.And a pair of towheads, too, he supposed, if no one claimed them.They’d have a heritage to be proud of one day, if he made the inn work.
But this bailiff business...He wasn’t cut out for it.He wanted to be up at the manor, protecting his wife and the children.He didn’t want to be suspecting men of being monsters.He was a soldier.He was aware that, given good reason,allmen were monsters, including himself.He resented the reminder.
Carrying his heavy greatcoat, his new tenant emerged from the east hall, looking as weary as Rafe felt.“You could lock up for the night,” Damien suggested.“It’s unlikely you’ll have anyone arriving after dark.”
“Can’t leave the maids alone.Can’t go up to my wife.What else can I do?I’d hire a night clerk, but who can I trust?Parsons is a filching cove.I can’t believe a word he says.”
