Page 43 of The Remarkable Myth of a Nameless Lady
He would not be allowed to return to sea.
Jacob looked around the room, seeing the laughing faces of the men he had served with for the last few years. His mother held court in the corner. She held herself with an air of someone who was being somewhat put upon. He could see in the set of her mouth, in the regal way she held her head, that these people, these particular friends, would not be welcome again in her home. She would see them as beneath her, as she did now.
He would lose these associations. It was an unsettling thought, one that did not sit well.
One of the men saw him lurking there in the doorway and called to him. A moment later, Jacob was thrust into the assembly. He found himself dancing with someone’s sister, and was passed along in short order, one partner to the next, until he’d danced three dances without having remembered asking anyone formally if they cared to. In truth he could not have imagined asking anyone to dance at all. When he even considered it, the only partner he desired was one not even there.
All the same, it was a riotous affair, the men easygoing, though treating him with a certain respectful air that maybe took on a greater degree of solemnity than it had previously. Every interaction underscored a change he hadn’t been aware was setting in. By the end of this house party, he would no longer be their Captain, except in fond memories and the occasional correspondence.
Begging off from further dancing, Jacob looked for his mother, only to find she had retired for the night. She must have slipped out while he was dancing. Somewhat thankful that he would not be called to account for his disappearance over dinner, Jacob set out to begin his own investigation. Namely, that of determining where his brother had disappeared to.
A handful of questions found him more confused than ever. No one had seen his brother leave the estate, but clearly he was not anywhere to be found. Somewhat nonplussed, Jacob found himself seated in the corner watching a game of whist while contemplating the servant girl who moved unobtrusively throughout the room, fetching items for the ladies, and attending to small details such as who needed a drink or cushion.
In truth, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d watched a servant at work. In his world, they had always just been there. Now as he considered this girl, he found himself wondering if she were happy in her work, or whether people were unknowingly cruel. He wondered how she felt about the people she served.
And about whether or not she was this mysterious Meghan that Alicia had told him to find.
Alicia. Leave it to her to consign him to feeling unsettled and discontented in even the most mundane of settings. If someone had told him the Irish lass was a witch he would have believed it. She had ensnared him under the spell of those amber eyes. The dusting of freckles across her nose beguiled. The bright curls of her hair that constantly escaped from under her cap lured him to her. She would be his downfall yet.
But for her, he would leave Ireland and never look back.
“Miss…” He caught the servant girl in passing, her hands full of shawls. The room grew chilly as the night progressed.
“Yes, Your Grace?”
Such plain, ordinary eyes. How was it that one girl could so beguile while another was merely another servant within his house? Disconcerted, he cleared his throat before speaking. “I was…er…rather hoping that you might be Miss…er…Meghan.”
Funny how talking to Alicia had come so easily. The girl, flustered, and with a hint of amusement in her hazel eyes, answered that she was not Meghan, that in fact she had not seen her for several hours.
This was not the answer he had expected. For some reason, Jacob had rather hoped that this line of inquiry might be something simple, where everything else had been complicated. Frowning, he asked the girl if she could find her for him as he wished to have a word with her in private.
It was an unorthodox request, and one better made through Mistress Flower or whatever her name was. That he had instead chosen to circumvent that redoubtable woman was only one more hint of the fear that was fast overtaking him. But he could not shake the feeling that this epic individual had in fact lied to him not once but several times.
And hadn’t she been responsible for hiring Alicia? Or now that he thought about it, hadn’t Owen had charge of the hiring? He tried to remember now what had been said upon meeting her. Had it only been a week since then?
Troubled now, Jacob realized that it was in fact Owen who had hired the girl and not Mistress Marigold as he had originally believed, though that good woman was clearly in charge of some aspects of hiring if she had made the decision to let the girl go.
Maybe he needed to talk to Mistress Marigold after all.
With that in mind, Jacob excused himself from the card players and left, not going to his study as he’d intended, but instead finding his way to the kitchens were the staff were just finishing the clearing away of dinner and were setting out the bread to rise for the morning.
“Your Grace!”
There was a clatter of cutlery, a scrambling of people drawing to attention as Jacob took in the room in a sort of amazement, first that it was run so efficiently, much like things upon his own ship, and second that it was functioning at such a high level with Mistress Marigold notably absent.
A dozen faces still turned toward him, wary and expectant. Jacob realized that running a crew of this nature not much different from handling a crew upon his ship, and saw for the first time what a mess he’d made of things in trying to jump in without knowing the arrangements of how the estate was run. His brother had been right; Jacob had clearly been acting the fool.
Whereas he had officers to handle different aspects of the ship, here too were overseers, and staff in varying ranks below that, without the helpfulness of titles to designate who was whom. There were no yeomen here or sailors, but a crew all the same, working seamlessly, long accustomed to working together. Henceforth he would try to understand these things before stepping in where he clearly wasn’t wanted or needed.
“I am looking for Mistress Marigold,” he said, with a certain triumph in his voice for having gotten the name right, given that no one corrected him nor seemed overly confused by the request.
Heads turned toward one of their own, the elected spokesman, a lean individual who was polishing the silverware with the intensity of a jeweler attending to his wares. This man pushed his spectacles back up his nose to look at the Duke better, giving a satisfied nod before answering. “She is visiting the wine cellar, Your Grace.” Her pointed toward a door, partially open, across the room.
“Thank you.” Jacob started toward that door then stopped again, this time pausing to look at each of the women who were kneading the dough, giggling heads together, trying to pretend that they weren’t watching him when in fact they were. “By any chance are any of you named Meghan?”
He thought he heard a cheeky reply of, “For you Icouldbe, Your Grace,” that might have come from any of the girls, for the giggles erupted anew when he looked at them sharply. It was his spokesman from before who answered for them.
“No, Your Grace. I believe that she, likewise, is below stairs.”
