Page 28 of The Jilted Duchess
“Oh, very well, Your Grace, thank you for asking. Mrs. Hopsted is a kind and diligent instructor, and I am enjoying my duties muchly.” Jenny was polite and sincere, and Alexandra smiled at her.
“That’s good to hear, Jenny. Are you finding enough to occupy your time when you have completed your duties? It must be strange, moving from the village to a house like this.”
“A little, Your Grace, but I’m getting along all right. Mrs. Hopsted very kindly lent me one of her young Nancy’s books to read by the fire in the evenings. I don’t really have any of my own, you see. It’s about a man who told the king that his daughter can spin gold. So the king takes the girl away so that she can make gold for him.”
“Does she? Make the gold, I mean.”
“I don’t know, Your Grace. I haven’t got very far in it yet.” Jenny looked to the ground, and Alexandra felt a pang as she realized the young girl was ashamed. “I didn’t get much schooling, see. I’m not too good with my reading and writing. But I’m keen to learn!” She looked up at Mrs. Hopsted, who nodded encouragingly.
“It sounds to me like you’re doing a wonderful job. If you ever wish to use the library for a quiet place to study or to borrow a book, please don’t hesitate to do so.”
Jenny looked up at her with wide eyes. “Really? That would be wonderful, Your Grace, thank you!”
Alexandra made a mental note to look into procuring some school workbooks that Jenny might appreciate. “You are most welcome. The same applies to your children, Mrs. Hopsted. I know they are trustworthy girls, they may borrow whatever they wish.”
Mrs. Hopsted dipped her head. “It’s much appreciated, Your Grace. I shall send the girls in to thank you personally just as soon as I get a hold of them.”
Alexandra smiled, thinking of the wild young things who were no doubt currently running around in the woods and getting up to mischief. She was sure it would be an arduous task for the Hopsted parents to corral their girls long enough to tidy them up and present them to a duchess. She turned to Gracie, who had until now been trying desperately to blend into the wallpaper. “And how about you, Gracie? How have you been getting along.”
“M’fine thanks,” she mumbled.
Mrs. Hopsted let slip a long-suffering sigh. “Your Grace,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “I am fine thank you,Your Grace.”
Gracie went scarlet in embarrassment. “M’fine thank you, Your Grace,” she muttered quickly, eyes on the ground.
Alexandra couldn’t help but feel for her. She was clearly a nervous sort of girl in the first place, and she had no doubt that Gracie finding her elderly former mistress deceased in a chair would have surely made the matter worse. She tried her best to look approachable, though she was not entirely sure she had succeeded. “Well, that’s certainly good to hear. Please don’t hesitate to come to me should you require anything.”
Gracie nodded without looking up. “Thank you, Your Grace,” she said, even quieter and quicker than before.
Alexandra decided to release her from her torture. She straightened and addressed her housekeeper. “Mrs. Hopsted, I wonder if you would help me with something in His Grace’s study. If the girls can complete their tasks on their own, that is.”
“They surely can, Your Grace.” Mrs. Hopsted shooed the young housemaids away and stepped forward. “How can I be of assistance?”
“It’s certainly looking much tidier, if I may say so, Your Grace.”
Alexandra looked up from the desk and smiled at Mrs. Hopsted, watching the woman busily yet carefully dust the shelves full of trinkets and ornaments. “I think you’re quite right, Mrs. Hopsted. Thank you for helping me with the matter.”
“Not at all, Your Grace. Many hands make light work and all that. Besides, if I might be so bold, you have done me rather a favor. Breaking in new maids can be an ordeal, sometimes it’s ever so nice to have a bit of a breather from it.”
Alexandra laughed quietly, pleased that the housekeeper felt comfortable enough around her to make a joke. They had been working in companionable silence for the past hour, methodically working their way around the room. Alexandra had put Mrs. Hopsted to work dusting and tidying up the furniture. Although she knew Hector trusted the woman, she felt certain that he wouldn’t appreciate someone rooting through his personal and business papers.
So Alexandra took on that duty herself. She was conscious not to read too much of the contracts and files, glancing at them just enough to decipher the subject matter so that she could add them to the relevant pile. She organized them into what she hoped were useful categories before filing the older items away into the desk and cabinets. The newer papers and those that seemed like they were in the process of being reviewed, she linedup on the desk in tidy trays. She was rather pleased with herself as she admired her handiwork. The documents were certainly much neater, and she hoped Hector wouldn’t be angry with her.
As she moved across to the bureau and began to open the drawers, she mused that she had never really seen Hector in an angry mood. Even at the church that very first day of their acquaintance, as he was faced with his dastardly stepmother and absent brother, he was calm and assured, a master at commanding the situation. Alexandra did not have much experience with men who refused to allow their negative emotions to best them. Her brothers-in-law were all good and decent men, she knew, but she also knew that they had experienced their wild moments before time, and her sisters had helped them change for the better. Her father had been joyless and easy to anger for almost as long as she could remember.
Alexandra knew that men could be quite adept at hiding their tempers until it spilled out of them like water streaming from a broken cup. And she had, of course, heard stories of young ladies swept up by handsome, charming, eligible men, who floated up the aisle and into his manor in a haze of bliss, where he promptly locked the doors and showed her an altogether different face now that he had her trapped in a cage. Alexandra liked to think that she was not a naive woman, and she certainly was not about to let down her guard. But Hector just confused and frustrated her so thoroughly. He was so cheerfulall the time,and yet it never seemed forced or insincere. He had shouldered the burden of whispers and coldness at the ball with a grace and dignity she was sure even born gentlemen would have struggled to produce. Nothing seemed to affect him at all, and yet Alexandra was certain that could not possibly be the truth.
She had been paying little attention to the ledgers she was now sorting in her daydreaming, but as she pushed them from one drawer to another, the Dowager Duchess’ name caught her eye. She attempted to resist, but curiosity finally got the better of her. With a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure Mrs. Hopsted was now occupied with dusting the lamps, Alexandra hefted the book out onto the table.
She flicked through a few pages, noting that Hector seemed to be funding all the Dowager’s household expenses each month.It’s very good of him, really. And unnecessary - does the Dowager not have her own widow’s allowance? Surely she could buy her own salmon from that?
She turned another page and then froze, the cogs in her brain whirring. She turned back and stared at the salmon entry once more. Her heart sank. Something was completely and definitely wrong. She turned the ledger right back to the beginning and went slower, trailing her finger down each page as she added sums together in her head. With every month’s summary of accounts, her horror mounted. As Alexandra reached the end of the most recent year’s ledger, she pulled older ones out of the drawer and combed through every one.
But this is just impossible. How could Hector not have noticed all this? How could no one have seen this before?
She was pulled out of her daze by Mrs. Hopsted’s distant voice. “Are you all right over there, Your Grace? You’ve gone ever so rigid. Have you seen a mouse?”
Alexandra forced her shoulders to relax. “I’m fine, thank you. I just inhaled some dust is all.”
