“If he is not the complete ass he acts, then he is in this with her, so no. Not him. I cannot take the ledgers away for that would be noticed.” He looked over what little there was strewn on the desk. “And she did not leave behind the papers she claimed Miss Primrose and Lord Simeon signed giving her the power to do Willow Hill business. And, no, they did not sign anything. That was a lie.”
“I have no idea what to do, Jenson.”
“Do not make her angry. Want to know why I was with her? Because she threatened the lives of my brother and his family and my daughter. She has just sent a man off to do the same to Master Geoffrey because the baron left Courtyard Manor to him and she will lose the lease money. That is how she works. And she has done something somewhere that makes them believe it, or her hirelings do for they are all violent men.”
“I might have something they can use,” Mrs. Jakes said as she stood up and started out of the room.
Jenson hurried after her. She went down into the wine cellar and he frowned. As far as he knew neither Augusta nor her useless husband had ever been down here for they expected, always, to be served. Then Mrs. Jakes tugged a little book out from between two bottles, the reddish-brown leather cover elaborately carved with a butterfly.
“It is Lady Wootten’s journal. She wrote in it all the time. I had just learned to read when she died and thought it would be lovely to read her words, that it might help me deal with the grief I was struggling with. She suspected Augusta of crimes, small ones at first but then larger and increasingly evil. It began slowly, with a few writings about hurt and disappointment concerning a woman she considered a sister to her. Near the end there was fear and on the last page she had decided to tell the baron.”
“At which time she conveniently dies in a fall,” Jenson murmured as he took the book from her hands. “Thank you, Mrs. Jakes. I will get this book to them. Even if, in the end, it is little help, it is something I think Miss Primrose would treasure. Now, be very careful and do nothing to anger the woman.”
“I will be careful. Just do your best to get that to one of the baroness’s children so they can end their mother’s killer. Now that she is back and searching every part of the house for something, perhaps more evidence of something valuable she can steal or sell, I fear she will find it.”
Jenson slipped out of the manor and into the woods. He knew of a shepherd’s shack on the hills where he could hide for a while. Being up on the hill would also give him a very good view of the road. For now he would just do his best to remain hidden but the moment he caught sight of any of the people riding with Miss Primrose, he would do all he could to get this book to her. Augusta was drunk on her own power and it was past time someone sobered her up.
Chapter Seventeen
Willow Hill Manor appeared in view as they crested a small rise. Primrose looked at it with relief for it signaled an end of a very long ride. She wondered if it would ever feel like home again now that her father was gone. It occurred to her that her brother was going to have a difficult time putting his own mark on the property for their father’s was so strong, so intertwined with all that was Willow Hill.
“It is not the same,” said Simeon as he reined in beside her. “It looks the same, I know, but it does not feel the same.” He shook his head. “And I am making absolutely no sense.”
“I know what you mean. The heart of it is gone.” She frowned a little. “Something else troubled me and I believe I now know what. None of us have been here and yet there are no signs that that has mattered. It has been run and cared for so efficiently, it appears it does not even need us. That is very unsettling. It is not a welcoming feel when I look at it, but it’s almost as if the house is shrugging and saying, ‘Well, come in if you must, but if you track mud from your boots on my carpets, I will crush you.’”
“Oh well,” he stuttered out, and then scowled at the house. “That was very fanciful and somewhat unsettling. It has been cared for correctly is all and, at some point, one of us would be needed. It is just that Papa hired good people.”
“Yet allowed two adders, one of them extremely poisonous, to freely slither about the place?”
Simeon sighed. “I did no better.”
“Nor I but I keep reminding myself that we were only children. Children are very good at believing everything is their fault, especially if some adult says it is, nor do they wish to give a parent any news that will cause discord. Penelope said a few things about the children she takes in, every one of them tossed out by their mothers. They all come to her thinking it is all their fault, that they are evil or whatever cruel thing they were told. Augusta was always telling me what a bad child I was. Why would I wish to tell Papa about that? I think I was terrified he would agree and not love me anymore. Then there is all that trouble I had with forgetting the truly horrible things she did to me.”