“I will, m’lord.” Mrs. Jakes grabbed Jenson by the arm. “Come along, Jenson. You need food and clean clothes. If that woman comes back here, there is always the wine cellar to hide you in.”
Careful not to draw any attention to herself, Primrose slipped out of the room after Mrs. Jakes and Jenson. Guilt tried to turn her back for she really felt she should also be doing what she could to help Geoffrey. Then she thought on the long, complicated argument there would be before any of the men would allow her to join them in what was sure to be a battle and the guilt eased. They would leave quicker if they thought they were slipping away without her.
It was a long time, one that required a great deal of sneaking around, before Mrs. Jakes put the journal in the place the baron had built for Primrose to work on her plants and all her medicines and lotions. Primrose waited silently in the shadows as the two servants talked quietly and, to her surprise, gently kissed before Mrs. Jakes led Jenson away. Then, after assuring herself that they were gone, Primrose hurried over to get the journal.
“Huh.” Simeon scratched his chin. “I did not know that Mrs. Jakes liked Jenson. Valets tend to keep themselves above other servants.”
“Oh, she likes him just fine,” said Lilybet, refilling her cup with hot tea and then putting in a lot of sugar. “If the fool would just look about a bit he would not spend his declining years alone.”
“Servants are not usually allowed to marry.” He winced at the look Lilybet gave him. “Did not say I agreed with that, just that it is a custom. Those who make such rules think it interferes with their ability to do their jobs. Did once say to a man that I could not see how that would be true and had anyone done a study to be certain. He gave me a look just like yours, Lily.”
“I think it is a rule made to make certain the servants have no life but serving the ones who pay them a pittance,” she said, and poured a lot of cream into her tea.
“Can you actually taste the tea?” asked Morris as he watched her drink some of it.
“A little. It flavors the sugar and cream very nicely.” She grinned and had another drink. “So, are we going to go rescue this Geoffrey person and his family?”
“We?” Simeon asked. “We will be me, Bened, Bevan, and Morris. Perhaps a few of the male servants. You will stay here.”
“Nay, I think not.”
All the men opened their mouths to argue, looked hard at her, and shut them. Lilybet nodded and then they all began to plan how they would help Geoffrey and his family not become yet more victims of Augusta’s greed. The man had three children and not one of them doubted that Augusta would have them killed as well.
Bened was not surprised to find himself unofficially made leader of their rescue party. He had been a soldier once and people who had never been soldiers always assumed one who had would be better in such situations, would somehow know every move to make and how to lead. Someone needed to tell them that a lot of the ones who had been soldiers, especially men like him, were little more than cannon fodder.
“Where is Primrose?” Bened asked when he suddenly realized she had left the room.
Simeon looked around the room and cursed softly. “Went after that journal, I suspect. But, at least we do not have to argue with her about going to help Geoffrey. She will be set on that journal for quite a while.”
“I thought she liked this Geoffrey fellow,” said Bevan.
“She does as well as she likes his wife but this journal holds her mother’s words, a mother she lost years ago and which we have had little to truly remember her by.”
Bened nodded, thinking it could work out for the best. Not only did he have to spend time needed to rescue Geoffrey making her understand this was not a fight she should be joining, but it would also allow him to ride away afterward without causing a large confrontation far too many people would undoubtedly observe. He knew it was cowardly but he was feeling cowardly. Bened did not care so much about an emotional farewell, not as much as he feared she could all too easily convince him to stay with her when he knew he should not.
The sound of something crashing to the floor yanked Primrose free of the spell of reading her mother’s words, of hearing that beloved voice from the past in every written word. She tucked the journal beneath a cushion on the settee she had been sitting in and crept toward the door. Listening carefully, she could not hear any voices and she reached to open the door just as it was flung open from the other side.