“Did either of you marry?” Dawn’s head was lathered with lavender-smelling shampoo.
The smile dropped away and Marjory turned to stare at the fire. “No. We have many stolen kisses over the years, but not all love stories end in happily ever after.”
Dawn thought of her parents. While they had never been openly affectionate with each other, there had always been an air of quiet companionship about them, and they seemed content in their marriage. She wondered what obstacle kept Marjory and Hector apart if they had some regard for one another. “I am sorry for you both, that you did not marry.”
“Don’t be. I will always have affection for Hector, and we both chose the paths we walk. Lady Letitia’s condition has meant I need to be her constant companion, and I sleep in her room. If I had married, I couldn’t have tended her as she needed.” She picked up the dipper and rinsed the last of the shampoo from Dawn’s hair.
Dawn dropped beneath the water and then emerged again with a new question. “What of Lord Seton, does he have a beautiful fiancée somewhere waiting for the day she becomes lady of the house?” Did it make her a terrible person that she hoped not?
Marjory placed the dipper on the floor by the bath. “Not that one. He’s not found the woman to give his heart to yet.”
Elation ran through her breast that he was unattached, tempered by sadness that he was indeed alone to carry his burden. His sombre moods might be a reflection of his loneliness. “It must be difficult, living in such a remote location. Perhaps he needs to take a season in London to find a charming debutante?”
“Oh, there are ways to find prospective candidates. Like advertisements in newspapers.” The smile was back on the nurse’s face, but this time it seemed mysterious and unreadable, as though she knew something Dawn didn’t.
How odd that the earl would advertise for a life’s partner. She thought that was something only cowboys did in the wild west of America, where brides were acquired through the mail.
After her bath, Nurse Hatton helped Dawn change into the clean dress.
“That’s a nasty cut you have there.” Marjory took Dawn’s arm and peered at her wrist. “You want to keep an eye out that it doesn’t become infected. You don’t want to end up losing the hand.”
“It’s only a scratch.” Dawn glanced at the cut, which looked much cleaner for a bath, but one end did seem to have a tiny black smudge, like the marks a pencil made on her fingertips when drawing.
Marjory frowned. “Give it a good salt wash to clean it out. But promise me that if it doesn’t improve, you will show it to Dr Day the next time he visits Lady Letitia.”
“I promise,” Dawn said. It would make a change to have a doctor examine an actual wound suffered in the course of being adventurous.
Then Marjory said her goodnights, as she had to return to her charge. Dawn headed back down the stairs alone and found Lord Seton sitting with Mouse in the entrance hall. The earl looked up as she descended the stairs.
“Feeling better?” He rose from his seat by the fire.
“Much, thank you.” She stopped at the last step, unsure what to do. She was an employee. Why was he treating her with such attention? Not being able to discern his motives left her in a constant state of anxiety.
Lord Seton held out his hand. “It is just the two of us for dinner this evening. Elijah is keeping Lettie company as neither wanted to call a halt to their game of chess. It also gives Nurse Hatton a rare evening to herself.”
Once again Dawn laid her hand on his sleeve, and again the little vine appeared and sniffed at their hands. As it snaked along skin, it progressed a little further past their wrists and drew them a little tighter.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Dawn closed her eyes tight and then opened them again, willing the plant to disappear.
“Yes, just a little tired after such a long day. We have made excellent progress in the walled garden.” Given the long and eventful day, followed by a hot bath, Dawn should have been lulled to sleep. Yet contact with the earl seemed to revitalise her as though she bathed in a cool stream on a hot day. She found herself anticipating dinner, like a birthday celebration with presents to be unwrapped.
They walked to the dining room, and as they separated to take their seats, the phantom vine dissolved into a burst of dust motes that danced and spun before vanishing. Unable to grasp any other topic, Dawn told the earl of how all the vegetable beds had been reclaimed and tended, and described her plans for winter seedlings. He may as well add frightfully boring to her list of faults alongside unladylike and unprofessional.
It was while Dawn paused as the main course was served that she realised she had monopolised the conversation. She stared at her cutlery. “I do apologise. Apparently I can talk non-stop about flora and compost once I start. I must be terribly boring.”
He made that grunt in his throat and took a sip of his wine. “On the contrary, I admire how passionate you are about restoring the grounds. It’s hard to find someone who cares so deeply.”
The estate made her feel practically maternal, as though it were a child she needed to nurse back to health from an illness. “I’m sure the previous gardener felt the same way.”
His face remained impassive. “Ravenswing Manor hasn’t had a gardener for forty years now. If it weren’t for Hector’s valiant efforts, even the house would have been reclaimed by the landscape.”
Forty years. Conversation kept turning back to whatever happened back then. In 1840, Victoria was a young and vibrant queen who was just learning how to rule. Dawn clasped her knife tighter in her fingers. She would never know what events unfolded here if she didn’t find the courage to ask.
“If it is not too impertinent, would you tell me about Master Elijah’s parents?”
Lord Seton laid down his cutlery and picked up the wine glass. He stared deep in the ruby liquid but didn’t drink. When he spoke, it seemed he addressed something he saw within the crystal. “Julian and I encountered Ava on the road to the mill. She was travelling from Scotland down to family in Cheshire, but her horse had become lame not far from our estate. Julian was obsessed from the moment he laid eyes on her and was determined to possess her.”
“Obsessed?” The word resonated in Dawn’s head. It was the same description used in the diary about an ill-fated pair forty years before, who must surely have been Julian’s parents. Did the son follow the same path as his father?
He swirled the glass, and the liquid within made patterns on the side. “It was as though she cast an enchantment over Julian from the moment they saw each other. Ava moved into the manor the same day. Over a period of weeks, their obsession turned into something darker. Something poisonous.”
Did Ava poison the ground or Julian’s mind? A shiver worked down her spine, and Dawn was glad the high neck of the dress concealed the prickle of goosebumps. The story the earl narrated echoed the older one in the diary. Perhaps all earls were cursed to follow the same doomed course of women unsuited to tending a large estate. “Were you not friendly with Ava for the sake of your brother?”
He didn’t look at Dawn, but through her toward some answer on the wall behind her. “I was pleased at first that Julian found someone he loved so deeply. But there was an air around her that smelt wrong, a taint that bothered me.”
“She smelt wrong?” What an odd thing to say. Maybe she ate lots of garlic that clung to her tongue.
His gaze slid sideways, back to Dawn. “Poor choice of words. I meant she behaved in a manner toward Lettie and the staff that bothered me.”
“What happened to them?” Dawn’s question was a mere whisper. She wanted him to continue but didn’t want to break his reverie in case he discarded the tale.