Any Groom Will Do Read online

  He laughed at this, laughed through his kisses, and then he rolled over, taking his wife with him, and buried himself in her love and her comfort and her body until he was too exhausted to do anything but sleep and hold her tight.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The next morning, after Cassin rose and dressed and rode to a meeting of assembled tenants, Willow made her way down the stairs to determine how she could best be of help to Lady Cassin and her sisters-in-law.

  The hope instilled by Cassin’s very fierce declaration of love still felt very new and tenuous, but it was his very fierceness, somehow, that allowed her to trust what he said. It was not a debate he wished to drag out or return to on occasion, and thank God. Despite everything that she could not do, he had been so emphatic.

  Alright, she’d thought when she’d awakened. Let me determine the best way to contribute what I can.

  She had just finished breakfast when Ruth appeared in the vast, drafty dining room of the family wing. Although pale and red-eyed, the young woman appeared both composed and diligent. After dispatching maids with breakfast trays for Lady Cassin and the girls, she offered to finish Willow’s tour of the castle and grounds.

  “You cannot feel up to squiring me around the castle,” Willow told her. “Won’t you tell me some way I may help you so that you may rest?”

  “Honestly,” sighed Ruth, “I relish the idea of having something diverting to do.”

  And so they toured. Yesterday they’d canvased the family wing. Despite Willow’s mind being miles from beauty and color and design, she had been troubled by what she had seen. The floors were clean and the windows washed, but soot from the fireplaces tarnished every surface, the furniture was forgettable, except when alarmingly damaged by overuse, and the carpets were faded and flat. Despite the many windows, an eye-squinting dimness seemed to hover over the great hall—primarily, Willow knew, because the colors (or rather the lack of any discernible color beyond “drab”) swallowed the sunlight.

  Although the family wing was large, the various spaces had not been thoughtfully arranged, and the result was an odd mix of emptiness in some spots and crowded overpopulation in others. Beyond the frowning ancestry portraiture, there was very little art. The tapestries on the walls were dusty, moth-eaten, and ages out of fashion. The fixtures for candles and torches appeared to be the tarnished originals from five hundred years ago.

  Today, however, she saw the castle with fresh eyes. Yesterday she believed she was literally on her way out; today, conceivably, as countess, she was the mistress of all of it. Not only could she concentrate on it, but she was excited for the tour Ruth would give. She longed for parchment and a pen to scribble down notes. She would die for a measuring tape. Oh, and if she’d only had her sketchbook.

  Sensitivity would, of course, require her to manage the dowager countess’s sense of ownership and pride in the castle. Lady Cassin seemed to enjoy her gardens more than the interiors, but surely she had some preference. Still, everything in good time. Twelve hours ago, Willow thought she’d never see Caldera again. Today she could resist piling up every available textile and lighting a fire.

  “But does the staff not have ladders or scaffolding to dust the ramparts and the ceiling beams?” Willow asked Ruth as they made their way to the open, uninhabited section of the castle.

  “I cannot say,” said Ruth. “Certainly I’ve seen ladders in and around the daily upkeep of the castle. I can tell you that Lady Cassin spends the majority of her time in her garden and nowhere else. The housekeeper, Mrs. Grant, is left to her own devices when it comes to the residences, I believe. It would never be my place to criticize. This castle is very grand, to say the least, compared to my very humble beginnings.”

  Willow smiled at the younger woman’s honesty. “How did you become acquainted with Felix? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  Ruth smiled wistfully. “No, I don’t mind. I was hired by Felix to transcribe his illegible note-taking and manage other secretarial work related to his research. He was just home from Oxford and was beginning his study of Caldera’s Roman ruins. This was six years ago, I suppose.”

  “Six years ago?” marveled Willow. “But you must have been—”

  “Fifteen years old,” Ruth chuckled. “Quite young, I know. But the village of Harrogate is largely absent of able-minded, literate applicants who might transcribe academic notes in English and Greek.”

  “You read Greek at fifteen?”

  Ruth smiled, leading Willow from a warm corridor, through a door, and into what appeared to be a cold, vacant ballroom. “Indeed. My father is vicar in Harrogate, and my classical education began very young.”

  Willow nodded, looking around the ballroom. The dusty floor was parquet, inlaid with geometrical pieces in half a dozen different woods and stains. The peeling, cobweb-strewn walls were paneled, the ceiling a veritable map of intricate raised scroll work. Tarnished chandeliers hung drunkenly at intervals.

  “But is this room open to the weather?” Willow said, staring at the windows.

  Ruth shrugged. “Glass remains in a few windows, but not many, I’m afraid. This part of the castle has not been in use, I believe, in Felix’s or Brent’s lifetimes.”

  Willow nodded, spinning slowly in the vast, forgotten ballroom. “It could be stunning, this room,” she said.

  “I cannot say what use would come of it,” Ruth said. “There are limited families of quality in Harrogate. Lady Cassin and the girls are friendly with the other gentry, but even if every last family turned up on the same night, children included, they would not fill this ballroom, not by half.”

  Willow nodded, following along as Ruth led her to the next room, a long, thin banquet hall. In this room, the massive oak banquet table remained but only two or three high-backed carved chairs. Willow slowly walked the length of the room, running her hand down the sticky surface of the table. Two birds, nesting in the thick paneling, flushed from the ceiling and startled her. She watched in amazement as they flapped wildly through an open window.

  Turning back, she saw that the walls here were paneled too. Willow squinted and leaned in.

  But was there . . .

  Yes.

  The brushstroke outlines of a faded mural, painted sometime long ago inside each paneled square. She stepped closer. It was a landscape, something pastoral and light. She scraped at the dust and grime with her fingertip and retreated to take it all in.

  Faded by age and elements, puckered in spots from water damage, she could just make out a sprawling landscape, with blue sky and green hillside, a stand of trees and a pond.

  “It’s a mural,” said Willow, smiling at Ruth, pointing to the wall.

  “Is it?” Ruth said, stepping closer. “So it is. Felix never paid this part of the property any mind. About a thousand years too new for our tastes.”

  Willow nodded, looking to the other walls. How breathtaking a giant mural would be, wrapped around the entirety of the room.

  “Felix’s sisters have said you are a designer,” Ruth said, watching her. “That you select the interiors of great mansions in London.”

  Willow laughed. “Well, mostly I was an apprentice to my aunt and uncle. You were an apprentice, in a manner, to Felix weren’t you?”

  “Well, I was his assistant for a time,” Ruth said. “In the beginning. Until I was not.”

  She smiled then and shared how, despite Felix’s most noble effort to resist her, they had eventually fallen in love. “We held off a year and a half,” Ruth said, smiling. “Until I was seventeen. It was torture.”

  “I can tell you loved each other very much,” Willow said softly.

  Ruth nodded. “We loved two things most of all,” she said. “Each other, and Roman artifacts. Would you like to see our very own Roman bathhouse?”

  Willow nodded, her throat suddenly tight.

  Ruth went on, “There are also some twenty-five bedchambers in this part of the castle, but each one is the same as the next, so perhaps we
shall tour those another day.”

  Willow nodded again and followed her through three doors and into the sunny rear garden of the castle. Pecking chickens squawked and flapped from their path, and dogs trotted up to trail behind them.

  “That building is the kitchens,” Ruth said, pointing to an outbuilding. “The food we eat in the castle is prepared in the original detached kitchen. Staff carries our meals, or tea, or even an apple, if we call for it, across the garden and into the family quarters. Even in the rain.”

  Willow shaded her eyes and looked at the grey stone outbuilding, its chimneys pumping smoke into the sunny sky.

  “And that is the smokehouse; there’s the wood store; that’s the root cellar; the former arsenal, now used for Felix’s and my excavation gear—well, now just mine, I suppose—and that,” she finished, her voice rushing on, “is the bathhouse.”

  “Oh yes. Cassin mentioned that the castle had its own bathhouse. How lovely.” They ambled toward it. The building had been built to match the castle, more grey stonework, a flat roof with a walkway lined with a gapped wall.

  “Yes, and lovely it shall remain, I suppose. Felix and I were just about to dismantle it, brick by brick. Obviously that will no longer happen.”

  “Dismantle it? But why?” Willow followed Ruth through the thick double doors into a room that looked so far from what she expected, she stopped and blinked.

  “It’s so bright,” Willow marveled.

  Instead of dim sootiness, this room had been tiled, wall-to-wall, with pale yellow ceramic. The yellow was broken at intervals with orange and black tiles, creating a beautiful mosaic that began near the door and zigged and zagged to the far wall. The center of the room dropped into four walled pools, also tiled, with tiled benches lining the sides. It was a room-sized work of art.

  “We had a room very similar to this in my parents’ estate, Leland Park, in Surrey,” Willow said. “It could not have been nearly as old, but it is in far worse repair. I’ve always wanted to redo it.”

  “Well, this one is not in what I’d call good repair either, although the family still uses it,” said Ruth. “Felix and I promised the moon in the way of improvements to it after we excavated it—this is how we garnered Lady Cassin’s support.”

  “Support for what?”

  “Oh, this bathhouse is only about three hundred years old. But it was built on top of an eighteen-hundred-year-old Roman structure that was used for the same purpose. An original Roman bathhouse, if you can believe it. The hot spring that feeds the baths today is the very same that the conquering Romans used in 45 AD. We were going to dig down and study the original. We were going to try to recreate the facility as the Romans built it, if we could.”

  “A hot spring,” Willow marveled. “Truly?” She picked at the mortar of a loose orange tile. “Our bathing room at Leland Park was in the cellar, and servants were forced to haul steaming water from the kitchens to fill the bath. The room did not interest my parents, and they would not permit me to remake it. Such a shame, but this is beautiful. I can see room for a few improvements, but by and large, it is a rare and beautiful thing. Truly. The mosaic is a work of art.” She turned back to Ruth. “And the water for the baths? Is it nice?”

  “Oh yes, lovely,” said Ruth. “It’s why we put off excavating it for so long. No one was willing to be without the comfort and convenience of the baths. See—here?”

  Ruth went to a rectangular spout and turned a lever. After a series of groans and pops, a rush of fizzy, acrid-smelling water poured from the spout into a basin below. “Go on; try it,” Ruth said.

  Tentatively, Willow held out her hand. The water was hot—almost too hot to tolerate, but not quite—as it bubbled and gurgled against her hand.

  “Your neighbors must be jealous,” Willow said idly, enjoying the hot water coursing through her fingers. “And the tenants? Are they ever permitted to use it?”

  “Oh, hot springs such as this abound in this part of the country. The neighbors and the tenants all have of their own source for a spring. We are fortunate because this very convenient spring was made into a proper bathhouse, but people around Harrogate make due with a wash tub or a trough. Some use the original Roman ruins, if they remain intact.”

  “I had no idea,” Willow said, stepping back and wiping her hand on her skirts. “You should see the bathing rooms and pulley systems we are installing in the new mansions in London. The richest families will have hot water at their whim, and upstairs, too, in their bedchambers. If only they could see how it’s done in Yorkshire . . . ”

  The words were scarcely out of Willow’s mouth before an idea struck her.

  The idea hit her so powerfully and so fully formed that she fell silent and ceased hearing Ruth’s chatter. She blinked and held out a hand to the cool wall for steadiness. Good lord, but if Cassin and his family would consider it, her idea might save Caldera and its people for generations, just as coal mining was meant to have done.

  “I must find Cassin,” Willow said suddenly, spinning on Ruth. “I must find him straightaway.”

  ***

  Cassin’s mood upon returning from his meeting with the tenants was, if not encouraged, then at least not the white-knuckle panic of the day before.

  It was clear these men preferred to put their faith in him, the known earl; and they could see his concerns about safety were intended for their own well-being, but they were reluctant to take money from him, even to hold their families over.

  He promised a great windfall and explained the work in Barbadoes; he told them he would return with the resources that all of them would require to make a successful go at the noble profession of sheep farming.

  The men listened with respect, but it was clear that the prospect of sheep sounded lazy and passive to their generations-old Yorkshire coal mining.

  Ironically, Cassin could relate to their skepticism, and he bought a very little bit of legitimacy by explaining to them the mining he had done in the tropics.

  Whatever happened, Cassin assured them that he would take their preferences under consideration and study the matter over time. The important thing now was that he was earning the money to invest in the land and the people. And they believed he was making choices in good faith, with their best interest at heart.

  Most useful of all, at least in an immediate sense, he had secured the promise of tenant protection for his mother and sisters. He explained the threat of his uncle after he returned to Barbadoes, and he arranged to hire six men in rotation who would provide personal security for the castle while he was away.

  Of all of his uncle’s threats, the most dangerous had been the prospect of five women living alone in the Yorkshire countryside with no man looking after them. Burly bodyguards could not protect the women from every threat, but Ruth was clever and could provide brains if the hired muscle was not enough.

  Not surprisingly, the bodyguards had been Willow’s idea. After they’d made love the night before, she’d lain in his arms, listening to him recount his horrible day.

  His original idea was to ask the tenants to be vigilant and watchful, reporting his uncle’s unwelcome presence to the constable in Harrogate. Willow had considered this and said, “Why not pay the tenants themselves to protect the castle? They could function like castle guards of old.”

  The grown sons of tenants had fallen over themselves to bodyguard the women in the castle, even without pay. When Cassin had explained that the duty was an actual job with real wages, he saw a pride in their eyes he’d not seen since before he closed the mines.

  With guards in place, and most of the tenants trying to be, at the very least, sympathetic to Cassin’s reinvention of Caldera, he felt prepared to confront his uncle, to demand that he leave and never return.

  “Oh, Brent, there you are,” said Willow, spotting Cassin as he stomped mud from his boots at the door. “I need a word.”

  What a touchstone she was, he thought. Turquoise eyes flashing, auburn hair hanging down her ba
ck, that smile she reserved for him and no one else. He’d nearly lost his mind with her efforts to leave him, even the suggestion of an annulment was a slice through his heart. He’d been given no choice but to fight one more battle that day. Everything about the situation had made him angry and petulant and unyielding.

  But it was a battle he would fight again, daily, if required. She would stay; he could not lose her.

  Thankfully, she did not appear to be on the verge of leaving at this moment. She was smiling and engaged, casting her discerning eye on the castle furnishings, which, he already knew, required significant repairs and improvements. He would need an entire shipment of guano simply to satisfy the changes she would make to Caldera. But oh, how spectacular the result.

  Cassin was just about to wave her over when his uncle made an indignant appearance on the stair landing, sputtering and berating a footman. He held out a hand to stay Willow. It was time.

  “Uncle,” Cassin said, clipping up the steps to him. “I have spoken with my mother and sisters, and in this time of mourning for my brother, I respectfully ask you to take your leave of Caldera and return to London. Your presence here has overstepped the bounds of our hospitality.”

  “You think I have a care for your boundaries?” said Archibald. “I’ve no plans to depart before Simon and Nigel arrive.”

  “You mistake me, Uncle,” said Cassin coolly. “ ’Tis not a question. It is an order. Get out. Today. Pack your things. I want you gone before luncheon.”

  The older man laughed. “Or what?”

  “Or I will lift you, bodily, off the ground, strap you to the back of my horse, and pitch you into the road to Harrogate. I’ve been swinging a pickax twelve hours a day in the hot island sun. Please do not doubt that I can do it.”

  Archibald’s pink face went red, and he screwed up his features. “If your father was alive to see—”

  “My father would have done the same thing,” Cassin interjected. “Only sooner. Now go. And if ever you make any plans to return to Caldera—alone or in the company of other aspirational relations—you will be met with a full castle guard, under strict orders to eject any of you on sight.”