Face Down Beneath The Eleanor Cross Part 10

By G.o.d! He did not wish to be pitied!

Eleanor cleared her throat. "You misunderstand me, Sir Walter. Appleton Manor boasts few private chambers. I mean to move, with Rosamond, into the cook's lodgings off the kitchen. You must have the great chamber, as befits your rank."

"A tight squeeze," Susanna commented. "I recall the cook as a woman of ample proportions."

Guilt flashed in Eleanor's eyes before she looked away from Walter to address Susanna. "If you mean Mabel, she is no longer here. She left some time ago, Lady Appleton."

"Who does the cooking?"

"I supervise mine own kitchen."

Walter's sharp eyes moved from face to face. Eleanor looked defensive, her expression betraying concern, even trepidation. Had she had a falling-out with a servant Susanna had hired and sent her away? Or had this Mabel left of her own accord? Either way, Susanna should have been notified, since she paid for the maintenance of this household.

Susanna's countenance gave away less than Eleanor's. Walter could not begin to guess her thoughts. But all Jennet felt was there to be read-suspicion, irritation, exhaustion after the long days of riding. And something more. Relief?

Eleanor forced a smile. "It will take no time at all to move my belongings and Rosamond's." She strode toward the stairs, as if anxious to escape.

"I'll not turn you out of your quarters," Walter protested. "I can use the cook's room. Or sleep here, by the hearth." In bygone days, half the household would have placed their pallets there.

Eleanor allowed herself to be persuaded, then left her guests to their own devices while she devoted her attention to supervising the servants, sending one maid scurrying to fetch fresh bedding and ready sleeping quarters and another to check the food supply.

A delightful woman, Walter thought as he watched her bustle out of the hall. Her soft voice drifted back to him, giving instructions for the preparation of a hearty evening meal.

She was not conniving like Alys, nor duplicitous like Annabel. She must have seemed a heaven-sent respite to Robert, until he found out about the child.

At the thought of his old friend's by-blow, Walter stopped staring at the mother and searched the hall for the daughter. To his surprise, he discovered Susanna once more crouched beside the girl, this time in the rushes before the hearth. From her earnest expression, she was attempting conversation with the child.

Walter could not make out their murmured words, though it looked to him as if Rosamond was doing most of the talking. He'd not had much to do with children, but she seemed an unusual child, bolder and more articulate than most girls twice her age. The combination was jarring.

When Rosamond scampered off in the direction of the kitchen, Susanna glanced up and caught Walter staring. "I cannot tell what she thinks of me. Are all children so difficult to comprehend?"

Walter was at a loss to answer, but Jennet had experience aplenty to draw upon. Three little ones, Walter recalled. The youngest must be about the same age as Rosamond.

"Treat her like a small adult," Jennet advised. "Ignore any tantrums. She is too young to always make sense but old enough to prattle on and on, well pleased with the sound of her own voice. A most vexing combination. If you want her to like you, you have only to offer her bribes."

Susanna looked stricken. "I should have thought to bring her a present."

Once again, Jennet came to the rescue, producing a square of cloth. A knot here and a fold there turned the handkerchief into a poppet.

Delighted, Susanna went off in search of Robert's daughter. "We will postpone both questions and revelations until the little one is asleep," she said as she went past Walter.

"Certes," he called after her. But he did not understand her sudden fascination with the little girl and fervently hoped the child would be fed and put to bed early.

His wish was granted. It seemed that Rosamond's mother was a sensible woman as well as a beautiful one. Her manner with her little girl was firm and direct. She put up with no nonsense.

At supper, Walter sat between Eleanor and Susanna at the elegant refectory table on the dais. The repast was modest but skillfully prepared. It was plain Eleanor knew a thing or two about cooking. He'd suspected as much when he'd stepped into the kitchen earlier and found her roasting a chine of beef, a loin of pork, a dove, and a chicken, all at one fire.

The pork, basted with sweet b.u.t.ter, was tender and delicious, the chicken superbly seasoned with a sauce made of onions, claret wine, lemon peel, and the juice of an orange. Where she'd gotten such things in winter, he did not ask, but he a.s.sumed the funds Susanna allotted for provisioning the manor were in accord with her usual generosity. He was not surprised that she wanted her husband's daughter to have the best.

When the ginger cake had been served and more wine poured, Eleanor was the one who shifted their conversation away from insubstantial banter. "No one travels for pleasure at this time of year," she said. "Did some particular reason prompt you to pay a visit in winter?"

"We came to discuss Robert," Susanna said.

Alert for any indication Eleanor was aware of what had occurred a few weeks earlier in London, Walter watched her carefully.

"Robert is dead," Eleanor protested.

"How did he die?" Walter asked. If she was innocent, she'd answer "of the plague."

Eleanor started to speak, then caught herself. Confusion reigned on her delicate features, making Walter wonder if she thought Robert dead because she'd been told he died in France, or because she'd had a hand in his recent murder.

"You wrote to me, Lady Appleton," Eleanor said at last. "You said he was dead but you promised I could go on living here with Rosamond. You promised." Her voice went breathy with emotion on the last two words.

"Robert is indeed dead," Susanna a.s.sured her, "but his demise was much more recent than you suppose. For the last eighteen months, he was still alive, although his movements were unknown to us. Was he here during any of that time?"

Eleanor's eyes widened at the question, but this time her hesitation lasted no longer than a heartbeat before she denied it. Her voice dropped to a tremulous whisper. "He's dead now? You're certain?"

"Aye," Susanna said. "In London, on the third day of January. I saw him die. There is no mistake this time."

Something was wrong here, Walter thought. Eleanor was distressed, but not in the way someone who'd lost a loved one would be. Her face was pale as snow. She twisted agitated hands together in her lap, indicating to him that strong emotions were at work. But he was uncertain which ones. Fear? Guilt? Was she lying to them? Had she believed Robert was still alive? Or had she known already that he'd been killed in London?

Walter held his silence and let Susanna explain that she'd come to Appleton Manor in the hope of tracing Robert's movements. She omitted the fact that Robert had been poisoned and did not mention that she had been accused of the crime.

"I would help you if I could." Eleanor did not ask what had caused Robert's death. Because she did not care? Or because she already knew the answer?

Walter had trained himself to be suspicious of everyone, to dissect every word he heard uttered, but when Susanna did not press Eleanor to answer questions, Walter was glad to follow her lead. For the moment, they let the subject drop. When Susanna asked instead about Rosamond, Walter stopped listening.

The permanent residents of Appleton Manor were accustomed to country hours and retired early. The travelers did likewise, exhausted after so many long days in the saddle. Walter settled himself on the pallet in front of the hearth in the great hall expecting to fall instantly asleep, but mind and body conspired to betray him. Eleanor's image crept into his consciousness.

Walter sat up, appalled by the direction of his thoughts. How could he have such a strong reaction to Eleanor Lowell? She was Robert's cast-off mistress. She had borne his child. She might even be a murderer.

None of those things seemed to matter. He desired her.

Walter beat his pillow into shape, wrapped his blanket more tightly around himself, and vowed to think of something else, to focus on anything but the way Eleanor Lowell stirred his blood and provoked inconveniently l.u.s.tful thoughts. Two weeks earlier, he'd wanted to marry Susanna, loved her. It was disloyal to want another woman so soon.

But he did.

His body paid no mind to his conscience.

At length, Walter fell into a restless sleep. It seemed to him that he'd only just closed his eyes when he opened them again to see someone creeping down the stairs in the early morning gloom.

Eleanor.

Telling himself this was an ideal time to question a suspect, he added breeches and doublet to the shirt and hose he'd slept in and followed her into the kitchen.

She knelt by the hearth, stirring embers she'd preserved in a pottery fire cover, bringing them back to life. He moved closer, until her perfume, sweet marjoram, one of his favorite scents, began to scramble thought processes that had always before functioned in a rational and orderly manner. His intention to interrogate her forgotten, he asked, "Will you share a morning cup of ale with me?"

"I have too much work to do, Sir Walter." She would not look at him after her first, startled glance. "You must realize that your arrival nearly doubled the size of this household."

When the fire had been restored and she'd hung a pot of water over it to boil, Eleanor left the kitchen, rolling up her sleeves as she went. She came back a moment later bringing ale for him to break his night's fast. Then she fetched ground meal and a container of ale barm and, ignoring him, began to make bread, first bolting wheat meal through a fine bolting cloth, then dumping it into a waist-high wooden trough secured to a thick, short-legged stand.

Walter sipped his ale, watching in silence while she warmed the ale barm then poured it into the hollow she'd made in the flour. When she'd added salt, she plunged both hands into the meal and began to knead.

He found the process surprisingly sensual. "Have you no servants to make the bread?"

"They have other duties. One maid is milking, the other gathering eggs."

"Then let me help."

Eleanor stopped molding and shaping to stare at him. "You? Bake bread?"

"Why not? Am I so useless?" The thought of plunging his hands into the malleable dough tantalized him and made him think of other soft things he might enjoy kneading.

"You are... an important personage."

Her tone of voice snapped him out of his trance. Just what, he wondered, did she mean by that? It had not sounded like a compliment.

"Have you finished so soon?" he asked when she left off kneading and wiped her hands on her ap.r.o.n.

"For the nonce." She closed a wooden lid over the trough and piled warmed sacks on top. "The dough must lie here an hour to swell before I take it forth and shape it into manchets. And they must rise again before they are baked."

An oven, which had yet to be fired, had been built into the wall next to the hearth. f.a.ggots of furze and blackthorn, tied in bundles, had been stacked nearby. If they were kept extremely dry, they would burn fast and intense, as was necessary for baking bread.

Eleanor moved on to her next task, selecting the whitest and youngest bacon in her larder and cutting away the sward. She sliced the collops thin, placed them in a dish, and poured hot water over them. "They must stand thus an hour or two," she explained, "or you will taste naught but salt."

"What did you see in him?" Walter's abrupt question escaped before he could stop it.

Accepting the sudden change of subject, Eleanor turned slowly toward him, bracing her back against the stonework by the hearth."You are blunt, Sir Walter."

She looked so troubled that he had to fight a nearly overwhelming urge to offer comfort, to take her in his arms and a.s.sure her all would be well if she'd just tell him the truth.

But then, instead of answering his question, she posed one of her own. "Why did Lady Appleton believe Robert came here?"

"This was his childhood home."

"He hated it here."

"How do you know that?"

Closing her eyes, Eleanor gave a sad little sigh. "I know a great deal about Robert Appleton. I even knew he did not die in France. I... heard from him after Lady Appleton wrote to tell me he'd succ.u.mbed to the plague. He sent me a letter."

"He wrote to you to say he was still alive?" That spoke of less caution than Robert was accustomed to use, but a woman like Eleanor might well have that effect on a man.

"I thought he might mean to make some provision for his daughter," Eleanor continued. "He knew I was here with her. I had no desire to see him. You must believe that." She gave a short, bitter laugh. "I'd learned he was not to be trusted. I had no wish to be deceived again."

Walter moved closer, keeping his voice gentle. "How did he deceive you?" Part of him did not want to hear her answer. He had to remind himself that this was why they'd come to Appleton Manor. To question Eleanor. To find out all she knew and if she had a motive for murder.

Eleanor sighed again, more deeply this time. Her eyes were open but averted from his. "I met Robert some three years ago, when I accompanied my cousin to court. She wanted an audience with the queen."

"You were her waiting gentlewoman," Walter recalled.

"She treated me more like a slave." Again, he heard the bitterness, but she did not dwell on her treatment in that household. "Robert offered me an alternative. He made promises. A house of my own. Even marriage. By the time I discovered there was already a Lady Appleton, I was with child."

"You did not tell him." Walter knew Susanna had been the one to break that news to her husband. "Why not?"

"Pride, I suppose. I was far enough along by the time he left England that he should have noticed the changes for himself. He did not." She stirred the fire, her gaze fixed on the flames. Walter could not guess what she was thinking.

"He brought disgrace upon you. You must have hated him for that."

But she shook her head. "I do not blame him for anything, but neither do I mourn him. I brought disgrace upon myself. I met Robert at a moment in my life when I was desperate enough to do anything to break free of the constraints forced upon me by my situation. I have had a good deal of time to think since then. I am the one at fault for what happened."

Had she met him instead of Robert, matters would have turned out differently. The thought came out of nowhere, startling Walter. He shoved it away before it could breed more like it.

"How did you manage after he left? Robert was sent to Spain. You vanished from London soon after." Her cousin, an unpleasant individual of advanced years, still had no idea what had happened to Eleanor. She'd told Walter's agent that she had no further interest in her wayward young relative.

"Robert gave me a purse, a generous gift of gold coins. He said he would come to me when he returned, but he would not tell me where he was bound or how long he would be away, so I put little faith in his promises. I left my cousin's house the next day. She suspected my condition. If I had not gone on my own, she'd soon have thrown me out."

"Where did you go?" Walter moved close enough to inhale her scent, his admiration for her growing with every new detail she supplied.

"I lived a simple life in a small town just outside London. Until Rosamond was born, I thought I might manage on my own. I prided myself on being frugal. Then the bulk of the money Robert had given me was stolen. I sold other presents he'd given me, but those funds did not last long. I soon realized I had only two choices. I could seek a new protector, becoming dependent upon another man, or I could throw myself on Lady Appleton's mercy."

"You made the right decision." Walter reached out and caught her hand, giving it an encouraging squeeze.

Eleanor's gaze dropped to their joined fingers, and she frowned. As if she feared allowing the intimacy might be misinterpreted, she pulled free. "Robert taught me many valuable lessons."

"I am certain he did. When did you last see him, Eleanor?"

"Before Rosamond was born."

Walter wanted to believe her. That worried him. It was not in his nature to so thoroughly lose his objectivity, out of character for him to be influenced by a soft voice and a beautiful face.

He should inform her Robert had been murdered. She thought they'd come to Appleton Manor only to try to account for his whereabouts during the last year and a half. She did not know that Susanna believed one of Robert's mistresses had poisoned him or that Susanna would have to stand trial for murder if she could not prove her own innocence.

But Walter was unable to decide what to say to Eleanor. He felt a coward's relief when her two maidservants interrupted them by arriving in the kitchen to take up their morning ch.o.r.es. As soon as Eleanor was distracted by their chatter, he slipped away.

Chapter 23.

Jennet was not happy.

It should have been a simple task to pry information out of Blanche and Lettice, the two maidservants employed at Appleton Manor. Jennet had once held the post of housekeeper here, for more than a year. During that same time, Mark had served as steward. Their first child had been born in the chamber in which Eleanor Lowell now slept.

"None of the servants I supervised are still in service at Appleton Manor," she reported to Lady Appleton. "All of those here were hired less than a year ago."