A Woman's Estate Read online

  Both Roger and Arthur were sorry the subject of Francis had come up. Arthur was particularly disturbed. He had believed Bertram was perfectly happy with his work, income, and the comfortable rooms that were exclusively his in every house Arthur owned. Bertram was free to use any house at any time, whether Arthur was in residence or not, free to invite guests, to entertain, in fact, to act in every way as if Arthur’s property were his own. And every servant on all of Arthur’s estates obeyed Bertram as implicitly as Arthur—perhaps more implicitly, Arthur thought, since he knew himself to be by far the more lenient. Yet twice this very afternoon he had been shocked by his secretary’s bitterness.

  When the footman who came in answer to the bell had been instructed to have Roger’s horse brought around from the stable, Bertram rejoined Arthur and Roger, who were talking politics again. A few minutes later, Arthur walked Roger out the large double doors of the library, through the beautifully furnished entry hall, and finally all the way down the broad steps to the driveway, where his hack was being held by a groom.

  “Bertram wasn’t joking when he said he wanted to marry, was he?” Arthur said suddenly.

  “No, I’m afraid not,” Roger replied.

  “Well, why the devil shouldn’t he?” Arthur asked irritably. “His wife would be perfectly welcome to live with us.” He gestured at the huge country mansion behind them. “Surely he cannot think we would lack living space.”

  Roger laughed, but then shook his head, his expression becoming sober. “It could not be easy to ask a woman to share his kind of life. You know he would not be considered eligible by many fathers, his ability to support a wife resting, as it does, on your goodwill. You know and I know that Bertram is as much your friend as your secretary, but there is no way he can prove that to a girl’s family. It is not as simple as you would like to make it seem, Arthur.”

  “What the devil can I do?” Arthur asked. “I would hate to lose Bertram, but I would gladly—”

  “I don’t think you should do anything at all just now,” Roger said decisively. “Just keep your ears and eyes open. If you find that someone in particular has caught his fancy, I imagine it will become obvious what is best to do.”

  “Yes,” Arthur said, drawing out the word, and then his heavy lids dropped, obscuring the mischief in his eyes as he added, “I have always found Bertram to have a most discriminating taste. Perhaps I will have a ready-made hostess without my having to marry, after all.”

  Chapter Two

  “Lady Lydden?” Mr. John Deedes said to his clerk, looking and sounding as surprised as he felt. “Is not Lord Lydden with his wife?”

  “No, sir,” the clerk replied. “No one is with her. She is quite alone, sir.”

  The solicitor’s face darkened. He could only assume that Francis Lydden and his family had arrived all but penniless, that Francis was drunk and incapable, and that his wife had been forced to come to apply for sufficient funds to make the journey to Rutupiae Hall. It was a dismal prospect. He hated to contemplate the ruin of a fine, old family, but there was little he could do, so he told his clerk to show in Lady Lydden and rose to greet her, bracing himself to meet a woman he was sure would be bitter and in great distress.

  Mr. Deedes knew something about Lady Lydden. Although Francis and his father had not parted on good terms, Francis had retained a sufficient sense of responsibility to inform his father when he had married in America and when each of his children had been born. At least, John Deedes thought, Francis had married a suitable girl. Abigail Evangeline Lydden was the daughter of Victor Milford, youngest son of Sir Thomas Milford. The Milfords were a good Dorset family. Why Victor had emigrated to America, Mr. Deedes did not know, but he remembered Lord Lydden’s relief and satisfaction after he made inquiries of the Milfords at the time Francis had written to announce his marriage.

  The door opened, and Mr. Deedes came around his desk and hurried forward. He had intended to meet the lady near the door and support her trembling steps to a chair, but the brilliance of the smile she gave his clerk as she thanked him, the erect carriage and graceful motion as she turned toward Deedes and held out her hand, were sufficient evidence that Lady Lydden was in no need of physical support. In fact, it was Mr. Deedes who could have used a prop, and he had some difficulty in commanding himself enough to bow and kiss the proffered hand.

  By the time he had seated her, he was enough restored from the shock her beauty had dealt him to tell himself he was a fool. He had assumed from the speed with which Francis married after he arrived in America that he had married for money, to keep body and soul together without being reduced to doing a day’s work. Why that had led him to believe that Francis’ wife would be plain and dull, he could not now understand. He knew that Francis was not the type to discommode himself with a dull, plain wife. Francis was sufficiently insinuating and ingenious to survive—at least for a while—without such a sacrifice.

  Plain and dull, Lady Lydden was not. Her rich auburn hair curled fetchingly from under her delightful hat, her lips were full and soft, her nose short and just slightly tip-tilted, her brow broad and beautifully white and the large, long-lashed, violet-blue eyes turned up to him glowed with warm friendliness. Mr. Deedes, who had his own fixed opinions of what gently nurtured females were like, noted Lady Lydden’s sweetly rounded chin but did not take cognizance of how very firm it was. Nor did he think—as someone who knew Abigail better than he did had remarked—that the strong, white teeth exposed by her enchanting smile looked as if they could take a bite out of the world and grind it down to her purpose.

  The smile, however, indicated to Mr. Deedes that his worst fears—that Francis was lying drunk and helpless somewhere and that Lady Lydden could not pay the bills—would not be realized. Deedes could think of only one other reason for her coming alone, Francis was too lazy to do whatever business he wanted done himself and had sent her. As a boy, Francis had never done anything that did not give him pleasure, and apparently he had not changed. Abigail had not been unaware of Mr. Deedes’ scrutiny. She did not mind. She was accustomed to goggle-eyed stares from men who were meeting her for the first time. She was somewhat puzzled, however, at the expressions that had crossed his face, albeit fleetingly. Abigail was also accustomed to reading expressions. The success of a bookshop depends partly upon the ability of its owner or clerk to recommend the type of book a particular customer would enjoy. When Abigail had been about fifteen, her mother grew too ill to serve in their shop, and Abigail had taken over the task of dealing with the ladies who wanted to read novels. After her father’s death, Abigail also assisted those customers with very scholarly tastes. Over the years, she had become very adept at interpreting those small facial movements and body gestures that betrayed what a person was thinking.

  “How pleased I am to meet you, Lady Lydden,” Mr. Deedes said, “but I am sorry you had to come here. Had you sent a message, I would have come to you. Lord Lydden should have told you—” His voice checked suddenly as the smile disappeared from her face and her eyes dropped.

  Now Abigail understood why the solicitor had looked at her so oddly. He had expected Francis. “Francis—my husband—is dead,” she said.

  Her voice, completely expressionless, was much deeper in tone than Deedes had expected, and her eyes were dry when she lifted them. Had he had time to think about the latter fact, he would have been startled, but his shock at hearing that Francis Lydden was dead blocked out all other emotions.

  “Oh, heavens!” he exclaimed. “How sorry I am, my lady. Dear, dear, how dreadful!”

  “You did not receive my letter, then,” she added quickly, trying to stem the tide of Deedes’ sympathy. Abigail found talking about her husband’s death very painful, not because she missed him or because her love had survived the terrible battering Francis’ habits had inflicted on it, but because she felt that she had somehow failed him, that she should have been able to stop his dreadful, recurrent fits of drinking and gambling. “I wr
ote to you,” she went on, “as soon as…as soon as I was able to do so, but the war had started by then, and I suppose some accident—”

  “My dear Lady Lydden,” Deedes exclaimed, “I am so sorry. I had no idea. Had I known, I would have arranged somehow for an escort to arrange your ladyship’s passage and accompany you. Your ladyship’s journey must have been harrowing in the extreme. I am sure Sir Arthur would have had influence enough in the government to obtain special passports—”

  “You are very kind,” Abigail interrupted, rather irritated by Mr. Deedes’ fussy manner and his habit of calling her your ladyship, which jarred on her nerves, “but I had no difficulty in arranging passage. The states of the Northeast have little sympathy with the war, and there is still a considerable commerce between New York and Britain, mostly in supplies for the armies in Spain, I believe. I wrote to Admiral Warren and explained the situation, and he was kind enough immediately to furnish passports for myself and my children.”

  Mr. Deedes regarded her with a faint astonishment, as if unable to understand why she had not remained in a state of collapse for nearly a full year. Then Abigail reminded herself that the solicitor had no idea yet when Francis had died. Nonetheless, she restrained a sigh at his lugubrious expression.

  “But you should not have been troubled,” he said. “I am sure Sir Arthur would not have wished that in the midst of your grief you—”

  “Who is Sir Arthur?” Abigail asked, trying to divert the solicitor from continuing his expressions of sympathy. It made her feel more guilty, because she had felt no sorrow over losing Francis—she had felt relief at his death, and that had shocked her dreadfully and made her miserable.

  “Sir Arthur is the second executor of the late Lord Lydden’s—I mean—”

  “Yes, I understand,” Abigail hastened to put in. “You mean Francis’ father.”

  She could see that Mr. Deedes might flounder for some time in explanations. Francis’ father had also been named Francis, and since both were “late” Lord Lyddens, it would be difficult to disentangle them from one another without using such crude devices as saying “your husband’s father”. Abigail was already amusedly certain that Mr. Deedes was much too nice in his manners not to call his clients by their full panoply of names and titles despite what he knew or thought about them.

  Mr. Deedes nodded with relief. “The will,” he continued, cleverly avoiding the problem of names by infusing the document with a life of its own, “named myself and Sir Arthur as executors, to manage the estate until Lord…er…until the heir could return to England and take control himself.”

  “I see,” Abigail said slowly. “But the heir is now a child of twelve. I am legally Victor’s guardian—”

  “Do not distress yourself, Lady Lydden,” the solicitor soothed, leaning forward to pat her hand—but most respectfully. “I assure you that no eventuality, no matter how unlikely, has been overlooked in the document.”

  Abigail hastily lowered her eyes to hide her violent impulse to laugh. She could just see the words thedocument all in capital letters, so portentously had Mr. Deedes uttered them. In the next moment, however, she realized that what Mr. Deedes had said was not funny at all. If no eventuality had been overlooked in “the document”, that meant legal controls had been established in the will to manage her life and her children’s lives without consulting her or communicating those arrangements to her.

  “And what disposition has been made for this eventuality?” Abigail snapped.

  A faint flush had risen to her cheeks, and the eyes she lifted to the solicitor had lost their soft violet glow and flashed bright and hard as sapphires. Mr. Deedes, who had just begun another soothing clucking, involuntarily jerked back in surprise. But before he could speak, she reminded herself that her letter announcing Francis’ death had never reached the solicitor, thus, it was unfair to blame him for not informing her of the provisions in the will relating to the condition in which the heir was a minor. Moreover, Mr. Deedes had only her word for it that she was Francis’ widow.

  “I am sorry,” she said more gently. “Naturally you will want to see proof of what I have told you before you discuss particulars with me.”

  As she spoke, Abigail removed a packet of papers from a small leather case. Mr. Deedes blinked again with surprise. He had been so startled by her appearance that he had not noticed she was carrying anything. In fact, between the surprises her beauty had given him and the shock of hearing that Francis Lydden was dead, he had actually forgotten the need for identification. Recognition of his dereliction from duty was a shock of another kind, and Mr. Deedes hurriedly pulled himself together and accepted the proffered documents.

  Although he looked with care at the papers and noted down the authorities who had issued the marriage lines of Abigail and Francis, the baptismal certificates of Victor Francis Milford Lydden, born 17 May 1801, and Daphne Martha Milford Lydden, born 9 August 1803, and the death record of Francis Gerald Bertram Lydden, who had been killed by being struck and run over by a heavy cart, Mr. Deedes had no doubts at all that Abigail and her children were Francis’ wife and offspring. Having made his examination and notes, he handed back the papers.

  “It was most sensible of you to bring these records, Lady Lydden,” he said. “I am sure there would have been no problem in any case, but the dowager Lady Lydden… Oh, dear, I mean Lady Hilda Lydden, is sometimes a little…ah…er…”

  “The dowager Lady Lydden,” Abigail repeated. “But I am sure Francis told me his mother was dead. Had Lord Lydden married recently? That is, after Francis left for America?”

  “No, no, indeed,” Deedes replied, shocked. “Did you not know that Lord Lydden had a stepmother and a half brother and sister?”

  “No, I did not,” Abigail said slowly. “Francis never mentioned any family other than his father.”

  “Yes, well,” Mr. Deedes’ voice was uneasy, “I fear there was not quite the harmony there should have been in the household. And since I was not absolutely certain that Lord Lydden intended to return to England or…er…what he would wish to do if he did return, I…ah…did not insist that Lady Hilda Lydden, Mr. Eustace and Miss Griselda remove from Rutupiae Hall. And now that the present Lord Lydden is a minor, I—”

  Abigail was again amused, although she knew she should not be. It was clear that poor Mr. Deedes was in terror of Hilda Lydden and had not been able to muster the courage to tell her to move out after Lord Lydden’s death. Or was it that he pitied her? Had Hilda Lydden been left virtually penniless? Abigail had heard of the hardships caused by the law that left everything to the eldest son except what had specifically been provided as a widow’s jointure. She had had legal problems enough because she was a woman to feel a surge of sympathy.

  “I can see no reason why my mother-in-law or my sister- and brother-in-law should be forced to leave their home,” she said. “From what Francis told me, Rutupiae Hall is a commodious house. I should be glad of company.”

  “Commodious— Oh, yes, yes indeed,” Mr. Deedes agreed. “It is not a very large house, no more than thirty or so rooms, excluding the servants’ quarters, but you would not be cramped. I do not believe you would find yourself cramped.”

  “No,” Abigail responded dryly, thinking of the house on Williams Street in New York, where she had found ten rooms above the bookshop, three of them tiny attic bedrooms for the servants, large enough. “I doubt I would find myself cramped.”

  “In any case,” Mr. Deedes continued brightly, “if there is any difficulty, I am sure Sir Arthur will be able to solve it for you.”

  There was that name again. Abigail felt a mingled curiosity and antipathy as she wondered how much power the executor would have over her. She knew, too, it would be useless to say that she was accustomed to solving difficulties for herself and preferred it that way. Even if Mr. Deedes had known Francis and understood that far from being a help he was a major difficulty himself, the solicitor would assume the trustee of
her estate had managed it.

  Sharp words rose to her lips when she recalled the complications caused by running a business under a trusteeship—not that dear Albert Gallatin, her trustee, had ever caused her trouble, it was just the inconvenience of needing to obtain his signature for any legal transaction that rankled her. But that was all behind her now, and it was a comfort to know that the bookshop was there and that Albert would make sure it was not run into the ground. If she should find the conditions of Victor’s inheritance too impossible, Abigail thought, they could return to America and remain there until Victor was of age and entitled to take the Lydden estate into his own hands.

  The notion of that safe haven gave Abigail a sense of freedom that nearly brought her to say caustically that she would thank Sir Arthur to mind his own business and permit her to mind hers, but she recalled how startled Mr. Deedes had been by her earlier sharpness. It was ridiculous, she told herself, to antagonize the family solicitor unless it was necessary, so she lowered her eyes to conceal the irritation she felt and said sweetly, “But you have not yet told me, beyond saying that he was your co-executor, just what powers Sir Arthur will have, and thus, I cannot tell in what situations I should apply to him.”

  “Oh, you may call on him in any difficulty,” Mr. Deedes assured her enthusiastically.

  Infuriated, Abigail bit her lip until she had her voice under control. “I should be most reluctant,” she said then, “to impose on a man who, no matter how worthy, is a total stranger to me. What I wish to know is whether I am free to live in Rutupiae Hall, to draw money to pay the servants and to purchase food and clothing for myself and my children, whether I am free to dismiss any servant I find incompetent and to employ others. I am sure Sir Arthur would find it inconvenient if I should call him from his own business each time I found it necessary to order smalls for my son or hire a new scullery maid.”