that it is in this state,” he mumbled.
Benna just grunted.
Nance shoved a bundle of drapes off a wingchair covered in rotting yellow silk and then carefully lowered his ancient bones onto the seat, groaning as he did so.
Once he’d shifted his narrow carcass around and made himself comfortable, he looked up at Benna, who was staring.
His face, already deeply grooved with wrinkles, puckered into a disdainful frown. “She has finally left.”
Benna didn’t need to ask which she he meant.
Besides, she’d seen Mrs. Valera’s carriage depart a scant quarter of an hour after she’d left the library. But even the knowledge that the two weren’t still alone together hadn’t wiped the memory of the earl’s besotted expression from her mind.
Benna turned back to the crate she’d just opened.
The dishes inside it were old and costly. It was Maiolica, a form of Italianate plate from the early fifteenth century. There were similar serving pieces at Wake House, but she’d never seen such an extensive collection. It looked like somebody had just tossed the pieces into a crate full of wood shavings.
“What do you have there?” Nance asked.
She held up a piece. “I do hope none of it is broken.” She set it on a nearby settee. It would better to haul it all back in small batches rather than risk dropping a full crate.
“Ah, yes. Maiolica.” Nance appeared unsurprised by the fact that valuable dishes were sitting in one of the state guest bedchambers.
In fact, neither he nor the housekeeper, Mrs. Gates, had raised an eyebrow at any of the oddities she’d found at Lenshurst, which told her that it had likely been going on for some time.
Benna went about her work, waiting for the old servant to get to the point of his visit.
Several minutes passed in silence, only the soft clinking of ceramic filling the big room. Benna had just moved on to the next crate when the old man finally spoke.
“Mrs. Valera’s mother, Margaret, was a tweeny over at Oakland Manor.”
Ah, here it was. Nance—usually so proper—wished to gossip.
“Margaret was a pretty little thing—although nothing to her daughter—and caught the eye of the vicar’s younger brother. This was the last vicar—John Bennett—not the one now.” He clucked his tongue. “The vicar and his brother were poor sons of a gentleman farmer somewhere in the north.” He waved a boney hand in a direction Benna believed was westerly.
Benna set aside the jemmy bar she’d been using to open the crate and lifted off the lid: more books. She replaced the lid and moved on.
“The younger son was a wild boy who’d been sent to the vicar to be tamed. Ha! He wasn’t here a month before he got a babe on Meg and then scarpered. Meg went into the straw and then took her own life not long after the child was born. Her family was strict and would have made her days a hell on earth. As it was, they sent the babe to Meg’s spinster sister, Tilly.”
He glanced at Benna, who’d paused in the middle of emptying yet another crate full of dishes to listen to the tragic but all too common tale.
Nance’s gaze dropped to the pewter pitcher she held. “We’ve been searching for that for months,” he said.
Benna put the pitcher aside and Nance resumed his story.
“When Tilly died suddenly, the girl was brought back. Not to Meg’s family—they wouldn’t have her—but to live with the vicar and his wife. ’Course they put the story about that Gloria was an orphaned niece.” He shrugged. “They were well-liked and so people played along.”
“What happened to Mrs. Valera’s father?” Benna asked.
“Oh, well, he’d died in the war.” Nance sighed, as if the tale were exhausting him. “The vicar and his wife loved that girl like she was their own—they never did have children—and they gave her everything. Some think the vicar beggared himself to make sure she always had the very best.”
Benna closed the crate of books and went to check the contents of the three large armoires that were stacked like soldiers along one long wall.
The first armoire was stuffed with clothing. Old clothing. Must and dust billowed around Benna when she shifted the piles to see what they were.
The garments had been wadded up with no care and expensive silks and satins were jumbled in with cheap muslin. A flash of salmon pink attracted her attention and she pulled out a man’s skirted frockcoat.
“That was his lordship’s,” Nance said. “I recall when he wore it.”
“Lord Cadan