Christina Hollis (27 page)

‘Why? What on earth for?’

‘If things had worked out differently, Jack, she would have been my sister-in-law. As it is, she’s in need of as much help now as Philip or Mistress Constance.’ Madeleine leaned in close to him so Kitty would not hear her next words. ‘And just because you’ve never been caught out, Jack Pritchard, it doesn’t mean you can act holier than thou with others!’

‘It’s Pickersgill that’s put Dad up to this! And now he knows all about...about...oh, but I don’t want anything to happen to Philip...not after what I’ve done to Mickey!’ Kitty wailed, her small bony fingers digging gratefully into Madeleine’s offered hand.

‘Get in,’ Jack said roughly, still hot and stinging at Madeleine’s words.

Despite Kitty’s wails that she had been disowned, Madeleine guessed Albert Pettigrew would be frantic at the loss of his daughter. She installed Kitty in a spare room with tea, toast and cakes then sent Higgins off to take the news to Highlands.

‘He’ll kill me!’ Kitty’s eyes were enormous and pink with tears as she heard of the message.

‘He won’t. All your father is worried about right now is that you’re safe.’

A tremendous clattering at the front door made Madeleine wonder if her words had been a little hasty.

‘Where’s my girl?’

‘The key’s in the door!’ Madeleine hissed at Kitty, springing out of the bedroom and on to the landing. Needing no further encouragement Kitty locked herself in the bedroom, howling.

‘Steady, sir!’ Madeleine took up a position at the top of the stairs, her hands raised to try and calm him.

‘Out of my way! I’ve come for my daughter!’ Pettigrew bundled past her, but the straggle of labourers he had brought as a lynch mob idled about in the hall, clearly not too interested in their work. Madeleine took heart.

‘Mr Pettigrew—Kitty is quite safe here. She’ll come home when you convince us all that you won’t be laying any blame on her. Bad enough that you and Sir Edwin should ruin Master Philip—don’t spoil your daughter’s life as well...’

In his rage Pettigrew raised both fists. Madeleine dodged, instinctively fearing a blow but he didn’t strike.

‘Me? You accuse me of spoiling my daughter? It’s Michael Adamson that’s done that! And the other one’s turning out to be no better! What sort of a man needs you to fight his battles for him? He’s ruined my daughter’s expectations, his brother’s ruined her life— everything I’ve worked for—’

‘He hasn’t, Dad!’ Kitty’s voice gained strength in its secure refuge. Pettigrew stopped ranting. ‘He hasn’t! Phil was never interested in me, but you were so busy making a fool of yourself that you couldn’t see it!’

Pettigrew’s face fell as far as his spirits. He sagged against the banister rail like a punctured balloon. At once Madeleine realised his pride would not stand in her way any longer. She seized the advantage while she could and leaned over to look down at the crowd gathered below in the hallway.

‘Mr Higgins, show Mr Pettigrew’s employees to the kitchens. Only milk to drink, mind! And if you could bring some sherry wine to the summer drawing-room...’

She took a firm hold of Mr Pettigrew’s arm and marched him down the stairs before he had time to complain. Her surprising strength coupled with the shock to his system overawed him. He sat down on the sofa meekly as Madeleine instructed. It amazed her to find someone taking her orders, but she tried not to show it.

‘What has your wife told you of this matter, Mr Pettigrew?’ Madeleine remained standing as Philip always did when he had something important to say.

‘Enid’s taken to her bed.’

‘I see. In that case, I’ll give you the details as Kitty has told them to me. Before I do, Mr Pettigrew, I should warn you that I will stand for no nonsense in the Adamsons’ house.’

When Higgins left after delivering the sherry wine, Madeleine filled two large wine glasses with it and handed one to Pettigrew.

‘Have a good pull—you’ll need it.’ She took a drink herself, but found it sweet and nasty stuff. No wonder it was usually served in such tiny little glasses. ‘Kitty was expecting Michael Adamson’s child, but old Mr Adamson wouldn’t let him marry her.’

‘Oh, my God...’ Colour draining from his face, Pettigrew searched hopelessly for his handkerchief. ‘Enid told me they’d been together in France, but...’ His voice dwindled.

‘Everyone was so terrified of causing a scandal, your wife arranged for Kitty’s trip to Europe.’ Madeleine continued with the sorry tale Kitty had finished telling her over again only a few minutes before. ‘Michael had a little money of his own, which he used to buy a farm in the French countryside. Kitty lived with her aunt in Paris, while Michael built a house and worked all the hours God sent on his patch of land. He was trying to make a home for them, Mr Pettigrew, so that one day you’d agree to their marriage!’

Albert Pettigrew passed a hand over his face. He might not have realised what had been going on over the past year and more, but he understood all about work. His voice now was still harsh, but without its earlier violence. ‘Go on.’

‘Kitty’s very young, sir. To be living so far away from home, among strangers—with a tiny baby...she didn’t mean any harm. The baby had been fractious for days, and she says she felt such a failure. Michael hadn’t been able to visit for over a month, and when he did arrive, they quarrelled. They both said a lot of things in the heat of the moment, and Kitty ran away. She’d had her one and only taste of freedom when she went to the sub the night we saw her, and the thought of seeing home, and you, and friendly faces, was just too much...’

Pettigrew got to his feet. Placing his untouched glass of sherry on the table, he went to the door with a heavy, ponderous walk. Taking another mouthful of the sherry for courage, Madeleine forced it down with a grimace and followed him.

‘Mr Pettigrew... If you’re willing to be reasonable, I’m sure Kitty would love to see you...’

He hesitated, but did not turn around. With a brief shake of his head he walked quickly from the room, and out of the house.

The next day a letter arrived addressed to Mistress Constance. Jack opened it on his daily visit. Written by Sir Edwin Pickersgill on expensively headed notepaper, it was a curt request for one thousand pounds in settlement of the loans and interest owed by her son to himself and Mr Pettigrew. It seemed that Kitty’s father had not been swayed by Madeleine’s explanation. He was still following Pickersgill’s advice.

Kitty burst into tears, and fled back to her bed. There could be no such luxury for Madeleine. The money would have to be raised, and that was an end to it. With Jack’s help she arranged for several independent valuers to visit Willowbury and with their help everything movable was priced and catalogued.

Mr Pritchard had been detained in London on business, and Madeleine could not bear to wait for his return. Philip was spending several lifetimes condemned to that black stinking hole of a prison. Mistress Constance agreed tearfully that there was nothing for it but to raise the money through sacrifice.

For Madeleine the time was spent in purgatory. Jack had settled young Jemima with Mistress Constance in Cheltenham, and told Madeleine that the Adamsons’ ward was a sensible girl and only too pleased to be of help. That was one weight off Madeleine’s mind. She had enough to worry about with the estate to run, the dairying to do and Kitty in a state of permanent collapse.

There were many mornings when the butter just would not come.

Jack visited the prison every day. Madeleine accompanied him when she could, but it wasn’t much use. Philip worried at her for a reason why she would not accept his proposal of marriage, while Madeleine could not bear to add her guilty secret to his burdens.

Willowbury and the state of his mother were more than enough for him to worry about, she thought.

As he deteriorated in the filthy conditions, so Philip’s pride refused Madeleine entry to the cell. Ever hopeful, she continued to visit, but was always left waiting outside.

The weather turned cold and wet. Jack brought back tales of the cell running with moisture sweated from the cold stone walls.

Any blankets, pillows or other small comforts they tried to provide for Philip were mysteriously spirited away by the next day.

Every night Madeleine lay awake in her safe comfortable bed, listening to rain and gale lashing about outside.

Her Philip was cold and alone, and she was in despair.

Madeleine stared down at the pile of broadsheets. A stone stopped them fluttering away in the stiff breeze, but their corners still flapped and struggled to be free.
        Notices of the coming sale had to be tied to every tree around Willowbury’s boundaries. Nearly everything movable was on offer—furniture, draperies, one of the coaches, most of the farm equipment, some of the livestock—even the peacocks.

There would be precious little left after the Adamsons had cleared their debt to Pettigrew. Only Michael’s inheritance of the land, and Willowbury itself. The staff would have to go their separate ways. Madeleine had put the remaining clothes she had acquired in Paris up for sale, too, for what they might fetch. Every little would have to go and help the Adamsons. Madeleine was used to real hardship and knew she could stand it, but they would find it a shock.

Sadly she cut another length of string. Making a hole on each side of another poster, she threaded the twine through and tied it to the front gate of Willowbury. ‘Sale Tuesday,’ it said. ‘Viewing at any time.’ Then there was a list of the useful and desirable, the beautiful and the functional that had all been part of Willowbury for so long. The spinet Madeleine so longed to be able to play, the little donkey cart, the stone bench where she had sat in the garden with Philip...everything was to go.

Madeleine sighed and looked up and down the lane. There was only one figure in sight—tiny against the distant horizon as it approached. The first of many visitors, she supposed. Posters had gone up in all the surrounding villages. The interested, the eager and the just plain curious would soon start buzzing around Willowbury like wasps around a jam pot.

While she was fixing an advertisement to one of the great beeches that hemmed Willowbury, Higgins arrived with news of a visitor. Grim-faced, he said that Mr Pettigrew had come across the fields from Highlands on foot, eager to keep his arrival a secret from his daughter.

‘Miss Kitty is on the front terrace, mademoiselle, so I’ve put Mr Pettigrew in the rear kitchen.’

A nice touch. Kitty wouldn’t venture there, and Mr Pettigrew had probably never been in a kitchen since his days as a junior assistant Jenny-spinner, or whatever it was he did.

Madeleine accompanied Higgins back to the house, pausing only to rearrange Kitty’s rugs and hand her a dry handkerchief.

The rear kitchen was a small, high-ceilinged room between the yard door and the pantry. Albert Pettigrew stood in front of the open fire. He was dressed in surprisingly restrained shades of brown, and peered at a framed floor plan of the house. It had been drawn up in the days when Willowbury could afford new servants who would need a map.

With his portly figure and hands behind his back he looked like a giant wood owl caught out in daylight.

‘Miss Madeleine,’ he said stiffly, with a hard stare at Higgins, ‘a word with you, if you please.’

Madeleine thought of her Philip, lying in that close, fetid hole of a cell. It was all she could do to bring herself to keep a civil tongue.

‘Certainly.’ She swallowed hard and turned on her heel. ‘Mr Higgins, if you could entertain Miss Kitty I will deal with Mr Pettigrew here.’

Unsettled to think he would not receive a welcome inside the body of the house, Mr Pettigrew couldn’t summon up the nerve to speak for a good few moments after Higgins was out of earshot.

‘This business, Miss Madeleine—’

‘What business, Mr Pettigrew?’ Madeleine said innocently. Betsy’s pot of tea stood on the table steaming gently, but the visitor was not offered a cup.

He was fidgeting. ‘I speak as I find, miss. Sometimes it can be a bit hasty. Enid says I’m so sharp sometimes it’s a wonder I don’t cut myself...’

Madeleine did not laugh as he had hoped.

‘If we could come to the point, Mr Pettigrew. We are all very busy, with the sale tomorrow—’

‘That’s it. That’s what I’ve come about.’

Madeleine put her head on one side. If Pettigrew had come to wriggle his way out of an embarrassing situation, Madeleine wanted to make sure he suffered in the process.

‘I—I want you to call it off. I don’t want there to be any more unpleasantness between us neighbours...’ He laughed nervously. Madeleine continued to study him. ‘Truth is, miss, Pickersgill convinced me for a bit that I had right on my side, but it doesn’t seem as though the county sees it like that. Enid went and told her sewing circle what a martyr she thought we were making of young Adamson between us—’

‘Indeed.’

‘My little girl won’t come home to me... Enid tells me it’s a grandson I’ve got, too, and me not even having seen him yet...’ Pettigrew gave a feeble smile, having seized on the only bright point in days of purgatory. ‘I was wondering, miss...ah...’

‘Yes?’

‘Do you think—that is...’ He took a deep breath. ‘If I was to suggest that young Philip married our Kitty, since it was a member of his family that ruined her—’

‘But not him, Mr Pettigrew.’ Madeleine clasped her hands together and forced herself to remain civil. Pettigrew had expected thanks, not reason, and it confused him.

‘Ah...but he is at least here! Might as well try to catch fog in a basket as pin down that jackanapes brother of his!’ Pettigrew glowed with the genius of this reasoning. ‘That way, our Kitty’s saved, and, as she’ll be coming to live here permanent, we might as well unite the two estates first as last. Young Adamson can rearrange the hedges to give Highlands that bit of land along the boundary I’ve been after, and we’ll say no more about the money he owes me—’

‘And what about Sir Edwin? He’s not likely to be put off by anything less than repayment of his loan and interest in full.’

Madeleine and Jack had had plenty of time to think of all the angles there.