Chapter 1
“It’s very... Gothic,” said Edwin, uncertainly.
“Yes, my lord; it’s why it is commonly called ‘Gothic House,’ said Hymes, the butler.
“I’m not used to being ‘my lord,’ you know,” admitted Edwin.
“I am sure your lordship will become more nearly acquainted with the felicity of the situation as time passes,” said Hymes.
Edwin thought the butler sounded more like his idea of a viscount than he felt. He had never anticipated inheriting his uncle’s title, since his uncle had two sons, one of them married with a potential heir on the way; but Uncle Miles Annesley’s younger son had fallen at Waterloo, half an hour before the French sued for peace, and his older son had decided to make a trip of collecting his brother’s body, with shopping in Paris for his wife, and their yacht had gone down in a freak storm in the Bay of Biscay. And then, Uncle Miles had had an apoplexy, and managed to name the offspring of his estranged younger brother before he died.
Edwin was not sure for what solecisms his father had been packed off to India; but Giles Annesley had amassed a fortune, married the daughter of a Rajah, and returned home in triumph with Edwin and Sarah, an Indian nanny and manservant, invested wisely, and proceeded to loan money to his older brother, Miles, at need, when his sons proved very expensive. This had not made him any more popular with the older viscount.
Mama had succumbed to some winter ailment engendered by the exigencies of the English weather, and Papa had followed her, in failing to take care of himself properly. Fortunately, by that time, Sarah was already betrothed to Giles’s man of business, and they married quietly, and inherited Devi Lohar as a nanny to any anticipated offspring. Ram Gopal Kumar remained with Edwin, having been something of a tutor in riding and swordplay to Edwin when he was growing up. He ruled the English servants with a rod of iron.
And now, Edwin was Viscount Aldermede, and Aldermede Hall was more commonly called ‘Gothic House,’ having been a medieval hall house which had been added to when the viscountcy did some kind of favour to Henry VIII, and most of the local priory had been added to the original austere timber-framed building with cobblestone lower floor.
“Are there... uh, any other servants?” asked Edwin, looking with some distaste at the cobwebs hanging like banners in the vestibule.
“Only the housekeeper, my lady wife,” said Hymes. “His lordship was not a tolerant man, and took delight in informing the few that were left that they would have to serve a...” he delicately cleared his throat, “A man of colour.”
“I don’t suppose the word he used was complimentary,” said Edwin, dryly.
“If I may say, my lord, though you are a trifle swarthy, few would realise,” said Hymes.
“Oh? Well, I don’t intend to hide it. I loved my mother very much, and I honour her bravery in coming to live in a foreign country where the climate was not at all what she was used to,” said Edwin, staring down his nose at Hymes.
A thin smile touched the austere features of the butler.
“Bravo, my lord; just the right manner, and, if I may say so, a touch of the old lord too. I have no more reservations, if you will stand up for yourself.”
“Dammit! Were you testing me?”
“Yes, my lord,” said Hymes.
“You old rogue,” said Edwin, more in charity with Hymes than he had been. “The place is filthy.”
“Yes, my lord; it breaks Mrs. Hymes’s heart, but she can’t do it all,” said Hymes. “But I don’t suppose you would want servants who would disparage you, anyway.”
“Well, I shall, in that case, bring the servants I have in our house in town to make a start,” said Edwin. “I have no butler as Ram Gopal is my comptroller of the household. I will expect you and him to come to an arrangement. Does your wife oversee the cooking?”
“She cooks for me and for her,” said Hymes.
“Then Ram Gopal Kumar can rule the kitchens, and the kitchen gardens, as well as being my valet,” said Edwin. “That seems an equitable division of labour. And my cook is English and can cook Engish dishes and knows when to let Ram Gopal have his way.”
“Yes, my lord,” said Hymes, who suspected that life was going to be interesting.
“I shall, I suppose, have to marry,” said Edwin. “And now, I suppose, those who did not like my background will ‘overlook it,’ for a viscount.”
“I fear so, my lord,” said Hymes.
“I am tempted to advertise, ‘Indian gentleman of adequate means with English connexions seeks a bride, must be a lady, under five-and-twenty years old, prepared to provide offspring in return for a comfortable lifestyle,’” said Edwin.
Hymes managed an austere smile.
“That, if I may say so, my lord, should get rid of most of the timewasters,” he said. “You would need to reduce the number who still apply to those who sound most suited, discarding those who tell you that they are only a few years over the age you stipulate, and who mean as much as five or six years by ‘a few,’ those who are apparent in fighting a, ah, distaste, over your background, and those who either wish to bring their own child or children to the marriage or who wish to tie up tightly some agreement that once brought to bed, they may be considered free to have discreet lovers.”
“Good G-d!” said Edwin, in shock. “It appears to be almost as much of a minefield as the season.”
“The difference is, my lord, that you have more control over meeting them; first in some neutral venue in London or some other city. And then perhaps hire a chaperone in order to have a house party or some such.”
“I have a better idea,” said Edwin. “Let this house be a test. I will observe them covertly as they are interviewed by my man of business, and then I will borrow clothes from Ram Gopal and pretend to be the coachman, and take those who are front-runners to a house party, but arrange an accident, and bring them to this mausoleum to see how they handle it, and you and your lady will pretend to be caretakers reluctantly giving succour.”
Hymes gave a slow smile.
“I like the way your lordship thinks,” he said. “But may I suggest you dress as an ordinary coachman; less exotic, and merely weather-beaten. You might dress like an Indian gentleman to conduct the interviews in case you have a question you wish to interpose. You can let them think you are a representative of yourself.”
“I wasn’t sure when I first met you, Hymes, but I’m beginning to think you are a capital fellow.”
“Thank you, my lord; I might venture to say the same.”
Edwin roared with laughter, and slapped Hymes on the shoulder.
“Let us go and write out an advertisement and post it in the newspapers of the local large towns,” he said. “Chelmsford and Brentwood, I believe.”
“Yes, my lord. Unless you wish to seek further?”
“Let us start local and then spread wider if I find nobody satisfying. I need to set up a post restante address at some hostelry.”
Hymes cleared his throat.
“If I may suggest, my lord, that patriotic inn, ‘The Black Boy,’ in Chelmsford, named for Prince Charles, who became Charles the Second, and who was swarthy. I fancy you might like the irony?”
“I do,” said Edwin.
oOoOo
Ram Gopal regarded his master with disapproval.
“This is not a regular way of finding a young lady to marry, Mister Edwin, most certainly not,” he complained.
“What am I supposed to do, Ram Gopal? Marry someone who pretends not to dislike me so she can be a viscountess? How else do I find out if someone is ready to like me for myself?
“I suppose it has some merit, but this testing with the house... what is it that you hope to achieve?”
“In adversity, people show their best and their worst. So, I will see the real side of the women I take there.”
“They will know that the coachman is the same man who asks them questions; your eyes are olive green and it is a most distinctive colour.”
“They aren’t likely to be staring into the eyes of the coachman,” said Edwin.
Ram Gopal considered.
“If any young lady notices, she will be a lady of singular perspicacity, and worth getting to know better,” he opined. “And am I to be in this Gothic monstrosity with you, as support?”
“Perhaps you had better,” said Edwin. “You may clean the kitchen.”
“Thank you, my lord,” said Ram Gopal, much relieved. “If I may say so, it is an extreme test, and moreover, we are heading for winter, and the thought of smoking chimneys does not fill me with joy.”
“Make sure that there is equipment to sweep the chimneys; there has been an invention of a series of canes to fit together. I am sure we can manage that if one of the ladies is capable of ordering it.”
“You have rats in your attic, Master Edwin,” said Ram Gopal, affectionately.
“Better mad than married to a besom,” said Edwin. Ram Gopal considered this, and gave a curt nod.
The advertisement went into the local papers, and Ram Gopal and Edwin moved into Gothic House to make sure it was well stocked with provisions, in case of being snowed up; and Ram Gopal declared himself satisfied with the state of the kitchen. Edwin claimed for himself the room above the porch, which was best described as cosy; it was panelled with linenfold panelling, some of which folded back, as Hymes showed Edwin, to provide a stair beside the chimney stack both up to the room above, which had no other means of entrance, and down into the back of a recess for hanging cloaks and coats in the porch, this stair down being hardly more than a ladder and hidden behind the coats.
“I love it,” said Edwin. “So very English that it satisfies the English side of me.”
“I will live in the servants’ quarters for now, sir,” said Ram Gopal. “I do not think I need to hide in a priests’ hole.”
“And when the young ladies are here, they will want proper bedrooms,” said Hymes. “You have a spy hole onto the landing, my lord, but not into the bedrooms.”
“So I should hope,” said Edwin. “But girls like to giggle together and gossip before going down, so, as it is a wide landing, I may hope to get some better idea about them.”
The house was built in an H-shape, the original medieval house being the central bar, more modern than a hall-house, in having a floor made on purpose over the downstairs entrance hall, which had been made into two rooms, a reception room opening off the porch, and a counting-house the other side and a boudoir behind it. To the right of the reception room, the new section housed a grand dining room at the front of the house, with grand staircase to the landing, running across the back of the house, opening into two bedrooms and between them a linen closet, which was entirely internal, sharing a chimney with Edwin to heat irons. He reflected that it would be a most uncomfortable room to work in but it concealed the door to his own room, which might be assumed to be occupied by a housekeeper or laundry maid; and the vent for steam onto the landing, where there was also a window to the back of the house, his spy hole. Back stairs were off the landing for the servants, and led to the kitchens behind the grand staircase. The master bedroom was over the dining room here, and Edwin thought he would be happy to occupy a light, airy room one day. At the back of the house behind the stair case was a study.
“The other side of the new part... if one might call a mix of Elizabethan and Jacobean ‘new,’ my lord, there is a grand ballroom, which stretches the length of the wing. Above it there are three bedrooms. There are three smaller bedrooms above that for children of the house or a governess.”
Edwin nodded.
As manor houses went it was not large, but he was beginning to love it.
“And all under Holland cloths, of course, to preserve the furnishings?” he asked.
“Of course, my lord,” said Mrs. Hymes. “I cannot clean the whole house on my own, but there is no reason to be profligate.”
“And your own quarters, and those of Hymes, are they adequate?”
“Oh, yes, my lord, we have a room and an office which we share on the ground floor at the back of the main house, and my still room, and there are rooms above that reached by the servant’s stair including a more convenient linen closet, and rooms for such upper servants as a chaplain, or a secretary, which have windows over the back kitchen garden, and the stables at the back, not joined to the wings at all and on the kitchen side, with a wall to close off the kitchen gardens from such things.”
“And what do you want, Mrs. Hymes? Ram Gopal tells me the stove is a closed stove but it can best be described as ‘adequate’ and ‘antique,’ running through ‘barbaric,’ ‘curmudgeonly,’ and I can’t remember the rest.”
“Oh, that man knows a lot of long words, so he does,” said Mrs. Hymes. “Well, I don’t say a new one might not be nice, and maybe if the draining could be put in, one o’ these Bramah closets.”
“I shall see if I cannot arrange to accommodate you in this,” said Edwin. “There is room under the grand staircase, I should think.”
“It’s a cloakroom with closed stools at the moment, gentlemen one side, ladies the other,” said Mrs. Hymes.
“Well, that is better than going outside in the bitter cold, and please use it, you and Hymes,” said Edwin. “I think I will not do any updating until I have chosen a wife.”
“No, sir, you don’t want it to look too good,” said Mrs. Hymes. “Girls are a bunch of dratted fools, my lord, and their estate don’t make no difference, heads in the air and expecting a load o’ fool nonsense.”
“Your opinion tallies with mine, Mrs. Hymes,” said Edwin.
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