When the Duke Returns(98)

An odd phrasing, but Simeon understood exactly what he meant.

Honeydew walked into the study with a stack of Simeon’s papers, a footman at his heels with more papers. But Simeon froze on the threshold. The room had no furniture other than half-filled bookshelves. Honeydew was arranging stacks of bills and letters in neat piles on the empty shelves.

“Where are my books?” he said, hearing the sharpness in his own voice. “Where is my father’s desk?”

“The duchess had me send the desk straight to London the day you moved to the Dower House,” Honeydew said. “We are expecting all the furniture back in a matter of days. The duchess was quite right, and an offer of double payment in ready money has effected miracles.”

Simeon digested that. “The books? Have they gone to London as well?”

“Only the ones which were falling to pieces,” Honeydew said. He pointed to the ceiling. Simeon looked up and saw a dingy stain that stretched from one corner over approximately a third of the room. “I’m afraid that when the water closet pipes leaked, they inundated the study, causing the rot of a number of books. On the duchess’s instructions—”

Simeon cut him off. “I see.” He felt that familiar swell of anger against his father. Some of those books were among the first books printed in England. He remembered an edition of John Donne’s poems signed by the poet himself…likely merely a moldering heap of pages now.

“The duchess believes that the books can be restored,” Honeydew said. The consolation in his tone just made Simeon more irritated.

“Of course,” he snapped.

A footman appeared with the small desk from the Dower House and placed it precisely in the middle of the echoing study. Honeydew immediately lifted a pile of papers from the bookshelf and moved it to the desk. “There, Your Grace,” he said soothingly. “Peters will fetch a chair and you’ll be as comfortable as can be. At least that odor’s gone!”

The demise of the odor had obviously made Honeydew giddy with pleasure.

When the chair appeared, Simeon took a seat and began looking over the letters delivered the previous day. Four new bills had arrived, for various expenses incurred by the duchy in the last ten years, along with a letter from another woman who had apparently been promised riches by his father in exchange for access to her bed.

Why did his father bother making huge promises to women, promises he obviously never meant to keep? There was something pitiful about the pattern of it. Invariably his father swore that he had fallen in love at first sight. Then he promised to support his “beloved” for the rest of her life, generally offering a small cottage as well as a cash payment. After, one must assume, enjoying himself, he would return home, thereafter ignoring all future communication.

It didn’t sit well with Simeon. The truth of it soured in his stomach and made him…irritable.

Honeydew appeared at the door. “Mr. Pegg would like to see you, Your Grace. Mr. Pegg is—”

“I know who he is,” Simeon said. “I already directed that he should be paid for his smithy work.”

“He is here about the cemetery,” Honeydew said. He advanced somewhat into the room, lowering his voice. “Her Grace seems to have effected a somewhat miraculous transformation in Mr. Pegg. He’s acting as the mayor of the village. The kitchen staff reported last night that on discovering that Mr. Mopser had been charging double to villagers living by the river, Pegg stormed into the shop and forced a promise that the practice would stop.”

“Show him in,” Simeon said.

Pegg looked sand-beaten, like a man who’d been driving a camel caravan for far too long. But his back was straight, and the spark in his eye was honest. Simeon got up and came around the table. Isidore was obviously a good judge of character.

He felt less magnanimous toward his wife by a quarter of an hour later. Some repairs Pegg itemized for the village were acceptable: a widow needed a new roof, the church needed a new privy, etc. The village green was to be opened for use by the villagers, and six fowl provided to each cottage. Likewise, villagers were to be allowed to hunt rabbits and small fowl in the duke’s forest, without risking arrest from the gamekeeper. Not that there was a gamekeeper; his father dismissed him several years ago.

But two hundred pounds to refurbish the cemetery? And another two hundred pounds to be given to Henry Wissner, thatcher, as a fee for accepting Martin Smith as an apprentice? Three hundreds pounds for John Phillipson and Christopher Sumerall to oversee the construction of a new spire for the village church?

He and Pegg argued a bit, jostling back and forth over the steeple and the cemetery. At the end of another half hour they were both satisfied. Admittedly, Isidore had chosen well. Pegg cared for the village and its people. He would keep Mopser’s conniving nature under control. Simeon just wished that Isidore had consulted with him beforehand. Not that he would have disagreed with her, but…