Page 6 of Cousin Conundrum

“The Peacock swings, and my slate is clean? My family name is safe?” And Louisa would never know what she married into.

“Precisely.”

“Very well, sir.” Steven bowed again, lower this time.

With a dismissive wave, Padgett returned his attention to the papers before him.

Lightness in his step, Steven strode from the room.

Chapter Three

Kitty Bennet slid out of bed, careful not to wake her younger sister Lydia, with whom she shared a room. Not that much care was required, for Lydia snored contentedly, burrowed in blankets despite the summer heat. Experience made dressing in the near dark easy, and soon Kitty eased her little journal and a pencil from under a loose floorboard beneath her bed. Sticking both into the pocket of her skirt, she slipped from the room.

As she did most mornings, Kitty went first to the front parlor, seeking one of Longbourn’s maids, Tilly, who looked up with a smile from where she shoveled last night’s ashes.

“Good morning, Tilly,” Kitty greeted, crossing to join her. “Mind if I help?”

“Course not, miss.” Tilly stood gratefully, having long since given up worrying why Kitty helped her with her chores. “Not much to do this morning, miss. No great call for fires in this heat.”

“No,” Kitty agreed as she took up the little bin and brush. “Only small ones for light, and even those resented for the heat they add.” She made quick work of brushing the ashes into a pile. “How fares your family today? Did you not say that your little brother has a cough?”

“Oh, he’s doing much better, miss.” Tilly dropped into a chair with an exaggerated sigh, as if she’d been digging trenches, rather than pushing dust around.

“That is good to hear. How is your cousin? Does she still enjoy her place at the Robinsons?”

“Oh, she likes it there well enough, but that old Mr. Robinson is always pinching her behind, miss. Any chance he gets.” Tilly leaned forward. “Do you know, my cousin, she’s learned some of their maids have been dismissed with quite the sums settled on them, let me tell you, because pinchin’s not all that one will do, given the chance. No one can say how many little Robinsons be runnin’ about the countryside.”

“Truly?” Kitty wrinkled her nose, filing that information away to be entered into her journal. “But he is so old.”

“Not that old, apparently,” Tilly said with a tip of her chin.

Kitty helped her clean several more fireplaces, and lay out fresh wood, then made her way into the garden to gossip with Longbourn’s two lady’s maids as they took in wash, a task that would soon need to be seen to with greater alacrity. Once the days cooled with autumn, wash left out in the night would get coated in dew, but Kitty saw no reason to bring that up now. Instead, she helped take down and fold linens, chatting all the while, but only learned that Sally, lady’s maid to Kitty and her four sisters, had an aunt who suffered from gout. Not truly journal-worthy information, but Kitty jotted it down after leaving them, regardless, and entered what she’d learned from Tilly as well.

Next, she snatched some dried apples from the kitchen, happy there would be fresh ones soon enough, and went to the stable. There, she leaned against the fence, watching one of the grooms walk her father’s team. Soon enough, she heard the creak of the wheelbarrow that meant the approach of Stammy Smith, the youngest of the stable hands. Stammy, so called because he stammered, always got the job of mucking out the stalls.

The wheelbarrow appeared first, followed by Stammy, who halted when he saw her by the fence. “M-morning, Miss C-c-catherine.”

“Good morning, Stammy.” Kitty held out her hand. “I brought apples for the horses.”

Stammy set the wheelbarrow down to snatch them up. “T-thank you, m-miss. They’ll b-be enjoyin’ these.”

“I am certain they will,” she said, struggling not to smile. Kitty had no delusions that any of the treats she brought for the horses ever got farther than Stammy’s mouth. Which mattered not at all, for her true purpose was more gossip. An endless stream was required were she to have enough ideas to supply good material to the papers. “And how are Papa’s horses today?”

“H-hale and h-hearty, m-miss. Hale and hearty.”

Kitty nodded. “And how is your gram?”

Stammy’s grandmother was who everyone thereabouts went to with their ailments, large and small. That was, everyone who couldn’t afford Mr. Jones, the local apothecary, meaning most of the populations of Longbourn, Meryton, and the nearby estates of Lucas Lodge and Netherfield Park. From Stammy, Kitty regularly learned a great many secrets.

As he prattled on, spilling confidences like rain, Kitty filed them away for entry into her journal. Not that she would use anything she learned specifically. She simply required gossip for inspiration. Not only would it be wrong to share their community’s private doings with all of London, the papers to which she sold weren’t read by many who would care if Mr. Goulding’s knee was acting up, or if Miss King hated her freckles so much that she’d sought a tonic to be rid of them, and had to apply sour smelling oil to her face twice daily.

After Kitty gleaned all she could from Stammy for the morning, she wandered off to one of her favorite places, an ivy-choked stone bench. One that happened to sit right below the window of Mrs. Hill’s little workroom off the kitchen. Mrs. Hill, Longbourn’s housekeeper and well-regarded by the community in general, often had the very best gossip brought right to her.

Today, however, all Kitty could hear inside Mrs. Hill’s room was the scratch of a pen as she went over accounts. Disappointed by the lack of chatter spilling out, Kitty set to entering everything Stammy had told her into her journal. Beneath her entry about Mary King, she sketched a young miss with very smooth skin, but with gentlemen behind her holding their noses, their eyes watering from the smell.

But what caption to put? And for how long would Kitty need to wait before sending such a sketch to make certain Miss King had no notion the caricature alluded to her? Kitty had no desire to humiliate Miss King, or to have her work traced back to her.

Footfalls approaching the door to Mrs. Hill’s room drew Kitty from her thoughts, and she stilled as one of the kitchen maids said, “Mrs. Hock to see you, ma’am.”