Edwina wasn’t surprised that her uncle had dismissed what she had said earlier as unimportant. “Mr. and Mrs. Warren,” she replied.
Her uncle gave her a blank stare. “Why would you wish to call upon your father’s old butler?”
Edwina went to reply, but Bennett spoke up. “Mr. Warren is a good man and served Uncle Richard dutifully.”
“Yes, well, now he is living off my good graces,” her uncle grumbled. “I do not know what the blazes Richard was thinking about when he willed one of our cottages to the Warrens.”
Bennett reached for his glass as he shared, “I find it admirable how Uncle Richard made sure to take care of the Warrens even after he passed.”
Her uncle’s expression was stern as he countered, “He still was a servant.”
“That is very high-handed of you, Father,” Bennett stated. “Besides, Mrs. Warren was a delightful housekeeper who always made sure I had plenty of biscuits during our visits.”
The tension in the room rose as her uncle leaned forward in his seat. “There is a line that must be drawn with servants, but it seems Richard believed that line could be blurred.”
Edwina knew her next words would not be well received by her uncle, but she said them anyway. “My father treated the Warrens like family.”
“That is rubbish!” her uncle exclaimed. “By doing so, the Warrens would never have learned their place.”
She bristled at her uncle’s words, her back stiffening in response. She knew it was pointless to argue with him since he was an incredibly stubborn man who seemed to revel in disagreements. But he was wrong. Her father cared more about the people working around him than following what Society dictated.
Lord Hilgrove spoke up, his voice calm but firm. “I do believe it says a lot about a man by the way he treats his servants, or people that are less fortunate than himself.”
“I am not for tar and feathering the servants, but I do think it is important that they know their place,” her uncle insisted. “We have worked too hard to be lumped in with commoners. It is our birthright.”
Lord Hilgrove seemed to take her uncle’s words in stride as he shared, “I rather enjoyed serving in the Army, because no one seemed to care that I was a son of an earl. They only cared that I did my job, a job that many lives depended on.”
Her uncle settled back in his seat. “I have no doubt that you served honorably in the war but life is much different on English soil.”
“I wholeheartedly agree to that,” Lord Hilgrove said.
Edwina leaned to the side as a footman stepped forward to retrieve her plate. With only dessert remaining, she anticipated retiring to her bedchamber for the evening, looking forward to her nightly routine of reading by the crackling fire in the hearth.
Her aunt redirected her focus towards Lord Hilgrove. “Have you been to Town since you have returned from the war?”
“No, I’m afraid my country estate has commanded much of my attention, and I have little time for frivolous things,” Lord Hilgrove responded.
“That is a shame. Everyone deserves to have fun, once in a while,” her aunt said.
“I’m afraid my brother didn’t spend the time necessary to make our estate profitable and it has taken much work to bring it up to snuff,” Lord Hilgrove shared.
Her aunt smiled. “Elodie and Melody will be arriving any day now and they will be pleased to see you once more,” she said. “They refused to leave their boarding school a day earlier than required.”
“I do not blame them, considering I only have fond memories of my time at Eton,” Lord Hilgrove shared.
Bennett chuckled. “Only fond memories?” he joked. “What about the time our headmaster punished us for sneaking out for a night swim at the stream? Or when we caused a mouse invasion?”
“Mouse invasion?” Edwina asked.
“Yes, we had the ingenious idea of storing food in our dormitories, despite it being against the rules,” Bennett said. “For a few days, we thought we had outwitted our headmaster and we feasted on food late into the evening.”
Edwina leaned forward in her seat. “What happened?”
Bennett’s lips curled upward. “The mice arrived in droves and ate through everything. It was awful, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out who the culprits were. We were severely punished and I couldn’t sit down for days.”
“How awful,” Edwina murmured.
“No, what is awful is sharing a bed with mice,” Lord Hilgrove added. “They went after the crumbs in my bed, and it didn’t matter that I was occupying it.”