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“Have you chosen a room yet?” the lady asked, walking into the gold room.
“I like the green one,” Rose answered, plunking herself down on each chair by the fire and then jumping up again to race through the connecting door to do the same in the other bedchamber. “It has roses on the walls! That’s my name!”
“Is this one acceptable to you, George?” Mr. Pershing asked.
George took another look out the window. Still visible in the fading light, trees, pastures, some fields down in the valley, and maybe a river beyond them. Acres and acres without anyone hawking their wares or trying to lure rich shallow pates into some dark alleyway or other. No alleyways at all. “Is that all yours?” he asked, gesturing.
Joining him, the husband nodded. “Those are our pastures that way, and beyond that the wheat fields and cattle pastures used by the farmers who rent the land from us. Over that hill there is the village of Birdlip, which marks the border of Winnover land on the west.”
“‘Birdlip’?” George repeated. “That’s a stupid name. Birds don’t have lips.”
“It’s called after Birdlip Manor on the far side of the valley,” Mr. Pershing explained. “Where Lord Birdlip got his name, I have no idea.” He leaned back against the window casement. “Perhaps one of his ancestors had a mouth like a bird’s beak.”
George stuck out his lips, pursing them together. “I reckon that could be it,” he said. “I wager he was one ugly bustard.”
“What are you doing?” Rose asked, bounding back into the bedchamber and immediately scrunching up her face in an imitation of George’s bird beak.
“Making bird lips,” he explained. When he turned around, the footman was pushing the new blanket box, his blanket box, into the dressing room. Out of sight. “I want it here,” George said, pointing at the foot of his bed.
“You might trip over it out here,” the fart-catcher said. With a quick glance at Mrs. Pershing and an even quicker grimace, though, the servant pulled the box back into the room and over to the foot of the bed. “There you go, sir,” he said, inclining his head. “All nice and tidy.”
Freezing in place, George stared at the tall, thin servant as he left the room. Then he spun to face Mr. Pershing. “That cuffin called me ‘sir,’” he whispered.
“You’re our son for the next few weeks,” he explained. “That makes you a ‘sir,’ or ‘Master George.’”
“What am I?” Rose demanded, lighting on the edge of the bed like a cricket, pausing for a moment but not finished yet with hopping about.
“You are ‘miss’ or ‘Miss Rose.’”
“Ooh, I’m a prime article!” she exclaimed. “Deirdre won’t ever believe it!”
Mrs. Pershing made a sound. “George, Edward will help you put your clothes away in the wardrobe there, and you may arrange the room however you please. Rose, I’ll have Sally assist you, and you may do the same. When you’re ready, come back downstairs and Powell will show you to the dining room where we’ll have dinner and begin making our plans.”
So they were Master George and Miss Rose now, and the fart-catchers and mop squeezers and even the pantler, Powell, had to do what they said. They’d never had it so soft and splendid, but George could see that it wouldn’t take more than a few days to get them as spoiled as chickens in a pile of corn. When the chicken was happiest, that was when the butcher lopped off its head.
While the children hurried about opening drawers and wardrobes and exclaiming at all the space they had, Emmeline slipped up the hallway to her own room, the second-largest bedchamber in the house. Good heavens, they were loud. She doubted Winnover Hall had experienced such a ruckus since her mother and her aunts and uncles had been small, if then.
“I have your gowns back in the wardrobe,” Hannah said, emerging from the dressing room. “But I can’t find your abalone hairbrush. I don’t recall leaving it behind, but I was helping Miss Rose, too.”
Emmie sank into one of the chairs by the crackling fireplace. “Don’t fret. When I have a moment, I’ll send a note back to Landon. I believe Mr. Pershing left at least one shoe behind, and his hat.”
The maid set the emptied portmanteau by the door so it could go back into the attic until they required it again—which would be in just under six weeks when they began the trip up to Cumberland. “I’ve told everyone who’s asked just what you said—that the young ones are a charitable project and we’re all to address them as your children.”
“Thank you.”
“But… Well, I’ve been in your household since you were sixteen, ma’am. I mean to say, it’s none of my affair, but if I had some idea—”
Ah, that. Of course, all of the servants would have questions, and not a one of them had reason to believe the tale they’d been handed. Of everyone employed there, Hannah and Powell had been at Winnover the longest. The butler had kept her secrets as a young girl, and she had no doubt he and Hannah would do so now. “Would you ask Powell to join us?” she said aloud, folding her hands onto her lap.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Once the maid and the butler had joined her in her bedchamber, she blew out her breath. “Have a seat, why don’t you?” she said, gesturing at the pair of chairs opposite her.
Hannah, looking as if she would rather chew nails, perched herself on the edge of an overstuffed chair. Powell, though, remained stiff-shouldered and on his feet. “I have never sat in the presence of my employers, Mrs. Pershing,” he stated. “If you deem it necessary I shall do so now, but I—”
“No, no,” she interrupted. “Stand if you wish. I—”
Hannah popped to her feet again. “I wish to stand, as well.”