The Indebted Earl by Erica Vetsch (love letters to the dead TXT) 📕

Thea, however, appeared more than willing to plow in where angels feared to tiptoe. “So I guess we have to wait to hear what you’re going to do with us until you have a good long think about it?”

The question landed in the middle of the table with a thud.

“That’s correct.” The captain ate the last bite of his breakfast and excused himself.

“Thea, why can’t you keep your mouth closed once in a while?” Penny scolded. “You do realize that not every single thought you have has to be uttered?”

“What? What did I do?”

“If you want the earl to like us and possibly continue to look after our welfare, perhaps you shouldn’t accuse him of neglecting you by taking time making decisions. The entire world doesn’t revolve around you.”

Sophie had wanted to intervene, but Penny was doing a fine job. No doubt she’d had plenty of practice as a stand-in mother to her younger siblings. A pity such responsibility had fallen to one so young.

“Ladies, enough talk. It’s time to work. For this morning, Mrs. Chapman is in charge, and we will follow her lead.” Sophie reached for a tea cloth on the sideboard and bent to wind it around her hair. “I would suggest you protect your hair as well. This is bound to be dusty.”

The cleaning went as well as could be hoped for considering that the crew was mostly youngsters. By the time noon arrived, the kitchen and pantry were spotless, and Mrs. Chapman had a list of provisions to keep house for the next fortnight or so.

“I know we might not be here that long, but I thought I would lay in enough for the captain for the coming days.” The housekeeper tucked her pencil into her gray-streaked hair. “I’ve added a few cleaning supplies like beeswax, lye, and vinegar. I hope the captain doesn’t mind. But what we really need are a few maids, a laundress, and a footman or two.” She pointed to the final row of jugs and baskets lining the table. “Penny and Betsy, be loves and put those in the larder, baskets on the floor and crockery on the shelf by the door.”

“Do you think it would benefit to write to Charlotte and see if any of her girls in training would want to try for a position here?” Sophie unwound her hair cloth and handed it to Thea, who was tasked with taking them outside and giving them a good shake.

“If you were going to stay, I would say yes, but I don’t know how it would eventuate unless you had a reliable housekeeper to continue their training. Not to mention, would the captain—I mean the earl—wish to hire women with, shall we say, checkered histories to staff his manor house?”

“That’s always going to be the challenge, isn’t it? Will people give those women a chance to move on from their pasts and make new lives for themselves?”

“What’s a checkered history?” Thea asked, bringing the wadded tea cloths inside.

Sophie looked to Mrs. Chapman for help.

“It means someone who has done something they wished they hadn’t.” The housekeeper took the cloths. “And now they want to change and do things differently.”

“Oh.” Thea pulled a face. “I thought it was something bad.” She sounded disappointed. “Everybody’s done something they wished they hadn’t.”

Sophie pondered that. Thea was correct. Everyone had regrets of one sort or another, and it could be hard to get past those regrets, to forgive yourself, and to receive forgiveness in order to change and move on.

Like the captain regretting his part in Rich’s death. He had said he was unable to forgive himself, and Sophie had not said aloud that she forgave him, because she wasn’t certain she had forgiven him in her heart.

She was willing to forgive the prostitutes who came to Charlotte for help, because their sins didn’t affect Sophie. What they did had cost her nothing. But when someone had come to her admitting fault in something that had cost Sophie her dearest love, Sophie had withheld words of forgiveness.

Her conscience prodded her, but she forced it to quiet down. She wasn’t ready to face such thoughts, nor to act upon them just now. When she’d had some time to think, when she had spent some time in that cottage by the sea and gotten some distance on both the grief and the captain, she would work through her feelings about forgiveness.

“Let’s see about washing ourselves up. We’ve earned some lunch, and then we’ll see about going down to the water. How does that sound?”

If Halbert Grayson had been on a ship under his command, Charles would be sorely tempted to bring the man up on charges of incompetence and dereliction of duty. These ledgers were a disaster. Great amounts of information were missing, and much of the rest was illegible.

“His lordship took the books from me about six months before he passed, and he did all the recording himself. He wouldn’t even let me look at them, just called me in sometimes to give a report. I don’t think the guv even understood me half the time.”

What about the weeks since? Surely Grayson could have made a start on cleaning up this mess once the old earl had died.

The man lacked initiative, which would not bode well for leaving him in charge when Charles went back to sea. For all his supposed experience, the steward seemed at a loss when it came to making decisions on his own.

“Without knowing what the new earl would want, and with the magistrate telling me I should wait until someone in authority arrived, I bided my time. As I said, I kept track of the lambing and calving and crops, but everything else stopped.”

“I assume you collected rents?” Charles ran his finger across the columns of the ledger, trying to decipher the headings. “How often do you do that?”

“Supposed to be twice a year, but I didn’t