The Wild Dark Flowers by Elizabeth Cooke Read Free Book Online

would give her that. But she had made two errors: she had listened to Harry Cavendish, and she believed what he told her. Young men tell lies to young women; he might have advised her of that, had he himself been more watchful. Mrs. Jocelyn, the housekeeper, lectured the maids about proper behavior and quoted the Bible at them mercilessly; but it was of no practical use once the girls were alone with a man. Especially a young man like Harry Cavendish.
    Bradfield had been a young man himself, just thirty, when he came to Rutherford. The year was 1884, and he had replaced old Watbridge, who had worked for Lord William’s parents for fifty years. Times were very different then; Rutherford had been a man’s house. Lord William’s parents were soon to go and leave their son alone in the place. A year or two later, Mrs. Jocelyn was hired as housekeeper, and between them they ran Rutherford—Bradfield in charge of the men, the cellars, the service, the practicalities; Mrs. Jocelyn in charge of the kitchens, the furnishings, the maids.
    He had known early on that there would never be any chance of a friendship with Mrs. Jocelyn; she killed any instinct at close harmony. Edwin had realized within hours of meeting her that they would each live in their assigned kingdoms in their rooms belowstairs; each in a small, hot furnished room along at either end of a stone corridor. The housekeeper was a frightening woman.
    But it was only lately, in the past year, that Mrs. Jocelyn had actually begun to worry him. She kept to her room more, and the maids said that they often found her fervently praying. She had taken against Lady Octavia in a serious way after the young American, Gould, had visited last year. She talked obliquely, at odd times, about loyalty and disgrace, and gave dark warnings about the war being the visitation of God on mankind. She had frightened some of the younger girls, he knew. But he was at a loss as to know what to do about it.
    Bradfield had always thought that Lord William would never marry. In the old days he had been a silent and self-conscious man. Busy with his Parliamentary life in London, his lordship would come back at Christmas, Easter, and in July. By rote, Bradfield and Mrs. Jocelyn went to London to run the house there, and occasionally they traveled together if a large occasion were planned in the capital. But that was hardly ever the case, for his lordship had rarely entertained.
    Bradfield had partly admired his lordship’s simplicity; part of him felt that it was a shame. He had looked at William and seen himself: obsessive, upright, lonely. All the master’s affection was lavished on dogs; mastiffs sat by his lordship’s side in the breakfast room, they traveled with him, they slept in the bedrooms. Mrs. Jocelyn, surprisingly, tolerated the mess. “It is his lordship’s wish.” She idolized the man.
    Rutherford had become Bradfield’s world from the moment he had stepped through the door. In that first year of his service, he had read news of outside events in the newspapers—the siege of Khartoum, the presentation of a great statue depicting Liberty to the USA, the publication of a book called
Huckleberry Finn
, which would much later become young master Harry’s favorite—but these had all very quickly become distant echoes. He had heard Lord William discuss Gladstone with the men who came to shoot, and of course the Queen’s name was uttered with holy respect. But they had not been matters of importance to Edwin Bradfield.
    Nevertheless, times changed. And the greatest change had come with Lord William’s marriage. Rutherford had been torn apart, physically, after Octavia came. In went the enormous staircase to link the two wings of the house; in went the broad upstairs gallery; up went the glasshouses and the two extra cottages for the “outsiders,” the gardeners and undergardeners; up went a suite of extra bedrooms, and two upstairs bathrooms where none had been before. The