Merely the Groom (Free Fellows League 2)
Village of Helford Green
Bedfordshire, England
May 1813
“Goodbye, Miss Eckersley. And you Lady Dunbridge.”
“Wait, please!” Sarah Eckersley stood with her aunt beside the front gate feverishly tugging on the drawstrings of her reticule as the Reverend Tinsley, his wife, and children bade them farewell.
The reverend pretended not to hear her as he waved good-bye, then shepherded his wife and children inside before resolutely closing the front door, shutting Sarah out.
“I forgot to give you the key…” Sarah withdrew the brass door key.
“Don’t worry about it,” Lady Dunbridge advised, fastening a leash on her little spaniel, Precious, as they walked to the front gate. “He may be a rector, but he doesn’t appear to know that charity begins at home.”
“We don’t need their charity,” Sarah said. “Nor do we need to be accused of stealing the front door key.” She took a step forward. “I should go give it to them.”
“After the way they treated you?” Sarah’s aunt was outraged. “After the way they shoved our belongings onto the front lawn? And tried to steal Precious? And Budgie. Hang it on the gate,” she suggested. “They’ll find it.”
Sarah hesitated. “Someone else might find it first.”
“So what?” Lady Dunbridge dismissed her niece’s concern. “It isn’t as if anyone in Helford Green locks their doors anyway. Unless a desperate highwayman or a gang of s
neak thieves finds its way here, you can be certain the reverend and his family will be safe. Callous, but safe.”
“I’ve never seen anyone get so angry so quickly,” Sarah said. “Certainly not a man of the cloth. I don’t know how you managed to calm him. He appeared almost pleasant by the time I arrived with Squire Perkins.”
“The only reason I was able to calm him was because I told him you would be returning with your father’s close friend the magistrate, who wouldn’t tolerate your mistreatment by anyone,” Lady Dunbridge explained, patiently waiting while Precious squatted beside the wrought-iron fence.
“His pleasant demeanor was merely an act for Squire Perkins’s benefit,” Sarah concluded.
“Precisely.”
“Then I don’t suppose it will matter if I do leave the front door key hanging on the front gate.” Ignoring a lifetime of her father’s sermons about the meek inheriting the earth and turning the other cheek, Sarah took a deep breath and hung the brass key on the center point of the wrought-iron gate. “Besides, what self-respecting thief would bother with a rectory when Shepherdston Hall is just down the way?”
“My point exactly,” Lady Dunbridge agreed.
The sleepy little village of Helford Green was three miles off the main road. Sarah had never heard of any type of crime in the community and she doubted the rectory would present much of a target for would-be thieves. Not when magnificent Shepherdston Hall sat between the village and the main road.
Sarah smiled for the first time since Reverend Tinsley and his family had arrived at the rectory without warning, entering the front door and descending like biblical locusts, where they immediately began laying claim to the things they wanted and casting aside everything they didn’t without regard to the rectory’s current residents.
Sarah had watched in horror as one of the Tinsley daughters shot past her. Precious, Aunt Etta’s little spaniel, began to bark as the little girl ran past her basket, through the parlor, and up the stairs where she headed for Sarah’s bedroom.
“Pippa, you mustn’t run up the stairs,” her mother had scolded.
But Pippa already had.
Sarah bounded up the stairs after her with the child’s mother close on her heels. They arrived just as the little girl announced, “This shall be my room,” and grabbed hold of Budgie’s cage, pulling it off the stand before exclaiming, “Oh, look, Mama, what a darling little bird! I believe I shall keep him and name him Admiral Nelson.”
Sarah hadn’t realized how ferocious she could be until she’d snatched the birdcage out of the child’s hand and held it out of reach. “I believe he already has a name and an owner. His name is Budgie and he belongs to me.”
“Does not,” the child insisted, reaching for the birdcage. “Mama says the land and the rectory and everything in it is ours. Admiral Nelson is mine!”
“Your mother is in error,” Sarah said firmly, meeting the mother’s gaze over the child’s head.
“Make her give me Admiral Nelson!” the child screeched at the top of her lungs. “He’s mine! I want him!”
“Ouch!” Sarah looked down to find that Pippa had sunk her teeth into the flesh of her arm.