The Lacemaker (Silver Linings Mysteries Book 2) Read online

  THE LACEMAKER

  Silver Linings Mysteries Book 2

  A Regency Romance

  by Mary Kingswood

  Published by Sutors Publishing

  Copyright © 2019 Mary Kingswood

  Cover design by: Shayne Rutherford of Darkmoon Graphics

  All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction.

  Author’s note:

  this book is written using historic British terminology, so saloon instead of salon, chaperon instead of chaperone and so on. I follow Jane Austen’s example and refer to a group of sisters as the Miss Wintertons.

  About this book: A traditional Regency romance, drawing room rather than bedroom.

  Caroline Milburn and her younger sisters live in two cramped rooms, struggling to survive by their skills in lace making and weaving. When their previously unknown grandfather drowns on the Brig Minerva and bequeaths them a cottage in the country, their lives seem set to improve. But where will the daughters of a linen draper fit into rural life, now that they are better off? How will Caroline find husbands for her younger sisters? Why have purses of money been buried in the garden? And why are the neighbours so interested in them?

  Charles Leatham was happy in the army, where all he had to do was to follow orders. With both his older brothers dead, he’s forced to return home and he knows where his duty lies - he must marry, and soon, to secure the inheritance. He doesn’t care who he marries, but why is his step-mother so keen to pair him with the ill-bred linen draper’s daughter? She’s a termagant and a shrew, but he always follows orders so he resigns himself to the inevitable. At least she’ll be grateful for the offer… won’t she?

  This is a complete story with a HEA. Book 2 of a 6 book series.

  Isn’t that what’s-his-name? Regular readers of my books will know that occasionally characters from previous books pop up again. There are a few in this book. Lord Randolph Litherholm, the new Duke of Falconbury, made a brief appearance in The Clerk, the prequel to this series; his story will be told in book 6, The Duke. Lawyer Mr Willerton-Forbes and his flamboyant sidekick Captain Edgerton have been helping my characters solve murders and other puzzles ever since Lord Augustus. Keep an eye out for Mr and Mrs Elkington, unobtrusive guests at a dinner party here; you’ll be seeing more of them in the next book, The Apothecary.

  About the Silver Linings Mysteries series: John Milton coined the phrase 'silver lining' in Comus: A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634

  Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud

  Turn forth her silver lining on the night?

  I did not err; there does a sable cloud

  Turn forth her silver lining on the night,

  And casts a gleam over this tufted grove.

  Ever since then, the term ‘silver lining’ has become synonymous with the unexpected benefits arising from disaster. The sinking of the Brig Minerva results in many deaths, but for others, the future is suddenly brighter. But it’s not always easy to leave the past behind…

  Book 0: The Clerk: the sinking of the Minerva offers a young man a new life (a novella, free to mailing list subscribers).

  Book 1: The Widow: the wife of the Minerva’s captain is free from his cruelty, but can she learn to trust again?

  Book 2: The Lacemaker: three sisters inherit a country cottage, but the locals are surprisingly interested in them.

  Book 3: The Apothecary: a long-forgotten suitor returns, now a rich man, but is he all he seems?

  Book 4: The Painter: two children are left to the care of a reclusive man.

  Book 5: The Orphan: a wilful heiress is determined to choose a notorious rake as her guardian.

  Book 6: The Duke: the heir to the dukedom is reluctant to step into his dead brother’s shoes and accept his arranged marriage.

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  Table of contents

  The Litherholm family

  1: A Letter (March)

  2: Bursham Cottage

  3: A Ride In The Woods

  4: Callers (April)

  5: Chance And Good Fortune

  6: Searching

  7: Locks And Keys

  8: Making Calls

  9: An Invitation To Dinner (May)

  10: Dinner At Starlingford

  11: Mr Leatham Pays A Call (June)

  12: Of Purpose And Wisdom

  13: Mysteries

  14: A Visit To Valmont (July)

  15: A Wager

  16: Proposals

  17: A Gentleman At Large

  18: A Birthday Party (August)

  19: Narfield Lodge

  20: Observation

  21: A Ball

  22: A Waltz

  23: Welcome Home

  24: Of Marriage

  25: Help And Support

  26: Moral Guidance

  27: More Proposals (August/September)

  28: The Silver Box

  29: A Village Wedding (October)

  Thanks for reading!

  About the author

  Acknowledgements

  Sneak preview of The Apothecary Chapter 1: A Visitor (May)

  The Litherholm family

  Hi-res version available here.

  1: A Letter (March)

  Caroline laid the strip of lace flat on the counter, smoothing it carefully. Mr Turner, the linen draper, placed a neat pile of shilling coins beside it, while his sister looked on suspiciously. She was always suspicious, that one, suspecting Caroline of some subterfuge, even when the price was clear to see before her. Mr Turner, however, was old-fashioned. He still paid the traditional way, with the number of shillings that could cover the lace.

  With delicate fingers, Caroline began to place the coins on the strip of lace, placing them as tightly as she could. Eventually, when not a scrap of lace remained uncovered, she stood back.

  “That one is over the edge,” Miss Turner said in her sour way, pointing to one of the shilling coins.

  “It is just the angle from which you are looking,” Caroline said easily. “The light is not the best just here.”

  “I can fetch a lamp,” Miss Turner said, the fire of battle in her eyes.

  “No need, Elspeth,” Mr Turner said. “Let us not argue over a shilling. You know Miss Milburn’s work is worth it. I never have any trouble selling her pieces, and this is a very pretty one.”

  Almost five guineas for three weeks’ work — not a great deal, but much needed. Quickly, before he could change his mind, Caroline scooped up the coins and tucked them into her purse, hiding it away in a pocket. There was a great deal to be said for the old-fashioned fuller skirts, which had room for the concealment of pockets. She strongly disliked the new fashion for a reticule held in the hand. With a nod of the head and a quick bob to the Turners, she hurried out of the shop.

  The rest of her day’s business was more pleasurable. Winchester had shops in abundance, and her steps took her to the grocer for tea, cheese and spices, the apothecary for Lin’s herbs, the silk merchant for more thread for her lace and — an indulgence — the milliner for a new bonnet for Poppy. Gradually her basket filled with neatly-wrapped packages. Only when she heard the clock strike the half hour again did she hasten back to the White Hart to catch the return stage to Romsey. She had no time to buy food at the inn, but she had had the foresight to buy a pie from a stall in the market, and that sustained her for the journey home.

  Caroline was squeezed into the middle of a seat designed for two, but that didn’t matter. She had seen the passing scenery many times before, and besides, she was busy designing her next piece of work in her head. She could already see
the cushion laid out in her mind’s eye, the placement of the first pins, the strip gradually growing under her nimble fingers. Mama might lie in the Abbey graveyard, but her skills were still alive in her daughters.

  With a great racket as the guard blew his horn, the stage coach turned in to the crowded yard of the White Horse Inn in Romsey. Caroline never rushed to alight, waiting for the dust to settle and the initial confusion to dissipate. When she descended, she picked her way past the carts and wagons, skirted the groups of people greeting arrivals or bidding farewell and made her way through the arch to the Market Place. From there it was only a short walk to the house she shared with her sisters, three other families and a linen draper’s shop. The shop had once been her father’s and the whole house theirs, but when he had died and everything had to be sold, they had squashed into just four rooms, and since Mama’s death, it was only two, with the use of an attic room for the looms. Still, it could be worse, she supposed. They had a roof over their heads, and enough money for their modest wants, and today they had fresh cheese and a new bonnet for Poppy.

  Lin was bent over the worktable, absorbed in her task, one fair curl falling unregarded from her coiled hair. “Gracious, are you back already?” she exclaimed, as Caroline set her basket down on the table. “Did you catch an earlier stage?”

  “The coach was, if anything, a little late,” Caroline said. “It wants but an hour until dinner. Have you finished the scarf already? I thought it needed two more days of work.”

  “Oh… oh, well, I meant to, but I had this wonderful idea. Peg dolls.” She held up the work on which she was engaged, showing a clothes peg dressed in rather a fetching gown and bonnet. “We can sell them, you see, dearest,” she went on eagerly. “It’s another way to make money. You’re always asking us to think up new ideas, and so I have. Don’t you think it’s sweet?”

  “It is, yes. Very pretty. How much would you be able to sell it for — a penny? Tuppence? And how long has it taken you to make it?”

  “Oh, not long… an hour or two… once I had got the idea.” Sheepishly, she held up several failed attempts. “But… you mean we cannot make a profit by them? Oh… I am very sorry, Caro. It seemed like such a good idea.”

  “So it is, or would be if we didn’t have Mrs Hasbroke waiting for that scarf.”

  “I am very sorry,” Lin said again, hanging her head. “I am a great trial to you, I know. Shall I go and help Susie now?”

  “No, I’ll give her a hand. You can get an hour’s work done on that scarf while the light is still good.”

  Lin nodded and rushed away to the loom in the attic, leaving Caroline shaking her head ruefully. Lin was a hard worker, and enthusiastic, but too easily distracted. And yet it was so disheartening to watch her youth draining away in the hours spent bent over her loom. That attic was sweltering in the summer and freezing in the winter, and exhausting all year round. Lin was too pretty to be wasted in that way. Some rich young man should sweep her up and dress her in silk and diamonds, and allow her to spend her days creating peg dolls or painting portraits or whatever her project of the moment was. She was nineteen already, and should be dancing at night, not huddled over a single candle with a needle.

  Caroline hung her cloak and bonnet on a peg and took her basket through to the back room, where Susie was stirring a pot on the range.

  “Had a good day, Miss Milburn?” Susie said, with her wide smile. She had been their nurse in the prosperous days, and still addressed the sisters with the formality their mother had insisted upon, even though she was now as much friend as servant.

  “Good enough,” Caroline said, as she always did.

  “Winchester busy, was it?”

  “As always. I bought some of that tasty cheese you like to melt onto toast. Our usual tea was far too dear, so I had to get something cheaper. Mm, something smells good.”

  “Made a seed cake.”

  Caroline tied on her apron, and settled at the table to pare vegetables. “These carrots are so old they almost bend in two. Was there nothing better in the market?”

  “Not within the price you set, Miss Milburn, no. They’d keep better if we still had the use of the cellar. Gen’leman called to see you today.”

  Caroline laughed. “I don’t know any gentlemen, Susie, not any more. I never knew many, and now there are none.”

  “Well, he looked like a gen’leman, right enough. Said he had somethin’ to your ’vantage.”

  “Oh, selling some kind of patent medicine, was he? Only a guinea a bottle, and cures gout, freckles, the bloody flux and leprosy.”

  Susie chuckled, a low rumble that made her ample flesh wobble. “Nothin’ like that. Attorney, he was. Card’s over there, by the clock.”

  “An attorney?”

  That was different. Caroline abandoned the carrots, and reached to the high shelf where the clock stood. Beside it was a neat rectangle of card. ‘Mr L Stratton,’ she read. ‘Stratton, Walsh, Stratton and Stratton, Attorneys At Law’.

  “I know Mr Stratton,” she said thoughtfully. “A portly old gentleman, with a great white wig and a fondness for snuff.”

  “This one were a thin, young gen’leman,” Susie said. “Fine lookin’ man, for a lawyer.” She sniffed disparagingly. “Left a letter for you. Now where did it go to? Miss Poppy had it in her hand, I reckon.”

  “Then it has been cast aside somewhere, or thrust into a pocket,” Caroline said. She sighed. “Ah well, it will turn up, I dare say. Where is Poppy, though? Is she in the loft?”

  Susie looked sheepish. “Don’t know, Miss Milburn, and that’s a fact. Haven’t seen her for hours, but then you know what she’s like.”

  Caroline did know. “Well, I’d better go and find her. If I have to go out to look for her, I’ll send Lin down to do the vegetables.”

  “I can do them no bother,” Susie said. “Mutton’s stewing and everything else is ready. Off you go.”

  It was three flights of stairs up to the loft where their looms were. On each floor, she asked for Poppy, but was met with shakes of the head. In the attic, Lin was hard at work but there was no sign of Poppy.

  “Mrs Bright has a new baby,” she said.

  “Ah. I’ll try there.”

  Back down the stairs again, and out past the main kitchen to the yard, threading her way through Lin’s pots of herbs and the lines of washing strung between posts. When Papa was alive, the laundry had gone out to the washerwoman and the yard was a pleasant, flower-filled place to sit, but with four families now sharing the house, there were always sheets and chemises hanging.

  At the back of the house was a narrow alley, foul with discarded refuse, scavenging dogs and trickles of malodorous liquid. Crossing carefully, Caroline pushed open a gate and entered another yard. And there was Poppy, without her cloak and still wearing her working apron, the baby in her arms, crooning gently. She looked up at Caroline with a beatific smile on her face, tendrils of soft brown hair curling around her face. She looked angelic in such a pose, an enchanting Madonna. Almost sixteen, with sweetness of countenance and an innocence of such purity that Caroline feared for her future. Lin was a beauty too, but she had a deal of sense and knew how to keep out of trouble. Poppy had no such instincts.

  “Isn’t he sweet, Caro? So good — he’s been asleep all afternoon. He is to be Baptised John — that’s a fine name, isn’t it?”

  “A good, Biblical name,” Caroline said, softly. “I’m afraid you’ll have to give him back to his nurse now, dear. It’s almost time for dinner, and Susie needs some help.”

  “Of course. Sally!” she called, and the maid’s face appeared from an upper window. “I have to go now.”

  The maid nodded, and emerged into the yard a few moments later. Gently, Poppy laid the sleeping baby in her arms, then skipped away and out through the gate.

  “Don’t be cross with her, Miss Milburn,” the maid said. “She loves babes so, and she’s ever so good with them. Besides, I got the whole nursery cleaned, from top to bo
ttom, so she’s been a big help.”

  “I’d like her to be a big help to her own family sometimes,” Caroline said. Then, since that sounded ill-humoured, she added, “I could never be cross with her, Sally.”

  And it was true, she reflected, as she followed Poppy back across the alley. No one could ever be cross with her, for whenever such a thing were attempted, she would gaze at the scolder with huge, reproachful eyes, and instantly all annoyance dissipated. Lin was remorseful and downcast when any neglect of duty was pointed out, but Poppy was simply incredulous that anyone could admonish her. How could it possibly be wrong to do whatever her heart told her was needful?

  It was not until the three sisters sat down to their dinner that the letter from Mr Stratton finally emerged from its hiding place in Poppy’s pocket. ‘To the Miss Milburns’ it said, and so Poppy, with her own form of logic, had decided that it could not be read until they were all three together. Caroline could not remember the last time they had had a letter to open. A few condolence letters, after Mama’s death, and how expensive that had been. One had come all the way from Scotland and had cost a shocking one and tenpence. But this one was a pleasure to open, for it had been delivered by hand, and therefore had cost them nothing.

  “Read it, Caro,” Lin said. “It must be important, seeing as he’s an attorney.”

  ‘To Miss Milburn, Miss Elinor Milburn and Miss Penelope Milburn. It gives me great pleasure to inform you that I have some tidings to impart to you of the most interesting kind, which will be greatly to your advantage. Please call on me at the offices of Stratton, Walsh, Stratton and Stratton at any time convenient to yourselves. I am readily available between the hours of eight and two, but may be obtained at other hours by appointment. Yours in anticipation of an early meeting, Lester Stratton.’

  Caroline laughed out loud. “Now I imagine him sitting behind an empty desk waiting for us to appear and give him something to do. I have never heard of an attorney who was readily available before. Papa always had to make an appointment to see the elder Mr Stratton. It will be some scheme or other — some investment he wishes us to participate in. He’s misinformed if he thinks we have money to spare for such nonsense.”