The Lady Pursues

Prologue

1801

Constance closed the door to The Rose Room, declaring, "I've quite given up on them. They've been a trial all day. I had no choice but to send them outside, and I'd wager that is precisely what they wanted!"

Fiona scarcely had to ask who she meant. She only poured the tea, waiting for her mistress to begin.

Constance, The Right Honourable Lady Crewe whenever she had the rare opportunity to use the formal title, had taken to having tea with her housekeeper, Mrs. Fiona Douglass, in The Rose Room on Mondays. It had been only a half-year since Fiona had come into her employ, but Constance had often told Fiona how she had come to depend upon this hour. The object was always to properly plan the week ahead as far as meals, linens, supplies of candles, the odd formal dinner, the ever-dwindling budget, but the tea always devolved into a discussion of Lady Crewe's three children and the attendant woes.

"The bickering and the blaming and the... Ah, if only we could afford a nurse to sort out these squabbles," the woman sighed. "This is all too much for me to bear alone."

Mrs. Douglass rather wondered how her days, not to mention those of the other staff, were so full with the children if Lady Crewe was truly bearing it all alone, but she kept her counsel on that. "Surely they are all high-spirited, but all wee ones are."

"They are also terribly stubborn, quite set on having their own way. And I chose such lovely, humble names for them."

From what Lady Crewe had told Fiona, Constance Abbot came from a family with Puritans in their lineage. Though the Abbot family had been decidedly Church of England for two generations now, the lady did like the idea of virtuous names. Upon marrying William Crewe, third Baron Crewe, she convinced her ever indulgent husband to allow her to name the children after qualities she admired. Her eldest Prudence, now nine years of age, was supposed to be all that was frugal, cautious, and wise. On that last note, she couldn't complain very much, as Mrs. Douglass liked to remind her.

"The girl certainly likes to read," Mrs. Douglass said bracingly. "Why I've seen her finish a book in little more than a day and Mr. Keen is certainly impressed with her studies." She'd sometimes dined with the tutor and he'd always seemed quite sincere in his praise of the eldest Miss Crewe, especially as compared to her brother.

"Yes, but she likes to read entirely too much," Lady Crewe lamented. "I feel it's rather imprudent, if you ask me. That's not even going into the money spent on pencils, paper... She sketches all through dinner. Do you know she wants to try her hand at watercolors now? That will mean canvas, paints..."

"But surely you can afford such trifles."

"Lord Crewe certainly thinks we can. She has but to ask and he indulges her." She sighed. "And what will be left for her dowry in the end?" Even as young as her daughters were, Lady Crewe was always fearful for their future prospects. "He hasn't settled an amount and you know his family won't aid us there. Lord knows I try my best, but they still believe he's married beneath him, even compared to that harridan aunt and her cloth money."

Though Constance Crewe, before marriage, was the daughter of a gentleman with a modest estate in Cheshire, she certainly married upward in Lord Crewe, a man with a larger estate and a baron to boot. Of course, that was nothing to the seat of his family who, it might be argued, owned nearly half of Yorkshire. Much of that bounty was gained through the Duke of Dartmore's marriage to Muriel Harrod Crewe, Duchess of Dartmore, aunt to Lord Crewe, and a very indulgent great aunt to the children. Her "cloth money" had taken the Dartmore Crewes out of a level of unenviable poverty, but that didn't seem to win favor with the extended Crewes, who only gave her the barest acknowledgment.