The Flawed Mistress (The Summerville Journals) by Margaret Brazear Page A

and carry on living there. 
       
But I could not stop Lucy from entering the room and seeing his foul body
slumped in the chair. 
        “My Lady?”   She enquired in a low voice. 
“Is he dead?”
       
“I am very much afraid he is, Lucy,” I replied without really thinking about
it.  “He seems to have suffered a heart attack.”
       
“What do you want me to do?”
       
I smiled slightly.  Trust Lucy to be thinking of how she could help me,
and not how she could help herself.
       
“I have no idea,” I replied.  “I do not want to involve you.”
       
“Well, it is late in the day for that.”  She said, striding forward and
putting her fingers on the Monster’s wrist to feel for a pulse.  “What
shall we do with him?”
       
“If we tell his servants he is dead, they will want to know why the authorities
have not been informed.  You and I will be homeless once more.”
       
“I have an admirer, I think, in the form of the older man.  I do not
believe that any of these servants will be sorry if I tell them that he has
already abandoned his new bride and gone away.”
       
So that is what we did and while I felt guilty at involving Lucy, I could not
have managed without her.  She had been right about her admirer and about
the servants’ general contempt for their master.
       
I found some gold coin hidden away in a drawer and wondered if it was part of
that stolen back from my father.  It would be ironic if it were.
       
They were all happy to go and as soon as they had we dragged the body into the
wine cellar, where it lie on the dusty floor to
stiffen and decompose.  I could not think about that; I had to decide what
to do with the child we had rescued.
       
“She is a nice enough girl,” Lucy assured me.  “If you and I are going to
manage to live in this place with no servants, we will need help.  She is
very pleased to be out of the orphanage so I think she will make a good
helper.”
       
She was right.  The three of us would have to manage and I just thanked
God that the house had little land to manage, no tenants and was remote, well
away from the village.  I am quite sure that this was the reason the
Monster had chosen it in the first place, no one to interfere with his perverted
pastime.
       
There were two horses trained to pull the carriage, but there did not appear to
be any others nor saddles for riding.  We spent a week or so driving the
horses about the small estate, so as to learn how to drive it.  It was not
something any of us had ever done before.
       
I went into the village to get supplies and when the gold coin ran out, I found valuable jewels to sell.  We brought up
some wine from the cellar, so as not to have to return there again.
       
It was from people in the village that I learned of the death of King
Henry.  He had murdered another wife since I hid myself away here and
married yet another and during this time had grown farther and farther away
from the catholic faith.  Although he still heard mass and persecuted protestants , it was said that his new Queen, Catherine Parr,
was fiercely protestant and was trying to convert him.  Meanwhile his son
and heir was being raised by Protestant uncles and I
could not help but worry about Richard Summerville who I knew was fiercely Catholic.
       
As to my own faith, God had done me no favours so I would not be persecuted for
His sake, not ever. 

CHAPTER
SEVEN
     
      I
worried about other things as well, like the mouldering corpse in the wine
cellar and how long we could stay here before someone found us out.  The
Monster must surely have someone who would come looking for him.
       
The three of us used only a few rooms in the house and spent most of our time
in the kitchens, because it was warm while the remainder of the house was
freezing in the winter.  The grounds were overgrown as that was not
something we could keep up and it was beginning to look