Free Autumn Softly Fell by Dominic Luke Page B

there, you’re only young and you don’t know no better. It’s Bessie Downs who’s at fault. She’ll come to a sticky end one of these days, mark my words! But never mind all that. We must hurry. The mam’zelle is waiting!’

    Fresh air, said Mlle Lacroix, was
efficacious
(a French word, perhaps?). A daily walk in the gardens (weather permitting) was part of Dorothea’s new routine. But today her head was in too much of a muddle to enjoy it. She was going over and over what Bessie Downs had said. Did the house
really
belong to Richard? It was so big and solid and deep-rooted that it seemed impertinent to think of anyone
owning
it. It would be the other way round, if anything – the house would own
you
. Was that how Aunt Eloise felt about the place?
    Leaving the governess sitting with a book under the pergola, Dorothea wandered off with her secret thoughts. She had felt from the first that the house was somehow
alive
. It might permit you to lodge within for a day or a year or a lifetime but when you’d gone, the house would carry on. It would carry on forever.
    Looking up from the cinder path on which she was walking, Dorothea saw ahead of her the old gardener Becket clipping a privet hedge. Becket was none other than the crusty man she had met on the morning of her failed escape. She had met him often since. He had worked at Clifton for years, which he was quick to tell you. ‘I was just a nipper when I started. It was Mr Jephcott as took me on. He was head gardener in them days. It must be fifty year back if it’s a day. Since then, I’ve worked for four different masters and seen head gardeners come and go. Now I’m head gardener myself. Leastways, that’s how I see it, for there ain’t no one but me.’
    Dorothea skipped along the path. If anyone would know aboutthe house, then Becket would. He could be crotchety at times but he didn’t mind answering questions.
    Becket stopped his clipping and tipped his cap back, listening to her eager questions. Well, he said when she’d finished, Bessie Downs was nothing but a flibbertigibbet, but in this case she was quite right – the house was Richard’s. Not just the house, either, but the grounds too, and lots of land around – what Becket called
the estate.
It would all be Richard’s when he came of age.
    ‘I don’t understand, Becket. How did Richard come to own
everything
?’
    ‘Well, miss, now let’s see. Where shall I begin?’ He laid his shears aside, took off his cap, scratched his head, making his fluffy white hair stand up in tufts. Dorothea knew it was no good trying to hurry him. Becket did everything in his own good time. ‘When I started here as a nipper, Sir Edward was guv’nor, the last of the Massinghams, them what had owned Clifton Park from time out of mind. Titled folk, they were. Baronets. But Sir Edward had no son so the estate passed to his nephew – the estate, but not the title.
Mr Harry Rycroft,
this nephew was named. Title or no, he was a gentleman proper and he loved the gardens here. Ah, but they was kept spic and span in his day! There was a whole troop of us back then, head gardener, under gardeners, no end of boys – everything was done as it should be.’
    Hopping with impatience – what had all this got to do with Richard? – Dorothea nonetheless knew better than to interrupt. To interrupt was to invite even more humming and hawing.
    Becket paused, giving her a sharp look as if he knew very well what she was thinking, and then he pursed his lips, staring into the distance as if he was trying to see back to days gone by.
    ‘Now Mr Rycroft, he was guv’nor here for forty year and more. Two kiddies he had, a boy and a girl. Now the girl growed up to be Mistress Brannan – your aunt, that is to say. But the boy was Master Fred – Mr Frederick Rycroft, to be precise. He was the one who became guv’nor when Mr Rycroft passed on. He
inherited the estate,
as they say.’
    Dorothea couldn’t let this pass. ‘Why did