“Yes, you,” Villiers stated.
She laughed at him. “I do the work that no one else wants to do. My girls won’t be prey to the likes of you. They’ll know a trade when they leave me. You think you can come in here and lord about, but what do you really have in the way of morals?” She spat it.
He managed not to flinch.
“I see that you think you’re coming in here like a knight in shining armor, coming to save the poor orphans. You fool, you fool! Do you have any idea how much work it takes me to give each of them a trade and a sense of purpose? And you—you’re one of them!”
“Them?” he asked. Melinda was clinging to his pantaloons now, so he switched his sword to his left hand and put his right on the child’s shoulder.
Mrs. Minchem’s eyes were maddened now. “You’re one of the men who incontinently fill the landscape with the offspring of your illicit, your disgusting, unions!”
Villiers resisted the impulse to cover Melinda’s ears. It was regrettable that Mrs. Minchem actually had a point.
Eleanor marched around to confront Mrs. Minchem. “The pedigree of these children does not excuse your treatment.” Her voice was at once soft and terrible, and cut through the woman’s strident tones like a knife. “You are wrong to treat them so, wrong.”
“What do you know of these girls?” Mrs. Minchem said shrilly. “If I do not subdue them, keep them working, they will betray their origins. They will become nightwalkers, like their mothers.”
“I will not bandy words with you,” Eleanor said, and there was a crushing finality to her tone. “Leopold, summon your footmen. Mrs. Minchem will be leaving the premises and she may need an escort.”
Taking just a split second to savor the fact that she’d used his given name instead of his title, Villiers turned to the eldest Jane. “My coachman is waiting in the courtyard, fetch a footman.” She scurried off after one look at Mrs. Minchem, who was shuddering, like the surface of a seething volcano.
“You—you—”
“Hush,” Eleanor said, cutting through her words. “You can explain yourself to a judge. The children have heard enough, and so have I.”
Villiers thought of agreeing, and decided that would be undignified.
“Lisette,” Eleanor said, not raising her voice.
Lisette skipped up, children clinging to both hands.
“We need a good woman to make sure these children are warm and clothed, and that their injuries are attended to. Do you know of someone in the village, or in your household?”
“I’ve never treated these girls with aught less than loving kindness,” Mrs. Minchem squealed.
Villiers met her eyes and she sputtered to a halt. “I gather that my children are in the pigsty, madam. Do you wish to point the way?”
“Your children—your—”
“My children,” he confirmed. “Twins. Currently named Jane-Lucinda and Jane-Phyllinda. My daughters, who are apparently residing in the sty.”
“You have children living here?” Lisette exclaimed.
“The sty!” Eleanor said. “As in a home for hogs?”
For the first time Mrs. Minchem looked a little frightened. She gulped like a snake trying to swallow a large bird. “Those girls had to be separated from the rest because they were a bad influence.” Her jaw firmed and she put on a defiant air. “Wicked, they were, especially Jane-Lucinda, and anyone who knows them will agree with me.”
“My children the fiends,” Villiers said pleasantly. “Yes, that seems appropriate. Now you will do me the pleasure, madam, of telling me where to find the sty.” He paused. “I hardly need add that I hope, for your sake, that the both girls are healthy.”
She flashed a look that tried to act like a hammer blow but failed.
“It’s behind the milking shed,” a tall Sarah said suddenly, standing forward. “I’ve been there only once.”
“And you see how healthy she is,” Mrs. Minchem said defiantly.
“She always said—” Melinda piped up, then faltered to a stop after a glare from Mrs. Minchem.
“Yes, Melinda?” Villiers asked, peering down at the little girl attached to his leg.
“She said as how the hogs would eat us if we fell asleep,” Melinda said, and pressed herself even harder against Villiers’s thigh. “And she left Lucinda and Phyllinda in there all night long.” She gulped. “Maybe they’ve been et up.”
Villiers looked at Mrs. Minchem and she actually recoiled. “You might want to spend the next few minutes praying that your hogs haven’t acquired a taste for little girls,” he suggested.
He waited until he was out of earshot before assuring Melinda that pigs were vegetarians. But when he and Eleanor, trailed by various orphans, undid the huge rusty clasp shackling the door to the sty, and stuck their heads into the dark, odiferous place, he felt serious misgivings.
There was no one in the sty but three extraordinarily large pigs and a litter of piglets. The sow lumbered to her feet with a murderous look in her small eyes.
In the middle of the soiled straw was one small shoe.
“That’s Jane-Lucinda’s!” the eldest Jane said, bursting into noisy tears.
Chapter Fifteen
“They must have escaped,” Eleanor said, giving the girl a hug. “They are, after all, your children, Villiers. That is surely what happened.”
He had picked his way through the filthy straw and was examining the window, set up high and caked with indescribable dirt. “They didn’t go out this way.” Of course the pigs couldn’t have eaten two children. One of the animals was so fat that he couldn’t imagine it on its feet. Though one had to suppose that there was room in that vast stomach for a small child—
No. Of course not. One could not imagine that.
“Someone let them out,” Eleanor said. “Someone in this house had the Christian decency to look out for two small girls locked in this nauseating place overnight.”
His blood was beating in his ears and he heard only part of what she said. Suddenly she was next to him, hand on his arm. “A servant rescued them,” she repeated.
A servant…a servant. Of course a servant rescued them. The red haze in his head miraculously cleared. He didn’t even thank her, just pushed his sword back into its scabbard; he must have withdrawn it without realizing. “Whoever saved my children will be handsomely rewarded.”
But after Mrs. Minchem had been led away by Villiers’s grooms, cursing and protesting, and all the servants gathered around, it became clear that not one of them had dared to gainsay their mistress’s commands.
“You frequently left children overnight,” Villiers stated, looking from face to face.
“She weren’t an easy woman,” a servant said.
He was a craven fool who turned his face to the side rather than meet Villiers’s eyes. “You’re all dismissed,” he said. “Lady Lisette will make certain that you are not hired within the county.” He turned to Eleanor. “Where is Lisette?”
“She felt dizzy at the idea of the sty,” Eleanor said. “I sent her home. She’ll send the carriage back for us. Your twins are on the grounds somewhere. We must find them.”