Chapter 3 #3
The number of grown men who’d dare refer to my mother as Dorothea was vanishingly small. “We’ll close the door behind us and have a toddy and a long nap when we return to the manor. First stop is the stable, and we must make it in one go.”
“Bossy sort? Get tha’ from you mutter.”
If I was giving orders, then my high-handedness was fueled not by any maternal legacy, but by a sense of impending doom. “Take the hoe, Sir Clive. We’re not in a hurry, but we must keep moving. No stopping to rest or ponder the eternal verities. Push on, as you doubtless did in Canada.”
On the one hand, the way to the stable was gently downhill. On the other, any sort of slope made for slippery going.
“Can’da.” He spat the word. “Avoid Can’da. Dane-jeruss bee-yoo-tee.”
Perhaps Lavelle’s prayers were with us, perhaps Sir Clive’s native toughness saved his hide.
We slipped, slogged—and, yes, cursed—our way back down to the stable, though Sir Clive gave me a bit of trouble at the brewery.
He insisted in his garbled way that we might wait out the storm within, though given the season, the brewery had neither fuel for the hearth nor provisions to offer, and we would have had to break a window to gain entry.
By impersonating a drill sergeant railing at a cup-shot recruit, I cajoled, bullied, and half dragged Sir Clive to the relative warmth of the stable. Lavelle managed an awkward trot from the staking operation and presumed so far as to whack Sir Clive on the back.
“And if it isn’t himself, back from a tour of the inmost circle of hell. We’re that glad to see you, sir. You, too, young milord. Parlor stove is burning in the saddle room, and you can brew up a pot while we finish staking the path.”
Sir Clive looked at Lavelle as if he’d never seen the man before in all his born days.
“A cup of tea sounds wonderful.” I took the hoe from Sir Clive’s grasp, propped it against the wall, and unwrapped my scarf from his neck. “I’ll pour out.”
He treated me to a scowl worthy of Atticus in a taking. “Do not condescem… dessem…” A shudder passed over him that turned into shivering he could not hide.
I pushed him on a bony shoulder. “Get into the damned saddle room, and take your medicine like a soldier, Sir Clive, or I will tell Miss Dulcie you were the greatest fool God ever sent to dawdle about the earth.”
He shuffled off to the saddle room, and I felt like the meanest nanny in England, trailing after him, my scarf in my hand, the horses all giving me reproachful looks as they chewed their hay.
The next order of business was to get Sir Clive out of anything wet—his boots and stockings, for starts—and get hot liquid into him. He propped himself on a plank bench near the hot stove and produced a flask from an inner pocket.
“None of that.” I swiped his pocket pistol from his grasp. “That is likely half the reason you’re in such a state.” I shook the flask and heard nothing sloshing about inside. “If that was Mrs. Gwinnett’s toddy, you are a thrice-demented hen-wit who has no ambition to enjoy another spring.”
“Needn’t shout.” Said clearly, though Sir Clive took no measures to divest himself of his wet clothing.
“I will shout if I jolly well please to shout. Those boots have to come off.”
He took a moment either to comprehend my words or to decide that complying with orders was the better part of valor. He stuck out a boot, and I managed to get it off. The next one was harder going. I set them by the door and put a saddle blanket on the floor at Sir Clive’s feet.
“Stockings next. They are wet, and if you aren’t to lose your toes, the stockings have to come off too.”
“Already lost one. Damned Canada. Place eats the toes of Englishmen.” His speech was improving, but where was his mind, and would it restore itself?
I took a teakettle down from a hook, filled it from one of the buckets outside the saddle room door, and set it on the parlor stove.
I wiggled my toes. All present and accounted for, also beginning to itch like the devil, which was a good sign.
My cheeks and ears itched, too, thank the merciful powers.
“Should not have stayed out so long.” Sir Clive had managed to peel off one sock, and indeed, the smallest toe on that large, pale foot was nowhere in evidence. “Found something.”
He’d likely found an ewe chewing her cud beneath an obliging juniper, her baby snuggled against her side on a cozy bed of pine needles.
“Other sock,” I said, finding a tea tin, mugs, a tin full of lump sugar, and a jug of milk on the mantel. “I don’t care if you saw the archangel Gabriel practicing his harp in a tree, you had no excuse for missing luncheon with Miss Weatherby.”
Sir Clive sent me a hint of a grin. “She’ll make me wish I was dead. Has a temper, does little Dulcie. So do you, my lord. Get that from your mama, and a proper legacy it is too.”
“Stop trying to impress me with your wit.” His clear speech was reason enough to rejoice. “You were closer to death’s door than you knew.”
“A seductive death, freezing. They warn you about that when you sail for Canada. I should have known better, but…”
“You saw something? A lost lamb?”
“Lambs are easy. You stuff them into your coat or your saddlebags, and the mama will climb mountains in hell to follow the sound of their bleating. Sugar in mine, three lumps, please.”
When the kettle whistled, I brewed up a pot in an article of chipped blue porcelain. I was abruptly famished and decided that if I memorialized the day’s events in a letter to Hyperia, I’d leave that part out.
A soldier with any sense ate on the march whether or not he was hungry, for he soon would be.
“I suppose you must tattle to Dulcie?” Sir Clive ran a trembling hand through damp white hair. “I am hale and whole, and she would worry needlessly.”
I was angry with Sir Clive for risking his neck. Of all people, he should have known to take the weather seriously. I was also put out with him for risking my neck, but then, he’d not asked me to retrieve him from the springhouse.
I handed him his tea and fitted his fingers around the warm mug. “If Miss Dulcie asks me pointed questions, I will not lie to her, and neither should you. She’s no longer a grieving thirteen-year-old.”
“Dulcie was fifteen when her father died. Thirteen when she had the accident. Her mama was long gone by then. Thanks for the tea.”
He was sufficiently restored to himself to be thanking me for more than a polite cup. I was sufficiently in possession of my wits to know it.
“You’re welcome.” I downed my serving and immediately poured us both a second cup.
“Do sit,” Sir Clive said.
The only seat available was on the bench. I complied, keeping a good two feet between me and Sir Clive.
“You’ll have a nasty bruise on your calf,” I said, the purple an incongruous contrast to the fish-belly pallor of Sir Clive’s leg.
“Life does hand out a generous supply of nasty bruises, doesn’t it?” He sipped his tea, his expression puzzled.
“You don’t recall how you got that bruise?” I was tempted to do as Atticus had done—stand before the stove and rotate my form, toasting each side in succession. But then again, sitting also felt wondrously satisfying, even on the hard wooden bench, even next to Sir Clive.
“I was at the stream,” he said, “halfway to the village, thinking I’d tell the lads not to chance it. I was on horseback. They’d be afoot if they could tear themselves away from the sirens of Little Middleton. Figured I was safe enough…”
What was he going on about?
“Cheese toast!” Lavelle brought a gust of cold air into the saddle room with him and a linen wrapped parcel, which he held high in a gloved hand.
He closed the door behind him and stomped snowy boots.
“Cook says more awaits at the manor. They’ll nigh be killin’ the fatted calf to celebrate the safe return of the prodigals. ”
“We aren’t prodigals,” Sir Clive muttered, nonetheless accepting the parcel from Lavelle. “My thanks, Lavelle, well done. Next, you’ll be offering me a bran mash in a bucket.”
“With plenty of apples.” Lavelle shook out his scarf, sending frozen pellets in all directions.
Those that hit the stove turned to steam with a series of quiet little hisses.
“The lads are back. They formed up in two columns, kept to the tree lines, and took turns in front. Former military make the best lads, I always say.”
He winked at me, and I found it necessary to drink from my once-again empty mug.
“Tell them well done,” Sir Clive said. “Miss Dulcie and I would have worried ourselves silly. I’ll have Cook send down a pot of toddies.”
The intrepid lads, many of whom didn’t come past my shoulder, would be incapacitated until spring.
Lavelle bowed extravagantly. “I’ll find you some dry socks, sir. Best eat that cheese toast before it gets cold.”
He withdrew, leaving a silence broken only by the hissing and popping of the stove. Sir Clive unwrapped Cook’s offering, passed me half, and like the horses, we simply enjoyed the bounty for a few quiet minutes.
“I nearly fell in the stream,” Sir Clive said, eyeing the livid patch of skin on his calf. “I’m not clear on all the details of my outing—why I had to go to the springhouse, for example—but I got off my horse to examine a hat in the stream.”
Clearly, the old boy had taken a blow to the head. “The stream must be all but covered with snow.” The cheese toast was still warm, and either Cook had added a few spices, or my palate had grown more easily pleased.
“It’s not covered with snow below the laundry.
It’s wider there and rarely freezes in the middle.
I dismounted to fish a top hat out of the water, had to use my riding crop to get at the damned thing.
I read the label as the rubbishing wind tried to snatch the hat away. I overbalanced and lost my crop.”
Perhaps he’d lost his wits as well. “Where is the hat?”
“Wind got it. Fetched up on the other side of the stream.” He tore off another bite of cheese toast, stuffed it into his mouth, and munched contemplatively.
“Dantry’s hat?” I asked, wishing I didn’t have to.
“His and no other’s.”
We finished our repast slowly, made our way through more blinding snow up to the manor house, and agreed to meet in the family parlor thirty minutes on so that Miss Weatherby might hear our report.
Though whether we would share good news or bad news, I did not know.