Chapter 7
Joshua had come to know two kinds of quiet.
The first was the uneasy hush that fell before a volley, when men held their breath and horses rolled their eyes at dangers still hidden.
The second was the honest stillness of a winter morning in the country, when frost had laid its fine hand over every hedge and the air tasted of ice and wood smoke.
He had known far too much of the former.
The latter he found at Wychwood, and he craved it.
He rose before the household had shaken off its slumber.
In his chamber, the embers still glowed faintly in the grate, but the air was sharp and bracing.
He dressed swiftly, carried his boots in his hand to spare the corridor any noise, and descended the stair.
The hall smelled of evergreen and spice, still lingering from the day before.
Outside, the park gleamed, a skin of white stretched unbroken across the lawn.
Joshua had meant to exercise Brutus, his black gelding. The horse had aged as he had, though his steady temper pleased him better than youthful exuberance ever had. Yet when he reached the stable-yard, he found he was not the first to rise.
Merry stood beside a bay mare with a star upon her brow, testing the girth with quick, capable hands.
Her cloak was thrown back, her hair tucked beneath a modest felt hat, and her cheeks bore the colour of the morning cold.
She looked up at him, as though she had guessed it would be he who intruded, and had not quite decided whether or not to be pleased.
“Miss Roxton,” Joshua greeted her, bowing with old habit even at a stable door. “You will rob the sun of his earliest glory.”
“That would be a crime in Gloucestershire,” she returned with a smile. “He has so few glories in December, one ought to leave him the ones he can contrive.”
“Where are you off to so early?”
“To Roxton House. We have ewes lambing in the fold below the north copse, and I would see how they fare.”
“Do you not have a shepherd to tend to such matters?”
“Of course,” she said, fastening the strap another notch, “but I would not have my own peace of mind if I did not go.”
Brutus was brought forward, tossing his head as though he, too, relished the frosty air. The groom grinned. “He’ll be away like a thought if you let him, Captain.”
“I shall not let him,” Joshua answered, patting the strong black neck. He knew Brutus would go nowhere without him.
Merry observed him, her mare shifting beneath her. “Older, and yet improved—at least in the horse.”
Smiling, Joshua mounted. “I might contest the comparison. If you do not object, I shall ride with you. It would be a pity to waste all this frost for want of conversation worthy of it.”
She lifted a careless shoulder, though a spark of mischief lingered in her expression. “Very well. Only promise you will not tell me how to manage my ewes.”
“I shall not presume to instruct you in sheep. My experience extends beyond horses only to mules, which hate me, and men who behave the same.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
They set out down the lane, the horses’ hooves cutting crescents in the frost. The air turned their breath to clouds, and the hedges glistened as though dressed in lace.
“You go often, then?” Joshua asked.
“Every day now,” she replied. “Lambs do not read calendars.”
“And your shepherd?”
“Old Dawkins has eyes like a hawk and hands like bark. He misses nothing…but he never minds if I ask foolish questions and pretend to be useful.”
Joshua studied her as she spoke, the ease with which she described her part in the work. “I doubt the pretence. You are not half so ornamental as you would have the world believe.”
“That is an insult if ever I heard one.”
“It is praise in disguise. You are very bad at being merely pretty.”
“You do not improve the matter, Captain,” she said, though her lips curved despite her rebuke.
They reached the fold, where Old Dawkins greeted Merry with respect, Joshua noted keenly. She went among the ewes without fuss, crouching to take a shivering lamb into her arms and murmur comfort until both ewe and lamb settled. Dawkins, leaning on his stick, nodded toward her.
“She has a way,” he told Joshua. “Some frighten beasts by trying to be kind. She comes, and they sense she means no harm. Born with it, she was. Miss Merry has saved more lambs than I can count, only for want of affection.”
Joshua watched Merry, her auburn head bent over the lamb, and could not dispute him. “That is a gift,” he said quietly.
They lingered awhile, aiding here and there. When Dawkins withdrew, Merry blew on her hands. “The sheep never ask when I mean to wed, or whether the vicar will allow the waltz,” she said.
“They only require you to be faithful,” Joshua returned.
Her expression wavered, and for a moment the lightness slipped. Beneath her teasing, he sensed a quiet restlessness, as if she were weighing matters not yet spoken. She rode with her chin lifted, but her eyes held the look of someone searching for answers, uncertain of what she hoped to see.
Joshua did not press her, though he felt the urge. It was in her nature to decide quickly, with the courage of a woman who preferred action to waiting. Yet he could not help but fear she might leap over a hedge when the gate was just ahead.
They turned their horses homeward, the sun higher now, the frost sparkling brighter.
The church bells rang faintly across the fields, calling them back to Christmas-tide noise and family.
Joshua glanced at Merry, the restlessness still lingering beneath her composure, and thought to himself that he must tread carefully.
If she hurried into a future she did not deserve, it would not be because he had failed her.
They took the longer way back to Wychwood, down a track that curved by a stand of birches and then ran straight across open meadow.
The sun had climbed a little and turned the snow to a dazzle.
Merry allowed her mare to break into an easy trot, and Brutus answered with a spring of eagerness.
It was impossible not to admire the way man and horse moved as one.
“I am told,” Merry said, fixing her eyes on the path ahead, “that in London mornings are different from these. One may sleep through them and nobody minds.”
“In London, for most morning begins after noon,” Joshua drawled.
She laughed. “You disdain it?”
“I am remarking upon it for people who like lamps more than sunlight—people who stay out until dawn.” He looked across at her. “You would like parts of it very much. You would scorn parts of it.”
“What parts would I scorn?”
“The parts that pretend crowds are an ideal to be attained. The parts that mistake glamour for goodness. Yet you would love your first sight of the theatre. You would forgive London anything for an evening at Covent Garden with a singer who can turn silence into music. You would love the bookshops and the picture galleries. I suspect you would like the Thames when it freezes and everyone pretends they can skate.”
“I should like the skating,” she said at once. “I should not like the noise.”
“London has its virtues, but will never compete with the country for quiet.”
They slowed at a gate where the hasp stuck. Joshua swung down and set it right with a firm lift. When they moved on, she said, “Would you enjoy more time in Town, Captain?”
“I enjoy London well enough when there is a reason to be there,” he answered. “I like the stimulation of my work, and the company of my colleagues, who excel at it.”
“Then the country suits you better, yet you would not leave the army,” she said, not as a challenge, only as a fact she wished to lay beside the others.
“No,” he answered. “I know the feel of that work. It is not gentle and it is not always fair, but it is rewarding. I also know that men must have more than idleness if they mean to grow old without becoming soft.”
They rode on in companionable quiet. A crow lifted from the hedgerow and scolded them. Far off, the river lay like a strip of pewter, edged with ice that would harden by nightfall. She had enjoyed mornings alone all her life, although she had longed for the better pleasure of someone beside her.
“Would you live more in the country if you could?” she asked, as if she had only just given herself leave to wonder.
“Yes,” he said, and the ease of the answer surprised her.
“Would you miss London?”
“Not much,” he replied, and she smiled.
The path narrowed where two old oaks leaned together across it.
Simultaneously, they ducked their heads through the twined branches.
Merry’s hat brushed a snow-laden twig and sent a soft drift over her cloak.
She shook it off, laughing. Some lightness had crept back into her courtesy of his company, yet the restlessness remained.
They reached the stile where the meadow fell away toward the lower spinney. The air smelled faintly of wood smoke from a cottage beyond the ridge.
“A person could make a life of mornings like this,” she said, meaning it and almost wishing she did not.
“A person could,” he said, “and some would call it a small life because it looks small from a distance. On closer inspection it is a great one.”
She looked aside at him. “You speak as if you had measured both.”
“From too many people have I stood far-off and judged them wrongly,” he said. “I hope I am learning to stand closer.”
“You are quite philosophical. I would not have supposed it about you.”
She felt almost content. Then she remembered the bracelet hidden away upstairs and the way Mr. Tremaine’s mouth had hardened when she refused him liberties under the mistletoe. The contentment faltered, as thin as ice above a brook.
“Captain,” she said, and then did not know how to shape the rest, so she said, “Thank you for the ride this morning.” Then, before she could school the words, she added, “Commonly I ride alone, but I enjoyed having your company.”.
Heat rose in her face and somehow she turned it into a laugh.
“The sheep prefer two fools to one sage,” she said quickly, lest he think she was flirting with him. She must remember her purpose.
They topped the last rise. Wychwood lay below them, calm beneath its winter cap.
The roofs and chimneys were softened by snow.
Merry’s spirits had lifted, too—her cheeks still tingled from the cold air, her heart quickened with the glad sense of being alive, of sharing a morning that had felt unusually free.
As they began their descent, she thought how very nearly perfect it had all been. The crisp air, the steady mare beneath her, the companionable quiet with Joshua. At that moment, she might have believed that life could be simple.
The road curved past the gates of Lord Bruton’s manor, tall and imposing even beneath its frosting of snow. Merry glanced through them idly, expecting only to see the wide sweep of lawn, the dark evergreens edging the drive. What she did see struck her like a slap.
Across the lawn, cutting twin tracks in the snow, sped a shining sleigh.
The horse’s bells jingled gaily, and Barnaby Tremaine himself held the reins, handsome in his dark coat, his posture the very picture of ease.
Beside him sat a lady wrapped in fur, her bonnet trimmed with crimson ribbons.
She leaned close, laughing as though the world held no shadows, her face lifted to Barnaby’s with unguarded delight.
Merry’s breath caught. She stiffened in the saddle.
Joshua saw it too—she felt rather than witnessed the change in him, the way his horse shifted in response to his hand. But he said nothing. He did not need to. The sight spoke loudly enough.
Barnaby had not seen them, or else he cared little who witnessed his gaiety. He flicked the reins, and the sleigh bounded forward across the lawn, the lady clutching at his arm in mock alarm, her laughter ringing clear through the frosty air.
The sound seemed to echo in Merry’s very chest. A wave of humiliation swept over her—hot and stinging, which seemed absurd against the cold.
It was as though all her doubts of the past days had taken flesh and presented themselves before her eyes, daring her to deny them.
The bracelet upstairs, the kiss that had left her cold, the whispers from the tavern—each accusation returned now with a companion in fur and ribbons.
Her mare tossed her head, feeling the hard grip of her rider’s hand. Merry gathered the reins and turned sharply from the gate.
“I must go on,” she said, her voice tight. She did not wait for Joshua’s answer. She pressed the mare into a brisk trot, her skirts swaying and her chin high, as though she could ride away from what she had seen.
The beautiful morning had shattered. The light, that moments before had seemed to gild the fields, now mocked her.
She heard still, in memory, the young woman’s laughter beside Barnaby, so light and careless.
It pierced her, though she told herself angrily it ought not.
What right had he, if he meant to court her, to parade another in so familiar a fashion?
And if he did not mean to court her—then what a fool she was.
Her cheeks burned. She urged the mare faster, wanting only to be away, to put distance between herself and that sleigh, from Joshua’s silent company, from the treacherous hope that had filled her earlier in the ride.
She knew she should not care so much. She told herself, sternly, that it was nothing—a lark, a trifle, a scrap of winter amusement that meant no more than a snowball tossed by children.
Yet the words rang false and hollow. Somewhere deep inside, she had wanted Barnaby’s attentions to mean more.
She had wanted to believe. And now the sight of him, so at ease, so gay with another lady, told her more than any whispered warning could have done.
The beautiful morning was ruined.