Chapter 7 #2
“Many of the men in England would disagree with you,” Fred replied, patting his cheek. “Now shush. Wait for the food.”
Obediently, West closed his eyes and tried to rid his thoughts of anything relating to Fenmore.
It took quite a few minutes, but he eventually succeeded, finding nothing remaining but abject exhaustion.
Which was when his body gave into the emotion—state?
—and began to allow more of his weight to press into the surface of the table.
To fully slump, despite the importance of a gentleman’s posture and bearing.
To give in and allow the burden and the fatigue and the despondency to pull him down as it had been threatening to do from the moment he’d arrived.
And it was so quiet in this moment. Not peaceful, given the weight of it all, but it was settling into his bones and draining him in a way that he desperately needed.
He had been carrying these things for days and pushing forward, barely allowing himself to feel anything, let alone anything negative.
But here, in this quiet that was not actually quiet and with express permission from someone who knew him well, he could rest.
Everything would still be there when he was alert once more, but perhaps he would have more mental currency to face it with.
More fortitude and less endurance. He wasn’t sure if he needed hope or willpower, or both, but he would be desperately seeking anything that could help him move forward in any manner that was not trudging.
A gentle buzzing began to purr about his body, and he leaned into it, praying the goddess of slumber might bestow a gift upon him, even if only for a few minutes.
He could use such a detachment from the present.
Whatever sleep he’d attained the night before in that poor excuse for a bed had not been sustaining, and the constant headache of the day only proved that further.
It seemed only a scant few moments before his shoulder was being roughly shaken, and West had to force his eyes open to peer at his cousin.
“Supper, Cousin. Wake and rise.” Then his back was slapped. Hard.
West groaned and pressed himself up from the table, rubbing his hands over his face and hair before sitting back and blinking in an attempt to restore awareness to his eyes and his mind.
Mrs. Fulton stood by the table with a tray bearing two pork pies and a loaf of bread, a motherly smile of understanding cast in his direction. “Bit of rest for the first course, my lord?”
West only nodded, the tentacles of sleep still neatly draped around most of him.
She tutted and set their plates down, then the bread, the tankards of ale already on the table.
When had those arrived?
“Eat up, gents,” Mrs. Fulton instructed. “I’ll be back with my husband to have that talk after you’ve had enough.”
“Yes, ma’am, Mrs. Fulton,” Fred replied with the most obedient and demure expression he had ever worn in his life.
The woman rolled her eyes, even as she smiled, showing that even she could tell Fred’s nature despite having minimal exposure to his ways.
Fred was not a particularly complicated man. Just a unique one.
“Thank you, Mrs. Fulton,” West murmured, picking up his knife and fork to cut into the pie.
The first bite was one of delight and savory bliss. The second one of comfort and satisfaction. The third . . . silent appreciation.
“I may never leave this inn,” Fred moaned around his present bite of the delicacy. “Nothing has ever tasted this good. Not one thing in any tasteful or nostalgic realm.”
“I am inclined to agree.” West reached for his tankard of ale and drank deeply, delighted to find the combination one of complementing flavors and harmony for his palate. This might be the best food he’d had in his entire adult life.
And exactly what his body had been crying out for.
They had no conversation while they ate, letting the enjoyment of the food speak for itself and the comfort of silence seep into them. It was exactly the sort of reprieve West hadn’t known he needed.
Fred reached for the bread board and knife, slicing into the warm loaf eagerly. “I don’t even need butter or spread for this first one, I just need the bread,” he ground out as he cut.
West shook his head, laughing to himself and indulging in the delicious fragrance that only fresh bread could emit.
Fred placed a slice of bread on West’s plate while taking two for himself, biting into the first without any spreads, as he vowed. He groaned in a sort of tortured elation, completely unashamed. “Adoration, thy name is this bread.”
“You’re an idiot,” West announced as he layered his slice with butter.
“I will beg you to hire whoever is cooking in their kitchen,” Fred argued. “You need them.”
West cocked a brow. “I think the inn needs them. Might be hard to tempt them away.”
“The salary and housing alone should sway them.”
A hoarse laugh escaped West at the thought. “Did you stay in the same lodgings I did last evening? It’s not tempting for anyone. And what salary? The estate is barely making ends meet, and I am hardly swimming in wealth.”
“It is not a lump sum, and you know it,” Fred protested in a more serious tone than West was used to hearing from him.
“And you must wager a little on the promise of the future. That is the business of landowning. You know this, too, else what have we been gadding about in the last few years for? You’ve been preparing for this all your life.
Perhaps not for Fenmore, since we never imagined Leonard would do this, but for some place all your own.
” He tapped the table with one finger. “Now you get to use the one place you’ve always dreamed of.
Wager a little for the risk of all your dreams coming true. Isn’t that worth trying for?”
West had never heard his cousin be so passionate, or so sentimental.
He was so used to Fred being all laughter and lightness and pulling him from his overly serious moods into a world far more entertaining than one in which he lived.
But this version of his cousin was foreign. Not unwelcome—simply unexplored.
Fred must have sensed West’s confusion, shifting his expression immediately to one of wicked teasing. “And I shall exert all of my energy to finding you very pretty housemaids for a fair wage.”
West swiped a blow at his cousin’s shoulder, which Fred laughingly took.
The trouble was that Fred would probably do it anyway, if for no other reason than to have something fair to look at and flirt with whenever he visited Fenmore.
“Let me establish some sort of income from the estate so that I can afford a respectable wage for a staff before you start filling the house with pretty faces, hmm?” West gave him a warning look that his cousin was sure to ignore, and took another bite of his bread, which really was particularly delicious.
Fred waved him off dismissively, which was no answer at all, but at least his hearing seemed to be intact.
Their attention was brought up as Mrs. Fulton approached them a few minutes later, a burly and balding man in sturdy work attire following. They took open chairs at the table without asking, something that amused West immensely, and turned towards him with open expressions.
“So you’re the new Lord Bickham,” Mr. Fulton—he presumed—grunted more than said.
West nodded. “I am. Found out a week ago.”
He snorted softly. “Not going to offer condolences on your relation passing. Saw him maybe twice in my whole life and wasn’t impressed.”
“That’s very accurate for those who knew Leonard,” Fred offered with a knowing nod.
West only smirked. “Not expecting condolences, and not offering any.”
Mr. Fulton dipped his chin and offered a large hand. “John Fulton, my lord.”
“West Howard,” he replied, gripping his hand and shaking firmly. “Pleasure.” He gestured to Fred almost idly. “My cousin, Frederick Gates. He came along to improve the décor.”
Fred, who had been offering his hand to shake as well, gave him a sour look.
Fulton, on the other hand, barked a sharp laugh. “Anything would improve the décor of that place now, my lord. Aside from that pretty Miss Ellie, it’s not much to look at anymore.”
“Oh, bless Miss Ellie,” Mrs. Fulton chimed in before West or Fred could react. “She does so much for the tenants and the village and gets so little back. Have you ever known a fine lady to live in the state she is? Let alone to not complain about it. Remarkable.”
Fulton shook his head as though he could not believe it. “Never met any woman like her who wasn’t born into this life, and she is still more determined than most I know. There’s no stopping her once she gets an idea in her head.”
“What do you mean?” West asked carefully, not wanting to upset some Elena devotees without knowing the details. “What has she done?”
“We’ve only just arrived yesterday,” Fred explained. “We don’t have the full scope of things yet.”
They fell silent, seeming to hold their breath while they wanted for revelations, either about the estate itself or simply about Elena.
It seemed more and more that she was the estate—the good parts, anyway—in recent years.
“Well, for one, she got the village school back,” Fulton told them, his voice still more of a grunt than words. “That ain’t nothing. Never did tell us where the money for supplies and the teacher came from, or the supplies to repair the building.”
“She tried to help with those repairs, remember, John?” Mrs. Fulton threw her head back on a merry laugh. “Trousers an’ all. Climbed up on the roof like she was born to it.”
Fulton chuckled reluctantly, folding his arms. “She wasn’t about to be told she couldn’t, but we eventually persuaded her.
She took some of the children into the village to procure lime and salt to make whitewash, and promised they could help whitewash the building when the repairs were done.
You should have seen her driving that wagon with supplies up to the building, the children cheering in the back.
Wasn’t even her rig, you know. Borrowed it, she did, rather than paying a delivery fee. ”
The Fultons continued to laugh at this, but West was growing more and more concerned about this hoyden who had taken over his house and estate.
Yes, she was improving matters and restoring faith with the locals, but how was he going to get rid of her if she was so enmeshed with them as well as the estate?
“And did they?” Fred inquired in a too-high voice. “Whitewash the building, I mean. With her. Miss Ellie.”
Gads, Fred sounded like an idiot when he could not speak in full sentences.
“Oh yes,” Mrs. Fulton said with relish. “Most orderly chaos I ever did see, but it got done, and they are happy little birds in that school now.”
“Never would have happened without Miss Ellie,” Fulton admitted. “No one else had the means or influence.”
West had been afraid of that. But tonight was for information finding, not reacting, so he would push forward in spite of his concerns.
“What else has Miss Ellie done since arriving here?” he queried, very much feeling that he would regret asking.