Chapter 9 #2
She returned to the kitchen, glanced at the half-plucked hen that would have to wait, then laid her apron over the back of a chair and washed her hands in the rinse bucket. Smoothing some of the loose sprigs in her upswept hair, she returned to the entrance hall.
“What brings you here, John?”
“I came to call on you, Miss Oxley. Mr. Coates said it was all right. Just for an hour.”
Her heart stumbled clumsily over John’s answer. “You spoke to him?”
“Yes. I met him on the road just now. He and his sons were planting in the field.”
“And you asked if you could…”
“Call on you, yes.”
Call on me? Gentlemen never call on me.
Madeline swallowed with difficulty and had to struggle to find her voice.
She wished that her thoughts didn’t fly directly to Adam in these circumstances. She wished she wasn’t wondering how he might feel about John courting her.
She supposed at the very least, Adam would worry that he was going to lose another housekeeper.
But maybe, just maybe, John coming to call on her would make her become visible to Adam. Maybe Adam would finally see her as a woman, not a child, he would comprehend the fact that other men found her appealing—even though she had a hard time believing it herself.
“I see. Would you like to come in?”
John gave her an appreciative smile and followed her into the front parlor.
Agnes headed for the kitchen. “I’ll make some tea.”
Madeline sat down on the chintz sofa while John sat on the other side of the room in a green upholstered chair.
For a few moments, neither of them spoke, while John’s eyes wandered around the room, looking at the framed paintings on the walls, the brass face on the tall clock that ticked away in the silence.
He gazed at the piano in the corner, then wiggled in his chair as he reached down to touch the rich, velvet upholstery on the seat.
“Mr. Coates has a very fine house,” he said.
“It’s quite comfortable.”
“It’s more than comfortable,” John replied. “It’s a palace compared to most places around here. Maybe we should start calling him ‘Lord of the Marsh.’”
Not caring for John’s disrespectful tone, Madeline rubbed a thumb over her fingers. This was going to be a very long hour.
* * *
Adam stood in the hot morning sun, his boots firmly planted in the dirt, and removed his hat to wipe his forehead with a sleeve. The wind was nonexistent today. Everything was so still. Everything except the insects, which were humming and buzzing a steady cacophony.
Curse his thoughts, for buzzing a cacophony, too.
He hoped Madeline was all right at the house. Maybe he should go and check on things.
No, surely that wasn’t necessary. He was just making excuses to interrupt, to thwart John Metcalf when Adam had no business thwarting anything to do with Madeline.
Whatever improper feelings he had for her, he had to vanquish, for Adam had already proposed to her sister.
More than proposed. No one knew it, but he had sent the necessary documents for a proxy marriage to take place, and it was out of his hands now.
The proposal was on its way across the Atlantic, and Adam could not make the ship turn around.
Nor should he want to. Diana was the true love of his life, the one he had always wanted and the one he continued to want at this moment. Didn’t he?
The number of times he’d had to convince himself of that lately was beginning to irk him.
He settled his hat back on his head and returned to the planting, but despite his efforts not to think about Madeline, it dawned on him that perhaps Mrs. Dalton was not in the house with her and John—which would be wholly improper.
Adam hadn’t thought about accompanying John to ensure they were chaperoned. What if his housekeeper was in the barn when John arrived?
Clearly, he was no good at this. He had never been required to play this role before. He hadn’t expected to be in this position until Penelope had matured a number of years. A good number of years.
When he’d sent for Diana, he had expected a bride, not a ward.
But there…he was making excuses again. Madeline was not his ward. She was a woman, and sometime over the past few weeks, he had become all too conscious of that fact.
He gazed across the field at Jacob and George working diligently. Then he flinched at the direction of his thoughts again as he asked himself: If the proposal to Diana were not pending, would he go up to the house now and interrupt John’s visit, then court Madeline himself?
Adam’s head began to throb. How in the world was he going to handle this? He reached into his bag for more seed and sprinkled it onto the field.
He knew one thing. He was not—absolutely not—going to return to the house and make a fool of himself. He would stay right here in the field. And if he knew what was good for him, he would wrestle this reckless and unwelcome infatuation into submission.
Not two minutes later, feeling thoroughly ashamed of his lack of self-discipline, he dropped a final handful of seed onto the ground and marched up the hill to the house.