Chapter Three
SARAH WAS DRESSED in her best walking dress, a newly trimmed bonnet atop her blonde curls. She did not usually put such effort into her appearance but, then, she did not usually get invited on outings with devilishly handsome earls.
Not that she was dressing up for the Earl of Ashford’s benefit, of course. She merely wished to present her best self on the outing to Long Acres that Mrs Mifford had organised, so that she could maintain her slight upper-hand on the man. It was all she had, after all.
The earl was handsome, cultured, and obscenely wealthy. While Sarah…well, Sarah was a spinster worrying over the opinion of a man who probably hadn’t given her a second thought.
He certainly hadn’t seemed to care for her company last night at dinner, for he had spent all six-courses cozying up to Mrs Mifford, of all people.
The party for the outing consisted of Sarah, Mary and her husband, Mrs Mifford, Charlotte, and Lord Deverell. Mr Leek—usually aloof, bordering on rude—was all effusive smiles and warm welcomes as the group disembarked the carriage.
“Miss Hughes, a pleasure,” he intoned, bowing over Sarah’s hand. She was a little shocked by both his silky manners and the fact that he knew her name. He had never once, in her five and twenty years living in Plumpton, acknowledged her existence.
“Lord Deverell, I am humbled to host you again.”
Mr Leek near elbowed Sarah out of his way in his haste to greet the earl, his lean, satin clad frame bowing so low that his nose almost touched the floor. Sarah hid a smile as Mr Leek revealed his charming manners to be only temporary.
Lord Deverell offered the horticulturist a nod. “Your gardens moved me, Mr Leek,” he stated, his grey gaze catching Sarah’s. “I was not expecting to find such beauty in Plumpton.”
Sarah lowered her eyes to the floor, lest the earl noted the pink stain on her cheeks. If she hadn’t known any better, she might have thought him flirting.
“Our bucolic backwater can offer up some surprises,” Mr Leek agreed. “Come, let us begin our tour.”
The gardens at Long Acres were as pompous and precise as Mr Leek. Neat graveled paths wound through beds and borders stuffed with elaborately labeled rare blooms. At the centre of the gardens stood Mr Leek’s pride and joy, a hothouse containing specimens from the Orient and South Americas.
“Are you impressed with Mr Leek’s blooms?” the earl whispered, as he fell into step beside Sarah.
“I’m more impressed by whatever it was you did to deter Mrs Mifford, my lord.” Sarah answered, managing to keep her tone mild even as her heart skipped a beat. “She hasn’t come near you all morning.”
Mrs Mifford had, instead, attached herself to Mr Leek—who looked none too pleased by her company—and was leading the tour through the grounds as though she herself had grown each plant from seed.
The earl gave a pleased smile at her praise, which caused Sarah’s stomach to twist a little with longing. He looked boyishly handsome when he smiled.
“In truth,” Lord Deverell confided in a low voice, “I employed your sound advice for managing her. I must thank you sincerely for your wisdom, I have had a most peaceful morning.”
“I am always glad to help, my lord,” she answered, touched by his sincerity.
“That’s good,” the earl grinned again, though this time his smile was a little lupine.
“Because I’m afraid that I have dragged you into my cunning plan.
Mrs Mifford was determined to see me matched up for the duration of my visit, so I decided that if I could not stop her from forcing female company upon me, that I would chose which female it was. ”
Sarah paused mid-step, her brain working too furiously to decipher his meaning to also instruct her legs forwards.
“I don’t understand,” she said, though she had a sinking suspicion she did.
“Mrs Mifford wants to matchmake,” Lord Deverell shrugged his broad shoulders, “She cannot be deterred. Therefore, I decided that if she will insist on orchestrating alone time with a young lady, that the young lady should be you.”
To prove the truth of his words, the earl gave a coy wave to Mrs Mifford who was peering back at them. She in turn broke into a broad beam at his signal, her delight evident.
“See?” Lord Deverell said proudly.
Sarah was torn between amusement and indignation at his air of self-satisfaction.
“Did you not consider that I may not wish to play-act as a partner in a faux-courtship?” Sarah queried, as she resumed walking so that they would not fall too far behind the group.
A silence ensued, during which Sarah deduced that earl had not considered her consent might be anything other than assured. How aristocratic of him to assume that everyone in his sphere was eager to do his bidding.
“My only worry was that someone had already claimed your hand,” he replied easily, ignoring his own pause. “But Mrs Mifford reassured me that this was not the case. All I have to say on that matter, is that the men of Plumpton must be blind.”
“I cannot be bribed with Spanish coin for my participation, my lord,” Sarah laughed at his obvious attempt to flatter.
“I have never offered anyone a false compliment in my life, it would imply a need to ingratiate that I have never felt. I’m an earl, other people do the ingratiating.
” he huffed. “Though I am glad to hear you will participate—and how charitable of you to waive payment for your services. Come! You must see the orchids in the hothouse.”
He linked Sarah’s arm through his and escorted her—firmly—through the door of the hothouse where the other members of the party were already admiring Mr Leek’ collection.
Inside the air was pressing and humid, curling around Sarah like damp cloth. Rows of shelves housed intriguing flowers in violent shades and shapes. Along the far wall climbed a vine laden with magenta flowers, so beautiful that Sarah actually gasped aloud.
“Bougainvillea,” Lord Deverell informed her, his eyes following the line of her gaze. “It’s found mostly in the Kingdom of Brazil.”
“Have you always had an interest in plants, my lord?” Sarah questioned, as she crouched down to peer into a pot crowned with a rosette of long, sharp leaves. She gave a happy laugh as she discovered a pineapple at its centre—small but perfectly formed.
“I took up an interest in botany after my wife died,” the earl replied with a shrug. “I needed something to distract me. I soon learned that drinking or gambling were off limits; clubs and hells don’t take too kindly to a man who turns up with an infant in tow.”
Sarah turned to look at him, her brow raised, and was glad to find him smiling. He had delivered his statement so dryly that she hadn’t been certain it was said in jest.
“How old is your son?” she questioned, too shy to ask him about his late wife—though desperately curious to learn more.
“Seven,” Lord Deverell stated, his pride in his son evident. “He is visiting with his maternal side at the moment but will join me here in a fortnight, and then we will travel on to Abergavenny.”
Geography was not Sarah’s strong point but she knew from Debrett’s—which she had poured over after her first encounter with him—that the earl’s primary seat was in Wales.
“Miss Hughes!”
Charlotte Mifford’s voice traveled across the turgid air, causing Sarah to turn. The rest of the group was gathered around a table, with Mr Leek at its head, impatiently waiting to begin a lecture.
“I believe our host wishes to show off his peonies,” Lord Deverell said.
Sarah bit back a giggle as she imagined the fun her brothers might have had with that sentence.
Lord Deverell caught her eye and she realised that he had intended the innuendo.
No matter their rank or class, all men took a boyish delight in words that sounded even vaguely phallic.
It was a wonder they had managed to assert themselves as the dominant sex, given how easily they were amused, she thought with a grin.
They joined the group at the table and Mr. Leek launched into a long lecture on the care and cultivation of moutan peonies.
“Of course,” he finished—much to everyone’s relief, for the hothouse was stifling and they were all wilting in the heat.
“They require a steady and generous water source, particularly during the early summer. We are lucky at Long Acres that we were able to divert a small tributary of the stream to serve our needs.”
The group as a whole stilled at these words, apart from Mrs Mifford, who never did seem to suffer from the bouts of awkwardness that afflicted most people.
“What a pity Mr Hardwick intends to cut you off,” she commented. She turned to look with annoyance at her husband, who had clearly trod on her toe to silence her. “What? There’s no point in ignoring it.”
“Nothing in life is ever certain, my dear Mrs Mifford,” Mr Leek said in response, his thin lips curled into a smile. “Now, I don’t know about all you, but the air in here has made me quite thirsty. Let us repair to the courtyard; my housekeeper, Mrs Vickery, has prepared us some cordial.”
Sarah was glad to trade the cloying air of the hothouse for the freshness of the garden.
The group followed Mr Leek back along the raked gravel paths to the courtyard—a rather generous description for a small paved area at the side of the small house.
There his housekeeper, who Sarah recognised from Sunday service, awaited them.
“I have prepared a tomato and spice cordial for your guests, sir,” she said, executing a stiff curtsy as though she was being presented at court.
The guests each accepted a glass of the blood red cordial from Mrs Vickery. It smelled tart to Sarah’s nose and when she sipped on it the taste was bitter.
“Delightful,” Mrs Mifford exclaimed, her wince belying the enthusiasm of her tone. “I am so fond tomatoes; frightfully hard to grow but worth the effort.”
“I wasn’t aware you grew tomatoes, dearest,” Mr Mifford commented mildly to his wife.
“Yes, well it will probably take you a year to notice when I die,” she gamely answered, “I’ll be mummified in the drawing room before you think to ask where I am.”
“I’ll notice when you die, mother, never fear.” Mary reassured Mrs Mifford, before giving a quelling look to her father for his part in the fracas.
“I’ll notice because I’ll finally know a moment’s peace,” Mary hissed, as she sidled up to Sarah. Then her face fell, as it always did, when she complained about her mother to Sarah. “I’m sorry, I know I must sound ungrateful.”
“Please do not apologise,” Sarah said, most firmly.
Now that Mrs Mifford had embroiled her in a farce with the earl, Sarah had no qualms listening to Mary’s complaints about her mother.
Any other day, she might have felt a pang of longing for her own mother—some fifteen years dead—but not today.
Especially not as—over Mary’s shoulder—the Earl of Ashford caught her eye and delivered a conspiratorial wink.
Sarah was saved a blush as Mrs Vickery gave a cry of anger, startling all the guests.
“Mr Leek, the crows are back,” she cried, waving her fist in the air at a murder of corvids circling overhead.
“Excuse me a second,” Mr Leek said to his guests, disappearing momentarily through a set of French doors, before returning with a shotgun in hand.
The assembled guests watched in a mix of fascination and horror as their host raised the shotgun, took aim, and fired at a crow that had landed on one of the gravel paths. Sarah shielded her eyes as the bird exploded into a cloud of feathers.
“I must say, you’re a crack shot Mr Leek,” Lord Deverell said after a pause, though his dry tone implied that he was simply saying something—anything— to fill the stunned silence.
“You have to be, to protect the gardens,” Mr Leek rested the shotgun down, his expression one of great satisfaction. “Isn’t that right, Mrs Vickery?”
“Yes, sir,” the housekeeper agreed, her round face alight with fervour.
“May God help Silas Hardwick, if he does decide to cut Mr Leek off from the stream,” Mary whispered into Sarah’s ear.
And then, because at heart she truly was her mother’s daughter, she turned to Sarah with a coy smile and demanded; “Now tell me everything that happened between you and the earl—it is clear that he is smitten by you. I sense another fine match!”