Chapter 16 #2
“She will be very mad at Annette.” Possibly a little angry at herself. “The nonsense will stop, Jordy.”
He sighed mightily and stuck a clover flower in his mouth.
“Annette made me fall off that pony too. She rode the pony first and changed the saddle for me. She fixed the girth before I mounted, but she didn’t fix it.
She unfixed it, then laughed at me when I came off.
Bridget says I’m right. Bridget rode the pony before Annette did, and the saddle was snug then. ”
Nasty, dangerous business. Annette, who was no sort of equestrienne, likely hadn’t realized how dangerous. “What she did wasn’t in the least funny.”
“Will you tell Mama?”
Jordy clearly didn’t want to be the bearer of troublesome tidings. “I will, and rest assured that your mother will brook no more foolishness where your safety or Bridget’s safety is concerned.”
“Mama was very fierce with Annette, wasn’t she?”
“Between us gents, I thought your mother was far too lenient, but she makes allowances for the fact that Annette is facing a challenge for which she does not feel prepared.” For which she, in fact, was not prepared.
“Tricking a prince? He won’t be a very smart prince if he marries Annette. Can we find Bridget now?”
He might be a smitten prince of the lowly variety. Bernard had presided at all manner of nuptial ceremonies, and there was no accounting for the path Cupid’s arrows could take.
“We will find Bridget, and your mother, and you will have a grand time whacking the stuffing out of a wooden ball. Makes a very satisfying sound when the mallet connects with its target.”
They chatted about the rules of pall-mall until they spotted Bridget riding her pall-mall mallet like a stick horse around the edge of the pitch. Sorcha watched from a bench in the shade of a stately maple.
“Bridge!” Jordy yelled and waved. Bridget dropped her mallet and waved back. Sorcha left her bench. She looked of a piece with the rural scene, sturdy, sure of herself, happy to see her darling firstborn.
She would not be quite so happy when Bernard gave her a full report.
He struggled with the impulse to gather them all up and retreat to Yorkshire, where the only family he had put no demands on him, and young ladies did not become obsessed with impressing all of Society in an annual public courting contest.
“Did you drink your posset, Jordy?” Bridget asked.
“Two sips. It was awful. Where’s Annette?”
“Not here,” Bridget replied. “Eggie and Jessica are reading on their blanket. Elise is sailing toy boats with the other girls.”
Sorcha cocked her head at that report. “And are you also watching Cousins Coraline and Tally?”
“No, but Cousin Tally went for a stroll around the lake with some girl. They are there.” Bridget pointed quite rudely to a couple meandering along a few hundred yards across the water. “Cousin Coraline might be in the tea tent with the ladies.”
“You would do well in commerce,” Bernard said. “You notice details and can recall them.”
“Our Bridget will do well in Society,” Sorcha added, “and in the schoolroom and everywhere in between. Jordy, would you like to take a turn at pall-mall?”
Jordy eyed the pitch, which was set up as a course meant to be challenging. “Do we get to smack the ball as hard as we can?”
“You call those practice shots,” Bridget replied, quite confident of her expertise. “You can take as many of those as you want. Aunt Lilly said. Then you have to hit between the wickets and smack other people’s balls and go in the right order. It’s complicated. Mama knows the rules.”
Mama also fortunately knew how to discreetly thwart the rules. Bernard was fondly beholding his favorite rule-bending lady when he spotted Annette swanning down the path from the house.
“I want to go home.” Jordy looked anywhere but at his cousin in the distance. “I don’t feel well, and I want to go home now.”
“Jordy, what’s wrong?” Bridget sounded more concerned than annoyed.
“Nothing is wrong. I just want to go home.”
“Annette has apologized,” Sorcha said gently. “You will have to face her sooner or later. If you’d rather it be later, we can go for a walk around the lake.”
The boy looked ready to bolt hotfoot for Wales.
“Jordy,” Bernard said. “She can’t hurt you again. You have your family right here with you, and we won’t let any harm befall you. You and Bridget take some practice shots while your mama and I have a chat on the bench.”
Sorcha’s brows went up, but she let Bernard’s suggestion stand.
Jordy looked from his mama to Bernard and ultimately at Bridget. A silent exchange took place between the siblings while Annette twirled her white parasol over by the boathouse, and Coraline beamed determinedly at her oldest daughter’s side.
“I like the mares’ paddock,” Bridget said. “The foals are wonderful, and the mamas don’t mind if we visit them. Let’s go see the mares and foals.”
Brilliant girl. Jordy nodded. Sorcha looked puzzled.
“The mares’ paddock it is,” Bernard said, offering his arm to Sorcha, and away they sauntered. Bridget skipped along beside her brother, the picture of a carefree little girl on a pretty spring day.
Over by the water, Annette and her mother joined the women taking tea under the white tent. The lake itself was a flat blue mirror of the sunny sky, and two rowboats made a lazy progress across the surface.
The very picture of a lovely day on a lovely estate in lovely company.
And yet, pictures, as Bernard well knew, could be deceptive.
“Has Eglantine always been a reluctant sailor?” Bernard asked.
To Sorcha’s ear, his tone was casual—too casual. “In fact, she has. She claims if God had meant ladies to travel across water, then ladies would have webbed feet. Eggie has some queer notions, and her opinions can become quite fixed.”
“Then Annette well knew her sister would not get into that boat.”
Bernard’s voice, always so rich and resonant, held an edge that contrasted with the peaceful scene in the mares’ pasture. The mamas munched the lush spring grass while foals slept in the sunshine, gamboled about, nursed, or nosed at the grass beside their mothers.
The little ones grew so quickly. This batch, mere weeks old, were already steady on their feet and challenging one another to mock battles.
“Jordy!” Bridget called. “I’ll race you around the paddock. On three!”
They counted together and pelted off along the fence line. The mares watched, but only one raised her head, and even she did not stop chewing.
“You’ve been questioning Jordy, haven’t you, Bernard?”
Sorcha took the sketching bench conveniently placed on a slight rise beside the paddock. Bernard remained on his feet, gaze on the children, who’d slowed to a jog.
“Jordy has been keeping a confidence out of a misguided attempt to emulate gentlemanly behavior. The burden grew too much for him, and yes, I did put a few questions to him.”
“Please have a seat. If we are to engage in a disagreement, I don’t want you looming over me.”
The Scots in Sorcha’s voice was gaining an upper hand. She mentally counted to ten in the Erse and waited for Bernard to do as she’d told him to.
“Please hear me out, Sorcha. Jordy has recalled that Annette changed saddles for him the day he came off that pony. I gather the girls had been riding aside, while Jordy would, of course, ride astride. He is quite certain she left the girth too loose.”
Old business. Why must Bernard be so concerned with old business? “The grooms assured me the saddle had been properly adjusted.”
“Are we to believe a lot of grooms—who could have been sacked for allowing Annette to meddle with the saddles—over Jordy?”
Though Bernard posed a question, he was making an accusation. Barclay had resorted to the same tactic. Would Madam have me believe her allowance is inadequate? Is it the case that my wife prefers the Scottish wilderness to English civilization?
Two people could pose questions. “Jordy has taken Annette into dislike, Bernard. Unfortunately, she makes that easy. Why has Jordy decided to point a finger at her, months later, over an incident better forgotten?”
“A gentleman does not speak ill of a lady, especially a lady in his family.”
Sorcha snorted as the children slowed to a fast walk. “Jordy has been insulting Annette roundly for the past fortnight.”
“General aspersions. He kept more specific criticism to himself. When he was hiding in the oat bin, he heard a tread that exactly matches Annette’s flitting gait. He also detected that peculiar scent she prefers, a muddied blend of lemons and roses.”
“And again, he told you that only now, a good fortnight after it would have been relevant. Annette drenches herself in attar of roses to try to hide the scent of the lemon rinses her mother insists she use on her hair. I agree that the aroma is distinctive, and Jordy is clever enough to discern that and pin guilt on Annette accordingly.”
Bernard sat forward, forearms braced on his thighs. Why must he be so attractive when he was determined to be so vexatious?
“They are looking for lucky clovers,” he said.
The children, on the far side of the paddock, were on all fours in the grass, slowly crawling about. Looking for luck, while Bernard apparently thought he’d come upon some relevant truths.
“Children will play pranks on one another, Bernard. I mean you no insult when I note that you have no children. You had only the one cousin as a companion growing up, and you and he rubbed along well. That is often not the case in larger family settings.”
He scrubbed his palm across his face and glanced back at her. “I doubt these pranks, as you call them, are exclusively the work of a child, and as to that, Annette expects to take Mayfair by storm in less than a year. That is not the aspiration of a child.”
“That is her mother’s aspiration. Annette has no choice but to support it.”