Chapter Three Mud on Her Hem
CHAPTER THREE
Mud on Her Hem
Dinner proved considerably less safe than Mary Beth had predicted.
Ambrose Tavener behaved perfectly properly, which would have been easier to endure if he had not made propriety feel so charged.
He arrived in the morning room at eight wearing the same dark trousers and waistcoat he had traveled in, though someone had brushed the dried mud from both.
He had accepted a clean collar from the house linen and declined the evening coat the butler had apparently offered him.
Mary Beth knew this because the butler’s expression, when he announced Mr. Tavener, carried the restrained injury of a man whose hospitality had been refused on technical grounds.
Ambrose stopped just inside the room.
Mary Beth had changed into a dark green dinner gown with a square neckline and narrow black lace at the sleeves. It was not one of her daring dresses. She had chosen it precisely because she did not intend to dress for a contractor who had spent the afternoon discussing culverts.
His pause suggested the distinction had been wasted.
“You found the blue room?” she asked.
“Eventually.”
“It is at the top of the principal staircase.”
“Your house has three principal staircases.”
“Only one of them thinks so.”
A brief change at the corner of his mouth told her he understood the joke.
Mary Beth indicated the table laid near the fire rather than in the dining room. “I thought this less absurd for two people.”
“You needn’t alter your household for me.”
“I have been altering this household for four years. You are merely tonight’s excuse.”
He pulled out her chair before taking his own. The gesture surprised her, not because it was refined, but because he performed it without any of Benedict’s polished awareness of being observed doing the correct thing.
Soup arrived. A footman poured wine. The butler supervised the first course as if Ambrose might attempt to steal the silver engineering-style, by calculating load, leverage, and the shortest route to the door.
For several minutes they spoke only about the wall.
Ambrose had sent a message from the estate office before changing.
Four men would arrive from Leeds shortly after seven in the morning with leveling instruments, rods, picks, shovels, and additional timber.
He wanted test cuts made above the surviving retaining wall and levels taken from the upper pasture to the beck.
If the old drainage line had settled where he suspected, the visible collapse might be only the place where the problem had finally announced itself.
Mary Beth listened, asked questions, and noticed that he answered them differently now.
Yesterday morning he had simplified. By evening he no longer did.
“If the road cannot be reopened quickly,” she said, “the southern tenants lose the shortest route to market.”
“How much longer by the east road?”
“Nearly five miles for the farthest farms.”
“Loaded wagons?”
“Mostly milk and produce. Some wool.”
“Then we need a temporary route before the permanent wall is finished.”
“There is an old quarry track.”
“Too steep.”
“You have not seen all of it.”
“I saw enough from the ridge.”
“The west spur is gentler.”
“And ends at a ditch.”
Mary Beth set down her spoon. “You did see all of it.”
“I make a habit of examining the thing I am paid to repair.”
“A tiresome professional virtue.”
“It keeps walls standing.”
“Not mine.”
He gave her that dry near-smile again. “I was not here when yours was built.”
The second course arrived. Mary Beth discovered that Ambrose ate like a man accustomed to meals being interrupted: efficiently, without fuss, and with no reverence for a sauce that had probably occupied the cook for half an afternoon.
“Where is home?” she asked.
He glanced up. “At present?”
“You have several?”
“I have rooms in Leeds, an office near the station, and more nights in railway inns than I recommend to anyone with a choice.”
“No wife objecting to railway inns?”
The question came out too casually.
Ambrose took a drink of wine before answering. “No wife.”
Mary Beth hated the small satisfaction that followed.
“A fiancée with stronger objections?”
“No.”
“A devoted widow in every county through which the railway passes?”
His gaze sharpened. “Is that a professional inquiry?”
“Entirely. I must know whether my engineer is likely to be murdered before the drains are finished.”
“Then you may reassure the estate. No one is waiting to kill me for affection.”
“For business?”
“Several men have considered it.”
She laughed.
This time Ambrose did not immediately look away.
Firelight caught one side of his face and left the other in softer shadow.
He was not beautiful. Mary Beth had known beautiful men, and most had known it too.
Ambrose’s appeal was harder to name. Strength, certainly.
Competence. A mouth that seemed designed for severity until amusement changed it.
And eyes that became dangerous whenever he forgot to keep them impersonal.
Mary Beth reached for her wine.
“You asked about my wife,” he said.
“Your absence of one.”
“Am I permitted the same discourtesy?”
“You may ask anything. I reserve the right to lie.”
“How long were you married?”
That was not the question she had expected.
“Nine years.”
“And widowed?”
“Four.”
He acknowledged the answer without arranging sympathy across his face or softening his voice. Mary Beth appreciated that enough to answer what he had not asked.
“My husband inherited Blackthorn from an uncle. It was not entailed with a title or tied to a male line. He left it to me.”
“Why?”
She lifted an eyebrow.
“That sounded worse aloud,” Ambrose said.
“Much.”
“I meant, did he expect you to keep it?”
“I think he expected me to own it while allowing sensible men to explain what ownership required.”
“And instead?”
“I dismissed two sensible men.”
Ambrose’s laugh was low and unexpected.
The footman entering with the next dish heard enough of it to glance between them.
Mary Beth saw the glance, and so did Ambrose. After that, the open door and two servants in sight felt less protective than they had a minute earlier.
It should not have mattered. A widow had fed the engineer repairing her wall, with two servants in sight and the door open to the corridor. Nothing more had happened.
Yorkshire required much less material than that to construct a scandal.
Mary Beth imagined the story by breakfast: Mr. Tavener in the family wing; Mr. Tavener dining privately; Mrs. Blackthorn laughing with him over wine.
She found, to her irritation, that the prospect no longer amused her as much as it had that afternoon.
She did not fear the story. What bothered her was the small part of herself that wanted there to be something worth lying about.
She dismissed the thought and asked him whether he preferred the western or eastern drainage route.
They were discussing gradient when dessert arrived.
By ten, Ambrose had gone upstairs with a roll of estate drawings beneath his arm. Mary Beth stood alone in the morning room after the servants cleared the last glasses and listened to the rain begin again against the windows.
It was not heavy, and she was absurdly disappointed.
A harder rain would have justified going downstairs to check whether her engineer was awake.
Mary Beth went to bed instead.
At six thirty the next morning, she woke to sunlight.
By seven fifteen she was dressed for the estate in a brown walking skirt, stout boots, a cream blouse, and a short fitted jacket that had survived mud, brambles, an angry ewe, and one memorable disagreement with a gate.
Her maid regarded the skirt with resignation.
“It will be filthy by luncheon,” Mary Beth said.
The maid’s expression indicated that this was not news.
“You may enjoy saying you told me so when it returns.”
She went downstairs and found Ambrose already outside.
Four men had arrived with a small wagon and enough equipment to make the terrace resemble the beginning of an invasion. A brass level stood in its case. Measuring rods leaned against the wall. Timber, rope, iron bars, picks, and shovels lay in orderly groups.
Ambrose stood beside the wagon checking a notebook.
His coat was off again.
Mary Beth had begun to suspect coats were temporary inconveniences in his life.
“Good morning,” she said.
He turned, and his eyes went immediately to her boots.
“No.”
Mary Beth stopped.
“What a remarkably efficient greeting.”
“You are not coming onto the lower slope today.”
“Good morning to you too.”
“The rain softened the bank.”
“Then I shall tread gently.”
“That is not how soil works.”
She glanced toward the men. All four had become intensely interested in equipment.
“If you intend to issue commands to me before breakfast,” she said, “you might at least do it privately.”
Ambrose lowered his voice. “If you intend to ignore them, privacy seems wasted.”
“You do understand that I own the slope?”
“You mentioned it.”
“Then we have made progress.”
He closed the notebook.
“The upper line is safe enough. The lower cut is not. Stay above the stakes when we set them.”
“I will decide where I stand.”
“And I will decide where my men work. If you stand somewhere unsafe, I stop them.”
It was infuriatingly difficult to argue with a man willing to halt his own work rather than merely forbid hers.
Mary Beth lifted her chin.
“You are enjoying this.”
“Not yet.”
“How promising.”
They set out ten minutes later.
The morning had washed the moor clean. Heather darkened under the lingering damp, and every blade of grass held light. The air smelled of wet stone, earth, and the faint mineral sharpness that came from the old quarry when rain soaked its exposed face.
Ambrose put two men on the upper levels and took the others toward the wall. Mary Beth followed until he planted a wooden stake in the ground and gave her a pointed glance.
“The sovereign boundary of Mr. Tavener’s temporary kingdom?” she asked.
“Something like that.”
“I dislike the flag.”
“There is no flag.”
“Exactly.”
He left her there.
For nearly an hour Mary Beth behaved.