Chapter Nine Morning #2
“You were right about the stone,” she said.
“I shall record the date.”
“Do. It may never happen again.”
“The grain is nearly identical to the original facing. Whoever opened that quarry understood what he was doing.”
“My husband’s uncle, probably. He distrusted buying anything that could be dug from his own land.”
“A philosophy with limits.”
“He attempted to grow peaches in Yorkshire.”
Ambrose turned toward her.
“That is not thrift. That is aggression against climate.”
Mary Beth laughed.
Two men working below glanced up.
She stopped too quickly.
Ambrose noticed that too.
“You may laugh at your own wall,” he said.
“I know.”
“Then why did you stop?”
Mary Beth watched the workers return to setting stone.
“Because I was laughing at you.”
“A common enough activity.”
“Not for me.”
He said nothing.
Mary Beth hated when his silence gave her room to hear herself.
She had not been unhappy before Ambrose came to Blackthorn. That would have been too simple and too insulting to the life she had built. She had money, land, authority, appetite, and enough independence to make half the county resentful.
But happiness had arrived in smaller portions than she had realized.
A good horse on a cold morning. A tenant child’s fever breaking. A ledger balancing. A bottle of wine opened for no one but herself. A lover who understood the terms.
With Ambrose, happiness had become inconveniently frequent.
It appeared at breakfast.
It followed her into mud.
It waited in the carriage room with rolled plans under one arm.
It laughed when she insulted peaches.
Mary Beth braced one hand on her hip.
“You are becoming disruptive.”
“Professionally?”
“No.”
Ambrose’s gaze moved over her face.
“Ah.”
“Do not look pleased.”
“I am trying not to.”
“You are failing.”
“Increasingly.”
She remembered the first time he had used that word, standing too close after warning her away from unstable ground.
Ambrose remembered too. She saw it happen.
“That was not even two weeks ago,” he said.
“You were unbearable then.”
“I have improved.”
“Marginally.”
A cart wheel struck a rut below, ending the exchange before either of them did something foolish in full view of six laborers.
Mary Beth was beginning to understand how many forms restraint could take.
* * *
The returned invitations began arriving that same afternoon.
Mary Beth found three cards on the silver tray in the front hall when she came in from the slope.
One invited her to a musicale she had not attended in four years.
Another requested her presence at a county hospital committee meeting whose chairwoman had once crossed a shop rather than acknowledge her.
The third was a luncheon invitation from a family that had abruptly discovered a prior engagement every time Mary Beth had called since her widowhood.
She carried all three into the estate office.
Ambrose was standing over a drawing with his sleeves rolled to the elbow.
“More trouble?” he asked.
“Apparently I am respectable again.”
That made him straighten.
Mary Beth placed the cards beside his ruler.
He read none of them.
“Sablehurst?”
“His mother, more likely. Benedict would understand that influence works best when one does not appear to be exerting it.”
“Will you go?”
Mary Beth leaned against the desk.
“To which?”
“Any of them.”
“I have not decided.”
Ambrose picked up the ruler again.
The ease of the movement irritated her.
“You have no opinion?”
“I have several. None gives me the right to answer for you.”
“That is annoyingly improved of you.”
“I have been studying under a difficult instructor.”
Mary Beth lifted the hospital card.
“They refused my donation last winter.”
Ambrose’s attention left the drawing.
“Refused money?”
“Not exactly. They returned the cheque with a very gracious letter saying their subscription list for the quarter was already complete.”
“Hospitals do not usually suffer from excessive money.”
“No. But committees occasionally suffer from excessive virtue.”
Ambrose’s jaw tightened.
Mary Beth watched the anger come and was touched by it despite herself.
“Do not be offended on my behalf. I survived.”
“That does not make it less stupid.”
“No. Merely less important.”
“And now they want you in the room.”
“Now Lady Sablehurst has made it safe to want me in the room.”
Ambrose considered that.
“Then go if the work matters to you.”
Mary Beth raised an eyebrow.
“And make use of Benedict’s protection?”
“Make use of the door while it is open. You never promised the doorman your hand.”
She stared at him.
“That is a remarkably immoral position.”
“I spend my life using bridges built by men I do not like.”
Mary Beth laughed.
“You may yet become useful in society.”
“God forbid.”
She set the hospital card apart from the others.
“I may attend that one.”
“Good.”
“The musicale can go to hell.”
“Can one write that on the reply card?”
“One can if one owns Blackthorn Manor.”
Ambrose’s mouth curved.
Mary Beth turned to leave, then stopped.
“Ambrose.”
“Yes?”
“Thank you for not making me choose between enjoying what Benedict’s influence can accomplish and choosing you.”
Ambrose stopped pretending to study the ruler.
“Mary Beth, I am not interested in winning you by making your life smaller.”
She held his gaze.
“I know.”
She left the office with the unexpected comfort of knowing he meant it.
* * *