Chapter Eighteen The Best of Them
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Best of Them
The following June, half the county had forgiven Mary Beth just enough to want tea at Blackthorn again.
The other half preferred to remain principled from a safe distance.
Mary Beth found both arrangements satisfactory.
She stood at the open window of the morning room with a ledger in one hand and watched Ambrose cross the lawn below carrying rolled drawings under his arm.
He had been married to her for four months and still crossed Blackthorn as if he had somewhere urgent to be, even when the urgent destination was only the carriage room and a cup of coffee he had forgotten on his desk.
He wore his coat off because the day was warm. His shirtsleeves were rolled once at the forearms. He had acquired a streak of graphite along one cuff, and Mary Beth could tell from the set of his shoulders that he had been arguing with a bridge on paper since breakfast.
Marriage had not improved his ability to remember meals.
It had improved several other things.
She closed the ledger.
The wedding had been smaller than the county expected and larger than Ambrose wanted.
Mary Beth had refused to make it secret, and Ambrose had refused to make it a spectacle.
They compromised on a ceremony attended by the Blackthorn household, a handful of neighbors who had remained kind when kindness cost something, the elderly widow who had demanded champagne at their engagement, and enough curious respectable people to ensure that the marriage could not later be dismissed as rumor.
Benedict had not attended.
His mother had sent a brief note wishing Mary Beth happiness. Mary Beth had read it twice, detected neither insult nor warmth, and kept it because she admired efficiency.
Ambrose had kept his promise from the night of their engagement.
The morning after Mary Beth proposed before half the county, he took her to the repaired north wall before breakfast. Mist lay over the field.
The widened culvert ran clear beneath the grass.
He stood beside the first section they had rebuilt and produced a ring so plain and well made that Mary Beth knew immediately he had chosen it himself.
Then he had proposed very badly.
He began with her tenants, moved to drainage, accused her of terrifying him, lost the order of whatever speech he had prepared, and finally said, “Mary Beth, I love you. I would like to spend the rest of my life being argued with by you. Will you marry me?”
She had made him wait almost five seconds before saying yes.
He still complained about the cruelty.
Blackthorn remained hers. The marriage settlement said so plainly, although Ambrose had called the document unnecessary and Mary Beth had called that opinion evidence of why the document was necessary.
Its rents, accounts, land, and decisions remained under her control.
Ambrose had no wish to become lord of an estate he had entered carrying drainage instruments, and Mary Beth had no wish to exchange one form of independence for another simply because the second man loved her.
His own firm had grown instead.
The carriage room had served for two months as a temporary office whenever he worked near Blackthorn.
By April, the arrangement had become ridiculous.
Drawings covered the old harness cupboards.
Contractors arrived through the stable yard.
Clerks from Leeds appeared with bundles of estimates.
One unfortunate messenger spent twenty minutes asking three servants where “Mr. Tavener’s establishment” was before discovering that the establishment consisted of Ambrose, two desks, a stove that smoked in east wind, and Mary Beth’s former carriage room.
So Ambrose leased rooms in the market town six miles away.
He paid the rent himself.
Mary Beth had offered to buy the building.
He had kissed her and told her no.
She offered again the next morning because she enjoyed consistency.
He told her no again because he enjoyed being difficult.
The office now employed two permanent clerks and gave Ambrose a place to meet landowners who preferred not to conduct serious engineering business within sight of Mary Beth’s rose garden.
His work took him to railway cuttings, estate bridges, retaining walls, drainage schemes, and once to a mill foundation that he described for three consecutive dinners until Mary Beth threatened to sleep in the blue room.
He had stopped talking about the mill foundation immediately.
Mary Beth visited the new office once a week whether invited or not.
On her first visit, Ambrose tried to give her the better chair; she refused it, took the hard wooden one by the stove, and spent an hour listening while he explained why a landowner’s proposed bridge needed another pier.
A week later, one of his clerks handed her a stack of copied figures without ceremony and asked whether Mr. Tavener had left a drainage sketch at Blackthorn.
Before long, no one stood up when she entered.
Mary Beth counted that as progress.
She had been watched all her adult life. At Ambrose’s office she was occasionally ignored because everyone was busy, and she discovered that being ignored could feel remarkably like freedom.
Ambrose never asked to inspect Blackthorn’s household books.
Mary Beth never asked to inspect his payroll.
They discussed anything that affected the other, argued when they believed the other was being foolish, and stopped short of claiming the final word where it did not belong to them.
This sounded simple when described afterward. In practice it required effort.
Their worst married quarrel so far concerned a tenant barn roof.
Ambrose said the old timbers should be replaced before new slate went on.
Mary Beth said the estate carpenter believed three beams could be sistered and kept.
Ambrose said the estate carpenter had not crawled into the roof space during rain.
Mary Beth asked whether marriage had secretly appointed Ambrose engineer to every structure she owned.
He answered, unwisely, that gravity had appointed him.
They did not speak through most of supper.
The next morning Mary Beth climbed into the barn loft with Ambrose and discovered that one of the beams had split farther than the carpenter had seen.
She approved replacement, then made Ambrose apologize for being insufferable while correct.
He did. Later that afternoon he asked her advice on whether to accept a railway contract that would keep him away nearly three weeks.
Mary Beth told him to take it because the fee was good and the work mattered to him.
He took it.
She hated every one of the nineteen nights he was gone.
The nineteen nights taught her something she had not expected: she could miss him fiercely without trying to keep him home.
When he returned, he came through Blackthorn’s front door at noon, dropped his valise in the hall, and kissed her while a footman pretended to be fascinated by a vase.
Mary Beth decided then that nineteen days was the maximum length of any future railway embankment.
Ambrose said engineering did not submit to marital decrees.
She told him engineering had not met her at her most determined.
The blue room remained where it had always been, but no one slept there unless Blackthorn had guests.
Mary Beth was thinking about that fact when Ambrose glanced up from the lawn.
He saw her at the window and changed direction.
A minute later he entered the morning room without knocking, which was another marital improvement she had not anticipated enjoying as much as she did.
“You are supposed to be reviewing the western accounts,” he said.
“I was.”
“You were watching me.”
“I can do two things.”
“Your ledger is closed.”
“That is because the second thing became more interesting.”
Ambrose set the drawings on the table. “I have been objectified in my own home.”
“My home.”
He came around the table. “There she is.”
Mary Beth smiled. “Our home, if you require reassurance before luncheon.”
“I do.”
She caught his waistcoat and pulled him closer. “Our home.”
His mouth softened against hers.
Four months of marriage had not made kissing Ambrose ordinary.
It had changed what happened around the kiss.
There was no listening for footsteps in a corridor, no lamp signal in a sitting-room window, no calculation about when he must return to the blue room before a maid arrived with coal.
If someone entered now, the embarrassment belonged to the intruder.
Mary Beth found that deeply civilized.
Ambrose drew back enough to say, “I came in here for a reason.”
“You usually do.”
“A professional reason.”
“How disappointing.”
“The north culvert survived last night’s rain without backing up.”
Mary Beth released his waistcoat. “You checked it already?”
“At six.”
“You were in bed at six.”
“You were in bed at six.”
“I distinctly remember you being there.”
“That was five forty-five.”
She laughed and shoved him lightly away. “You are intolerable.”
“The wall is dry. The field below it is dry. The pantry crack in the lower cottage has not reopened. I thought you would want to know.”
She did.
Nearly a year earlier, water had forced the old wall outward and brought Ambrose Tavener to her door.
Now the grass had grown thick over the repaired drainage line.
The cottages were occupied. The west lane carried carts again.
Most people passing the north field would never know how close that slope had come to failing.
Mary Beth knew every stone of it.
“So it worked,” she said.
Ambrose gave her a wounded expression. “You doubted me?”
“I hired you because I did not.”
“That answer is acceptable.”
He reached for the drawings again. Mary Beth placed her hand over them.
“Stay for luncheon.”
“I have a meeting at one.”
“Then eat quickly.”
“The man is coming to the office.”
“He can wait five minutes.”
“He owns three miles of railway embankment.”