Chapter 2 #2
He retrieved the bouquet from its watering can and held it to her, stems dripping. “Don’t you want your flowers? Here.” He produced the wrinkled handkerchief and wrapped the stems again. “I insist. I don’t like to think you’re taking only bruises away from our first encounter in ages.”
His smile was the personification of masculine charm, and Alice resented it mightily—so mightily that she grasped the bouquet too firmly and got a jab in the palm for her efforts. She nonetheless bobbed an easy curtsey and wished his lordship a pleasant day.
She exited the conservatory through the side garden door and kept a resolute pace all the way across the park. Only when she’d reached the safety of the home wood did she examine her wound, which had turned her palm slightly bloody.
“Drat him and his smiles anyway.” And yet, she couldn’t quite sustain a real temper where Cam Huxley was concerned.
He’d come home when Mrs. Shorer had been certain he wouldn’t.
He’d look after the Hall despite Mr. Beaglemore’s dire predictions to the contrary, and he would commend Grandpapa to a happy and secure retirement.
Camden, Lord Lorne, was being responsible. That he had also become a magnificent male specimen, with both manners and muscles, well… that had nothing to do with anything.
Though the whole awkward quarter hour left Alice feeling bewildered, an all-too-familiar state of affairs where Cam was concerned. Not quite angry, not pleased, not even exactly flustered, but… bewildered.
Alice Singleton had grown dowdy.
This astonishing fact preoccupied Cam sufficiently that the first footman had to clear his throat twice after setting the tray on the library desk.
“Will there be a reply, my lord?” Chapman glanced portentously at the tray, which bore a towering epergne full of comestibles. A second footman, already departed, had brought a full tea service, despite supper being less than two hours away.
A reply. Cam extracted a folded epistle from the edge of the tray. Cousin Bernard’s flourishy handwriting hadn’t changed. An examination of the missive confirmed that Bernard’s ability to blend presumption and flattery was in good form as well.
Cam located a pencil in the desk drawer, scrawled a few words onto the bottom of the note, and then as an afterthought added, We shall dine at seven. Informal attire.
“My reply, which is not urgent.”
“We’ll deliver it to the vicarage within the hour, my lord.”
“You might also alert Cook to the fact that we’ll have company tomorrow evening. Vicar and his mama have invited themselves for supper and taken the liberty of extending invitations to a few other neighbors. Lady Josephine suggests a buffet, the better to accommodate the numbers on short notice.”
Chapman was hardly new to service, and yet, he made a moue of distaste. “Very good, my lord. I will inform Cook.”
Very annoying, more like. “My thanks, Chapman. That will be all.”
That Alice had become dowdy was also annoying, in addition to astonishing. A woman of her impressive dimensions ought not to be wearing ruffles, much less big, droopy ruffles that obscured her figure and put one in mind of governesses on annual seaside holidays.
St. Didier had at some point stepped into the room. He lurked by the door until Chapman withdrew and only then approached the desk.
“I will not eat at the desk,” Cam said, rising and lifting the epergne. “You would scold me for it. Mind you, the food will taste the same regardless of where we consume it and will just as effectively spoil our suppers.”
“You ate barely anything at luncheon. This looks delectable.” St. Didier hefted the tea tray and set it on the reading table. “You survived the parade inspection?”
“No thanks to you. Where did you get off to?”
“The Rose Suite. A little communing with soap and water, a short nap, and I’m a new man. Please do compliment the housekeeper on the scented soaps. The lavender is heavenly.”
Cam filled a plate with cheese tarts, rolled slices of ham, and two lemon tarts. The fare wanted some plain, cool, summer ale, rather than damned tea.
“You are scowling,” St. Didier said, filling his own plate. “Has your review of the premises revealed creeping damp and evidence of mice?”
Were ruffles worse than mice? “The house appears in good trim, but I did not nose around the attics and cellars, where signs of neglect would most likely be found. Are you acquainted with my aunt Josephine?”
St. Didier poured out, taking his tea black.
Cam added sugar and milk—well, no, cream—and sipped cautiously. Hot, sweet, rich. He set his cup down after a single taste.
St. Didier selected a variety of fruit tarts.
“Lady Josephine, relict of the late Reverend Ambrose Huxley, your uncle, and said—most notably by Lady Josephine—to have been in consideration for a suffragan bishop’s post when he went to his celestial reward.
Bad fish, though the lesser lights of the congregation might have been heard to whisper about bibacity as a contributing factor.
Her ladyship presides over the vicarage at St. Wilfrid’s, a post beneath the dignity of an earl’s daughter, but within the ambit of a doting mother’s dreams, to hear her tell it. This is good tea.”
“Are you surprised?” Cam was surprised. Surprised at Alice Singleton all grown up and full of curves she tried to hide. Surprised she’d truss her gorgeous chestnut mane up in one of those crocheted black net thingums. An abomination against the natural order, to see her hair confined thus.
St. Didier sipped again. “If your property is well cared for, I am pleased, I suppose. The house has been without a lord of the manor for months, and your brother’s decline was lengthy. One might expect standards to have slipped.”
“The old guard has prevented that, though I’m certain Aunt Josephine will take the credit. She has invited half the shire to a buffet here tomorrow night. You can plead the fatigue of travel if you’d rather be spared.”
“Bold of her.”
“A formal meal would have been bold. She’ll doubtless make the attempt if I’m ever here when the household is not in mourning. Is three months too soon to dispense with the black armbands and covered portraits and mirrors?”
“Not the armbands. One mourns a sibling for six months.”
“Lorne’s will—Alexander’s will—specified no deep mourning.”
“Armbands on livery are not deep mourning. Neither does mourning prevent you from hacking out early tomorrow to have a look at your acreage.”
“I’m not much of one for hacking out.” Every fashionable bachelor in London paraded himself through Hyde Park at an ungodly hour, and half the heiresses and diamonds did as well. Cam had no wish to be confused for an eligible on display. “I prefer to spend my mornings in productive pursuits.”
St. Didier raked him with a pitying glance.
“You fall asleep at your desk, you wake up at your desk, your cheek stained with ink. You eat barely enough to keep body and soul together, and you grow fretful if you’re not in sight of an abacus.
One would despair, except that you have, by the grace of the Deity and my own selfless efforts, landed in the middle of the most beautiful shire on earth in its most beautiful season.
If you lie abed tomorrow morning, I shall disown you. ”
“Empty promises will never move me, St. Didier.” By sheer self-discipline, Cam did not glance at the abacus gracing the windowsill nearest the corner. He instead started on his cheese tarts.
“Empty promises should move nobody, but the beauty of Yorkshire is irresistible. Your brother claimed you used to be out of doors more than in and spent most of your summers on the back of a horse. For all you know, the land has been neglected terribly, but here you sit, eating—or pretending to eat—in the library, because books and ledgers are the only landscape you now recognize.”
For St. Didier, that was a tirade.
“Thaddeus Singleton will insist on taking me about. He’d probably rather I wait for his escort.” The cheddar was perfectly aged to have flavor with a hint of bite. The crust was exquisitely light.
“Old Singleton will show you what he wants you to see in the light he wants you to see it. That’s not how you find the truth of the place.
When I visit my former family seat, I ride about at will, seeing what’s before my eyes.
I don’t call upon the present owner and take tea overlooking the sunken garden. ”
That St. Didier visited his ancestral pile was a revelation. His former ancestral pile. “How is the place holding up?”
“It isn’t. The English climate will take prisoner any structure left undefended, and the current inhabitants of The Gables haven’t the first notion how to repel the elements. You are attempting to change the subject. We will ride tomorrow before breakfast.”
The hell we will. “After breakfast. Even you have said I need more rest and sustenance.”
St. Didier made an unconvincing effort to look abashed. “Very well. We ride out after breakfast, but no later than eight of the clock.”
Cam was usually at his desk well before eight, and some sort of mounted inspection of the property was required sooner or later.
“What do you call those net things women wear over their hair when they bun it all up at the back of their head?”
St. Didier obliterated the last of his tarts. “A bun at the nape is a chignon.”
“Not the bun itself. The little woven net for trussing it all tidily together. Widows wear them, and the yarn is often black.”
“A snood. Old-fashioned, modest. Why?”
Cam finished his cheese tarts and started on the rolled slices of ham. “No reason. I don’t care for them. Too antiquated. Could not think of the word. Will you attend tomorrow’s supper buffet?” Even the word sounded dowdy. Snood. Rhymes with prude, rectitude, platitude, brood…
“I would not miss my lord’s debut in local Society. You’ll have to strike the right balance between sorrow at your brother’s passing and joy to be home. Wants delicacy.”
“Wants dishonesty, you mean. Lorne was more than ready to go, and I did not begrudge him an end to his suffering. Far from it. And lest you think I am unaware of your maneuvering, St. Didier, this visit to the Hall is an occasion of duty rather than joy.”
St. Didier finished his tea, wrapped three raspberry tarts in linen, and rose.
“Duty and joy can overlap, which you’d know if you ever lifted your gaze from your ledger books long enough to behold new parents with their infant offspring.
I’ll see you at supper, and we can plan tomorrow’s outing over a good meal, though I do believe you’ve eaten almost everything on your plate. ”
“One is supposed to, lest good food go to waste. I’ve not touched the lemon tarts.”
“Yet.” On that telling shot, St. Didier took his leave, and not a moment too soon.
Cam finished his lemon tarts, finished the remaining ham, and had two cups of tea, but still, he did not quite feel satisfied.
Snood. Homely, frumpish word. Disappointing word. None of the ladies vying for Cam’s attention in London would be caught wearing a snood while reading fashion magazines on a rainy morning at home.