Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
“I’ll do that.” Alice closed the library door behind her, set her basket of medicinals on the sideboard, and advanced on the baron.
He sat at the library desk, a massive article of carved oak that probably hadn’t been moved since Good Queen Bess had been in leading strings.
Papers, inkpot, pen tray, and abacus covered the blotter.
Stacks of mail three inches high sat on each side of the wax jack.
“I can open my own correspondence.” His lordship nonetheless put down the letter opener he’d been awkwardly wielding and rose. “You’re the estate’s herb lady?”
“Not exactly. Let me see your hand. Mr. Beaglemore was most concerned on your behalf.”
His lordship brandished the requested appendage. “Not very pretty.”
More bruise than hand, and a livid, purpling bruise too. The fingernails weren’t involved, though. “This is Gooseberry’s work? That horse has had other victims.”
“I was wearing gloves, fortunately. The skin isn’t broken.” His lordship tried to flex his swollen digits and made a poor effort. “I blame myself. Burnside warned me. Said the horse has many fine qualities—which is true—but is prone to nibbling.”
Alice retrieved her basket. “You’re lucky to still have all your fingers. The beast is a menace.”
“I was distracted. I doubt Gooseberry will attempt similar mischief upon my person in the future.”
“Good. Somebody needs to put the manners on him. Have a seat. This won’t take long.”
The baron propped his considerable length against the desk and folded his arms. The result was an exquisitely tailored riding jacket stretching over shoulders Apollo himself would have envied, and nobody was sitting.
“Would my lord please have a seat?”
“Since you ask so nicely, of course.” He ambled to the reading table and planted himself at the head. “I wasn’t aware that modern medicine offered much treatment for plain old bruises.”
“If that is a plain old bruise, then Lorne Hall is a pleasant little cottage. You should keep that hand elevated and wrapped in ice.”
In the depths of the basket, Alice found a blue bottle with a cork. She took that and some squares of clean linen to the table and sat to his lordship’s right.
“Your hand… Might I please have your hand, sir?”
He surrendered his abused paw with an air of complete indifference, but Alice was angry on his behalf.
The dratted horse had no manners, but then, the previous baron hadn’t bought Gooseberry for his manners.
He’d bought him for endless stamina, bravery over fences, and good bloodlines, and then promptly neglected him.
“This is arnica,” Alice said, uncorking the bottle.
“It isn’t supposed to sting, but I have seldom seen so nasty a bruise.
” The discoloration described a large U enveloping the back of his lordship’s hand, the knuckle of the index finger, and the middle of the remaining fingers.
The shape of a horse’s mouth, in other words.
Alice wet a cloth and applied it to the bruising. “You should probably be soaking the whole hand in a tincture of arnica. Bilberry can work as well.”
“I do not have time to sit about soaking a hand that will heal eventually on its own.”
She dabbed gently at purple flesh. “What on earth does a peer of the realm have to do that is more important than recovering the use of his hand? Arnica helps ease the pain and the swelling, and white willow bark tea can help with both as well. Goes down a bit easier with honey.”
His lordship gazed around the library, an airy, high-ceilinged space housing a few thousand books, a half-dozen landscapes, three large hearths, and some comfortable furniture. Grandpapa’s whole cottage would likely fit inside his lordship’s library, with room to spare.
“I have little notion what occupies a peer of the realm,” Alice’s patient said. “Before the title was imposed on me, I was happily absorbed with an enterprise that trades on six continents. We’re barely getting started with the Antipodes, but the potential for brisk business there is obvious.”
“Trade in what?” Alice cared little which variety of commerce interested his lordship, but while he maundered on about his mercantile affairs, he wasn’t grousing about his hand.
“Anything at first. When I was in the army, the old hands from India—who all claimed to have served under Wellington in every battle His Grace fought there—were of the opinion that Spain was a lovely place to wage a war, compared to India. Spain has a good supply of Peruvian bark, which can work wonders with intermittent fevers. I shipped some Peruvian bark to India and made a tidy sum.”
Alice slipped one hand beneath his lordship’s and bathed each finger in arnica. “Are you still shipping Peruvian bark to India?”
“When I can find a supply at a reasonable price. Willow bark tea is also in demand. The local Indian flora provides comparable and even better remedies, but the English officers and their wives want their English treatments.”
“Thus you pay somebody to sail all that way, bringing coals to Newcastle, so to speak?” His hands were works of masculine art. Powerful, elegant, in proportion with the rest of him. A white scar marred the right set of knuckles, but even that was in keeping with the whole man.
“I don’t pay anybody to sail my goods. I figured out ten years ago that having a valuable product is only half the game. Controlling the means to direct that product to its best market is the other half.”
He said this without a hint of pride.
“You own ships?”
“I own three outright and shares in several others. Are you disappointed? One cannot be more thoroughly ensconced in trade than I am, and for the most part, I enjoy it.”
Alice was still more or less holding his hand. She gave his knuckles a final, gentle dab and slipped her fingers free.
“But for trade, England would be bankrupt and starving,” she said. “I never did grasp why polite society values idle wealth over honest labor of any kind.”
He flexed his hand, winced, and flexed it again. “I can assure you, Alice, that amassing what sums I command was anything but an idle undertaking. I should not have frittered away the entire morning trotting around with your grandfather, then absented myself again for half the afternoon.”
Alice collected her supplies and returned them to the basket. “If you tell Grandpapa he was frittering away his time today, he will plant you a facer.”
The baron rose, smiling crookedly. “I can work with an aching jaw. This,”—he waved his hand at her—“means I will fall further behind than ever. The king’s mail waits for no man.
I like my work. It has meaning, it accomplishes good, and I do well with it.
Keeping up with my correspondence is more than a duty, it is a necessity. ”
His scowl said he positively detested falling behind. To lag in his work annoyed him the way a champion racehorse was annoyed by competition at his heels.
“I can send you the underbutler,” Alice said, edging toward the door. “Truckle is studious by nature and good with figures.”
The scowl became a considering frown focused directly on Alice. “Truckle cannot write to my managers and applaud this one’s initiative while scolding that one for sloth or carelessness. What I need…”
Alice felt a distinct sympathy for the chubby mouse espied by a hungry cat. “I’ll just be going. Ice and elevation will work wonders.” She extracted the blue bottle from her basket. “Bathe the hand with this every two hours. I can bring more—”
“Might you not stay for a while?” He gestured toward the letters. “As a sort of amanuensis? I’m sure you could draft suitable responses with a little guidance.”
Now he turned up all polite and deferential, the varmint. “I ought to be getting home.”
“Truckle will require word-for-word dictation, and in the time he and I get through three letters, you and I could plow through both stacks.”
The task was simple, one Alice had been doing for her grandfather for years.
As steward to a large estate, his correspondence was considerable.
His penmanship, by contrast, was awful. He’d scrawl a few margin notes—price acceptable, but delivery must be within fifteen days, or, no need for additional shearers this year, perhaps next—and Alice would draft a reply for Grandpapa’s signature.
She had handled Lady Josephine’s correspondence when her ladyship so chose as well.
But she really must be on her way. “I can do a few. Select the more important matters and explain the replies you want.”
“And you’ll charge me for services rendered?”
The question was surprising and arguably insulting. “I will not, though I understand you meant no offense by asking.”
“I mean to acknowledge that your time is valuable, and I have no right to it. If you won’t accept coin, then at some point, you will name a favor I can do for you. Agreed?”
Put like that… “Agreed.” Alice’s time was valuable, though that seemed to be a minority opinion. Then too, his lordship’s instinct for a fair bargain was a different matter entirely from implying that Alice was in service to the household.
“The favor I ask is that you sip willow bark tea, elevate your hand, and apply a cold compress for ten minutes every hour until supper.”
He opened his mouth as if to argue, then closed it. “Done. We’ll start with my sluggard of a French factor. I assume your French is passable?”
“Rusty—I spent only a year at finishing school—but sufficient for written purposes. My accent is atrocious.”
“The French claim every English speaker has an atrocious accent. Have a seat. Ring for that vile medicinal tea and those other items you mentioned.”
Alice let him get away with giving that order—she had agreed for a limited time to do as he asked, and she wanted him swilling the tea as soon as may be.