Chapter 8 #2
“Alice, I would not allow you to dwell in penury. Out of respect for your grandfather and respect for you, I will see a sum settled upon you such that you can tell Lady Josephine to go to perdition if you want to.” What could be simpler?
Alice blinked. She swallowed. She stared at him, then at her hands. “That is very sweet of you, sir. Very kind, but I do not want your pity.”
“Then give the money away to your favorite charity, provided it’s not St. Wilfrid’s church.
I would excuse Lady Josephine’s infernal meddling if she had no means herself.
One could reason she was attempting to be useful, trying to be appreciated, and was simply bad at it.
She has ample wealth, but that’s not enough for her.
She must have power in addition, and thus she plays skittles with the little misses’ marital aspirations.
“She has apparently done her bit to inflict misery on you too,” Cam went on, “and she doesn’t quibble at playing God with the lives of local bachelors.
Well, in your case, I can thwart her mischief, and I wish you’d allow me to.
If nothing else, you might find a way to use the money to preserve other people from Josephine’s pious cruelties. ”
Alice peered at him, her brows knit. “You really don’t care for your aunt, do you?”
The boot had long since been on the other foot. “Alice, who would be the baron now, if it weren’t for my humble existence?”
“Ah. Interesting point. Alexander was never all that robust, was he?”
“Born early, according to my uncle, and sickly as an infant. I am not sickly.”
Alice gifted him with a slow, warm sunrise of a smile. “And you are not an infant.”
“Haven’t been for some time. Promise me you will not fret about penurious spinsterhood, Alice.
If you want to marry Blessington Peabrain, then I wish you every measure of earthly bliss in his loving if undeserving arms. If your aspirations lie elsewhere, don’t let Lady Josephine bully you into compromising. ”
Cam did rather hope Alice’s aspirations lay elsewhere in his very direction.
The thought should have surprised him, should have disconcerted him, except that it didn’t.
He not only liked Alice, he respected her, and he was prepared to deal summarily with any who would becloud her happiness. As for the rest of it…
He had some thinking to do. A lot of thinking, and then some serious negotiating that Society sentimentally labeled courting.
“I will consider what you’ve said, my lord. If you’d drop by Grandpapa’s cottage shortly after noon tomorrow, you and he can confer regarding the progress of the harvest and this mad notion you’ve presented of making a late hay crop.”
She scooted forward, and Cam was on his feet instantly, hand extended. “Allow me.”
She accepted the assistance she did not need, and Cam was careful to step back and release her hand rather than presume.
“You’ll stop by the cottage tomorrow?” she asked.
“Shortly after noon, and if I have any queries regarding dusting, sweeping, or polishing, I can relay them to you in your grandfather’s hearing.”
Alice stepped nearer, put a hand on Cam’s shoulder, and spoke close to his ear. “Grandpapa naps after his nooning. You mustn’t be offended if he doesn’t receive you personally.”
She eased away, and while Cam was still mentally groping for words, thoughts, anything coherent, Alice passed through the open door. He stared at the empty doorway and wrestled with the urge to call her back. Had Alice Singleton just kissed his cheek, or had he wished that sensation into existence?
“I did not quite kiss him.” Alice had informed the cat of this sorry failure—or sorrier success—twice already.
Cassandra, a calico queen, yawned, showing exquisite feline indifference and a pink mouth full of sharp teeth.
“To have money, Cass. To have real, adequate money. I envy the maids their wages, you know.” Alice collected the lunch dishes from the breakfast parlor and took them to the kitchen. Today was half day for the daily cook/housekeeper, not that Mrs. Patrickson did a great deal even when on the job.
The cat followed Alice into the kitchen, tail high.
“I cannot accept money from the baron, but even to think of having means…” Alice put the dishes into one half of the divided copper sink and worked the pump handle until the sink was half full. She dumped a kettle of hot water over the lot and watched the steam rise.
Her imagination had had the evening, the night, and the morning to consider what a difference funds would make.
The magnitude of that difference still fascinated her.
How limited her life had become, how circumscribed by cannot, will not, and must not, all pronounced in Lady Josephine’s genteel, censuring tones.
Money meant freedom, for Alice and for those she cared about. Money meant…
Cass stropped herself against Alice’s skirts.
“Right. The dishes won’t wash themselves.” She unfastened her cuffs and rolled up her sleeves, swabbed a rag in the soap dish, and picked up a plate.
Lady Josephine would never change. Grandpapa would at some point go to his eternal reward, though Alice hoped not for many long happy years. Gabriella was growing up.
Something would have to be done, the sooner the better.
“I knocked, and nobody came to the door.”
Alice whirled and beheld Camden, Lord Lorne, hat in hand, peering about the kitchen and making the whole room seem half its usual size. Cassandra sniffed at his boots and gave him her best won’t-you-pet-me-please? purr.
Shameless beast. “My mortification is without limit, my lord. You will please wait in the parlor, and I’ll bring a tea tray. I believe you’ll find Grandpapa there.”
The baron hunkered down to pet the cat. “My steward is making a contented journey through the Land of Nod. I hadn’t the heart to disturb him.
Mrs. Shorer was also said to be asleep when I had the audacity to stop by her apartment earlier today.
The maids are guarding her slumbers like a lot of mobcapped dragons defending their hoard of gold. ”
“You were not permitted to see her?”
His lordship stood and put his hat on the table. “I was nigh tossed bodily up the steps by the first footman and the head porter. I left them muttering about ‘London addling the poor lad’s wits.’”
None of this insubordination appeared to bother the baron. He used the water in the sink to wash his hands and appropriated a towel draped on a peg over the hearth.
“Best tend to that plate,” he said. “The food gets sticky if you let the dishes sit, and then it’s twice as much work to wash them.”
He apparently meant to dry the dishes. Alice was torn between appreciation for the assistance and the voice screeching in her head that he was seeing her in an apron and without her snood.
Hysterics would not do. Alice returned the plate to the sink. “Grandpapa dined early. I wasn’t expecting you to call quite so soon.”
“Rain on the way,” the baron replied. “I came on foot. Didn’t want to get a soaking. I can wash if you’d rather. I know ladies like to keep their hands dry.”
How would he know that? “I’m fine. You really should not be here.”
“You all but invited me.”
Alice scrubbed the plate within an inch of its little, ceramic life. “To the cottage, not into the very kitchen.”
“You are having cold feet, because we talked about money, and Blundering Peahen, and the abomination against the natural order who is my aunt. Why haven’t you married Bernard? He’s a good sort, if a bit stodgy.”
They were to discuss marriage instead of money? From bad to worse. “He hasn’t asked.” Then too, a life spent under the same roof as Lady Josephine would be akin to torture. “Why aren’t you married?” Alice set the clean plate in the empty half of the sink.
“Stubbornness, mostly. I would like to be married. To have a partner in life, a loyal friend and lover, an affectionate ally… I have always approved of that notion. That aside, I am aware that my prospects were evaluated by the matchmakers in light of Alexander’s illness.
A purveyor of Peruvian bark or sailcloth would never merit their notice.
A baron’s heir poised to come into forty thousand acres and a tidy income? That fellow was worth an introduction.”
Alice dealt with plates, glasses, and utensils. The baron pumped rinse water over them and arranged them on the counter on a dry towel, all the while regaling Alice with the social gatherings he’d endured in Mayfair.
“They all but counted my teeth,” he said, “and when it became apparent Alexander would not rally, the Huxley family solicitors were besieged with invitations to lunch and supper by their colleagues.”
The same solicitors who handled Lady Josephine’s affairs, no doubt. “Grandpapa says the estate is not as profitable as it once was. That you ought to consider some enclosures if you have the capital.”
“And yet, he hasn’t mentioned enclosures to me.
I brought up replacing the mill wheel with a more efficient design, and he nearly had an apoplexy.
I brought up taking off a second cutting of hay from fallow pasturage, and he importuned heaven to relieve me of my fanciful notions.
Have you thought about my offer of coin, Alice? ”
She’d thought about not-quite kissing him nearly as much. She took the towel from him and replaced it on its peg over the hearth.
Thunder rumbled in the east, and a spattering of raindrops hit the kitchen window.
“Tea, my lord?” Alice couldn’t send him out into a downpour, could she?
“Why not? Don’t suppose you have any biscuits on hand?”
Alice set a tin on the table, refilled the kettle, and hung it on the pot swing. To apologize for a near kiss or to pretend it hadn’t happened? To allow discussion of her lack of funds or to pretend coin of the realm did not exist?
Even to ponder these dilemmas pleased Alice in a perverse, refreshing way.