Chapter 11 #2
“I am watching for who tattles. Who holds her tongue despite the temptation to gossip. Who notices that this time of year, all the scything east of the Hall puts a fine dust in the air that ends up all over the library. I will see who whispers behind her hand to stir the pot and who uses my supposed absence to linger over her nooning.”
“Beaglemore will report to you?” Another odd notion.
“We keep each other informed, Alice, and look out for each other. Not the same thing at all. Why aren’t you at Farnes Crossing this morning?”
“Lady Josephine wanted to remind me of my place.” As cruelly as possible. Alice would admit that much, to herself.
Mrs. Shorer smiled benignly. “Won’t she be surprised when she finds that your place is in the baroness’s suite, hmm?”
“Please don’t speculate in that direction and certainly not aloud.” Alice had been speculating in that direction, also dreaming and wishing. “And you’d best make a miraculous recovery soon, ma’am. Nobody believes you’d stay abed for more than three days.”
“Suppose I’d better.” She popped to her feet and hugged Alice tightly, which was both similar to and very different from the rare hugs Gabriella had given Alice.
“Take care, child, and be bold. Camden understands the need to be bold sometimes. Why don’t you depart through the herb garden?
One can always use a bit more mint or lemongrass, can’t one? ”
Alice dipped a curtsey and exited the Hall by virtue of the door between the china and porcelain closets. She’d put on her bonnet and gone halfway across the herb garden before she realized that she and the bees were not the garden’s only occupants.
Camden Huxley sat on a bench in the shade, eyes closed. He opened them and treated Alice to another one of those subdued smiles.
“Caught you fair and square, Alice Singleton. Let’s walk, shall we?”
He had caught her, well and truly, but how fast would he uncatch her if he learned she had a daughter born out of wedlock who lived only a few miles away?
A war had begun inside Cam, between the directive by which he conducted most of his life and the directive by which he’d earned most of his coin. The first commandment was: Do not rush.
Whether negotiating the sale of lucrative cargo, allowing a new boy to find his way among the others, earning trust from horses or cats, or training a new clerk, haste could be fatal to success.
When investigating a business prospect, haste could result in risks overlooked or competition underestimated.
With the boys, trying to steer a lad toward clerking when he was a groom at heart only resulted in misery, unless the boy himself made the decision.
And even then…
Watching Alice Singleton stride across the garden, all business in a wide-brimmed straw hat and plain brown walking dress, Cam stifled the urge to spring over the herbaceous borders and tackle her amid the lavender.
He’d take off that straw hat, letting his fingers brush her chin and neck as he undid the ribbons, and he’d brace Alice against the birch tree in the corner, and froth that ridiculous ruffled hem over her knees…
Do not rush.
He rose slowly. “It’s a pleasant day for a stroll, and you can tell me how Mrs. Shorer is getting on.”
Alice regarded him balefully. “Were you spying on me?”
“Miss Singleton, you wound me. I used to come out here as a boy because the scents are so lovely and the gardeners never tattled on me. I’m wrestling with a conundrum, and this is a quiet place to think.”
“What manner of conundrum?”
She was tallish, wary, and possessed of quick wits that she could hide behind half a glass of punch and a simpering smile.
Cam winged his arm. “Several different puzzles vex me. I must promote somebody to Armendink’s place, but that person will be resented by all whose ambitions I frustrate. I have three candidates in mind, none ideal and all sufficiently qualified.”
Alice slipped her fingers around the crook of his elbow. “You could hire somebody.”
Preferably somebody Worth Kettering had relied upon for years. “Time is somewhat of the essence, and here I am, lost in the wilds of Yorkshire and likely to remain here for at least a fortnight.”
“A fortnight?”
“At least.” Not much time to get a courtship underway, but Cam’s latest trek along the Great North Road had actually been a pleasant respite. He could make the journey again and have an even better sense of how to make time in a coach productive. “What did Mrs. Shorer have to say?”
“She claims her turned ankle—the ankle she pretended to turn—is a ploy in aid of choosing a successor, oddly enough. While she’s tucked away in her parlor, the maids are sorting themselves out.
Some are slacking a bit. Some are working as hard as ever.
A few are yielding to the temptation to gossip.
Others are cheerful without lapsing into idle talk. ”
Cam held the door in the garden wall for Alice and followed her out onto the lawn bordering the park.
The sun sparkled on lush green grass. The sky arched achingly blue above.
A border of hollyhocks along the wall added tall stalks of pink, white, and yellow joy to the scene, and Alice Singleton was allowing Cam to escort her.
Truly, Yorkshire was lovely in the summer. “Is Mrs. Shorer holding auditions?” Cam asked.
“So she claims.”
The urge to take Alice’s hand, to lace his fingers with hers, to brace her back against the old wall and kiss her until they hadn’t a functional wit between them…
Alice resumed her grip of his elbow. “The path to the cottage starts among those maples.”
“I know that. You aren’t convinced Mrs. Shorer was honest with you?”
“She was in some regards. Not in others. She knows her staff, my lord. She knows who carries tales and who quietly takes initiative. Some of those women have been in her employ for half their lives. Three days of idleness on Mrs. Shorer’s part won’t yield any great insights, and besides, you might decide to send your London housekeeper up here rather than promote from among the Hall’s staff. ”
“My London housekeeper would never leave Town.” Nor would she abandon her wee, wicked laddies, bless her rather stern, Scottish heart. “Do you fear Mrs. Shorer needed the rest for some reason more serious than a sprained ankle?”
Alice’s steps slowed. “My lord, she was matchmaking.”
Cam nearly said, Between one of the maids and a footman? But he caught himself as the notion meshed with his unacknowledged hunches.
“I suspect Thaddeus was doing the same, with yesterday’s protracted postprandial nap. I don’t know whether to be alarmed or pleased, but I suppose their support is better than their disapproval.”
Touching, in a way, to have a vote of confidence from the old guard. Also… unsettling.
Why had they taken up the cause almost before Cam himself had decided upon his course? What was the urgency? Would Alice be put off by their intrigues?
Do not rush.
“I fear both Grandpapa and Mrs. Shorer want to see me settled before they die, and that… I don’t want them to die, and I don’t want to be an obligation they must tend to on their way out the door. More to the point, I cannot abide meddling in any fashion. Well-intended meddling is still meddling.”
For Alice, that was a tirade, and in the vicinity of Lorne Hall, all tirades led to… “Lady Josephine is a champion meddler.”
Alice picked up her pace, her atrocious ruffled hem rustling over the grass. “Oh, precisely, my lord. Her ladyship has no shame when it comes to manipulating others, always for their own good, and yet, nobody seems able to manipulate her.”
Interesting observation. “Alice, I can have a word with the elders, tell them that their machinations are likely to have the opposite of the intended result. I don’t care to be treated like a pawn on a chessboard either.”
Stop fidgeting, Camden. Speak up, young man. Huxley, recite.
“They would be hurt,” Alice said. “They are only trying to help.”
Alice would not for the world offend people she cared about. “But they have upset you?”
Cam had escorted Alice to the towering maples that enjoyed the sunlight at the edge of the home wood. The path winding deeper into the woods lay mostly in shade, and though Cam had traveled it often in boyhood, the prospect was lovelier with Alice at his side.
This part of the woods, so close to the Hall, had been undisturbed for generations.
The trail wound beneath ancient maples, around sprawling oaks, and through dappled clearings.
Greenery sprang up where the occasional sunbeam penetrated, with herb Robert providing splashes of pink and dog violets adding tiny dashes of purple to the palette.
Alice stumbled slightly against his side.
“Careful.” He took her hand and expected to be rebuked.
“I’m in a hurry. I know better than to hurry,” Alice said. “That root has been tripping me since the day I arrived on Grandpapa’s doorstep. Grandpapa has told me to take my time more often than he’s told me to stop chattering or be still.”
“You don’t chatter.” How pleasant, how deeply gratifying, to hold her hand and stroll through the woods. How frustrating that Alice was wroth with the elders and annoyed rather than pleased with their schemes.
“I chattered when I was younger,” she said. “I seemed to be the only girl of my age in the entire shire, and I had to learn that Grandpapa did not want to hear about every new litter of kittens or pair of fawns I’d seen on the way to market.”
“And thus you became bookish.” Perhaps Cam had trodden this path with Alice and hadn’t known it at the time.
“Your uncle, Vicar Ambrose Huxley, was kind to me. Generous with his books, not at all prone to spouting Scripture. He said I was smart. I was astonished because I knew the vicar would not lie to me, and what few indications I had suggested I was the wrong size, had the wrong hair color, the wrong interests and proclivities, the wrong everything.”