Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Might I carry that for you, Miss Singleton?” Bernard Huxley, blond, smiling, and utterly inconvenient, fell in step beside Alice as she marched along the high street of Farnes Crossing.
“You absolutely may.” She passed him a small burlap sack. “Grandpapa says now is the time to stock up on whetstones. At the beginning of harvest, they’re dear, then the prices drop.”
“Whetstones.” Bernard hefted the sack. “Does nothing escape Singleton’s notice?”
The question bore a hint of innuendo, which might have been real, but was more likely the product of Alice’s overly active imagination. Bernard had never been given to hints or veiled threats before, and she was being ridiculous—probably.
“Grandpapa claims his eyesight and hearing aren’t what they used to be, but I can detect no signs of diminished faculties.” He was religious about his morning dose of digitalis, though Alice would not disclose that to the vicar.
Because the vicar might accidentally mention what he’d heard to his blasted mother.
“Alice, I confess I am not pleased that Singleton would send you after his whetstones. Might not one of Jonesberry’s underlings from the home farm have made this trek?”
Alice had left her gig at the livery, and she was walking in the opposite direction. Bernard would notice that.
“I come here every Tuesday with your mother, sir. It’s hardly a trek, and Cerberus enjoys the exercise.
Besides, every able-bodied man is needed to bring in the wheat, and the baron wants some haying done as well.
Grandpapa is in high dudgeon over that suggestion, and telling him to have somebody else fetch his whetstones would have required fortitude I lack. ”
Grandpapa had, in fact, intended to send one of Burnside’s grooms. Alice had offered to go instead.
“What does the baron know of haying?” Bernard asked. “I thought his lordship had eschewed all things rural and plighted his troth to the countinghouse.”
Was Bernard bitter to have his younger cousin in residence at the Hall? “The sweet shop is two doors up,” Alice said. “Will you join me in an ice? You are sworn to secrecy, of course.”
“As are you. I haven’t had an ice… Well, yes. I will join you. Tell me about Cam’s haying project.”
“You aren’t lordshipping him?”
“Mama is, at least in the hearing of anybody save myself. I would never disrespect my cousin publicly, or privately for that matter, but to me, he has always been Cam. A solemn little boy who grew into a quiet adolescent and then a broody young man. Took a first in mathematics, much to everybody’s shock.
I’m not surprised that he’s immured himself in commerce.
He likes complicated puzzles, and I gather commerce is that. ”
The present Lord Lorne liked slow kisses and cinnamon biscuits too. Alice hoarded that knowledge like a first edition copy of Wordsworth’s poetry.
“The baron saw the old yearling pasture standing two-feet deep in grass and told Grandpapa we might as well make hay out of it. Grandpapa protested vociferously, but the baron threatened to scythe it himself or put the gardeners and footmen to the job.”
“Footmen making hay? Mama would be scandalized.”
What scandalized the vicar’s mama should matter not at all to anybody, but instead mattered far too much.
“Grandpapa won’t let it come to that. The gardeners know how to wield a scythe, and they will doubtless be asked to help, but I suspect his lordship brought up the footmen simply to inspire Grandpapa to action.”
Cam was that clever, that strategic.
Bernard held the door to the sweet shop and saw Alice settled at a little table in the shop’s side garden. No market was in progress, and thus the garden had only two other occupants. A pair of older ladies in widow’s weeds occupied a table in the shade, their laughter merry and frequent.
What did it signify when Alice envied widows their joy?
“What flavor for you?” Bernard asked.
“Cinnamon. You?”
“Barberry.” He strode off, too handsome not to catch the eyes of the older ladies. They beamed at Alice and nodded, as if congratulating her on some accomplishment.
Of all times and places for Bernard to appear… Drat the luck. Drat the rubbishing, perishing luck.
Bernard emerged from the shop, followed by a maid carrying a tray. She set the treats down, cast an appreciative eye over Bernard, and bobbed a departing curtsey.
“Does being a handsome, single vicar ever grow burdensome?” Alice asked.
Bernard picked up his spoon and smiled wanly.
“Conceding your compliment for the sake of argument, I hardly know how to answer. Would being a homely single vicar be worse? You might better inquire if it’s burdensome having my mother at the vicarage, but you are too diplomatic for that.
I could ask you how Mrs. Shorer is faring—one heard she was in bed with a sprained ankle—but you will choose your words carefully on even that subject, knowing I might repeat the news to Lady Josephine. ”
Alice took a spoonful of frozen sweetness, the better to give her time to frame a reply. Bernard in a mood this forthright was a new and disconcerting experience.
“Your mother is much respected.”
“Much resented, you mean. Annabelle Dingle and Horace Doonenburg walk home from market together and studiously avoid each other in the churchyard. I made the mistake of informing Mama of this when she began considering Miss Dingle for the baron. Horace and Annabelle don’t want Mama doing to them what she did to Henry and Maryanne last year. ”
“Your mother is the reason Henry and Maryanne found the courage to marry and leave here.”
“Not in that order, which is a blight upon my care of the flock. What do you make of the new baron, and no, I will not parrot your words to my mother.”
“Nobody believes you bear tales.” Some of Alice’s pleasure in her treat waned. “We know how her ladyship is, though. She could winkle secrets from a stone saint.”
“All in the name of somebody’s best interests or the greater good.” Bernard ate a small spoonful of his ice. “She’s trying to find a bride for Cam, and I cannot see that ending well.”
To be honest, neither could Alice, if the prospective baroness was local. “I thought his lordship was returning to London soon.”
Bernard regarded her over his empty spoon. “You are privy to his plans? He’s told me nothing.”
“I spent hours with him tending to correspondence, Bernard. The whole shire knows as much. His commercial enterprises are demanding and require his presence in Town. Only St. Didier’s prodding got his lordship up here before winter.”
Bernard set the spoon back in the bowl. “St. Didier bothers me. What is he doing here, and why do I have the sense I’ve seen him somewhere before?”
Probably because the man was capable of spying in disguise. Alice would have to ask Cam about that.
“St. Didier’s family title reverted to the crown exactly one generation ago. Mr. St. Didier has developed the habit of encouraging reluctant peers to attend to their duties.”
“Cam told you that.”
Well, yes. Between a thank-you to the Paris factor and a query regarding timber from Sweden, St. Didier’s lot in life had come up.
“It’s no secret. Your mama’s London correspondents probably know more than that about him.”
Bernard gathered up another spoonful of ice. “She doesn’t have many connections in Town, except for those related to the church. I doubt there’s a corner of Britain where she hasn’t some parson’s widow, wife, mama, or sister to write to. Very industrious.”
Very burdensome, when Alice was called upon to rewrite Lady Josephine’s epistles to all those pious ladies.
“Bernard, what brought you to Farnes Crossing today?”
If he took offense at the abrupt change of topic, he didn’t show it, which was fortunate. Alice wanted, rather urgently, to know what he was about.
He saluted with his spoonful of ice. “I’m conducting an epistolary romance, in the opinion of the innkeeper’s wife. Or several of them. Have been for some time, but such is my discretion that I come to Farnes Crossing to send and receive my missives.”
“Bernard, what are you talking about?” The whole discussion, Bernard’s very presence in Farnes Crossing, made Alice uneasy.
Would he report seeing her to his mother?
Could Alice ask him not to? Buying new whetstones at harvest was hardly urgent enough to justify driving miles across the countryside, and Bernard was shrewd enough to conclude as much.
“I’m looking for another post,” he said. “Accepting the living at St. Wilfrid’s was a mistake, but Mama was insistent. Said I owed Papa’s legacy that show of respect. The result has been a curse upon the congregation.”
And a curse upon Bernard too? “You don’t want your mother to know you’re unhappy?”
“I am not particularly unhappy, or no more unhappy than usual, but others around me are. Mama has become a problem, and she’s my problem.
That business with Henry and Maryanne went too far, Alice.
That constituted interference under Alex’s roof as he lay dying.
I cannot overlook it, and thus I’m taking what steps I can to remove Mama from the scene of her crimes. ”
Alice took another spoonful of melting ice. “You are seeking another post.”
He nodded. “Cornwall appeals.”
The Antipodes would be better, if Lady Josephine accompanied her son. “Your mother will hate Cornwall.” Her ladyship would hate Bernard for dragging her there, but then, Lady Josephine was no more likely to dwell in Cornwall than Alice was to become a baroness.
“She will never let you take another post,” Alice said, surprised at her own blunt speech.
“Her ladyship thrives here, in her fashion, and Cornwall—anywhere else—would be purgatory for her. Here, Lady Josephine has the consequence of being the baron’s aunt and, at least for now, the heir’s mother. Elsewhere…”