Chapter 12 #2
“Elsewhere, she will still be an earl’s daughter, still have her courtesy title and all the airs and graces she wields so well, but I can better thwart her.
I am the vicar, Alice, which honestly doesn’t matter to me as much as it should, though I am also a gentleman.
Something must be done about Mother, and it’s my fault she’s been allowed to become so irksome.
Nobody will say it to my face, but she’s growing worse—flinging women at Cam when Alexander has barely gone to his reward, insisting on those weekly knitting sermons—and the time to act is now.
“How many times,” Bernard went on tiredly, “have we heard her cheerfully admonish others to ‘bloom where they are planted’ as she has so selflessly bloomed after marrying my father? She can jolly well replant herself nearer to Land’s End and astonish a whole new congregation with her wisdom and resilience. ”
Did Bernard know how Lady Josephine wielded her power? How she collected confidences and secrets and then extorted obedience in return? The general assumption about the shire was that he could not possibly grasp what a venal, underhanded, cruel woman he had for a mother.
Somebody needed to warn him. “Bernard, she will fight you, and you cannot imagine the low tactics she willingly employs.” Alice was certain—almost certain—that Bernard knew nothing of Gabriella’s situation.
In the local surrounds, only Mrs. Shorer had been taken into Alice’s confidence.
Not even Grandpapa suspected what Alice’s protracted absence had really entailed.
Though, of course, Lady Josephine knew all.
“Mama will fight me, but I am the one person she will not destroy, aren’t I?
If she casts me into disgrace, the scandal would reflect on her too.
I am not entirely without means, Alice. I have been investing in Camden’s ventures for years, modestly, of course, and anonymously, but steadily.
Seemed the least I could do, and my faith has been rewarded, as it were. I can make a go of a post in Cornwall.”
He sat back, looking more like a prosperous lordling than a rural vicar. “Are you finished with your cinnamon treat?” he asked. “My ice is now a cold wet mess in the bottom of my bowl. Not very appealing, I’m afraid.”
“Bernard,” Alice said. “Be careful. Be very careful.” She had not considered previously that he’d regard his mother as anything other than a doting busybody, a fixture in his household by virtue of both filial duty and affection, but no very great imposition.
He’d been carrying a burden in silence, and Alice knew how such heartaches could increase in weight. One grew reckless, using a dozen whetstones as a pretext for spying, for example.
Bernard rose, took her hand, and bowed over it.
“You be careful as well, Alice. I know Mama has made a particular pest of herself to you, and yet, you bear her company without complaint. Exercise extreme caution. She will turn on you in an instant if you come between her and her plans for the baron.”
Her ladyship had long since turned on Alice—and Gabriella. “I will exercise utmost care.”
He hefted the sack of stones and put it on the table. “You never saw me today. I was not here. I never come and go from the Farnes Crossing posting inn.”
“Tall blond men abound in Yorkshire,” Alice replied. “At a distance, they look much the same.”
The vicar was asking her to lie for him. That sad realization was also a little reassuring. Alice was not Lady Josephine’s only victim, not the only party baffled by her ladyship’s ceaseless bullying.
Bernard favored Alice with a smile that put her in mind of the late baron. Charming, kind, even genuine most of the time. Then he was off, crossing the garden at a good clip and leaving Alice to ponder the puzzles multiplying under her nose.
“I wanted a glimpse of Gabriella,” she muttered, spooning the mostly melted ice from the bottom of her bowl. “I wanted to sit up on the hill behind the orphanage and watch for her helping to hang out the wash.”
Bernard’s scheme was doomed. His mother would simply write to the wife of whatever vicar was retiring or vacating his post and gently, regretfully, explain why Bernard, though such a fine man, really, was not at all suited to the new position.
Her ladyship might already be on to his scheme, intercepting his mail at the posting inn. She was that devious and that determined.
That devoted to her son, she’d say.
Mrs. Shorer’s remedy for the situation flitted through Alice’s mind, though where would Gabriella be if Alice were hanged for murder? Emptying chamber pots in some lowly inn, vulnerable to every drunken lout with perverted fancies.
“Don’t do this.” Alice gathered up her effects, including the sack of stones, and made for the livery stable. Brooding and fretting never solved anything.
As she steered Cerberus in the direction of home, Alice wished she could lay Bernard’s situation at Cam’s feet. Cam dwelled in London. He might not know bishops or well-placed churchmen, but he knew the sorts of people who held the livings churchmen most coveted.
He knew how to negotiate with a rival, he knew… He knew Lady Josephine.
He did not, though, know about Gabriella, and Alice couldn’t envision a way to inform him.
The song came to an end, the windrow came to an end—or what would become a windrow when raked—and Cam glanced behind him.
“Not bad work,” he said, accepting the tankard St. Didier passed him and draining half. “Straight enough, and we kept up.”
“The rest held back so as not to disgrace us. They don’t know whether to be scandalized or amused.
” St. Didier had kept his shirt and waistcoat on, but like everybody else on the haying crew, he had chaff in his hair.
The toes of his boots were also covered with fine green detritus, and his complexion was ruddy.
“The rest,” Cam replied, “will be able to boast next spring that Lorne Hall had plenty of hay, unlike some other estates.”
“Unless it rains,” St. Didier said, doing a fair imitation of Thaddeus Singleton’s Yorkshire accent. “Unless it rains, sir, and then ye’ll be nobbut a laughingstock.” St. Didier looked almost approachable in a humorous moment.
“A tired laughingstock at that, but each acre we bring in is another ton of fodder, St. Didier. A ton of fodder can feed a large horse for a month, give or take.”
“You would know these things.” St. Didier finished his tankard. “Ten thousand cuts per acre. Did you count them out once upon a time in your misspent youth?”
“That figure is as old as Yorkshire, I’d guess, but I tested it.
Counted cuts per pass across a field, times number of passes, divided by acres, that sort of thing.
Ran the experiment over several fields. The length of the scythe can compensate for variations in the height of the scyther, provided the handles are adjusted correctly. ”
St. Didier regarded him with some puzzlement. “You can’t help it, can you? You think like a banker.”
“Like a clerk, you mean? A good farmer has a thorough grasp of numbers. Thaddeus Singleton told me that when I aspired to be his understudy. He said the ciphering part came naturally to me, and I should be grateful for it.”
A rare compliment, handed out as a seemingly casual observation, but Cam had taken it to heart.
“He was right,” St. Didier said, passing his tankard to the boy collecting them.
“Parkin, isn’t it?” Cam said, handing over his empty tankard as well. “How is the kitchen managing without Yorkshire’s best potboy?”
The lad grinned. “Cook says if the gardeners can go for farmhands, the potboy can mind the ale and water for an afternoon and no shame in it. You made a proper job of your row, my lord.”
“High praise. Mind you have an occasional drink yourself, young man. That sun means business.”
“Aye, milord. Best get your shirt on, sir. That’s Miss Alice with the nooning.”
“From the mouths of babes…” St. Didier murmured as a gig pulled up in the shade of the hedgerow, two wicker hampers tied behind the bench.
Alice wore a wide-brimmed straw hat that had seen better days, a simple maroon walking dress, and dusty ankle boots. Her arrival was greeted with a ragged cheer as the rest of the crew pulled off hats and donned shirts, waistcoats, and even jackets.
“No ruffles,” Cam said. No ruffles, just the simple, sweet wonder of Alice Singleton brightening an already brilliant summer day.
“Shirt,” St. Didier muttered. “Your shirt on, now.”
Alice looked up from wrapping the reins and went still.
“Half the Hall’s outside staff is watching,” St. Didier went on quietly, as Parkin looked from Alice to Cam.
Cam made a production out of shaking the chaff from his shirt before pulling it over his head, then doing up two of the four buttons.
“Waistcoat.” St. Didier spoke through clenched teeth. “Unless you want me to strangle you with it. Do not make a spectacle of yourself that involves the lady.”
Somebody yelled for water, and Parkin scampered off.
“You told me to get dressed,” Cam said. “I am getting dressed.”
Alice accepted a proffered hand and hopped down from the gig. She disappeared amid a throng of hungry men and women who crowded around the back of the vehicle.
“I cannot emphasize strongly enough,” St. Didier said, “that you trifle with that woman at your peril and hers. Do not give me cause to be disappointed in you.” He stalked off, once again radiating forbidding severity.
Cam buttoned his waistcoat, honestly baffled. St. Didier had been enjoying the morning’s exertion, as Cam had. Yes, the correspondence was piling up, but correspondence could wait a few hours for once. The staff at Lorne Hall had a hale and healthy baron on their hands now, and Cam had wanted to…
He ran his hands through his hair, wishing he’d brought a pocket comb. Why had he abandoned his work to come out here, much less dragged St. Didier along?