Chapter 12 #3
“Best get your nooning, milord,” Parkin said, materializing from nowhere. “A haying crew makes locusts look like slackers, according to Cook.”
“I’ll do that.” Cam picked up his scythe, which was overdue for peening and whetting, and took the place at the end of the line behind the gig.
No order of precedence here, no standing on ceremony, and what a relief that was. “Any left for me?” Cam asked when he was the sole unfed member of the crew.
Alice passed him a meat pasty. She, too, seemed to be assailed by a serious mood. “One, my lord, which I doubt will be enough, so we’ll let you have first crack at the fruit tarts.” She opened a second hamper. “Cherry on the right, lemon on the left. Bilberry in the middle.”
“Which is your favorite?”
“Pear, and do not ask me to share your nooning, because I cannot, and you know it. Why is Mr. St. Didier looking so thunderous?”
“Because I dragged him out to play farmer with me this morning, and he will be sore for days.” A good kind of sore, one Cam relished.
“Should you be doing this so soon after injuring your hand?” The question bore a hint of relenting.
“My hand is fine, and yes, I should be doing this. I enjoy it. I’m good at it.” Two facts that had been obscured by time and temper. “I would have made a good steward.” A good, happy steward.
“A post as steward would have wasted your talents.” Alice passed him three lemon tarts. “Cook makes them with cinnamon. I’ll see you at Sunday supper.”
Thus dismissed, Cam took what passed for his meal and sat in the shade of an obliging maple with his head gardener, a merry old rascal who, when sober, answered to the name Oscar Cooper.
“Best not look at the lady like that in the churchyard, lad,” Cooper said. “The old witch will take it amiss.”
Cooper was outside staff, venerable, and from a long line of Lorne Hall gardeners. His place was secure, and he’d not married.
“You speak honestly of Lady Josephine.”
“We all do, when private. Vicar is right enough. A bit serious, never mean. That mother o’ his. She’s hardest on the women, but we all give her as wide a berth as we can. Best not forget that, lad.”
The joy Cam felt working Lorne Hall land—his land, his to look after at least—enjoying the gorgeous Yorkshire day, simply beholding Alice faded. St. Didier was not one to overreact. Cooper was as honest as the harvest workday was long.
Alice had fended off anything approaching flirtation, a very different reception than Cam had had from her in the herb garden.
Lorne Hall was harboring a puzzle, and Cam had the distinct sense that unless he sorted that puzzle, he and Alice would not be sharing the happy future he was increasingly inclined to dream about.
He passed his last lemon tart to Cooper. “I’ve had enough haying for the nonce, but I’ll be back tomorrow.”
Cooper bit into the tart. “Unless it rains, lad.”
Cam handed in his scythe, commended the crew chief on a good morning’s work, and left by way of the footpath that wound along the home wood.
As a boy, he’d hiked the lanes and paths doing sums in his head.
Now, his thoughts circled the morning’s events.
Had Alice been cool, civil, guarded, or merely polite?
Had the silly business with slowly putting on his shirt been truly offensive, or had St. Didier become a prude in his dotage?
Was turning an unused pasture into hay a genuine mistake, or was Singleton disdaining the idea to ensure Cam made a project out of it? Had Alice been reminding him—
“My lord, good day.”
Bernard occupied a bench at the edge of the glebe land, his gaze on the church spire a few hundred yards off.
“Cousin.” Cam sat, uninvited. “I made a fool of myself swinging a scythe all morning. I will regret this on the morrow.”
“The old yearling pasture?”
“The very one. Tons of fodder going to waste, unless there’s a new fashion for allowing pasture to fallow for an entire year.”
“If there is, Thaddeus Singleton would know of it and have every pamphlet on the topic read and filed. He will be difficult to replace.”
“Particularly if he doesn’t want to leave his post.”
Bernard sat back and crossed his feet at the ankles. “He doesn’t want to lose his wages. For himself, he likely would not care, but he must think of Alice.”
Did Bernard think of Alice as a handsome bachelor thought of a prospective wife? “Why have you always had the gift of casual elegance, Bernard? I resented you for it, but now you’ve landed in the vicarage, and one isn’t permitted to resent you for anything.”
Bernard passed a brief glance in Cam’s direction. “Perhaps, if you hadn’t clover in your hair, dust on your boots, and half your shirt buttons undone, you might make a better impression, hmm?”
“You are poking fun at me,” Cam said, mostly to test an unlikely theory. “This is how you enjoy a bit of humor at my expense.” He dusted his fingers through his hair and did up one more button.
“My lord, I depend upon you for the very bread on my table, and yet, you speak of resenting me. For that matter, I depend upon you to keep my mother’s carriage in good trim, her wardrobe up to the mark, and her tea drawer full of the finest China black, which she takes with cream and sugar when nobody is watching. Ponder that for a moment.”
Was everybody in a contrary mood today? “I thought Lady Josephine was quite well fixed.”
Bernard shook his head. “Do you imagine she would rusticate with me if she could instead swan about York, calling on the archbishop’s wife or holding fashionable at homes?”
An old memory swam up from the recesses of Cam’s tired mind.
His mother, who had been gathered to her reward before his eighth birthday, once made a disparaging remark about Lady Josephine being no better than she should be.
Mama had been taking tea in the garden with her visiting sister while Cam had played with his soldiers.
He’d not understood the comment at the time, and it still made no sense. He was surely misremembering her words, because the implication was plain enough and utterly incongruous with the pillar of piety Cam knew as his aunt.
“I am under the impression,” Cam said, “that Lady Josephine enjoys being at the top of the social heap out here in the shires. In London, or even York or Edinburgh, a widowed earl’s daughter of mature years would not have that much standing.
” Particularly if, as Bernard implied, she lacked significant means.
One could not pity Lady Josephine, but one could admit that, from her perspective, she was entitled to a measure of disappointment with her station. A small measure.
“Your impression is correct. Mama delights in managing the neighborhood, and I am sorry to say, she has every intention of managing you.”
“My marital prospects, you mean? She has been far from subtle.” Was Bernard speaking from the perspective of a cousin, a vicar, something in between?
“She will start there, then she will progress to managing the Hall. Before you know it, you will have spent five straight years anywhere but Yorkshire lest she drive you to Bedlam. By then, she will be hosting company at the Hall as if she owns it in fee simple absolute. And by the way, I myself am pursuing opportunities anywhere but Yorkshire.”
“You’d take your mother with you?” Cam struggled to keep relief from his tone. Bernard might be a bit High Church in a lowly pulpit, but he was family and not a bad sort overall.
“If I can secure a post elsewhere, Mama will have little choice but to go with me, or at least absent herself from the shire.”
Bernard’s plan had a flaw. Cam knew that the way he knew when a negotiating opponent was bluffing.
“She hasn’t the means to buy her own property?”
“She does not, unless it’s a very humble property indeed.
When Papa died, my mother got her hands on a tidy sum, and she promptly spent it on that enormous carriage, on fitting out every room in the vicarage, on fashion and whatnot.
She spent mourning acquiring the trappings of a wealthy widow.
How depleted her finances are, I do not know for certain, but she will manage best if she remains under my roof, wherever that roof might be. ”
“I don’t want you to go.” Cam made the admission with some surprise.
Bernard was urbane, pleasant, well read, golden-blond, and a bit sanctimonious without being condescending.
He was the pattern card of the perfect vicar, and Cam’s resentment of him was—had been—real.
“You are my only surviving blood relation.”
“Don’t be too sure of that. Alex was no saint.
Neither were our fathers. Will you thwart my plan to leave?
” No inflection illuminated the question whatsoever.
“Alice claims that Mama will sabotage any offers to come my way, and Alice is generally right. Her surmise has been troubling me exceedingly, but I thought you’d be pleased to be rid of me.
I am overpaid, lazy, and my mother can only wreak her genteel brand of havoc because I hold the living at St. Wilfrid’s. ”
“You are not overpaid. I investigated discreetly what stipend a rural Yorkshire living brings in the general case. We are a prosperous parish, most years, and you are compensated accordingly. You have no curate, which allows more funds to be put in your pocket, though that also means you do more of the work.”
Bernard looked faintly puzzled. “You make business out of even church affairs. Will you allow me to go?”
“Bernard, you are an adult male of sound mind. I could not stop you from leaving. I of all people understand that the power to depart is sometimes the only power left to us.” Though how ironic that Bernard should now resort to the same tactic Cam had used as a younger man.
“You must do as you see fit, Bernard, and I will support whatever choices you make. Please consider, though, that Alexander has been gone only three months, and that’s caused some upheaval for your congregation.
I’m underfoot for the nonce, which is more upheaval.
St. Didier is insisting that I must pension Mrs. Shorer, Beaglemore, and Singleton, and that will effectively upend the neighborhood. ”
Bernard uncrossed his legs and sat forward. “You have been paying attention.”
One did not ignore St. Didier. “Good decisions are made based on good information, and for that, one must pay attention and mind the details.” One also did not ignore the nagging sense that his correspondence was calling to him, and he’d been truant enough for one day.
“Please don’t accept another post without giving me some notice, Bernard. If nothing else, I must find a replacement for you, and I will want your thoughts on who should fill your shoes.”
“They’re good people hereabouts,” he said, rising. “Hardworking, tolerant, kind. They have their petty conceits and squabbles, but if nothing else, Mama has united them against a common foe, and they set aside differences because of her. Anybody you choose should prosper here and be happy.”
Cam rose as well, his hips and back already protesting the morning’s exertions. “Bernard, is there something you aren’t telling me?” A pointless question, most times, but not always. Whatever the local puzzle was, Bernard was part of it.
“Much,” he said, smiling faintly. “Much, of course, and much you won’t tell me, but Alexander said you’d make a good baron. I enjoyed besting him or proving him wrong, though in this, he was correct.”
Bernard bowed slightly and strode off. No handshake, no cousinly punch on the shoulder.
“Leave the man his dignity,” Cam muttered, taking the path to the Hall. He moved mental chess pieces, considered options, and gave some thought to Sunday’s menu and soon found himself once again at his desk, albeit in clean clothing and with a plate of sandwiches at his elbow.
The correspondence towered over the tray on which Beaglemore had delivered it.
Cam nonetheless began not by sorting and stacking, but by penning a short epistle to the family solicitors and setting it aside to be sent by express. Then he wrote an even shorter missive to Worth Kettering and set that aside to be sent by express as well.
If anybody knew the scandals, rumors, and on-dits polite society circulated behind fans and late at night in the clubs, Kettering would. His sources were excellent, some of them quite venerable, some of them in the lowest of obscure places.
Having stolen a clerk, Kettering needed to make reparations, and Cam wasn’t really asking much.
Just following a hunch as sound businessmen were wont to do.
Lady Josephine immuring herself in the shires out of maternal devotion was only semi-plausible.
She was wellborn and greedy for power. That kind of person, regardless of gender, gravitated to Mayfair and Paris to play their nasty games, and yet, here she was, blighting the shire year after year.
One wanted more information.
Cam put the expresses out of his mind, rolled up his cuffs, and set about once again spinning epistolary straw into mercantile gold.