Chapter 23
GIDEON
He watched her exit the front door and meet up with Mrs. Strom, Lavinia settled on her hip.
He walked toward the window and watched as she made her way to the waiting carriage, which rocked gently as the horses shifted in their traces before pulling slowly out of the estate and disappearing around the bend of the drive.
“She is quite magnificent, if I may be so blunt, Your Grace,” said Heathcliff, appearing at his shoulder with the perfectly timed silence that good butlers made an art of.
He looked after the carriage long after it had gone. This was the third time she had gone into the village with Mrs. Strom since their arrival the previous week. And according to Mrs. Strom, she was very popular indeed.
“Is it true that she was invited to the tea circle after church?” he asked.
“Indeed, Your Grace. She was. Most unusual for a Duchess — and rather more unusual still that she accepted.”
There was the faintest suggestion of judgement in his tone, but Gideon let it slide.
Heathcliff was of the old guard — he had served his father and grandfather before him, and he would find Helena’s ways curious at the very least. Gideon, however, was impressed.
So much so that he was determined to follow her example.
The Duchess of Blackthorne could not be the only one who was popular with the people.
“Have my horse saddled, please. I intend to ride into the village.”
“Of course, Your Grace,” Heathcliff said.
A few minutes later Gideon made his way to the stable, mounted, and rode toward Haslington.
As he went, he passed several farmers working the fields on either side of the lane.
Each one lifted his hat and nodded a greeting — a good morning, a pleasant day, a blessed life.
He gathered that he was already more warmly regarded than his cousin had been, though there was still a wariness in the way people looked at him, a slight reservation behind the friendliness, as one might regard a new horse that had not yet been properly assessed.
He did not blame them for it. He was new, and they did not yet know what to expect of him.
In Haslington, he tied his horse to a hitching post near the market square and walked out into the village.
It was a pleasant place — wide oak trees providing dappled shade along the lane, a row of modest shops, and even a new tea house that had not been there on his last visit.
The church stood at the center of it all, beside the market square where the weekly market was currently in full swing.
Farmers’ carts were drawn up in a row, their owners calling out the merits of whatever they had to sell.
The smell of bread and something roasting somewhere drifted across the square.
A pair of dogs investigated a dropped cabbage with tremendous seriousness.
He was about to head toward where he could see his carriage drawn up outside the public house when a voice spoke at his shoulder.
“Your Grace?”
He turned. The vicar was walking toward him.
He was a young man, perhaps thirty, with dark hair and a bright, open smile.
Gideon had met him at his cousin Howard’s funeral, where the man had been generously complimentary about the deceased without once mentioning that Howard’s death had been brought on by sheer stupidity, or that he had not been the most stellar person in life.
For that discretion, Gideon had always been grateful.
“Vicar — how are you on this fine day?”
“Very well, Your Grace, though surprised to see you in the village. I had thought you would be rather occupied up at the estate.”
“I am,” Gideon said, “but I decided to see how the town fares.”
“Ah. Much better, I think, for your tenure as Duke. Your cousin was of course a dedicated patron in his own way, but there is considerable hope for a warmer connection with the current holder of the title. Your wife has done a great deal to establish that in a very short time.”
Had she now. He was surprised — they had not discussed anything of that nature — though it was like Helena to be mindful of those less fortunate, given she had not been so very long out of difficult circumstances herself.
“I can concur with my wife in that regard,” he said. “Pray, do you know where I might find her?”
The vicar nodded toward the public house. “I believe she is in there.”
“In the public house?”
The vicar smiled. “There is no cause for alarm. We have been using it as a meeting space for the past several months. Every Tuesday, anyone with a grievance comes to attempt to resolve it before a panel of village elders. I attend to issue a final judgement should one be required.” He sighed.
“It has been required most Tuesdays. I was just on my way there myself. Would you care to walk together?”
Gideon fell into step beside him, genuinely curious.
A tribunal of locals — an informal court of sorts.
It made a great deal of sense, in practice.
And that Helena had attached herself to it already surprised him less the more he thought about it.
In London she had shied away from grand gatherings and the press of society, but here — where nobody had heard the rumours, where nobody cared about her parentage or the circumstances of their marriage — she was simply herself.
And herself, it turned out, was very well suited to exactly this sort of thing.
They entered The Crane — the public house, a low-beamed, comfortable establishment that smelled of sawdust and woodsmoke — and were immediately enveloped in warmth and noise.
There had to be at least seventy people packed inside.
At the front, a long table had been set up with three men behind it.
Gideon recognized one of them — Mr. Fisher, the local surgeon, a steady, sensible-looking man.
Beside him sat a serious-faced fellow with a grocer’s apron, and on his other side a large man with dark hair and an impressive beard.
“That is Mr. Flannery, the greengrocer,” the vicar said quietly, “and Mr. Gold, the apothecary.”
Before them, two shorter tables had been arranged, each occupied by two men in the rougher clothing of farm workers, their hands and faces weathered dark by outdoor work.
“They were my oxen,” the taller called, his fist banging on the table in front of him. “They were on my side of the field.”
“But the cows were mine,” the other — a ruddy man with reddish hair — fired back. “And therefore the calves are mine also.”
“How should they be yours? Without my oxen there would be no calves. They are mine, and I demand them.”
The two men talked over one another with increasing volume until Mr. Gold brought his hand down on the table with a crack that silenced the room momentarily. “Stop this foolishness. We will come to no agreement in such a manner.”
“We must,” the first man insisted. “I must have the calves.”
“And so must I. It is absurd that he should claim all three.”
The shouting was about to recommence when a familiar voice rose above it, quiet but clear.
“I would like to propose a solution.”
He looked to his right. Helena was standing up, smoothing her skirts with the composed, slightly-braced expression she wore whenever confronted with raised voices and general aggression — which she had never liked, and which he suspected had something to do with her years with Huxley, though she had never said so directly.
It was clear that on this occasion she had decided to put a stop to it herself.
“I do not think it is necessary to raise your voices at one another,” she said.
A murmur went through the crowd.
That’s the Duchess.
Her Grace — how is she here?
I wonder what she has to say.
She walked to the front. The three men behind the table stood immediately. “May I speak?”
“Of course, Your Grace,” Mr. Fisher said. “You must.”
She nodded, and turned to the thinner man. “Mr. Stevens — you have two oxen, and they are responsible for the calves of Mr. Hastings’s three cows. Is that correct?”
“That is right, Your Grace,” Stevens replied, rising to his feet.
“Have you other oxen?”
“Two more, yes — but they were on a different pasture that day.”
She nodded and turned. “And you, Mr. Hastings — do you have only three cows?”
“No,” Hastings said, getting up. “I have fifteen at present.”
“And do you have oxen?”
“Two. But they have given him no calves in years — they are too old and can hardly pull the plough,” Stevens added, with a gleam of satisfaction.
“Which is precisely why I need the calves,” Hastings said. “Two of them are male.”
Helena walked slowly up and down before the table, hands clasped behind her back, contemplating.
Every pair of eyes in the room followed her.
Gideon watched with quiet pleasure. They were respectful — giving her space while clearly curious about what she would produce.
It was not a Duchess’s place to adjudicate such things, strictly speaking, but Helena had made her decision to insert herself, and when Helena had made a decision it was generally not worth arguing with.
Her formidable nature was on full display, and he found he could not have been more glad of it.
“Here is what I propose,” she said, and turned so that she stood between the two men.
“There appear to be two possibilities. Either Mr. Stevens receives one male calf and one female, and Mr. Hastings keeps the remaining male. Or—” she raised a hand as Hastings’s mouth opened “— Mr. Stevens receives all three calves, but in exchange he gives Mr. Hastings one of his youngest and most promising oxen, so that Mr. Hastings may begin breeding his herd afresh while retiring his two elderly ones.”
Silence.
The two farmers looked at one another.
“I do need a young ox,” Hastings said slowly. “And the calves will take time to be of use.”
“And I have no particular need of another young ox at present,” Stevens replied. “I had intended to sell him.”
“But is it not better to be unneighborly?” Helena said. “Is it not preferable to help one another rather than to be in constant competition?”
A murmur of approval ran around the room. Mr. Flannery clapped once, with considerable satisfaction. “I think that is a splendid idea. Hastings, Stevens — you used to be friends. Why not be friends again?”
The two men regarded one another for a long moment. Then Hastings nodded. “I think so.”
“Well,” Stevens said. “If Her Grace thinks it fair, how can I argue?” He extended his hand, and Hastings took it. Applause spread through the room in a warm wave.
Beside Gideon, the vicar leaned in. “Your wife has a real gift of the gab when it comes to people,” he said quietly. “She speaks their language. Knows how to reach them.”
Gideon nodded. He was watching Helena, who was now surrounded by a small crowd of people, with Mrs. Strom standing a comfortable distance away as a buffer, her expression one of considerable approval.
“I believe,” the vicar continued, “that it may be partly due to her having known less fortunate circumstances herself. She is a captain’s daughter, after all — though I understand there was some connection to an earldom.”
“There was not, in fact,” Gideon said, quietly and with deliberate care.
He had decided some days ago that it would be better for everyone if the village understood Helena’s origins correctly from the beginning.
If the rumours ever found their way here — which he intended to prevent, but could not guarantee — the ground should already be prepared.
“She is a captain’s daughter and nothing more.
Many families have tales of grand connections — hers is no different in that respect.
What I can tell you is that her father was a man I admired greatly and am personally indebted to.
She became a lady through her first marriage and a Duchess through her second.
That is the whole of it, and it is quite enough. ”
The vicar studied him for a moment, then nodded with quiet understanding. “I am glad you care for one another,” he said. “It is good to see. Not all marriages are fortunate enough to be blessed in such a way.”
His heart clenched at the words. He looked back at Helena — who had now apparently said something that had made two elderly women laugh until they had to hold each other up — and could not deny it. He wanted to feel blessed by this marriage. He wanted to believe that love might yet find them both.
But the truth was he could not be certain. And that uncertainty cast a long shadow over the pride and quiet joy he felt watching her now.
For the last two years he had wondered whether he could ever love again after Cassandra.
He had come to understand that he could.
The question that remained — the harder one, the one he had not yet found an answer to — was whether Helena could ever open her heart to him.
And what, exactly, it was that stood in her way.
He watched her laugh at something Mrs. Strom said, the sound carrying faintly across the room, and thought that whatever it was, he intended to find out.