Four
Lavender
Lavender helped the boys stack their clothing in a heavy, ornate sideboard too ugly to move from the room they’d chosen. She found a tear in their draperies and had just finished stitching it when Thea and Arnaud returned bearing tales of unwanted guests.
She and Mr. Birdwhistle—Lord Fortescue!—had arranged to avoid each other while the others had been gone. A duke’s exceedingly handsome son had been teaching her to read!
She didn’t know why that was so much more humiliating than a tutor.
Perhaps because she had dreamed just a tiny little bit about courting, when she thought they were equals.
The smiling scoundrel had led her to believe he might be interested!
Which was mortifying in itself, since he had to know that she was a bastard, her mother had been a maid, and even if one of her grandmothers was a baroness, the other worked in the kitchen, and she could only ever be one thing to him.
She had been interested in a man so far out of her reach, he might have been the North Star. And here she’d prided herself on knowing better than to fall for the wicked schemes of men! She’d known she should have stayed with her sewing, where no one was better than her.
While the other three conspirators discussed the unwanted visitor, Lavender put away her needle. She really needed to return to work now that the others were here. She had no wit for plotting defenses.
“Lavender, why don’t you take Fort down to the inn and pretend you’re showing him your shop? He can make discreet inquiries of Rafe about our visitors while admiring the new shirts you’re selling.” Arms full of sheets, Thea apparently sought to learn more while avoiding the inn’s guests.
“Me?” Lavender asked, surprised. No one ever included her in their plans. The only reason she was involved now was that she had been the one nearest when Weston’s messenger arrived.
“Fort is likely to be stuck in here for the duration of his brother’s recuperation. He is the one who must handle difficulties as they appear,” Arnaud explained. “He must establish the communication with Rafe.”
“Oh.” A simple task, she supposed. She wouldn’t have to talk to him.
Lavender tucked her thread and scissors into her sewing basket.
She might distrust most men, but she respected Arnaud much as she did his cousin Hunt.
Some gentlemen were above reproach. “Fine, then. Kate is in the shop today. Shall I ask her to send her husband to the manor? Should he be included?” Her best seamstress had recently married a rather formidable former soldier.
“You might mention Rafe needs to speak with him when he returns. I believe he is currently in Stratford, purchasing sheep.” Thea carried the linens out.
Mr. Birdwhistle—Fort—offered his arm. “I’ll explain as we walk down.”
Stubbornly setting her lips, Lavender clung to her basket. She had spent her life establishing that she was not her mother, who had been seduced by a lying noble. She didn’t need any man taking care of her. Besides, he had lied. Bird-witted Fortescue was no longer trustworthy.
Any remote hopes she may have held of a charming, handsome suitor were entirely dashed.
Not that she meant to marry. No husband would respect her talent to let her continue her business and it was too important to abandon.
But some nights, she was lonely and dreamed.
. . No more. She kept her basket between them like a shield.
“Arnaud, you might work with the boys on the earl’s puzzle. You and Thea helped solve the last one,” his noble lordship suggested, before leading her from the schoolroom.
“And you say your brother is domineering,” Lavender muttered as she followed his right noble lordship to the rear tower door and they stepped into the autumn twilight.
“Tutoring allows me to bully those who can’t fight back,” Fort agreed without apology. “It becomes habit.” The setting sun caught on his dark wavy hair—it needed a cut—and the stubble of his day’s beard.
She shouldn’t be looking. Instead, she watched the long shadows on the drive. They saw the sun so seldom these days that the breeze almost felt warm. Or perhaps it was just stepping out with a handsome man. She had never done so, and it made her nervous.
She was unaccustomed to making small talk. Men had flirted with her, of course, but she had no patience with nonsense.
Only—Lord Fortescue’s brother had almost been killed. Despite her personal anger and humiliation, she had to respect that Fort’s pain was greater than hers. Awkwardly, out of sympathy, she asked, “Is there aught I might do to help while we are in the village?”
The overbearing noble instantly showered her in more commands.
“Talk to Kate. Spread the measles rumor, about how people can go blind or die from it. Explain only those, like us, who have survived the disease are allowed in. Maybe mention the tale about dangerous insurgents using our lanes? Should there be any suspicious activity, people might report it faster. We need to know if Weston was followed.”
“It all sounds like childish war games,” she complained, giving up on politeness as they entered the inn yard. “I truly dislike living in fear.”
She’d been kidnapped a few months ago, accidentally, as it turned out. But the helplessness had terrified her.
“I don’t really believe there is much to fear.” Lord Fortescue opened the inn door for her. “I simply want to impress Weston with our preparations. He has never requested my aid before.”
That sounded oddly vulnerable for one so. . . dictatorial.
Inside, they met a great hullabaloo of shouts and scurrying servants carrying trunks, while cape-coated gentlemen milled about, shouting commands and generally getting in each other’s way.
Oh dear. These didn’t look like revolutionary rabble. Had the earl’s men come in advance of his arrival?
Rafe Russell, the rufus-haired giant who ruled the inn, looked harassed and on the edge of heaving everyone out. “Gentlemen, if you would repair to the pub, we’ll have the rooms sorted by the time you finish a pint of our finest ale.”
“Whiskey,” an excessively stout, red-faced gentleman demanded, stomping in the direction of the pub. “Pheasant for dinner.”
“That is incredibly rude,” Lavender said in amazement. “Gentlemen aren’t supposed to be rude.”
Lord Fortescue turned her about and practically shoved her back outside. “Side entrance.”
“Clare would have told the rudesbies where to stuff their pheasant.” In indignation for the usually genial innkeeper, Lavender lifted her frilled hem from the dirt and stomped down the newly installed boardwalk.
“As the captain’s wife, Clare has a husband to defend her and is safe in drawing attention to herself. Should you speak up, the impertinent fellows would only see your beauty and think you available to their questionable charms.”
Lavender smacked his top hat. “I know that. Did I disagree at our precipitous departure? I have dealt with impertinent fellows all my life.”
“Pardon me.” He opened the side door and bowed her in. “I do not often escort dashing ladies.”
He’d called her beautiful—Lavender knew she was that—but dashing? Could a dull seamstress be dashing? It wasn’t worth pondering the words of a liar.
Kate Morgan, now Mrs. Ferguson, greeted them in surprise. “I was just about to close up. Without Henri across the hall, I was growing a little nervous at all the commotion.”
She glanced at the plainly-dressed but too-handsome tutor at Lavender’s side but didn’t question.
“We need to speak to Rafe,” Lavender explained as simply as she could. “The boys may have measles. We’ve moved them away from the village students, down to the new wing. But now we’re hearing rumors—” She gestured for his lordship to finish the lies.
“We’ve had word of insurrectionists using our back lanes. We need to notify Rafe. The manor’s ground floor is vulnerable with all the gentlemen elsewhere.”
“Oh.” Understanding illuminated Kate’s eyes. “Let me lock up. We’ll go out the side and around to the kitchen. Verity will summon Rafe from whatever is happening in the lobby. Is it a hunting party? Have you heard?”
“They can’t go hunting without the manor’s permission.” Fort took the key and locked the shop, before offering both his arms to escort them outside. “I assume it’s related to the wealthy American Thea chased off.”
Kate laughed. “I swear, she’s more a guard dog than Rafe’s wolfhound.
” They all knew Thea had reason to be cautious.
Unlike her more impoverished relations, who needed a free roof over their heads, Thea stayed at the Priory for the protection her immediate family did not provide.
Her parents wanted her married and her inheritance in their control before Thea came of age.
Sometimes Lavender was glad she was poor.
Rafe’s wife welcomed them warmly, fed them tea and scones, and sent one of the kitchen staff to locate her husband.
As the teacher presiding over the attic schoolroom, Verity had heard the measles rumor already.
“Thank you for thinking of others. I know nothing except the dangers of the disease, but those children need to be in the schoolroom. We are the only ones feeding and keeping them warm while their mothers work. I wish it could be otherwise, but the war took so many men, and Gravesyde has little to offer in aid.”
Rafe banged into the kitchen, looking startled at seeing the elusive tutor out of his usual lair. The bailiff apparently did not know Fort’s alternate identity, Lavender noted with interest. She waited to see what lies he would spin.
The duke’s son merely repeated what they had told Kate.
Rafe frowned. “I heard as much, but you can see the lot I’m saddled with. Doubt they’re insurrectionists, but they’re about as much trouble. And Miss Talbot tossed them out? Smart of her. They’re a blo. . . a blamed nuisance.”
“Do you know any of the men traveling with Mr. Humphries?” Fort asked. “Why are they in Gravesyde?”
Rafe shrugged his broad shoulders. “None of them nobility that I know. Wealthy merchants and industrialists, it seems. I left them discussing timber mills and housing. Maybe manufacturers interested in Sutter’s property?”
“Timber mills? The only timber here is on the manor’s rocky land.” Fort laughed. “Captain Huntley would certainly object to losing his deer stalking grounds. Americans have no notion of how very little forest we have. They’d do better to quarry stone.”
Lavender shivered, not liking the sound of this at all.
She gathered her sewing basket and stood.
“Gentlemen who do not know what they are talking about are generally up to no good. If the captain did not invite them for a hunting party, and Mr. Sutter isn’t here to sell them land, then they may very well be your insurgents. ”
They all stared at her as if she’d just stood in a pulpit and espoused a stairway to heaven. Or hell, given the circumstances.