CHAPTER EIGHT #2
“Constantly,” Ellen said, with a composure that made the admission almost grand. “She is the best company in the house, and I have told her so.”
“That was unwise.”
“Was it?”
“She is the best company in England, and you must on no account tell her that. It is the single circumstance keeping her within the bounds of polite society.”
Ellen laughed.
It came low and surprised out of her, as though she had not meant to give him the sound and could not take it back.
Theodore looked over before he could stop himself.
The laugh faded.
For one awkward heartbeat they simply looked at one another.
Ellen’s cheeks colored first.
Theodore turned back to the track with suspicious promptness.
Neither of them spoke for several moments.
Then Ellen said lightly, “You looked.”
Theodore nearly smiled. “At what?”
“At me laughing.”
“I was ensuring you had not fallen off.”
“While seated on the horse?”
“It seemed prudent to verify.”
She shook her head.
To his annoyance, and his satisfaction, he heard her laughing again.
He fixed his gaze steadily upon the path before him, preserving the memory of that sound for the remainder of his journey home, just as he had guarded the early hours of the morning, a private comfort held close and unexamined.
In the stable yard, Hibbert came forward to take the mare, his weathered face giving away nothing beyond professional satisfaction.
“She goes well,” Ellen said, patting the mare’s neck before dismounting.
“She goes as she is ridden, Your Grace,” Hibbert replied, taking the reins. “Which is a compliment to both of you, if either of you chooses to hear it.”
Ellen’s eyes turned toward Theodore. “I am willing to hear my half.”
“The other half is less accustomed to praise,” Theodore said.
“Then perhaps it will benefit him.”
“I shall consider the experiment.”
The words slipped out unexpectedly.
Ellen looked up.
Theodore looked surprised at himself.
Hibbert, who missed very little, suddenly became deeply interested in the mare’s girth.
A smile tugged at Ellen’s mouth. “Do let me know the results.”
Theodore inclined his head to Ellen. She inclined hers in return, still carrying the faint brightness of the ride, and that was the whole of it on the surface. A ride. A few words. A laugh that had surprised them both.
Underneath, nothing stood where it had been the day before.
At breakfast the next morning, Theodore found he had something to say to her, which was new.
“The bridleway over the south ridge is sound in any weather,” he said, turning a page of his letters as though the information had occurred to him incidentally. “You may take it in the wet without fear.”
Ellen looked up from the coffee. “Am I to understand that I have permission to ride in the rain?”
“You may understand that you have information enough not to drown in a ditch.”
“How romantic.”
His eyes lifted briefly. “I was aiming for useful.”
“Then you have succeeded admirably.”
“The lane through Wrenford floods above the fetlock after rain, at the ford by the mill,” he continued, refusing the small temptation to answer the smile in her voice.
“Go round by the church if the water has been up. The mare does not know the ford, and a horse that does not know a ford will argue it at the worst moment.”
Ellen rested her cup in its saucer, plainly startled by the length and specificity of the instruction. “I shall remember.”
“See that you do.”
“I would not dare disappoint the ford.”
“Disappoint Hibbert if you must. The ford is less forgiving.”
A small smile touched her mouth before she looked down.
“And if I become lost?”
Theodore folded his letter.
“You will not.”
“You sound very certain.”
“I know exactly where you ride.”
The silence that followed was brief but noticeable.
Theodore returned to his correspondence.
Ellen looked down at her coffee.
Both appeared unexpectedly occupied.
Lady Augusta, who had been pretending to read a letter with the theatrical patience of a woman waiting for fools to notice one another, set it down at last.
“Theodore, your wife’s diligence has completely revived the kitchen garden; it was quite gone to ruin, but she has made it flourish beautifully.” she said. “Had you noticed, or do you attend only to the park?”
“I had noticed. The beds were turned and limed a fortnight since, the pears are tied in, and the stillroom has been opened for the first time since my mother kept it.” He did not look up from the letters. “I attend to a good deal I do not remark upon, aunt. You of all people should know it.”
Ellen had gone very still over her cup, and he marked that too, and said nothing.
***
He came upon her in the kitchen garden that afternoon, not by accident, though he told himself it was.
She was kneeling down at the herb border with her sleeves pushed to the elbow covered in dirt to the wrist, and she did not hear the gate.
“You will ruin that dress,” he said.
She sat back on her heels and looked up without alarm. “It was ruined two seasons since. This is the first honest work it has done in all that time.”
“Coyne has men for this.”
“Coyne has two men and forty rooms of glass to keep, and neither of them knows lavender from couch grass, which is how the border came to be three years of nobody.” She pulled a fistful of weed and shook the soil from the roots.
“I do not mind it. One cannot think in a drawing room. One thinks very clearly with one’s hands in the dirt. ”
“What do you think about?”
It was out before he had decided to ask it, and she looked up, as surprised by the question as he was to have put it.
“Today, the Burton smallholding.” She turned back to the border. “I met the wife on the lane. She called it what was left of it, and looked sorry the instant she had, the way people do when they have told a duchess a true thing by mistake.”
“What was left of what?”
“That is what I came out here to ponder on. The holding runs down toward the river, and there is good bottom land below it in somebody else’s hand now, by the state of the hedges, and Mrs. Burton would not say whose.
” She sat back. “You own this country. I thought you would know who had been buying the river land off your own tenants.”
Theodore was quiet a moment. “Parcels along the bottom have gone these last few years. Through agents, to a name I never troubled to chase, because the price was fair and the land was poor and a man cannot buy up all of England to keep his neighbors comfortable.” He heard himself say it and did not care for the sound.
“I did not look closely. I am beginning to think I should have looked closely.”
“It is your country,” she said again, without sting. “People here measure a great deal by whether the man at the top is looking.”
“You have been at Wrenfield a month and learned more of my tenants than I have in eleven years.”
“I have been poor, Your Grace. The poor learn one another quickly. It is the comfortable who can afford not to look.” She brushed the soil from her palms and stood. “I did not mean it as a reproach.”