Chapter Six The Sheep Whisperer
TO SURVIVE AS THE SOLE heiress of Rosings Park, one required either a constitution of iron or a talent for deception.
Anne de Bourgh, having been born with the constitution of a fragile bird and the misfortune of Lady Catherine as a mother, had quickly realised that iron was out of the question.
Deception, therefore, had become her life's work.
Her morning had begun, as all her mornings did, with an assault of maternal care.
"The wind is from the east!" Lady Catherine had bellowed across the breakfast table, a piece of toast hovering threateningly in her hand. "Mrs Jenkinson, ensure the windows in the east wing are sealed. Anne looks pale. Paler than usual. Have you given her the tincture of rhubarb?"
"Yes, your Ladyship," Mrs Jenkinson had whispered, hovering near Anne's elbow like a mournful ghost. "Two drops, as instructed."
"Make it three," Lady Catherine commanded.
"And she must not practise the pianoforte today.
The exertion of the pedals will fatigue her ankles.
She must lie on the chaise in the drawing-room with a blanket.
I shall have Mr Collins come and read aloud to her.
A sermon on obedience should soothe her nerves. "
The prospect of spending three hours trapped under a woollen blanket while Mr Collins droned on about the spiritual benefits of submissive women was a fate worse than any actual illness. Anne knew what she had to do.
She took a small, shallow breath, closed her eyes, and produced a cough.
It was a masterpiece of auditory performance. It was not a loud, vulgar hack, but a delicate, rattling wheeze that suggested imminent collapse. She followed it with a soft flutter of her eyelashes and a slight slump against the high back of her chair.
Panic, swift and organised, seized the room.
Within five minutes, the threat of Mr Collins had been banished.
Lady Catherine declared that silence and fresh air were the only cures.
Anne was bundled into a pelisse, handed a muff she did not need, and instructed to take a slow, supervised walk in the sheltered south gardens.
Naturally, the moment Mrs Jenkinson turned her back to instruct a footman about a parasol, Anne slipped through the yew hedges and vanished.
Thirty minutes later, she was a mile from the house, sitting on a sturdy wooden stool in the middle of a sun-drenched meadow. Her easel was propped before her, a fresh sheet of paper pinned to the board, and her watercolours were laid out in a messy array.
Here, there were no curtains. There were no lectures on the proper depth of a curtsey. There was only the crisp breeze, the smell of damp earth, and her subjects.
The Rosings sheep were, by and large, a disgrace to agricultural aesthetics.
Lady Catherine had purchased them because the breed was supposedly favoured by the Duke of Devonshire, ignoring the fact that they were notoriously ill-tempered and prone to bald patches. To Anne, however, they were perfect.
She dipped her brush into a pot of water and swirled it vigorously into a cake of burnt umber. She was focused on a robust ewe she had privately named Boudicca. Boudicca had a slight cast in one eye, a clump of thistles permanently affixed to her left ear, and she chewed the grass furiously.
"That's it," Anne murmured to the sheep, applying a jagged stroke to the paper to capture the animal's menacing brow. "Look at me as though you wish to trample my easel. Let the rage out, Boudicca. Mother cannot dictate your posture."
Anne painted with a speed and ferocity that would have sent Mrs Jenkinson to an early grave.
She loved the unpredictability of watercolours, the way the pigments bled and bloomed into one another.
It was the only thing in her life that was not controlled, catalogued, and criticised by her mother.
In the meadow, she was not the tragic heiress of Rosings.
She was an observer. She was cynical, and she was content.
She was just mixing a vile shade of yellowish-green to accurately render the thistle in Boudicca's ear when the tranquillity of her sanctuary was shattered.
"Confound it! Blasted, treacherous, uneven country dirt!"
The voice carried across the meadow with the subtlety of a bugle call. Anne sighed, her brush pausing over the paper. Boudicca let out a single baa and trotted several paces away, disgusted by the interruption.
Striding through the tall grass, swatting at the seed heads with his walking stick, was Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam.
He looked magnificent, as he always did—broad-shouldered, impeccably tailored in a green riding coat, his brass buttons catching the sun.
However, his handsome face was twisted into a scowl of such frustration that he seemed rather like a fretful babe who had been denied a sweetmeat.
He stomped towards Anne, heedless of the sheep scattering in his wake.
"Good morning, Richard," Anne said dryly, not looking up from her painting. "I see you are attempting to conquer the meadow by force. The sheep surrender. You may eat their grass."
Richard halted beside her easel, letting out a dramatic sigh that ruffled the edges of her paper. "The sheep may keep the grass, Anne. I am defeated. I have been routed, outmanoeuvred, and left to die on the battlefield of romance."
Anne dipped her brush in the water to clean it. "Miss Elizabeth, I presume?"
"Who else?" Richard groaned, throwing his arms wide in a gesture of despair. "I followed your advice! I attempted to be profound. I attempted a flanking manoeuvre of the intellect!"
"And?"
"And I wrote her a poem," Richard confessed, his voice dropping to a miserable register.
Anne slowly turned her head to look at him for a long, silent moment. "A poem."
"Yes! A poem!" Richard defended himself, though he had the grace to look embarrassed.
"Do not look at me like that, Anne. It was a very good poem.
It was about a weeping willow and the eternal sorrow of the wind.
I stole it from a book in the library. I thought, Richard, you must show her the depths of your soul.
So, I caught her in the garden this morning, and I read it to her. "
Anne felt a laugh building in the back of her throat. "You read a poem about a weeping willow to Elizabeth Bennet."
"I read it with great feeling!" Richard insisted. "I modulated my voice! I stared straight into her eyes!"
"And what was her response to this display of emotional depth?"
Richard slumped, dropping his walking stick into the grass. "She asked me if I was suffering from the ague. She said my voice sounded a bit hoarse and offered to fetch me a lozenge from the apothecary."
The laugh broke free. It was a rusty sound, like a door that had not been opened in years. Anne threw her head back and laughed until her ribs ached.
"It is not funny!" Richard protested, with a reluctant, self-mocking smile. "She treated me like a younger brother, a bit touched in the head. I poured my heart out over a willow tree, and she offered me a sweet!"
"Oh, Richard," Anne gasped, wiping a tear of mirth from her eye. "You are an absolute blockhead."
"Thank you for your unwavering familial support."
"I told you to engage her mind, not to perform a tragedy in the shrubbery!
" Anne scolded, though she was still smiling.
"Miss Elizabeth is a woman of substance.
She views the world with a critical, amused eye.
She does not want a man to stand in front of her and recite stolen sorrow about trees.
She wants a man to converse with her. You are treating a siege like a parade, Richard.
You are making noise and expecting the fortress to open its gates in awe. "
Richard ran a hand through his hair, destroying his batman's careful work.
"But what else am I to do? If I am cheerful, she treats me as a jester.
If I am serious, she thinks I am ill! I am running out of options.
If I fail, I fear Darcy will sweep in and bore her to death with a lecture on soil drainage. The woman will die, Anne."
"Darcy," Anne mused, turning back to her painting and adding a delicate shadow beneath Boudicca's chin. "Yes, Darcy's tactics are... unique. But you are making the mistake of thinking you must be something you are not. You are not a poet, Richard. Stop trying to be one."
Richard stared at her for a moment, then, to Anne's surprise, he did not pace away.
Instead, he dropped unceremoniously onto the grass right beside her stool.
He cared not a whit for the damp earth or the stray sheep droppings that undoubtedly threatened his buckskin breeches.
He drew his knees up, resting his arms atop them, and looked at her canvas.
The silence that fell between them was not the awkward silence that usually characterised interactions at Rosings. It was remarkably comfortable.
"That," Richard said, pointing a long, gloved finger at the paper, "is the most furious piece of livestock I have ever seen."
"Her name is Boudicca," Anne replied, keeping her brush steady. "She despises me. She despises you. She despises the concept of wool."
Richard chuckled low. "You have captured her murderous intent. Lady Catherine would be horrified. She thinks all art should feature nymphs frolicking with doves."
"If I painted a nymph, Mother would complain that her toga was improperly hemmed," Anne said dryly.
Richard rested his chin on his arm, watching her work. "It is exhausting, is it not? Being a de Bourgh."
Anne paused to look down at him. The dashing, carefree soldier had vanished. Here, sitting in the dirt, Richard seemed vulnerable.
"I am a second son," he continued, his voice thoughtful.
"I have a uniform and no fortune of my own.
I must marry well, or I must remain a soldier until a French musket solves the problem for me.
Every time I walk into a ballroom, I must be the loudest, most charming man in the room, because charm is the only currency I possess.
If I stop talking, if I stop performing...
people realise I have nothing in my pockets. "
Anne felt a pang of sympathy. She set her brush down on the rim of her water pot.
"And I am an heiress," she countered. "I have tens of thousands of pounds, an estate the size of a small country, and absolutely no voice.
I am a vessel for my mother's ambition. My only purpose is to marry Darcy and merge our properties so that Mother may boast of the union. "
Richard grimaced. "You and Darcy. It would be a disaster of the highest order. You would paint angry sheep, and he would stare at the wall in silent agony for the next forty years."
"He would rather marry a tree," Anne agreed. "And I would rather marry no one at all."
"Truly?" Richard looked up at her, his eyes searching her face. "You have no desire to marry?"
"To exchange my mother's tyranny for a husband's?
Why would I seek a new gaoler?" Anne picked up a dry brush and began to blend a harsh line on the sheep's back.
"Here, in the meadow, I am left alone. If people believe I am sickly and dull, they do not expect anything of me.
It is a very peaceful sort of invisibility. "
For a while, Richard watched her deft, sure hands move, mixing colours with casual expertise. Then his brow furrowed. He sat up straighter, looking at her with intense scrutiny.
"Anne," he said slowly.
"Yes?"
"I have been sitting here for twenty minutes."
"I am aware. You are blocking my view of a very interesting patch of clover."
"You have not coughed."
Anne's hand froze mid-stroke. She did not look at him. "The fresh air is very... restorative."
"You have not coughed," Richard repeated, his voice rising with a mixture of dawning realisation and awe.
"You have not wheezed, requested a shawl or a vinaigrette, or complained of a draught.
You walked a mile across uneven terrain carrying a wooden easel, and you are sitting in a damp meadow without a pelisse. "
He sprang to his feet, staring down at her as if seeing her for the very first time. "Good God. You are not ill at all."
Anne carefully set her brush down. She met his gaze, her chin lifting in a gesture of defiance. "If a soldier finds himself hopelessly outflanked, Richard, is it not an acceptable tactic to play dead so the enemy marches past him?"
Richard's mouth fell open. He stared at her face, at the vibrant paints scattered around her, and at the cunning glitter in her eyes.
"You..." Richard breathed, a smile spreading across his face. "Anne de Bourgh. You are a genius."
"I am a woman who prefers watercolours to Mr Collins's sermons," Anne corrected primly, though the corners of her mouth twitched. "Now, please sit back down. You are frightening Boudicca, and if she charges us, I am relying on your training to save my paints."
Richard laughed and sat back down in the dirt, cross-legged and content, shaking his head in disbelief from time to time.