Chapter 2 #2
Dark brows drew down. “Nobody warned me about a cousin biding at the Glen. Amabel? Not Mabel?”
“Amabel in formal company. The A is pronounced as in ‘awesome.’ Nobody warned us you’d be paying a call so soon, my lord.
” Mabel was making a gentleman’s acquaintance without a proper introduction.
Those had largely gone by the wayside years ago, along with new bonnets, spirited riding horses, and pretty earbobs.
She regretted the loss of proper riding horses. The polite introductions too, truth be told.
“I apologize for the lack of warning, Miss Fielding.” Mabel’s guest smiled slightly. “I didn’t want to put you to any trouble by sending word of my plans.” His smile revealed a capacity for charm.
Mabel took a dim view of charmers, especially charmers who hailed from Town.
“You hoped to ambush us. If you saw creeping damp or a sagging roof at Shepherd’s Glen, you would have ridden right back down the Great North Road with nary a word to your sister or your aunt.
Had the butler had spirits on his breath or had the carpets required beating, you would have begun a list.”
His smile faded, leaving an appraising light in his eyes. “I am the ambushed party, Miss Fielding. St. Didier failed to inform me that Shepherd’s Glen is defended by its own personal Valkyrie, so we are even. Swidhelm, at your service, by the way. Will you poison my tea?”
“I’ve asked the kitchen to send up some ginger lemonade, and Yorkshire hospitality forbids poisoning guests in the ordinary course.”
“Am I a guest?”
Mabel was having trouble discerning exactly what his lordship was, though his rhetorical question made a valid point. The title was his, legalities being what they were. The house was his, along with the sheep, the beautiful views, and even dear old Thunder.
“I hope you’re the furthest thing from a guest,” Mabel replied somewhat fiercely.
“I hope you are here to take the Glen in hand. The seat of your viscountcy is some half-ruined abbey fifteen miles to the north and, since the last title holder died, has been all but neglected. I would hate for the Glen to suffer such a fate. I further hope…”
A strident note had crept into her voice. Mabel looked for something—anything—pretty, sweet, or dear to fix her gaze upon, but there was only his lordship, seeming to fill the room while he merely stood about in fine tailoring.
“Yes, Miss Fielding?”
“I hope you intend to look after your sister. Wealtha has not had an easy time of it.” Wealtha had, in fact, enjoyed prodigious good luck.
She’d never known want. She’d been the apple of her auntie’s eye and the darling of Papa’s heart—Papa Joseph, as opposed to Papa Blackstock, though Abernathy Blackstock had doted on her too.
Wealtha had a respectable dowry, and she was lovely to behold.
“I will do all that is right and proper for my sister,” his lordship said, “and for my aunt. You may be assured of that.”
The seriousness was back, with a thread of pugnacity. Much better, much easier for Mabel to deal with. “Both ladies will be relieved to hear that you are dutiful.”
A tap on the door heralded the arrival of the tray, and thank goodness for the interruption. Kepler withdrew on a bow and left the door open.
“If it’s not too great an imposition,” Lord Swidhelm said, “might we enjoy our libation in seated comfort?”
Ye gods and bleating ewes. “Please do sit.” Mabel appropriated a wing chair before the viscount could impose any assistance on her. “How was your journey north from Town?” A polite enough question and where Mabel wished she’d begun the conversation.
“Grueling. We made good time and had good teams. Thank the merciful powers for a well-sprung coach. How is my aunt Orla? Leopold St. Didier says she’s in poor health, and one doesn’t want to find an aunt only to have to surrender her to her celestial home.”
Not the sheep, not the tenancies, not his pretty sister, not even the income versus expenses, which Mabel knew down to the last farthing.
He’d asked about Orla, the blood relation whom he had never met.
“Your aunt might be fading, my lord. She has good days and bad days though she doesn’t seem to be in any pain.
I am sorry to suggest that she has been holding on in hopes we’d find you.
She will be most pleased to make your acquaintance. ”
He accepted a glass of lemonade. “I appreciate your honesty. I can bide in the village if you’d prefer, but given that Aunt Orla’s time might be short, I would rather stay here.”
Mabel would rather he’d stayed in London. Despite his laudable family priorities, his mostly sober attire, and his fine manners, she’d much rather he’d stayed in London and sacked the solicitors with a stern letter. Putting him up at The Happy Rooster would not do.
“You own this house, my lord, and everything in it. Where you stay and for how long are entirely yours to decide. Try the gingerbread and help yourself to as much butter as you’d like.”
Richard knew the look of a woman keeping trouble at bay—he’d been raised by one—and thus he obliged Cousin Amabel with small talk. She’d taken a fierce tone with him initially, for which he respected her.
Her polite chat put him in mind of a pugilist retreating to her corner between rounds, rather than a hostess regaining her balance after a social shock.
Her looks were aggressively plain—brown hair in a severe bun, figure on the sturdy side as best Richard could tell, given her shapeless gray habiliment.
Steady blue eyes and a chin and jaw that suggested little patience with fools bearing excuses.
Her hem bore a streak of dirt, probably from a morning subduing weeds in the garden. She was the sort of female who could wield a wheat scythe all day while singing and then dance her partners under the table at the harvest assembly.
Formidable, but why? If she was Orla’s daughter, she was gentry at least and exceedingly young for the maiden-auntie role she was trying to inhabit.
A puzzle. Too often, unsolved puzzles became problems the moment one’s back was turned.
“Tell me of my sister,” Richard said, sipping ginger lemonade tart enough to take the rust from old andirons. A bite of buttered gingerbread by way of antidote served to keep him from coughing and wheezing, but only just.
“Wealtha Blackstock is considered a local beauty, if not the local beauty. Oddly enough, she resembles you about the eyes, though hers are a lighter blue, and she is very fair. She is accomplished in all the domestic arts, adequately dowered, and graceful on and off the dance floor. Wealtha is understandably attached to Orla, whom she considers her aunt-by-courtesy. Wealtha is sorely upset over Orla’s condition.
That said, your arrival will dispel some tension in the household regarding… ”
Miss Fielding’s gaze traveled around the room, perhaps in search of tactful phrases lurking behind the bouquet of scarlet tulips on the sideboard.
Those blooms provided the only splash of color amid the pastel décor.
The appointments were otherwise as spotless as they were uninspired, right down to the porcelain shepherdess on the mantel and the pink floral pattern on the carpet.
“Tension in the household, Miss Fielding?”
“Wealtha’s situation has been uncertain. To be the sister of a viscount will raise her station considerably, provided you are the right sort of viscount.”
I am a thirsty viscount who doesn’t dare finish his drink. To her credit, Miss Fielding was asking if he was also the sort who’d needlessly bring up ancient acts of possible bigamy.
“I have no interest in mentioning anybody’s irregular antecedents, Miss Fielding, my own lineage passing all bounds in that regard. I intend to become a useful viscount and a proper brother, to the extent Miss Blackstock is receptive to either option.”
Richard wasn’t keen on becoming a brother—he knew little enough about siblinghood generally—but to have family… Mama would have wanted him to give the situation his best efforts. The house was an ancillary obligation, and that, too, could easily become a problem if neglected.
“Mr. St. Didier,” Richard went on, “suggested Shepherd’s Glen could be better managed, which is to be expected when the estate solicitors have been conspiring against common sense for years.
They invariably claim to be conserving assets, and all the while, great quantities of coin pass from the estate into the solicitors’ pockets. ”
The fierce light was back in Miss Fielding’s eyes. “One suspected as much, but they would not show me an accounting, and Orla was reluctant to press the matter.”
“They will show me an accounting, to the penny, with receipts and invoices.”
Miss Fielding took a long drink of her lemonade, and Richard managed not to shudder as he munched his gingerbread.
“You haven’t much patience with solicitors?” she asked.
“I read enough law to know when a lawyer is prevaricating, when he’s lying, and when he’s being honest. The lawyers I’d trust to look after any prosperous estate are vanishingly few and mostly Portuguese.
Solicitors haven’t the knack of minding acreage, and they cannot admit that to themselves.
When it comes to landed estates, what mischief they don’t wreak in the name of avarice often occurs as a result of incompetence. How long has Aunt Orla been ill?”
“I honestly don’t know. Months at least, possibly much longer.
She is stoic, though the physicians say a wasting disease must simply run its course and involves little physical pain.
I noticed last summer that she was tiring more easily, though I attributed the symptoms to advancing age.
The same with diminished appetite, general weakness, and occasional short temper. ”
Richard disliked that litany intensely. “You’ve consulted Scottish physicians?”
Another sip of the Shepherd Glen universal tonic and rust remover. “Where would I find one of those?”