Chapter 7 #2
Richard took the in-for-a-penny route. “The Glen is an impressive manor house and a gorgeous property, but it also has the feel of a home.”
Not his home, not yet, maybe not ever, but a home.
The windows flanking the front door did not match—one was mullioned, one was not.
An occasional panel of wainscoting had been replaced, and was lighter than its neighbors for being years, possibly centuries, younger than the boards to either side.
The windows in the gallery had squeaked abominably because the staff was too geriatric to wrestle with the hinges.
That shepherdess on the parlor mantel had been positioned to hide a dent in the wood, where some footman had probably bashed the mantel with a poker when he’d slipped on the carpet before the hearth.
Shepherd’s Glen held stories, and provided shelter to living, breathing human beings.
Though, if Richard did choose to bide there, he could not imagine doing so without Miss Amabel Fielding in residence as well.
“Would you like a closer look at The Oaks?” she asked. “Your interest would be understandable, and I know some of the staff. Clementina started in service at The Oaks.”
Miss Fielding likely knew every employee on every neighboring property, including the pensioners. “Not today, but thank you. Today, it’s enough to lay eyes on the place and know my mother grew up in the shade of those venerable trees.”
Miss Fielding turned her mare around, and Richard did likewise with his gelding. They had navigated the crossroads and returned to the shaded track before she spoke again.
“Wealtha has allowed that you should use informal address with her.”
Wealtha apparently did a lot of allowing. “I know of no siblings who use formal address with one another when private.”
“If you are to refer to her as Wealtha and to Step-mama as Aunt Orla, then you had best refer to me as Mabel. I am some sort of family connection to you, and I am in company with Orla and Wealtha on most public occasions.”
Richard sat a little straighter in the saddle. “People would remark formal address for you, but informal address for Orla and Wealtha?”
“People remark everything, but yes. One does not want to be singled out.”
“Or judged for needless punctilio. I agree. You must call me Richard, though, to complete the syllogism.”
She sent him a fulminating look. “Very well. Richard.”
She made the utterance of his name into a puzzle. A test, a challenge, a concession, a gift.
This time, Richard got his horse moving first, and he heard a slight chuckle behind him as Miss Fielding—Mabel—cued her horse accordingly.
No, not Mabel. Amabel, because that was her name, and a lovely name it was too.
“In little over a week,” Wealtha said, “Richard has called on half a dozen neighbors, most of the tenants, and the vicar. He’s ridden out with McCafferty three mornings in a row and taken tea with Auntie in the afternoons.
He loiters at the smithy with the local men and has even taken a turn with the market day cricket nonsense, but when will he meet with the solicitors? ”
A version of this lament had been aired regularly for the past week, usually during the morning gathering in Step-mama’s sitting room. Today was apparently to be no different, though how and why did Wealtha keep such a close eye on her brother?
“His lordship is conscientious,” Mabel said, “and that can only be good for the Glen.” Swidhelm’s eagerness to dive into every aspect of the estate’s affairs was both a relief and disconcerting.
A relief because running the place overwhelmed Mabel’s capabilities and disconcerting because she enjoyed the challenge anyway—most days.
Wealtha’s chin came up. “The Glen,” she spat, “should have been mine. The Glen can rot, for all I care. The Glen is a drafty old house and a clutch of farms, with a perishing lot of smelly, bleating sheep. I am a grown woman who should be getting on with my life, but I cannot because my brother is too busy playing yeoman farmer.”
Orla, serenely perched on the love seat, knitted along at a placid pace.
“Your haste does you no credit, Wealtha. His lordship’s preoccupation with estate matters will fade once he’s asserted himself appropriately.
He will look in on the solicitors, put your settlements to rights, and return to the more refined entertainments available in Town. Cease troubling yourself.”
For Orla, that was the next thing to a harangue.
“He will not return to Town,” Wealtha said. “He will stay for the shooting, and then there’s harvest, and then it’s too miserable to travel all the way to Town, and he will adore our quaint Yuletide nonsense, but he will never see my settlements increased.”
Mabel gathered up the tea things and set the tray outside the sitting room door.
“His lordship has businesses in Portugal and on Madeira. Who would spend winter here in Yorkshire when those lovely options were available? He has half-siblings in the south, including a half-brother he met only recently. Step-mama is right that his lordship has many reasons to conclude his activities at the Glen and return to London.”
Mabel wasn’t sure how she felt about that prospect. Swidhelm was just plain good company. He came to his own conclusions after thorough analysis of a situation, brought a fresh eye to matters at the Glen, and could poke fun at himself.
He was patient with the churchyard interrogations, respectful of the elders, and making a real effort to learn the local dialect.
He’d asked Mabel to translate delf, slack, and gimmers—quarry, low ground, and ewes after their first shearing but before the second—and he rode with a relaxed confidence the equal of any born-and-bred squire.
“Richard might well return to Town,” Wealtha said, “but he’ll do so without sparing me a farthing. What sort of brother ignores his sister in need?”
Orla sent Mabel a look, half humorous, half exasperated. “I’ll have a word with him, Wealtha. Your settlements are sufficient, but his lordship, I’m sure, will want to put his imprimatur on them as well. Have you finished with your new bonnet?”
Orla had procured this extravagance through the mails after Wealtha had admired the style in some fashion magazine. Periodic largesse by post was critical to keeping Wealtha’s spirits up, or so Orla insisted.
“I’m debating the ribbons. Mrs. Veater said she’d have some new ones from York by today, and I wanted to wait to see the new colors.”
If anything could deflect Wealtha from her preoccupation with settlements, it was the extravagance of a new bonnet, the first such acquisition since the winter holidays.
“Take the mare into the village,” Mabel suggested. “It’s a fine morning for a hack, and you might see some embroidery thread that will go well with your habit. We can put a new border on the hems this winter.”
“You can,” Wealtha said, rising. “I refuse to ruin my eyes with that sort of close work. I believe I will take Frigg. She does better with regular exercise, and I have been a negligent owner in that regard.”
Wealtha flounced from the room, and a quiet descended, like the peace when a storm had moved off over the hills.
“She’s not wrong to be concerned,” Orla said, finishing a row. “Swidhelm has been underfoot long enough to have a sense of how the Glen is faring. He ought to be calling on the solicitors, putting the fear of lordly ire in them, and rattling back to Town.”
“And if he intends to live here?”
“He’d best not. Wealtha resents being overshadowed by her titled brother. For as long as he’s a novelty whom she can show off, she’ll tolerate him well enough, but to have him in residence would not serve.”
“He owns the place.” Or he would when Chancery, the lawyers, probably Parliament, and a few of the lower angels finished dithering over Papa Blackstock’s estate.
“And Wealtha is correct again that he should not have inherited the Glen. She is Abernathy Blackstock’s daughter, his sole legitimate issue, and thus she should have inherited.
I know the usual manner of such bequests to a daughter requires trusts and trustees, which Abernathy could easily have organized.
He was careless in his arrangements, and Wealtha is paying the price. ”
Wealtha, Wealtha, Wealtha. Mabel had long since ceded her own place in the household hierarchy, but didn’t Richard deserve some consideration?
“Wealtha is not legitimate,” Mabel said, “is she? The law takes note of such details.” And thus, in the usual course, Wealtha could not displace a legitimate heir. Even a specific bequest or trust would have required a lot of explicit language in Papa Blackstock’s will.
Step-mama put her knitting back into her workbasket.
“The situation is, at best, complicated, and for that, I blame your dear late papa. If he’d kept my confidences, we would have no Lord Swidhelm galloping about the countryside, Wealtha would be an heiress, and you could contentedly weed your garden for all the rest of your days. ”
Surely a weed-free garden counted as the sum of any self-respecting spinster’s ambitions. “Papa Joseph knew of Swidhelm’s existence?”
“In a general sense, and he knew that Marie was quite alive when Abernathy began courting his second wife. We quarreled bitterly about who was owed which truths. When Joseph learned that Abernathy had had Marie declared dead, he finally ceased his fretting. The courts had spoken, and Joseph Fielding would not gainsay them on the strength of a few old letters.”
A note of contempt for Papa Joseph colored that observation, which struck Mabel as hypocritical. Step-mama had wanted Joseph to keep his mouth shut. He’d kept his mouth shut—as far as Orla knew—and for this, she disrespected him?
Mabel had loved her father, partly because he’d been more concerned with principle than personal convenience. If he’d thought it dishonorable to keep secrets from Abernathy Blackstock, he’d have simply spoken his piece to Marie’s husband, and to blazes with Orla’s quibbling.