Chapter 9
St. Didier looked exactly the same as he had when Richard had met him in Mayfair weeks ago. Tidy, at ease, unreadable, despite traveling for hundreds of miles in a bouncing coach over dusty tracks qualifying as roads solely by virtue of euphemism.
“Cook’s lemonade is not to be trusted,” Richard said, “but I can offer you sangria, tea, a good summer ale, or something stronger.”
“Sangria appeals,” St. Didier replied, “and I hope you will also offer me your thoughts on the state of the Glen generally. The place looks to be thriving.”
In the strong midday sun beaming down on the side terrace, St. Didier showed a hint of fatigue about his eyes. Only a hint.
“The Glen has been well managed over the past few years by Miss Amabel Fielding, though everybody acknowledges that the steward is a conscientious sort too. He is, and he takes every word from Miss Fielding’s mouth as agrarian gospel.
The solicitors, however, will have much to answer for when I call on them tomorrow. ”
St. Didier bent to sniff a white rose. “Might I accompany you?”
“For what purpose?”
“I have broad tastes in entertainment. I can also play the part of your vaguely menacing associate if called upon to do so.”
“You’d be my bully boy?” Having been bullied, Richard disliked the concept of professional intimidation. His handling of crooked solicitors had always been a matter of solo combat previously, just as his skirmishes with Mayfair hostesses had been. “I am quite prepared to deal with them on my own.”
Did St. Didier think he lacked that ability?
“I will be your stern witness, then. Always prudent to have one or two of those on hand. Your roses will soon be in their glory.”
And St. Didier had changed the subject before Richard refused him permission to tag along. “Miss Fielding is the de facto head gardener. I, and the other residents of the Glen, owe her much.”
St. Didier slanted a look at Richard. “You are residing here now?”
Richard hardly knew how to answer and was saved an immediate reply by the arrival of the first footman.
“Sangria for our guest, Hew,” Richard said. “And some sandwiches and pastries, if Cook can manage it. Should the ladies return from the village, please inform them Mr. St. Didier and I are enjoying the fresh air on the side terrace.”
“Very good, my lord.” The footman bowed and retreated.
“Hew?” St. Didier brushed a finger over a pink rosebud. “Not John or William or Henry?”
“Why take for a house name the moniker of a dead king when one has a more than adequate name of one’s own?”
“And you know his name, though you’ve been here less than a fortnight. How are you getting on with the ladies?”
For a newly arrived guest, St. Didier was doing a fine impersonation of an inquisitive godmother.
“Let’s have a seat. I prefer the table in the shade.” Richard crossed the flagstones and waited for St. Didier to amble in his wake. Definitely a hint of fatigue in the man’s stride too.
“You ask after the ladies,” Richard said, waiting for his guest to take a seat, then doing likewise.
“Aunt Orla looks well enough, but I have nothing to compare her present appearance to. She keeps mostly to her rooms, which are notably well appointed and pleasant. She does go to divine services, and she joins the household for supper. She has been gracious and welcoming, up to a point.”
“You arguably disinherited Wealtha. Orla is very fond of Wealtha. A certain coolness might be expected.”
“True enough, but Orla isn’t cool, exactly. She’s cordial, provided I do not attempt to pry into the past or bring up my mother’s name.” Richard’s aunt was tolerating him. A disquieting thought.
“You came here expressly intent on investigating the past. If Orla is disobliging, why stay?”
Because the Glen felt like a home and felt increasingly like Richard’s home. Because Amabel Fielding bided at the Glen, and Richard hoped she regarded the estate as her home. Because Orla could not erase the memories of every elder in the shire.
“I am the legal owner of the property,” Richard said.
“As such, I have work to do here, solicitors to sack, crops to plant, hay to bring in. I even have guests to entertain. A note of warning: Make it plain to Wealtha that you eschew blood sports, or she’ll regale you with a lecture on the black grouse that goes on forever. ”
“Spoken like a brother.”
The sandwiches and punch arrived before Richard could confess that he did not feel much fraternal affection for Wealtha. She was pretty, indulged if not spoiled, and a burden to Amabel in ways Richard did not entirely fathom.
“I’m to increase Wealtha’s settlements,” he said, “if I know what’s good for me.” He poured two glasses of cold, fruity wine punch. “I cannot evict her—she is the daughter of the late owner—and that reduces my available options to seeing her married off.”
St. Didier lifted his glass. “Is that a warning?”
“She’d count your teeth first and then acquaint herself with your prospects in detail, provided you passed the initial test. Wealtha can appear featherbrained, but she is very determined on her own ends.”
Though what, exactly, those ends were, Richard had yet to divine. Bonnets had something to do with her aims, and ribbons, and an excellent riding horse. So did ascending to a higher station in life and avoiding any hard work that did not aid that climb.
The sangria was good. Just sweet enough, cool without being shockingly cold, the citrus and the wine blending nicely. Not a hint of ginger.
“If you don’t care for your relations here,” St. Didier said, “and Miss Fielding has the estate in hand, why tarry?”
Richard held out the tray of sandwiches. “Because I am entertaining the notion that Miss Fielding should take me in hand.” St. Didier would have arrived at this topic through indirection and innuendo. He certainly hadn’t endured a forced march northward just to watch Richard harangue the lawyers.
To blazes with dithering. Richard preferred to deal with the honest, if uncomfortable, truth, even if it was none of St. Didier’s ruddy business.
St. Didier took his time selecting three half sandwiches of ham and the local yellow cheese.
“What does Miss Fielding think of your precipitous approach to wooing?”
“The notion is not precipitous on my end, though she is understandably cautious.”
St. Didier sipped his drink, considered the appearance of the glass, and studied the rose border.
Very well. Best get it over with. “Couples in Mayfair,” Richard said, “become engaged after dancing together on three occasions and going out for a couple of rides in an open carriage. Miss Fielding and I have shared many meals, walked and ridden in each other’s company by the hour, and discussed topics proper society considers unfit for polite conversation. ”
St. Didier set down his glass. “Is a beating in order?”
He’d be fast, but he’d not know the dirty pugilistic tricks Richard had learned of necessity.
“Topics such as which bull calf should be left intact, which should be gelded. How many nannies the best billy can service without losing his enthusiasm for the job.”
“A formidable farmer, Miss Fielding.”
“A formidable lady.” Who had been sent to Mayfair without a finishing school preparation, who had been treated ill somehow on that same journey, though, in fairness, most honest people would liken a Season in Mayfair to a social gauntlet rather than a dream come true.
“One assumes your intentions are honorable.” The very casualness of the statement promised pistols at dawn in the absence of an affirmative reply.
“Miss Fielding intends to amuse herself with me. My aspirations, which are, of course, honorable, might not signify.” Richard had tossed away half the night revisiting their post-kiss conversation and was hard put to make sense of it.
Amabel had kissed him enthusiastically. She was not offended by his overtures.
She was receptive to a dalliance, but what, in the parlance of Miss Amabel Fielding, of Obscure Rustication, Yorkshire, was a dalliance?
Was it a procession of giggling inanities and coy glances?
A series of passionate trysts terminated at the time of the lady’s choosing?
Something in between? Did Amabel herself know why she had refused to allow a courtship to even begin?
“You do not strike me as a lady’s plaything,” St. Didier said. “If I might assay an opinion on such a topic.”
“Nor have I ever aspired to that status. I have entertained the notion that the lady might not consider herself worthy of marriage.”
St. Didier chose a profiterole from the epergne in the center of the table. “Tainted by scandal? That sort of thing?”
“She had a brief Season, courtesy of her Fielding relations, and has bided here in the West Riding in professed contentment ever since. She subsists on the estate’s leavings as pin money and has a competence from that side of the family that she’s reserving for her impending old age.”
“She also subsists on determination, if my memory serves. Orla Fielding was initially cool to the notion of setting me on your trail, and Wealtha declared it a complete waste of time and even ghoulish to look for you.”
“And yet, you did look for me and find me.”
“Miss Fielding pointed out to Orla that should you pop out of the hedges two years from now, the scandal would be very great. How would it look if your true aunt, who well knew of your existence, had failed to pursue the location of the rightful heir? Orla and, by association, Wealtha would have appeared greedy, heedless of the law, and underhanded.”
“A serious charge.”
“A felony, when that behavior wears the label fraud upon Chancery. Miss Fielding raised that point in blunt terms, and a-hunting I did go. She also intimated that Marie might have told others you were extant or Joseph Fielding might have peeked at his wife’s correspondence.”
Richard tucked that possibility away for further study. If Fielding had known Marie’s secrets—husbands and wives had been known to share confidences, after all—others might have learned of them too.