Chapter 12
Mabel dearly hoped that Richard would not require much seducing, for she had no notion how to go about such an undertaking now that an ideal moment approached.
“How did your discussion with Granny Wexler go?” she asked as she and Richard left the side garden for the park.
“In polite little thee-thou-thy-thine circles,” Richard said. “She advised me to look to the future, to interrogate my aunt, and to send along a billy goat as soon as maybe.”
“You wanted to shake her.”
“Not her, but her bowl of pious little peas was tempting. What harm could it possibly do anybody to tell me about my mother’s earliest adult years?”
“Orla apparently doesn’t want that topic discussed.” Neither, at the moment, did Mabel. Marie Blackstock’s unhappy marriage had to be the least seductive subject imaginable. “I hope you’re hungry.”
“I am, as it happens.”
“The path to the right leads to the orchard through the yearling pasture,” Mabel said as they approached the trees of the home wood. “The one to the left will take us to the fishing cottage.” Which would Richard find more romantic?
“I have yet to lay eyes on the fishing cottage,” he said, “though I am no sort of angler.”
“You haven’t the patience for it?”
“I haven’t the ruthlessness. To hook a fellow in the mouth and haul him gasping to his death…
Then he’s lying on your supper plate, the same how-dare-you expression on his little fishy face.
I had nightmares about that as a boy. Vicar thought he’d give his scholars a holiday one fine summer day, and down to the stream we went.
The other boys thought it capital good fun. ”
“While you’ve avoided fish ever since?” What a tenderhearted child he’d been.
“I have. Cook served fish regularly prior to that, and I well knew what I was eating, but once I’d seen the whole process, from death to dinnertime, my perspective changed. Now you will tell me that this hamper is full of smoked trout sandwiches.”
“Ham sandwiches, actually. Also cherry tarts and a bottle of cherry cider.”
“I do eat fish, just not the kind that stare at me as I pick up my knife. Granny’s goat regarded me the same way. Part disdain, part dismay.”
The woods at midday were blessedly quiet and shady, the path well worn. A squirrel chattered overhead in the canopy, and Mabel wished she and Richard were going home after a mundane outing to the village. Home to a cottage set beneath the trees, not to the grand edifice of Shepherd’s Glen.
“You’re quiet,” Richard said. “I apologize for a lack of witty conversation. The woods are lovely.”
“Peaceful,” Mabel said. “I like quiet. If you started spouting on-dits and have-you-heards, I would be disappointed.”
He caught her hand in his and kept walking.
“We have discussed sheep breeds, drainage, which walls need mending, and which tenants are good farmers. You have patiently explained to me how the household ledgers work, reported knowledgeably on the neighbors, and ridden each and every bridle path within the Glen’s metes and bounds with me.
You never talk about your time in London. ”
Truly, the list of unseductive topics was endless.
“I came, I saw, I did not conquer, to badly paraphrase Julius Caesar. I was a poor fit with polite society, and this became readily apparent to all save my dear great-aunt Fielding. She had married well, and felt it her duty to introduce what goddaughters, nieces, and great-nieces she could to the wonders of the capital.”
“She tried to marry you off?”
Richard had seen Mayfair firsthand, studied it, and knew its hedges and thickets as well as Mabel knew Shepherd’s Glen.
Go carefully. “My great-aunt hoped I’d find a suitable match, but we both knew that was unlikely. Mostly, she was trying to show me life beyond Yorkshire, and for that, I will always be grateful.”
“I’m sorry you were disappointed,” Richard said. “We are to profess enchantment when first we set foot at Almack’s, or see the sunrise over Hyde Park’s maples, but I spent most of my university years missing Hampshire, and the years thereafter…”
They’d reached the portion of the path that ran along the stream. “Yes?”
“I was as badly behaved as a young man can be without finding himself on remittance.”
“Wagering, drunkenness, and licentiousness?”
“One mistress at a time, but yes. Exceeding my quarterly allowance, keeping bad company just to show I could. Your experience reminds me that I might have been cavalier toward some young ladies while I was being so reprehensible.”
Mabel disliked the sound of that. “Cavalier how?”
“Flirted a little too hard, stole a kiss or two, made plans I did not keep, claiming the press of business had intruded when, in fact, I’d been sleeping off a bad head.”
“Did you enter wagers into the betting books that reflected poorly on a young lady of good repute?”
He regarded her curiously. “Of course not.”
“Did you force your attentions on the unwilling or undecided?”
“I cannot imagine… No, I did not. I hope I could not. Ever.”
“Did you pay your debts?”
“Always. I had no wish to enjoy the hospitality of the sponging house and no confidence His Grace of Chanderton would spring me from its clutches.”
The fishing cottage came into view, a two-story fieldstone edifice that boasted a wide back terrace extending over a bend in the stream. Yellow irises were blooming in profusion along the foundation, and a rose vining up a trellis at the base of the terrace steps was heavy with buds.
“You want to prune that climbing rose,” Richard said, setting the hamper down. “I hope you will let it bloom its rosy heart out first.”
“The blooms are red, and they look magnificent against the gray stone. I have always hoped that I might have this place as my dower retreat, though I will, in all likelihood, be consigned to waiting on Wealtha at the dower house proper.”
Another curious glance. “You have done nothing to deserve such a fate. Where shall we eat?”
“Will the back terrace do?”
“Wonderfully, though I would like to see the inside too.”
“Of course.” The inside had three bedrooms, all of them recently dusted.
Perhaps the day might go as planned after all.
“The key is kept here, though just about any key will fit the locks, they are so old. Some sort of dwelling has occupied this spot for hundreds of years. Mr. Fothergill claims the stone hut on this site was the shepherd’s shelter that gave the Glen its name. ”
“Old Fergus Fothergill?”
“His younger brother, Dingle Fothergill, who is nonetheless quite venerable. Dingle is something of a scholar of the shire and Yorkshire lore generally. He has a prodigious memory. Fergus thinks himself a raconteur, but he’s mostly just a sot.”
Bother the Fothergills and their tales. How exactly did one start a seduction?
When? Before the meal? After? During? Mabel’s own experience being seduced was of no use whatsoever.
No closed carriage was available, and that occasion had turned out to be less than romantic for at least one of the parties.
“Come,” Mabel said, preceding Richard up the steps. “I’ll show you the cottage, modest though it is.” She retrieved the key from under the boot scrape while Richard set the hamper in a shady corner of the terrace.
“The place needs more flowers,” he said. “Potted vinca or salvia or lavender.”
“I can have the gardeners see to it, if you like.”
“Suit yourself, Amabel. You will know better than anybody what will grow well and look cheerful.”
His habit of handing out compliments was unsettling. She twisted the key in the lock—which needed oiling—and left the door open behind her. The scent wasn’t musty, but the air was notably cooler than the out of doors.
Richard followed without closing the door. “Was this room the original structure, do you suppose?”
The ceiling was about ten feet high, the exposed beams sable with age and smoke.
The hearth took up half the outer wall, the fieldstone contrasting with whitewashed plaster.
The room had two windows looking out over the terrace and a flagstone floor.
The furniture reposed under white Holland covers.
“A shame such a sturdy dwelling goes unused,” Richard said. “You are sworn to secrecy, but this place is probably more suited to my tastes than the great, sprawling grandeur of the manor house.”
“Mine, too, though the manor house is impressive.” To kiss him here and now, to kiss him in a bedroom? “The layout is simple, with a dining room and study-cum-parlor on this floor, bedrooms upstairs.”
“Kitchens and pantries below?”
“With modest servant quarters and cellars. The cottage is compact, but complete.”
They passed by the front entrance—more flagstone and exposed beams, though the front windows were mullioned for privacy.
After a peek at the dining room and the study—no books—Mabel seized her courage with both hands and took the steps leading upward rather than show Richard the lowest floor of the house.
“Construction seems sound,” he said, hand on the oak banister. “You’ve made sure the place has been maintained.”
The upstairs corridor was narrower than its counterpart on the ground floor.
“I take on the dusting myself. Nobody bothers me when I claim to be here with my rags and broom. The housekeeper well knows what I’m about and abets my schemes.
For the dower house, she sends maids along to help, but here… ”
“You have the place to yourself.”
The corridor was dim, illuminated only by windows at either end, a sort of parlor-at-large space in one corner.
Was a kiss in the shadows a better place to start than a kiss under the sun? Mabel was not, in truth, feeling particularly romantic, but she would have few opportunities when Wealtha was resting for a whole day and Orla content to keep to her rooms.
“Smallish,” Richard said of the first bedroom. The mattress had been rolled up and covered in sacking, the bed hangings taken down. A carpet was similarly stored in a roll beneath the bed slats. “But quite cozy.”