Chapter 14 #2
“I am courting her. She will admit as much in her own good time or send me packing. I am new to the business of courting, so allow me some latitude.” Amabel had allowed him some latitude—a great deal of latitude—and he took heart from that.
The picnic had gone more or less as she had intended.
“Be careful,” St. Didier said, finishing his drink. “Be careful of her good name, be careful of your…”
“Of my?”
“Just be careful. Miss Fielding strikes me as appearing more confident and sophisticated than she is. You could well hurt her, and she, possibly without meaning to, could serve you a few low blows as well.”
“Auntie Leopold’s words of wisdom? You reach these conclusions based on what evidence?”
“I hear things. I see things. Leave it at that. I also saw, by the by, that for an invalid, Orla Fielding appears to have a perfectly healthy appetite.”
The subject was abruptly and blessedly changed. “I agree. She is not pale. She is not thin. She has no palsy, nor is she dropsical. I do wonder what ailment afflicts her.”
“She might have suffered a creeping bout of lack of funds, in which case, she will make a gradual, halting recovery as you return the household budget to good health.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Which Richard would share with Amabel when next they found themselves with enough privacy for such a discussion. “Orla was the lady of this manor, without ever having been married to the lord, but as such, she could have been entertaining grandly.”
“Or entertaining modestly, but regularly. Hosting friends for a rural respite. She is a notable senior member of that coterie unfortunately known as Miss Gundridge’s Gossips. She might have held a small house party on the occasion of Wealtha’s birthday. Hard to do any of that without coin.”
“And easier to blame a lack of social events on poor health than poor finances.” Though how Wealtha would have reveled in the conviviality of a gossipy house party. “The notion that Orla was ailing also sent me north in rather a hurry, and I suspect that might have been intentional on her part.”
“She wanted to flush you out of the London hedges before Wealtha grew any longer in the tooth, perhaps.”
Thoughts of Wealtha were not cheering. She was what polite society called a difficult young woman. To have had a day without her silliness at meals, without her arch looks and pouting silences had made more obvious what a trial she was to a man’s patience.
So pretty to look on, though. Deceptively pretty. “How has Amabel not spanked her step-half-honorary-courtesy cousin into next week?” Richard mused, fetching the decanter. “They could not be less alike.”
“You are the head of the family. If anybody needs a birching, verbal or otherwise, it’s your job to see it done.”
Richard returned to his seat, glad to have St. Didier’s company and certain that telling him as much would send Auntie Leopold galloping for Scotland.
“I would like to thrash the former vicar, Mr. Whidman. I ran into him on my late afternoon ramble and tried to wrest a few reminiscences from him.”
“Without success?”
Richard splashed more brandy into St. Didier’s glass, though truly, the vintage was beneath the notice of a discerning palate.
“Without much success. I was treated to the usual panegyric about Abernathy Blackstock. Pillar of the congregation. Friend to all. Undeserving of the infamy my mother visited upon him. Whidman did allow as how Mama’s settlements were more generous than Orla’s, and Orla might still resent the slight. ”
“Or Tuffington’s fortunes sank yet further, or Orla’s husband wasn’t as greedy as Blackstock.”
“Those alternatives did occur to me. Amabel describes her father as surpassingly honorable.”
Richard fell silent, revisiting the conversations with both Whidman and Granny Wexler. A pair of pontificating old besoms, happy to consign Richard to ignorance about his own dear mama.
“What else is occurring to you, Swidhelm?”
“Nothing specific, but with both Granny Wexler and Vicar Whidman, I suggested that the difference in ages between Mama and Blackstock accounted for her unhappiness with the marriage.”
St. Didier yawned behind his hand. “It wasn’t that great an age difference, was it? Fifteen years?”
“Fourteen. Would you consider taking a bride fourteen years your junior?”
“Certainly not. She’d be in the schoolroom.”
“Exactly. Mama went to housekeeping with Blackstock before she turned eighteen.”
“She was beautiful. Perhaps she was as spoiled as Wealtha.” St. Didier downed the remaining brandy in his glass. “No more for me. All this fresh Yorkshire air is playing havoc with my stamina.”
“Mama was not spoiled. Spoiled women do not try to make a go of it in service.”
“Did she, in fact, make a go of it in service?” St. Didier’s eyes were closed, and he’d crossed his arms over his chest.
Richard shoved the hassock to a place before St. Didier’s chair. “She earned her wages as a housekeeper to an elderly squire in Hampshire, as you well know. She was in service for the entirety of the time I knew her.”
“Do these observations have a point?”
Richard had to ponder the question briefly.
“Both Granny and Vicar were more or less lecturing me about the folly of pawing through the past, about my mother’s bad choices.
When I posited that her youth or Blackstock’s mature years were to blame, both of them told me I was wrong.
The age difference had nothing to do with the marriage failing. ”
“You thus infer that something else is to blame. Something they both know but were unwilling to share.”
“Precisely. Mama had a reason for choosing to create a scandal, and I am determined to find it.”
St. Didier opened his eyes. “You might regret that determination. Orla, the former vicar, and this Granny person have all dissuaded you from prying.”
“If it’s my own past, does curiosity count as prying?”
“Sophistry is beyond me at this hour. Rising from this chair might be beyond me as well.”
“Too much raspberry compote.” Richard stood and tossed the blanket from the back of his chair into St. Didier’s lap. “At least take your boots off so they don’t get baked by the fire’s heat. I’ll see you in the morning.”
St. Didier arranged the blanket. “I might be leaving soon.”
“Must you?”
“Not yet. Soon. The press of what passes for my business. Will you give up your quest to unearth the details of your mother’s abandonment of her vows?”
Richard’s first impulse was to say he most certainly would not. “I will discuss it with Amabel. She is sensible in the extreme and knows the local terrain better than I ever could.”
“Amabel. Of course you will discuss it with her, probably at another all-day picnic.”
All-day picnicking with Amabel. What a thought. “Good night. St. Didier.” Richard left his guest muttering about raspberries and the ruddy fresh air.
The hour was not too late to have a short chat with Amabel, but Richard decided to leave that conversation for the following day.
Some fool had decreed that nobody need rush, despite all temptation to the contrary.
Richard was everywhere Mabel went. If she began her morning stopping by the village sweet shop, he was across the green, loitering with the other fellows gossiping in the blacksmith’s yard.
If she popped into the housekeeper’s parlor when she returned to the Glen, intent on discussing menus with Cook, Richard’s baritone drifted up from the nearly empty wine cellar.
He’d been absent from lunch—convening with the steward regarding the new plows—but he’d lurked in Mabel’s thoughts as she’d endured Wealtha’s chattering and Orla’s murmured replies.
Since yesterday’s picnic, Richard had refused to leave Mabel’s imagination, causing her to smile at nothing and turn her face to the sun for no reason.
And, of course, when she sought the solitude of the back garden—her last, best refuge—there he was on the bench nearest the fountain, a ledger open in his lap.
Had he known she’d include a spot of pruning and tidying up as a respite from the afternoon’s more tedious chores? Was he possibly waiting for her?
Mabel accidently yanked up a stalk of healthy iris, replanted it with a silent apology, and gave up attempting to be productive. She rose and approached the bench.
“Rescue me,” Richard said, closing the ledger. “I am trying to get a picture of the Glen as it was during Blackstock’s tenure, and the numbers aren’t making sense.”
Mabel took the place beside him on the sun-warmed bench—in view of the whole household, thank you very much, Step-mama. She pulled off her gloves and tossed them into the ash wood trug that held her secateurs and trowel.
“You hate it when numbers don’t make sense.” Mabel was none too fond of a sloppy ledger either. “I’m the same way about weeds in my garden. I did not plant them. Why do they presume to grow among my flowers when they could put down roots anywhere else in Yorkshire?”
“Anywhere else in the whole of Britain. Vexatious blighters. Blackstock, or his steward, was a conscientious bookkeeper, until he wasn’t.
Regular large sums were spent on I know not what.
Then the next thirty entries are complete.
Everything annotated, dated, and explained, then another mystery expense.
How dare Blackstock leave me guessing when he might have simply jotted down, ‘Thirty pounds—refurbished traveling coach’? ”
“Abernathy Blackstock had at least one flaw, then. You must derive some satisfaction from that.” Mabel tucked her fingers under her thigh rather than allow herself to touch Richard’s sleeve or, worse, take his hand.
“Blackstock’s imperfection is some consolation, you’re right, but if a fellow must leave an entry incomplete, then he ought to lapse on the small matters. A two-pound tithe—though I realize two pounds is a grand sum to most—or a few shillings for a vale.”
The accounts truly annoyed him, which Mabel would not have anticipated, though thirty pounds was far from a trifling expense.
“Do you suppose your mother left Abernathy because he was an indifferent bookkeeper?”