Chapter 16
“Your mother was the only Tuffington who had a smile for anybody,” Dingle Fothergill said.
He was a tidied-up version of his bibulous brother Fergus. Dingle’s beard was trimmed, his country-squire attire had been tailored to his lanky form, and his cravat was clean if a bit wrinkled.
Richard had sought an excuse to ramble after putting up with Mrs. Johnson’s twittering and cooing and Wealtha’s lowered lashes and coy smiles. Magnus Johnson was a man of apparent fortitude. He’d sipped his tea and replied genially, all the while ignoring Wealtha’s flirtations.
Mabel had poured out with relaxed dignity. Richard hadn’t known whether to laugh or run howling for the door as Mrs. Johnson had prosed on and on about her position as chair of the assembly committee.
A stroll to the mill pond had been in order, and lo, Dingle Fothergill had been of the same mind. Providence or good luck, or the probabilities of life in a small village.
“Half the village was in love with Marie Tuffington,” Dingle went on, ambling at Richard’s side. “Your mama was sweet. Not a vain bone in her body, despite her fine looks. Mind if I have a nip?”
He produced a flask that glinted in the late afternoon sunshine.
“Of course I don’t mind. What of Orla?” Richard asked. “Was she well regarded?”
“Let’s sit, shall we?” Fothergill gestured with a honey-colored oak walking stick lathe-turned into a spiral pattern. “I am in that phase of life where I mustn’t overdo, or my hip makes me regret my excesses, and I mustn’t be too sedentary, or other departments register complaints.”
For all that, Dingle Fothergill appeared spry, content, and well-spoken. His accent was local without being unintelligible, and he moved at a steady, balanced pace.
Richard took the bench, recalling the last time he and Mabel had done likewise. A lifetime ago and also mere days in the past.
“I cannot,” Richard said, “for the life of me, understand why my mother, a sensible, intelligent person, would abandon a marriage to a fellow as estimable as Abernathy Blackstock. He was quite well set up, hardly ancient, and universally liked.”
Dingle lowered himself to the bench, putting his right leg out straight, bending the left at the knee. “I didn’t care for the man.”
A minority opinion, at last. “Whyever not?”
“Too desperate for approval, as if he were running for the board of aldermen, though he wasn’t, in fact, interested in that office.
Like the young lady who is always laughing.
She might turn heads at first, then she becomes a tiresome fixture at any gathering she attends.
Blackstock was so relentlessly genial, his good cheer rang hollow to me.
Then too, his domestics never lasted long, not the women, not the men.
They came from agencies in York, and within a few months, back to the agencies they would go. ”
Richard thought of the odd entries in Blackstock’s ledgers. “Could they have blackmailed him over something?” A drinking problem? An ongoing affair with an unsuitable lady?
“I doubt it. A parlormaid faces significant difficulties if her employer won’t write her a character. They simply didn’t care to continue in his employment.”
“Did that change when Marie married him?”
Dingle stroked his beard. “I don’t recall, my lord.
I only know what I observed. My brother’s disagreeable nature has made the Fothergills somewhat unpopular hereabouts.
We are received only when necessary—Christmas open houses, a hunt ball, that sort of thing.
I am content with my books and correspondence, and I foster what good relations with my neighbors I can.
I understand that Fergus is the problem, and I don’t make an issue of it. ”
Half exile. Richard was all too familiar with the condition. He knew, too, that one could observe a great deal from society’s periphery.
“What did you make of Blackstock’s decision to court Marie? He’d been a bachelor for years, and then he chose her. Why?”
“He seemed smitten. We all thought Orla had set her cap for him, young as she was, but he apparently noticed Marie when he paid his neighborly calls at The Oaks. She was worth noticing, not merely for her looks. She had a blithe spirit, and that couldn’t help but appeal to a man like Blackstock.”
Richard had apparently found the one person in the whole shire who had not been charmed by Abernathy Blackstock.
“Can you be more specific? Why would the soul of geniality seek a wife with a blithe spirit?” And what had happened to that spirit after Marie had spoken her vows?
“You will think me fanciful, my lord, an old dodderer who spends too much time with his nose in a book, but your mother’s joy was genuine.
She loved this place. Loved its beauty and fierceness.
She loved her cranky old papa and her petulant little sister.
Her good-heartedness was honest. My sense—fanciful, I know—is that Abernathy’s good-heartedness was counterfeit.
Pinchbeck and paste, compared to Marie’s sparkling warmth.
He had to possess the genuine article, and that meant marrying her. ”
What an extraordinary, interesting theory. “Possess?”
“Wives are chattel, or the next thing to it under what passes for the law of the land, my lord. Children occupy the same status. Their legal identities are subsumed under the personhood of the husband and father. I find the notion of taking so much responsibility for an adult, thinking female daunting, myself. Perhaps in centuries past, women were more biddable, but that is hardly a cheering prospect either.”
“And you think Abernathy Blackstock wanted dominion and control over the vivacious person of Marie Tuffington?”
“She wasn’t so vivacious after a year of marriage, though her basic warmth was unabated.
She and Blackstock did little entertaining, in fact.
One keeps track of events to which one is not invited, I am embarrassed to admit.
Marie called on her neighbors, and they reciprocated, but even that sort of socializing trickled away after a year or so. ”
“That doesn’t sound like Mama. To the last, she was interested in other people and concerned for them.
” Even as she’d grown frail, Mama had fretted over whether the tweeny had seen past the footman’s ribald teasing.
Was the squire taking his nightly posset the same as usual?
Had anyone remembered to let the cat in on a frigid night?
“When the banns were cried,” Fothergill said, propping his hands on the owl carved from the head of his walking stick, “I felt a sense of unease. I am sure my unease was shared by others, but what can one say?”
Dragonflies danced over the water in the afternoon sunbeams. A rustle farther down the bank suggested some small creature traveling to the water for a drink.
A lovely, peaceful scene, though Richard’s thoughts were in riot.
“Was your unease like that of somebody who watches a friend buy a riding horse that is far too spirited for the friend’s abilities? You cannot counsel against the sale without jeopardizing the friendship.”
Another sip of tipple. “Something very like that, my lord. No point offering advice that might be mistaken for unkind judgment.”
“Was Blackstock perhaps a sot?”
“The absence of children resulting from the union sent my speculation in another direction. He might have been disappointing as a husband, if you take my meaning.”
Would Mama have left a man simply because he lacked amorous ability? Richard thought not, but very few nineteen-year-olds were the personification of rational judgment.
“Who might know more about the situation?” Richard asked.
Fothergill snorted. “Orla, of course, but she’s made it known the past is painful to her and not to be discussed. It’s not her past, for pity’s sake. Abernathy married Marie, not Orla. Marie was a better sister to Orla than she deserved, in my humble opinion.”
“You don’t care for my aunt?”
Fothergill banged the cork into the top of his flask and tucked it into a breast pocket.
“I’m sure you hold your aunt in fond esteem, my lord, so please disregard my uncharitable sentiments.
We can agree I am old and crotchety, though not as crotchety as my dear brother.
Orla Tuffington Fielding has always put on airs, and when Wealtha’s mama died, Orla swanned about at the Glen like she owned the place.
She all but plucked Abernathy’s daughter from his loving arms. That Abernathy allowed Orla to meddle to such a degree still astonishes me.
He doted on that girl, perhaps a bit too much. ”
A lot too much. “Orla seems to dote on her, too.”
Fothergill put his stick between his knees and scooted forward.
“Orla dotes on Orla.” He levered to his feet by balancing on the walking stick and shoving himself upward.
“She wasn’t so bad before she was sent off to that finishing school.
Since then, she’s always had the finest fashion in the churchyard.
Her gloves, bonnet, and reticule invariably match, and those scents she wears weren’t decocted in the Glen’s still room.
Her set of pearls is the envy of the local ladies.
You’d think she was royalty come to the shires. ”
“You truly don’t care for her?” Richard wasn’t sure he did either.
“I do not. Had she invited Fergus and me to the Glen even once for tea, or let me escort her on the opening promenade at an assembly, Fergus would not be regarded as such a reprobate, and our situation might be more tolerable for him. His great sin is to sit in the snug at the Rooster and drown his sorrows of a night. He isn’t evil, he has committed no crime, and he provides the Rooster with consistent custom. ”