Chapter 18
“Would you care to join us, Aunt Orla?”
Mabel overheard Richard’s question as she approached the open door to the breakfast parlor.
“I would very much like to,” Orla replied, “but my stamina isn’t what it used to be. I’m told Swidhelm Abbey is all but a ruin. Perhaps Wealtha ought to go with you. The Abbey is part of her birthright, in truth, and—”
And nothing. Mabel sailed into the breakfast parlor, feeling very much on her mettle.
“Good morning, Step-mama. You are looking exceptionally well.” Also very odd, sitting at Richard’s right hand, which had become Mabel’s preferred seat.
Orla usually sat at the foot of the table when she joined them for supper.
“Mabel, good day. I was about to tell his lordship that we have need of you here at the Glen for the nonce. Wealtha’s new dresses do not sew themselves, and the assembly is just around the corner.”
“I must insist on having Amabel’s company,” Richard said, spreading pear preserves on his toast. “She is best placed to evaluate the state of the Abbey. Hers is the sole expert eye I can call upon, while half the women in the village qualify as competent seamstresses. Recruit a few of them. I’m sure they can use the coin, and the dress will be just as pretty and more thoroughly admired for being a community effort. ”
A visit to the Abbey had not been on Mabel’s schedule, but then, neither had pouring her heart out to Richard, drifting off in his arms, and waking with a sense of new and wondrous possibilities.
She recollected Richard bundling her into her nightgown and tucking covers around her shoulders, but such had been her exhaustion that the details were sweetly, pleasantly vague. She wasn’t to lose him, though. That much remained clear.
She had very nearly lost herself, though.
“You are enjoying a good appetite this morning,” Orla remarked when Mabel took the place opposite her and tucked into a full plate of eggs, ham, and toast.
“The fine weather does that for me,” Mabel said, “and the knowledge that my day will be spent in excellent company. Mrs. Tait will know who the best seamstresses are.”
Orla peered into the bottom of her tea cup. “But you always sew Wealtha’s dresses, and she will object to relying on other talents with the assembly so near.”
“You always take a breakfast tray in your rooms,” Richard observed, “but we have a happier start to our day because you have varied your routine. Wealtha can learn to adapt to minor changes. Amabel, I’ll alert the coachman and have Cook pack us a hamper. Shall we depart in, say, half an hour?”
She appropriated the nearly empty jar of pear preserves. “That will suit. Bring a greatcoat or cloak, my lord. This fine morning could become a sopping afternoon.”
“Forewarned, Miss Fielding.” He rose, bowed, and helped himself to a raspberry tart from the sideboard on his way out the door.
Richard was up to something. Mabel would learn the particulars within the hour. Orla was up to something as well, showing up at breakfast and attempting to thwart Richard’s authority.
“Mabel, what manner of scheme are you pursuing, hauling his lordship over hill and dale simply to view a wreck of a manor house that he need never lay eyes on?”
I am not the schemer here. “Richard has insisted on this outing, ma’am, as you yourself have heard, and that wreck is his responsibility. We know the solicitors dealt badly with the Glen. Just imagine the liberties they took with the Abbey.”
Orla poured herself more tea. “You will forbid his lordship from dumping a fortune into trying to rescue a moldering pile. Wealtha needs that money for her settlements, and I will thank you to remind him of his obligations in that regard.”
I no longer take orders from you. “Might I have the butter dish, ma’am?”
Orla passed it over. “I’ll have the honeypot, Mabel.”
The honey sat nearly at Orla’s elbow. Mabel went about buttering her toast. “Wealtha is welcome to come with us to see the Abbey.” Richard would manage that imposition with good grace, though Wealtha was the last person to regard a carriage ride through the countryside as a worthy use of her day.
“If the Abbey wasn’t so far, I might join you myself, but Wealtha has obligations here at the Glen.
If you must shirk your regular duties by larking about with the viscount, then somebody will have to manage the women who will finally start to work on Wealtha’s new dress.
My energies reliably fade by late morning, which means Wealtha will have to contend with the results of your absence. ”
“She’s good at contending, in her way. We all have developed that ability of necessity.”
“See that you contend with the scandal you are courting, Mabel. I am loath to sound unkind, but it’s plain to all that you and his lordship are not related by blood or in law.
A journey to the Abbey will cast you into his company for two hours in each direction, and rural minds can be narrow.
If you continue to allow him familiarities, people will talk. ”
Of course they would, particularly if Orla publicly lamented such familiarities with a convincingly disappointed shake of her head.
“He and I dwell under the same roof, we sit in the same pew at services, and we are connected through family even if we are unrelated. Our neighbors are not so narrow-minded or spiteful that they will manufacture wrongdoing where none exists. The omelet has to be one of the best Cook has made in ages.”
The consternation on Orla’s face was also satisfying in its way.
“I have only your best interests in mind, Mabel. I have had other occasions to urge you to exercise caution and be mindful of your place. You ignored me then and suffered significant humiliation a result. I apologize for such blunt speaking, but you once again appear determined on a foolish course.”
Blunt speaking with the door wide open, of course.
“Apology accepted. As far as I know, my course will take me to the Abbey and back before supper. I do not foresee great foolishness along that route.” Mabel finished her eggs and her tea and made further inroads on her ham and toast.
Breakfast with a side of self-respect was a much better meal than one with self-doubt on the menu. Richard—reasoning with her, arguing with her, cuddling with her—was largely responsible for the change.
“That is the most unrepentant smile I have ever seen on you, Mabel. I vow this contrary mood of yours bodes ill. I know of what I speak.”
“I am to spend my day on estate business, ma’am, the same as I always do, and I will conduct that business with the lord of the manor at my side, as I have on many other occasions.
Why you insist on painting doom and ruin into that prosaic picture I do not know, nor do I find it a helpful aid to digestion. More tea?”
“No.” Orla balled up her table napkin, then refolded it and smoothed it beside her plate.
“No, thank you, rather. Exerting myself to attempt a breakfast en famille was clearly asking too much. I doubt you will see me at supper, so taxing has this exchange been. You get your stubbornness from your father, and little good it did him.”
She rose and left, her air that of a widow summoning all her strength to leave divine services without a lapse in dignity.
To insult Papa Joseph had been a desperate tactic, one Orla reserved for when her usual strategies—false pity, false regret, false concern for Mabel’s future—failed to silence one of Mabel’s rare rebellions.
“Except this isn’t a rebellion,” Mabel informed the honeypot. “This is me, and I can own my mistakes and try to learn from them.”
She was still smiling unrepentantly when she met Richard at the porte cochere twenty minutes later.
“Sorry to abandon you at breakfast,” Richard said. “I had had enough of Orla’s nonsense, and I wanted us to get an early start on our errand. I trust you finished your meal in peace?”
“Of a sort. Orla had to warn me that my reputation will not stand the strain of a visit to the Abbey in your company, and a closed carriage is asking for ruinous gossip, and my father—the dearest man who ever read a child a bedtime story—was a trial to her nerves.”
“She said all that?”
“She sighed it, implied, alluded to it. I do believe she has retreated to regroup. We are not likely to see her at supper.”
“Well done. The day is too pretty to be spoiled by her machinations.” He smiled, a secret, confidential little expression of shared merriment that was mostly in his eyes. “You do look lovely this morning, Miss Fielding.”
“It’s worse than that, you handsome devil,” Mabel replied. “I feel lovely. There is no accounting for my high spirits, though present company could have something to answer for.”
“Likewise, I’m sure. I hesitate to tell you, but we might not spend much time at the Abbey.”
Mabel entertained the notion they could be heading for Scotland. If so, she would ask Richard for fifteen minutes to pack a valise and hope for good weather and good teams.
“And here I was looking forward to counting all the household linens.”
The humor in his eyes changed to tenderness. “I’ll explain when we’re on our way. I promise you a linen-counting expedition soon, but for present purposes, I had something far less engaging in mind.”
Drat the luck. The coach pulled up, four matched bays in the traces. “This team is from the livery?”
“I bought them in York. We’ll need a relief horse or two, and bays are plentiful.” He handed Mable up, then joined her on the forward-facing seat.
“Are you kidnapping me?” she asked as the coach jostled slightly at the weight of a hamper being secured to the boot.
Richard thumped on the roof, and the carriage rolled forward. “I am taking you to meet the Fielding family solicitors. I sent them a message last night, and they should be expecting us. I came across the name of the firm among Blackstock’s ledgers and journals.”
Mabel gave up trying to untie her bonnet ribbons. “Papa Joseph’s lawyers?”