Chapter Seven
“THERE’S ANOTHER ONE,” brOOKE said, pointing out the coach window at the ruins of a small castle.
“Many of the smaller ones in Yorkshire were built to protect against incursions from Scotland. Yorkshire was meant to be a stalwart wall that would keep the Scottish armies from reaching the south.”
Brooke glanced at the maid and giggled. “You were listening to my history lessons, weren’t you?”
Alfreda nodded. “I had to. That tutor wasn’t supposed to be teaching you history. Your parents would have fired him if they’d found out. So I guarded the door. You don’t remember tempting him to lose his job with all your questions?”
“Vaguely.”
Looking out the window again, Brooke wondered if this small ruin was on Wolfe land. They should be on it by now unless the Wolfes didn’t actually own much land in Yorkshire.
“I wonder if we’ll be here long enough to see all this heather bloom.” They’d been told it would flower in late summer. “It must be beautiful when it does, there’s so much of it.”
“The Yorkshire moors are quite striking, even without the heather in bloom. But I prefer more heavily forested terrain,” Alfreda replied.
The sky was cloudy this morning, and without the sun the landscape looked a bit bleak and gloomy to Brooke. She wondered if her thoughts were just coloring it so.
“Where the deuce is it?” she said impatiently, still looking out the window on her side of the coach.
Alfreda didn’t need to ask what Brooke was referring to. “On my side.”
Brooke gasped and quickly changed places with the maid, but she sighed dismally when she saw the house she’d been looking for. “I hope that’s not it.”
“I’ll wager it is.”
The facade of the three-story manor house was made of dark gray stone that looked almost black, though that might be because moss or ivy was covering it.
It was hard to tell at this distance. Two corner towers rose above the massive rectangular edifice, giving it the appearance of a castle.
A large tree stood in front of each tower.
Both were in full bloom, obscuring her view of the rest of the manor.
“It looks forlorn, gloomy, forbidding.”
Alfreda laughed at that and stressed, “No, it does not. It would not appear that way to you if the sun would stop hiding from us. It’s going to rain soon. Let’s hope we get inside first.”
“If they let us in.”
“Stop it.” The maid loudly tsked. “If you are turned away at the door, I will spit on it. See how they like my curses added to theirs.”
Brooke couldn’t help laughing. Alfreda wasn’t a witch, but sometimes she liked to pretend she was.
Alfreda swore that centuries ago the t had been removed from her surname Wichway.
It was part of her mystique, which she cultivated with the villagers to keep them in awe of her, warning that she’d prove the t really belonged there if they told anyone where they got their potions.
Brooke spotted something else and exclaimed, “I see hedges behind the house, on this side of it at least, tall enough that I can’t see over them. D’you think he’s got a maze in there? Now that might be fun!”
“I know you were denied many things growing up, but mazes are something you should be glad to have missed out on. You can get lost in them.”
“You know that from experience, do you?”
Alfreda snorted. “Me? Go in a bloody maze? Ha, not in this lifetime I won’t.
But Cora from Tamdon village used to work at an estate in the south that had one.
She and her beau thought it a lark to have their trysts in that maze.
It was so big that no one could hear them yelling for help.
They were lucky it was only days, and not weeks, before they were found. ”
“They should have dropped bread crumbs to leave a trail they could follow on the way out.”
“They did, but Cora’s cat followed them in and ate them all.”
Brooke shook her head. “Was any of that actually true?”
Alfreda didn’t deny or confirm it. “I’m just saying, if you enter a maze, leave a trail, just not an edible one.”
“I’ll remember that, if there’s even one there.”
Brooke leaned back in the seat, beginning to feel anxious again now that their destination was in sight.
She could be meeting her future husband within the hour.
If he was even there. The emissary had obviously assumed he was.
But what if Dominic Wolfe wasn’t at his home in Yorkshire and knew nothing about this marriage yet?
A reprieve for her! That would suit her just fine.
Maybe Lord Wolfe had been warned of what was going to be demanded of him and intended to keep himself unavailable indefinitely to avoid receiving the news.
She might just like living here if he stayed away so she could have the house to herself.
Alfreda nudged her shoulder and nodded toward the other window.
Their coach had gone beyond the manor house and had rounded the last curve in the road, which turned them back toward the house.
Now they could see a large stable at the side of the house and beyond it a fenced-in pasture that stretched as far as the eye could see.
Brooke’s pale green eyes flared wide seeing the small herd of horses grazing in it, some small enough to be foals.
“He might be a horse breeder!” she exclaimed excitedly. “How ironic that he’s already doing the very thing I want to do.”
Alfreda chuckled. “You still have that silly notion of breeding horses someday?”
“Not just any horses, but champion racers, and I most certainly do.”
“But women don’t,” Alfreda said bluntly. “It would be scandalous and you know it.”
“The devil it would. Oh, you mean—no, no, I wouldn’t actually be on hand for the breeding.
I’d have a manager for that, of course. But I’ll own them and make the selections and be involved in the training.
Yes, I most certainly can do all the rest of that.
And I’ll make a very nice income at it once I’m done with family and husbands. ”
“Or you could devote yourself to your children instead.”
“If I ever have any, but who says I can’t do both? I can raise horses and horse breeders!”
Brooke laughed. Lord Wolfe’s liking horses as much as she did was a plus on his side. Two pluses boded well, didn’t it? She was suddenly feeling much better about him and this place where he lived.
“Well, the idea has at least put some color back in your cheeks, and in good time,” Alfreda said. “We are turning into the last stretch of road to the house.”