Chapter 2
Two
Arianna Westbrook had been craning her neck as she walked along the nave of the church, trying to see enough detail of medieval paintings above the windows to guess at the parable each portrayed.
Then bam! She walked into something solid. Someone solid, in fact, for he grunted, “Oof.” She recoiled, and as she did so, tripped over her own boots, but before she could fall, the man scooped her into his arms and gently put her back on her feet.
“Please accept my apologies,” he said, his voice that of a gentleman though he was dressed more casually than the gentlemen she usually met. “I was absorbed in the Prodigal Son up there and not paying attention to my surroundings.”
“It was I,” Arianna admitted. “I was walking along, looking at the paintings and not watching where I was going. I am so sorry.”
“They are quite hard to make out, are they not?” He gestured up toward them. “Quite wonderful to think they are still here, though, after perhaps as much as seven hundred years.”
Arianna was quick to agree. “It is! Only a few survive in the whole country, or so I believe. They were painted directly onto a prepared wall, you know. Not directly onto wet plaster, like a fresco, but onto a dry base. And in a place like this, they used colors readily available to them, which is why we are seeing mainly reds, browns, and yellows.”
“I knew that blue was expensive,” the man commented. “But I do not see green, either.”
“One sometimes sees both, but you are correct,” said Arianna.
“Both blue and green pigments were expensive. Ultramarine from lapis lazuli is—to this day—worth more, ounce for ounce, than gold, and cheaper types of blue pigment still cost more than a local church like this could easily afford. Green was generally cheaper, but still not cheap. Whereas materials to make reds, yellows, blacks, and whites—and all the variants made by mixing them—could be found in the local environment.”
Gracious! He did not need to know all of that! He must be a very polite man, for his eyes had not yet glazed over, but at any moment, he would be making an excuse to leave.
“How incredible that they have lasted so long,” he commented. “I suppose it helps that they would never be in direct sunlight, placed as they are above the windows.”
Thrilled that he had made such an intelligent comment, Arianna could not resist explaining more. “Even so, in most churches around the country, such paintings have been scrubbed off, painted out, paneled over, or otherwise destroyed. These are a real treasure.”
“The innkeeper raved about the rose window,” the man said, his tone disparaging. “It is very nice of its type, I suppose.”
“But in this church, it is just wrong,” Arianna blurted.
The man’s smile was both pleased and admiring. “Exactly! It is Tudor in an otherwise Norman church. Just wrong.”
How unexpected. How marvelous. He understood. He agreed with her!
“I suppose, to be fair, it only matters to people who know how exceptional this survival is,” she mused. “People who worship here are probably proud of the Tudor window.”
“The innkeeper certainly is. He boasted it was a gift to the parish from Elizabeth I after she stopped in Fenwick once while on a royal progress. Apparently, she stayed in the inn and even gave it a Royal warrant.”
Arianna snorted. “Unlikely.”
And the man nodded. Oh, why could Mama not set her matchmaking eye on a man like this!
It wasn’t just that he was intelligent, though Arianna had suffered far too many fools not to know that intelligence was the rarest and, to her, the most attractive of all the qualities on display in Society. She also appreciated that he was tall, broad and attractive.
Not handsome, exactly. He was too rugged to be handsome. But definitely attractive, with sand-colored hair cropped short as if he did not have time to be bothered with it, grey eyes, and skin that was darker on his face and hands than she would have expected in a man with such fair hair.
Did he work outside? Or had he been in the army or the navy during the long war with France (and a few other countries as the occasion arose)? So many eligible young men had gone off to war, and many had never come back, a fact her mother frequently bewailed as damaging to Arianna’s chances.
She gave herself a shake. Why was she thinking like one of those fluff-headed girls she had secretly despised during her time on the marriage mart?
Not every eligible man was interested in marriage.
Indeed, in her experience, such men were so rare that they could have their pick of the ladies on the market.
And, furthermore, this man was probably not at all eligible, or he was already married, as all the good ones were. More’s the pity, said some part of her.
Even Arianna’s obscenely large dowry did not tempt any but the worst of fortune hunters to ignore her stubborn refusal to fit the mold of a fashionable debutante. She absolutely refused to pretend to be frivolous, empty-headed, and willing to dote on any gentleman who paid her attention.
Instead, she was impatient with fashionable idiocies, preferred conversations of substance, and would not treat foolish opinions as if they had merit merely because the person promoting them happened to be male.
“It is unusual,” said the man, “to meet someone who shares my enthusiasm for architecture.”
How surprising. He said “someone” and not “a lady.” And he would have been right either way. Arianna had often been told her interests were not suitable for a lady, but she knew of very few men who shared them.
Five points, she thought.
To amuse herself during the social events to which her mother insisted on dragging her, Arianna often awarded points to the gentlemen she met, adding and removing them according to the man’s conversation, actions, and characteristics.
It was harmless enough. No one ever knew she was doing it, and it saved her from yawning in a man’s face or hurling a cake at his head.
Twenty was the top score she had ever given. That was to a man who was already betrothed to a friend of hers, and most of the points had been awarded for his clear adulation of his beloved. More commonly, gentlemen left an encounter with her unknowingly wearing a negative score.
She had not thought of the points game at all in the past ten minutes, but now she wanted to give him fifteen points immediately, five for treating her like an intelligent human being, five for saying things that were interesting, and five for saying “someone.” Also, another two points for his looks and at least two for his voice, which was a lovely rumble that seemed to vibrate right through her.
Gracious! He had earned nineteen points already, and she did not even know his name!
They were walking past a memorial plaque on which some ancient craftsman had depicted the lord and lady whose blessed repose was the topic of the words incised into the stone.
Arianna, in a sudden fit of whimsy, addressed herself to the lady.
“My dear Lady Huddlestone, I am Miss Arianna Westbrook. May I request your indulgence in presenting this gentleman to me?”
The gentleman did not disappoint her. He bowed to the figure carved into the plaque. “Thomas Medlock, at your service, Lady Huddlestone.”
Arianna pretended to listen to the lady. “Why yes, Lady Huddlestone, I would be delighted.” Then she curtseyed to Mr. Medlock, offering him her hand. “Mr. Medlock, I am pleased to meet you.”
“I am charmed to make your acquaintance, Miss Westbrook,” said Mr. Medlock, bowing over her gloved hand but, very properly, not touching it except with his own gloved hand.
“It is wonderful to meet someone who can converse intelligently about architecture,” Arianna said.
Her honesty and bluntness, according to her mother, were disastrous in social settings, but Arianna did not much care what a lot of social gadflies thought about her, and she did care what she thought about herself.
In this case, though, as soon as the words had left her mouth, she was worried that Mr. Medlock might think her too candid. Yet had he not said something similar?
“I feel the same way,” said Mr. Medlock. “The friends with whom I am travelling mock my interest. As do the rest of my friends, come to that.”
“My mother thinks I must have been swapped in the cradle,” Arianna said. Her mother was her biggest trial. Which meant, come to think of it, that she was blessed compared to many.
Mr. Medlock chuckled. “My sister swears I was put on earth to bedevil her into an early grave. She takes my lack of interest in the life of a London dandy as a personal insult.”
So, he was a gentleman! And wealthy enough to be a London dandy if he were fool enough to see that as an attractive pursuit.
She sighed. “Relatives can be a trial!”
“Neither of them is here, however,” said Mr. Medlock. “We can enjoy the architecture to our hearts’ content. May I say, Miss Westbrook, how nice it is to have congenial company while doing so?”
“You may.” Congenial company! Arianna had been called many things, but never congenial company. She pointed up at the painting above where they stood. “What do you think that one is?”
Mr. Medlock peered at it, his head tilted back. Arianna could make out a human figure with—was it a bowl?
“Is it the sower?” Mr. Medlock asked.
“Oh yes,” said Arianna. “And those dots scattered across the ceiling are not water spots. They are seeds. Well done, Mr. Medlock.”
They continued strolling around the church, commenting on a carving here, a painting there, a memorial plaque somewhere else. Arianna was certain she had never before been so comfortable with a man. Any man.
Somewhere in their conversation, she discovered he was here on business.
He did not say what sort of business, but it was something that required fine weather.
What a pity. Her mother would never tolerate a son-in-law who was in business, though Arianna’s own father had been a highly successful merchant.
And look at her getting so far ahead of herself.
Mr. Medlock was being polite to someone he met when he was whiling away the rainy hours, and she had already built a castle in the air in which to wed the poor man.
Such a waste of time, when she had no idea whether he was married, and every indication from past experience suggested that she was not the sort of girl to prompt romantic feelings in a man!
She was behaving like the silly girls she so despised, fancying herself in love on the basis of a finely shaped calf and pleasant conversation. How ridiculous!