Chapter Two The Man at Her Door
CHAPTER TWO
The Man at Her Door
“The north wall,” Mary Beth said. “Unless you have developed a preference for tea before disasters.”
Ambrose Tavener regarded her for a moment.
It was not a long moment, but it was long enough for Mary Beth to recover from the absurd interruption in her thoughts that had occurred when he entered the room.
He was not handsome in Benedict’s polished way.
Nothing about him appeared polished, though everything appeared deliberate.
His coat was dark wool, cut well enough to show that he could afford better than working clothes and plain enough to suggest he had chosen not to advertise the fact.
Rain had dried in darker patches across one shoulder.
His hands were bare, broad, and scarred along the knuckles.
They were not gentleman’s hands.
Mary Beth found herself noticing them twice.
“I was told the wall came down last night,” he said.
“Thirty feet of it.”
“Anyone injured?”
“No.”
“Any buildings below the slope?”
“Four cottages lie east of it. The tenant road runs between the wall and the cottages. The road is closed.”
“How far are the cottages from the failed section?”
“The nearest is a little over two hundred yards.”
His expression altered very slightly.
“You measured it?”
“I have lived here eleven years.”
“That was not my question.”
Mary Beth’s brows rose.
“No. The estate map did.”
Ambrose nodded once, as though she had supplied a figure rather than challenged him.
“May I see the map?”
“You may see the wall first.”
“I would rather see the drainage plan.”
“I would rather know whether another thirty feet is likely to fall before dark.”
Interest, or something close to it, entered his face.
“Then we should go.”
He turned toward the door.
Mary Beth remained where she was.
Ambrose stopped after two steps and glanced back.
“My steward will meet us outside,” she said.
“Good.”
“I am coming as well.”
His gaze moved down once, not to her body but to the hem of her dark-green day dress.
“No.”
Mary Beth took a moment to make certain she had heard him correctly.
The word had been delivered without heat, apology, or apparently any awareness that men did not often enter Blackthorn Manor and forbid its owner to walk across her own land.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The ground above the break is unstable. I need to inspect it, not spend the afternoon keeping a client out of it.”
“You have known me for approximately ninety seconds, Mr. Tavener, and already you have mistaken me for someone who follows instructions merely because they are given in a deep voice.”
His mouth shifted.
Whatever touched his mouth was not quite a smile.
“I give the same instruction in a high voice when necessary.”
Mary Beth had to make a deliberate effort not to laugh.
“I was on that slope at midnight.”
“That does not improve the slope.”
“No. But it should improve your estimate of whether I understand that mud is slippery.”
He looked at her dress again.
Mary Beth rang the bell.
The butler appeared with suspicious speed.
“My walking boots, please. And the brown coat.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ambrose waited until the door closed.
“You intend to make this difficult.”
“I had understood you were being paid.”
“Not yet.”
“You came all the way from Leeds without agreeing a fee?”
“I came because the telegram said a retaining wall had failed above occupied cottages.”
That answer removed some of her amusement.
“You did not ask what I would pay?”
“I asked whether anyone had been hurt.”
Mary Beth studied him more carefully.
He seemed to notice and did not appear especially pleased by it.
The butler returned with her boots. Mary Beth sat, exchanged indoor shoes for mud-stained leather, and stood again while the servant held the coat. Ambrose said nothing.
When they left the morning room, Mary Beth caught the butler’s expression as he watched Mr. Tavener walk beside her through the front hall.
By supper, she thought, the servants would know he had used the front door, declined tea, contradicted her twice, and survived.
That alone might earn him a place in Blackthorn history.
Outside, the air had sharpened after the rain. Broken clouds moved quickly over the moor, sending light and shadow across the lawns. Ambrose’s assistant had already unloaded a leather instrument case, two measuring staffs, a coil of line, and a canvas roll of tools from the wagon.
Ambrose spoke to him briefly, then joined Mary Beth and her steward at the edge of the drive.
He did not waste time introducing himself again.
“Show me where the water should go.”
The steward pointed north. “There is an old stone channel above the quarry road. It feeds a culvert under the road and carries runoff down to the beck.”
“And where did it go last night?”
“Across the road.”
Ambrose’s attention returned to the channel.
“How old is the channel?”
“Parts may be original to the eighteenth-century work.”
“Repaired when?”
Mary Beth answered. “The visible section was cleared in April. The buried run farther west was invoiced as cleared but appears not to have been touched.”
Ambrose turned his head toward her.
“Appears?”
“I opened the invoices at seven this morning and the ground at eleven.”
“You opened the ground?”
“With a spade. They are not terribly complicated.”
Her steward coughed into his fist.
Ambrose’s expression remained unreadable for another second.
Then he said, “Show me.”
They crossed the lawn and took the old service path toward the north slope.
Mary Beth expected him to walk ahead. Most men did when moving over uncertain ground, partly from habit and partly because it allowed them to feel useful.
Ambrose walked beside the steward instead, asking short questions about the quarry road, the spring repairs, the age of the lower culvert, and the men who had performed the work.
He did not ask Mary Beth anything.
That began to annoy her after approximately three minutes.
“The culvert was rebuilt twenty-two years ago,” she said.
Ambrose glanced toward her.
“I did not ask.”
“No. That is why I am telling you.”
The steward made a sound that might have been a swallowed laugh.
Ambrose stopped at the first bend in the path.
Below them, the failed wall cut a raw wound across the green slope.
Men had cleared most of the loose stone from the lower drain, leaving a heap of broken blocks beside the road.
Timber braces leaned against the surviving sections.
Brown water still moved through the ditch, though far less violently than it had in the night.
Ambrose’s manner changed.
The social irritation disappeared from him so completely that Mary Beth wondered whether she had imagined it.
He crouched near the upper edge, dug two fingers into the wet soil, rubbed it between thumb and forefinger, and examined the slope.
He walked ten yards west, then twenty east. He studied the angle of the wall without touching it, called for the measuring staff, and had his assistant take several readings.
For nearly a quarter of an hour he said nothing to Mary Beth.
She found that she did not mind.
Competence was pleasant to watch.
The realization was inconvenient enough without attaching it to the line of his shoulders beneath a damp coat.
Ambrose descended to the road by the safer eastern path. Mary Beth followed with the steward.
At the bottom, Ambrose picked up one of the fallen stones. Old lime clung to one side. New mortar clung to another.
“This was faced,” he said.
The steward nodded. “That was my conclusion.”
Mary Beth set her hands at her waist. “Explain it to me as though I have not been listening.”
Ambrose turned the stone in his hands.
“The mason repaired what could be seen from the road. He raked out the front joints, reset some of the face stones, and made it look sound.”
“But the pressure comes from behind.”
“Yes.”
“So the wall was dressed for dinner while its insides rotted.”
His eyes lifted to hers.
“That is one way to put it.”
“I know several families built on the same principle.”
This time there was no doubt.
Ambrose smiled.
It was brief, reluctant, and unexpectedly transforming. The severity left his face. For an instant he appeared younger than thirty-six and considerably more dangerous to Mary Beth’s peace of mind.
Then he set the stone down and the smile vanished.
“The wall did not fail because of the mortar,” he said. “That only hid the condition. The water caused this.”
He pointed upward.
“The blocked channel?” Mary Beth asked.
“Partly. I need to trace it before I know how much. If water has been moving beneath the road for years, the bank may be hollow farther along than the collapse shows.”
The steward frowned. “How far?”
“I do not guess for clients.”
Mary Beth almost objected to the word clients as though she had been grouped with lesser creatures, then decided that perhaps being treated like one was exactly what she had wanted.
Ambrose crossed to the surviving wall and tapped the stones with the wooden handle of a tool. The first section returned a hard note. Three yards farther on the sound changed.
He stopped.
“Everyone off the road.”
The steward moved at once. Mary Beth did not, and Ambrose turned back to her.
“Mrs. Blackthorn.”
“I am eight feet from you.”
“And I am the man who knows which sound I just heard.”
There was no arrogance in it now, only certainty born of knowing what he had just heard in the stone.
Mary Beth stepped back.
Ambrose waited until she had reached the upper path before tapping the wall again. A small piece of mortar broke loose and fell into the ditch.
He did not seem surprised.
“We brace another twenty feet before dark,” he said to the steward. “No carts on this road. No foot traffic below the wall. If the rain returns hard, move the nearest cottage family for the night.”
“Is that necessary?”
“I do not know yet.”
Mary Beth answered before the steward could. “Then we move them.”
Ambrose looked up at her.
“The rain may not come.”
“The cottage will still be there tomorrow.”
A pause.
“Yes,” he said. “It will.”
The steward left to organize men and timber.