Chapter Fourteen The Price of Loving Him
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Price of Loving Him
Nine days after Mary Beth told Ambrose Tavener she loved him, the last coping stone went onto the north wall.
It happened at eleven in the morning under a sky washed clean by the rain.
A hammer rang against stone. A horse stamped beside one of the carts.
Water moved cleanly through the widened culvert and away toward the western outlet, where the new trench had already begun to darken the grass in a straight, sensible line.
Mary Beth stood above the rebuilt wall with her hands in the pockets of her coat and tried not to be absurdly sentimental about masonry. The effort lasted perhaps ten seconds.
The wall was taller at the center than it had been before the collapse, thicker at its base, and tied back into the slope with stone that had come from Blackthorn itself.
The cottages below were occupied again. Smoke rose from both chimneys.
The west lane had dried enough for carts to pass without sinking to their axles.
Even the pasture sacrificed for the temporary bypass had been graded and seeded where the ground permitted it.
Ambrose came up the slope carrying a folded sheet of calculations.
“You are frowning at my wall.”
“I am admiring it.”
“You admire aggressively.”
“It is an excellent wall.”
“I shall have that written into the final account.”
He stopped beside her. There were three men within easy sight below them and two more near the culvert.
Since the dinner ten days earlier, Mary Beth had become aware that privacy was less a condition than a decision.
She and Ambrose could stand two feet apart and behave with perfect propriety while every person within half a mile still understood something had changed.
The county had eyes. Apparently it also possessed remarkably efficient legs.
Ambrose handed her the paper.
“Final figures. There will be one small account after the gravel settles, but the main work is done. Quarry stone saved you more than I expected. The culvert cost more.”
Mary Beth read the total. It was not a pleasant number, but it was lower than the estimate she had approved in his carriage-room office weeks ago.
“You have charged me for three fewer days of your own time.”
“Because I am leaving tomorrow.”
The cold seemed to enter at the opening of her coat.
She had known the date. They had discussed it twice at breakfast, once in bed, and once while Ambrose was half dressed and searching for a boot he had somehow kicked beneath her chaise. He had a retaining job outside Wakefield. Ten days, perhaps twelve. He had promised to return after it.
Knowing had done very little to improve the sentence.
“You could have charged through today,” she said.
“I did.”
“Then through tomorrow.”
“For traveling away from Blackthorn? You are a generous client.”
Mary Beth folded the account and tucked it into her pocket.
“I am no longer discussing what I am as a client.”
The teasing ease left Ambrose as he understood where she meant to take the conversation.
Below them, a man called for another length of rope. A cart wheel rolled over loose gravel. The ordinary work of finishing continued as if Mary Beth had not just moved the conversation onto dangerous ground.
“All right,” Ambrose said.
“When you come back from Wakefield, I want you to come back here.”
“I said I would.”
“As my guest.”
His expression sobered at that.
Mary Beth continued before courage could become ceremony. “Not because a drain is failing. Not because a wall needs measuring. Not because I have found another piece of Blackthorn determined to slide downhill.”
“That last possibility remains high.”
“Ambrose.”
“I am listening.”
“Come back because I want you here.”
He studied her face in a way that made lying impossible, though she had no intention of trying.
“In the blue room?”
Mary Beth almost laughed. “You object to the blue room?”
“I have spent a great deal of time leaving it before dawn.”
“Then stop leaving it before dawn.”
The humor went out of him.
Mary Beth felt her pulse in her throat. “I am tired of arranging my own house as though I am committing burglary in it. When you return, you stay as my guest. You dine with me. You come and go through the front door. If you spend the night in my room, we shall still exercise enough sense not to parade it before the servants, but I will not pretend you are merely an engineer whose horse happens to be in my stable.”
Ambrose glanced down the slope, not to avoid her but to take in the men, the wall, the cottages, the road beyond the trees.
“You know what that means.”
“Yes.”
“The dinner was one evening. People can call it eccentricity. This will be different.”
“I know.”
“Benedict warned you.”
“Benedict does not get credit for understanding cruelty simply because he knows how it works.”
A breath left Ambrose that might have been a laugh if his face had not remained so serious.
“Mary Beth, I want to say yes before you finish the sentence.”
“Then do.”
“I also want you to be sure you have counted the cost.”
“I have spent most of my adult life being told the cost of being myself. I am familiar with the arithmetic.”
“This time the bill may not stop with you.”
She had no quick answer.
Ambrose did not soften it. “Blackthorn employs people. You buy from merchants who can refuse credit. Your tenants have daughters in service and sons apprenticed in villages where respectable families care very much whom their people are connected to. I can bear being called a tradesman who climbed into a rich widow’s bed.
I was a tradesman before I met you, and my bed has survived worse descriptions.
But I will not pretend gossip cannot travel through your gates and land on someone with less choice than either of us. ”
Mary Beth turned toward the cottages. One of the doors opened. A woman came out with a basket on her arm, saw Mary Beth above the wall, and raised a hand in greeting.
Mary Beth returned it.
“I know,” she said.
Ambrose gave her time to find one.
“And I still want you to come back.”
He faced her again.
“All right.”
He said it quietly, and Mary Beth had to resist the urge to reach for him with five workmen below them.
Mary Beth wanted to kiss him. Five men, two cottages, and a clear view from the upper road made restraint advisable.
She settled for touching one gloved finger to the back of his hand.
Ambrose turned his palm and caught her finger for half a second.
“Ten days,” he said.
“Nine.”
“The Wakefield owner believes retaining walls obey schedules.”
“Then teach him otherwise.”
“Dangerous woman.”
“You have only just noticed?”
He smiled then, and she carried the expression with her all the way back to the house.
That evening they ate in the morning room without pretending the meal was connected to estimates, culverts, or any other respectable excuse.
Ambrose had changed out of his work clothes. Mary Beth had changed twice before dinner and resented herself for both attempts. In the end she wore a dark green gown he had seen before, which somehow felt more intimate than dressing to astonish him.
The meal itself was ordinary: roast beef, potatoes, greens, and a pudding that collapsed before it reached the table. Ambrose ate two helpings of the failed pudding and informed Mary Beth that structural defects improved flavor.
“You are leaving tomorrow and have chosen your final evening to insult my cook.”
“I am praising adaptability.”
“You called it a structural defect.”
“Professionally.”
Mary Beth laughed. A servant entering with coffee heard enough of it to hide a smile before setting down the tray.
That small, ordinary moment disturbed Mary Beth more than any kiss they had stolen behind a locked door.
She wanted Ambrose to return to precisely this: bad pudding, coffee after dinner, and someone entering the room without forcing him to become a secret.
When they were alone again, Ambrose rested one forearm on the table.
“You heard the servant.”
“Yes.”
“By breakfast half the house will know I am dining here because you want me here.”
“Half the house already knows.”
“Servants knowing and servants being required to pretend ignorance are different arrangements.”
Mary Beth poured coffee. “Do you want me to change my mind?”
“No.”
The answer came so quickly that she set down the pot too hard.
Ambrose reached across the table and steadied the cup she had nearly overturned.
“I want you to understand that I am not noble enough to save you from me,” he said. “If you tell me to come back openly, I will. If you tell me to sleep in your bed, I will make a very serious effort to obey. What I will not do is pretend I have no selfish interest in your courage.”
“Good. I would hate to discover I am conducting this scandal alone.”
“Impossible. I have worked very hard on my part.”
Later, in her rooms, there was no urgency between them.
Ambrose sat on the rug beside the fire with his back against the sofa while Mary Beth unpinned her hair.
She told him which east bedroom redecoration she had postponed after the wall expense.
He told her the Wakefield owner had written three letters asking whether the job could be completed in a week, as though repetition might improve the engineering.
Mary Beth eventually sat beside him on the rug, her shoulder against his.
“When you come back,” she said, “I do not want you inventing work to justify being here.”
“What if I find genuinely alarming brickwork?”
“You may mention it once.”
“Cruel.”
“You may also use the carriage room as an office when you need one. It is warmer than your yard in Leeds and Blackthorn has excellent coffee.”
Ambrose turned his head toward her. “Are you offering me office space?”
“I am offering you somewhere to put your papers so they stop breeding on my dining table.”
“That is practically domestic.”
Mary Beth felt the word settle between them. She did not reject it.
“Perhaps I am experimenting.”
Ambrose kissed her temple.
“Then I volunteer for the study.”