Chapter Fourteen The Price of Loving Him #2
They went to bed later without needing to prove anything.
Mary Beth woke once before dawn with Ambrose asleep on his stomach, one arm thrown across the empty half of the pillow as though even unconscious he expected her to be there.
She lay awake long enough to memorize the ridiculous tenderness of it, then pushed his shoulder until he stopped stealing the blanket.
“Tyrant,” he muttered without opening his eyes.
“Tradesman.”
He laughed into the pillow.
Two letters arrived with breakfast.
It was from the hostess of the musicale Mary Beth had already decided not to attend. The writer regretted that an unexpected number of acceptances had made the drawing room uncomfortably crowded, and therefore the invitation must be withdrawn from several guests who had not yet replied.
Mary Beth read it twice.
She had not replied because she had never intended to go.
She put the letter into the wastebasket and finished her coffee.
The second was from the county hospital committee.
The secretary thanked Mrs. Blackthorn for her generous willingness to provide a carriage for women from the western villages. Upon reconsideration, alternative transportation had been arranged. Her assistance would no longer be necessary at present.
At present was underlined by nobody and emphasized by everyone.
Mary Beth set the page beside her plate.
Ambrose, who was eating his last breakfast at Blackthorn before leaving for Wakefield, reached for the coffee.
“Hospital?”
“They have developed a miraculous surplus of carriages.”
“Convenient.”
“Remarkably.”
“Do you want me to say what I think?”
“Only if it is more interesting than what I think.”
“It is probably less printable.”
Mary Beth pushed the letter across the table.
Ambrose read it. His jaw tightened at one corner.
“This began before we changed anything at Blackthorn.”
“Yes.”
“The dinner.”
“Probably.”
“And Benedict?”
Mary Beth buttered toast. “Possibly.”
“That does not trouble you?”
“It troubles me that I cannot prove it. I refuse to give him the satisfaction of becoming omnipotent merely because he is well connected.”
Ambrose put the letter down.
“You are frighteningly sensible before nine in the morning.”
“I shall become irrational after coffee.”
“Good. I was beginning to feel unnecessary.”
She smiled, but the hospital letter remained on the table between them.
Ambrose left at ten.
Mary Beth stood on the front steps while his case was strapped behind the saddle and one of the stable hands brought his horse around.
He had refused the carriage because the Wakefield site lay beyond a station where his foreman would meet him with transport.
He wore the dark coat in which he had first entered Blackthorn, though it now seemed absurd that she had once mistaken its plainness for the whole of him.
“Nine days,” she said.
“Ten.”
“Nine.”
“If I return in nine, I expect admiration.”
“You have had quite enough of that.”
He put one boot in the stirrup, then stopped.
There were servants within sight. Mary Beth knew it. Ambrose knew it.
He came back to her instead.
The kiss was brief, entirely proper by the standards of lovers who had spent the night together, and completely improper by every standard that governed a widow on her own front steps.
Mary Beth heard someone inside the hall go very quiet.
Ambrose drew back.
“Still want me to use the front door?”
“Especially now.”
He mounted and rode away.
By Wednesday the York merchant who had recently restored Blackthorn’s favorable terms sent a new letter.
The merchant never mentioned Ambrose, but he did not need to.
The firm regretted that changing market conditions required larger deposits on estate orders and settlement within thirty days rather than the previously offered quarter. Existing orders would be honored. Future extensions of credit would be reviewed individually.
Mary Beth took the letter to the estate office and spent an hour with the ledgers.
Blackthorn could meet the terms.
It would tighten cash through winter. Repairs to two tenant roofs might have to move from December to February unless rents came in cleanly. The new pasture fencing could wait. Coal purchases could not.
Mary Beth could absorb the inconvenience.
A family with rain coming through a bedroom ceiling would experience the delay very differently.
Mary Beth wrote the merchant a short reply accepting the new terms for current orders and requesting quotations from two other firms for future business. Then she sent instructions that the tenant roofs were not to be delayed. She would postpone redecoration of the east bedrooms instead.
The decision made her feel better for almost twenty minutes.
That afternoon a tenant came to the house.
He did not ask to enter the drawing room. He stood in the small estate office near the back passage, cap twisting between his hands, mud drying along the edges of his boots.
Mary Beth knew the family. Their cottage stood beyond the west pasture. His eldest daughter, nineteen, had gone into service the previous spring at a house several miles away.
“What is it?” Mary Beth asked.
The man cleared his throat. “I beg pardon, ma’am. It is not for me to speak on your business.”
“Then speak on yours.”
His grip tightened on the cap.
“My girl came home Sunday. Only for the afternoon. Her mistress had heard... things.”
Mary Beth knew before he finished.
“About Mr. Tavener.”
He stared at the floorboards.