3 Exploring #3
It took them all the way through the house first, ending in a strange room stuffed with curio-filled cabinets, through a new door and up several broad steps into a long gallery, at present no more than bare, unplastered walls and an unvarnished wooden floor, but the ceiling was high and arched, and on either side were deep windows overlooking the river below them.
“The oddest bridge I’ve ever seen,” Cal murmured.
“Oh yes! That is Mr Payne’s genius. He is the architect. It is a bridge to connect the orangery to the house, but it is also a gallery where we may walk in inclement weather, and a ballroom for grand occasions.”
“And a dining room for feast days,” Cal said. “So the duke said. It’s a fine view from up here. The Palladian bridge upstream, and downstream that temple affair must be the orangery, and the lake beyond. Clever.”
At the far end of the gallery, a door led to a short, curved corridor before they entered the orangery, a room with an even higher domed roof and vast floor-to-ceiling windows.
Here men were hard at work, carpenters sawing and hammering, and a man up a ladder cheerfully singing a hymn.
He stopped mid-verse, and the other men lapsed into silence too, the only sound the clang of a hammer dropping.
“Do carry on,” Mrs Merrington called out cheerfully. “We are just passing through.”
At the far side a double set of doors led outside, where the scaffolding was still in place.
On the roof, at the centre point, the flag of St George fluttered in a slight breeze.
As the doors closed behind them, Cal took a deep, reviving breath.
The air was still cool, only slightly damp, and smelling of sawdust. The orangery sat on a low hill overlooking the lake, a fine location, but around the rim of the hill, the stumps of trees cried out to Cal, rubbing against the raw wound of his own grief for his lost trees.
“The path is over here,” Mrs Merrington said, recalling him to the present.
Meekly, he followed her and within moments the building works were behind them and they were swallowed up by the peaceful forest. Cal reached out his hands as he walked, to touch first one tree, then another, then rifling his fingers through the fringes of a scrubby little bush.
It helped, connecting him to the lifeblood of the trees.
Before long, they reached the main path that he had traversed before breakfast, and turned along it as it wound slowly downwards.
Recovering his poise somewhat, Cal began to point out anything he thought might interest a lady.
When birdsong filled the air, he told her what bird was calling.
He showed her the pretty flowers of sweet violet, the less pretty stinking hellebore and, beside a narrow rill trickling down to the lake, shy bog myrtle and the hoof prints of a deer.
He persuaded her to run her hands over the bark of the trees they passed, feeling the differences from one to another.
She was no chatterer, to his relief. Everything he pointed out to her she examined with seeming interest, repeating the names of birds and flowers and trees, as if she were learning them by rote.
When she concentrated, there was a row of shallow wrinkles on her forehead that he found quite intriguing.
She had a few markers of age around her eyes and mouth, for what woman of her years did not?
Even so, she was still a fine-looking woman who must have been a beauty in her day.
Nor had she grown fat and indolent, as so many matrons did, for although she was not slender, that just meant that she had curves in all the right places.
He couldn’t quite see what her interest was in him, but he couldn’t help being flattered by it, all the same.
When they came to one of the branch paths, he said, “What’s down there?”
“I have not the least notion,” she said, with a little laugh.
“We always take the same walk, over the upper bridge, the main path through the woods, back over the lower bridge. Or occasionally, the same route in reverse.” She paused, then added thoughtfully, “We are usually talking so much, we neither see nor hear anything around us. It is much more interesting walking with you, Mr Garford. Let us find out where this path leads.”
“You know, it makes me very uncomfortable to be Mr Garford,” he said, as they entered the new path. “Everyone calls me Cal, ever since I was a boy.”
“But you are a guest of his grace, and eat at his table. I cannot be on first name terms with a gentleman.”
“I’m no gentleman.”
“Not by birth or rank or situation, perhaps, but if the duke addresses you formally, then so must we all.”
“I wouldn’t want to contradict a duke,” he said, with a wry smile, “but maybe we could keep the formality for the house? Out here, just you and me and the trees, could you call me Cal?”
“I could, but only if you call me Cora.”
He opened his mouth to protest, then snapped it shut again. If a lady invited him to use her Christian name, that was her prerogative, and it would be rude to refuse. Or so he told himself.
Cora.
An intriguing and unusual lady. There was no possibility of anything developing from it, but he rather enjoyed her company, and hoped there would be more days like this, of clear blue skies, a whole forest to enjoy and a lady companion to share it with.
Cora.