Edith Layton (8 page)

“Ah! I understand. So then I suppose you wondered why I wasn’t here and felt guilty about it? Fine.
That
I can believe.”

He laughed. “Yes. But I missed talking to you too,” he said with complete honesty. “The doctor says I’m landed on you for at least another few weeks. He’s worried about the leg, and the head. He’s still not convinced that a carriage ride won’t jolt something loose. In fact, I’m even forbidden to use a crutch for another week! So, if I’m to stay, and I’m afraid I must, can we declare peace? I can’t help being domineering. It came with birth, you see. And I’m a natural meddler and a snoop. It helped in my work during the war, and I got used to it. I’ll try to be better. But since all I can do now is talk, I require that as much as food and water. I’d like to talk with you. When you can, and when you will, of course. Will you?”

It was too nice a request to turn down. His smile was even harder to deny. It was strange how such an imperious fellow could suddenly look as innocent and eager as one of her boys, Alexandria thought. It was an enviable talent. She didn’t doubt for a moment it was as practiced as his speech.

She nodded. “Yes, fine. But please, could you try to accept that I don’t want anything from you? I don’t want your money or any gifts. Your conversation would be nice.”

“It’s yours,” he said. “Now sit down, please, and tell me all the gossip of the neighborhood and what you’ve been up to all morning.”

She smiled, since even his requests sounded like orders. “No thank you. I don’t want to muss your bed.”

He looked confused, then chagrined. He sat in the only chair in the room. “I’ll have to get another…” he said.

She interrupted. “No, that
I
will provide. But I don’t mind standing for now, I’m too dirty to sit anyway. I’ve been working in the garden all morning. That’s where I heard all the latest gossip too. Let me see, what’s new? A new family of robins moved into the abandoned apple orchard down the road. Mmm…the badger was seen out late last night, and came reeling home towards dawn, and Oh! Yes. The laburnum started flowering.”

He didn’t laugh as she’d hoped. Instead, that long face looked very sorrowful. His eyes were gentled, blue as gentians, when he looked at her. “You’ve no neighbors?” he asked seriously.

“I do, of course,” she said quickly. She didn’t want his pity. Her chin came up. “We’ve nothing in com
mon, though. Don’t misunderstand, they’re good people hereabouts. I’m sure they’d come in a snap if they thought I was in trouble or needed them. But we don’t know them very well. The boys weren’t allowed to play with the local lads when they were young. Mr. Gascoyne said he didn’t want the boys associating with what he considered to be lesser minds. So we’re still strangers to one another.

“Children form bonds beyond what their parents want, and childhood associations can become lifelong friendships no matter where life takes a person,” she explained, as though reciting by rote, “Mr. Gascoyne knew that. He wasn’t popular and didn’t try to be. Now the boys are educated beyond their neighbors anyway, so they don’t have much to do with each other. There’s no hostility, just no friendship. It would be like asking the sheep to be friends with the cows. They live in adjoining fields, but have nothing in common.” She laughed.

She didn’t simper, he noticed. Her laughter wasn’t a practiced trill. She had a natural, rich warm laugh that made a man want to join in. Except now.

“A rustic image from a rustic,” she said derisively. “Now that will be something else to tell your London friends about your adventure in the countryside!”

“But their classmates,” he asked, ignoring the way she depreciated herself, “surely they visit?”

She shook her head. “No, the boys weren’t encouraged to associate with the boarders at school either. Their stations were too dissimilar and Mr. Gascoyne didn’t want them lusting for things they’d never have. So their life is our home. It isn’t so bad.”

“And you?” he asked soberly. “Were you allowed to associate with the local children or the schoolmasters’ wives or families?”

“Oh, me,” she said, and turned her face toward the window again. “I was needed here. I didn’t have the time to meet other girls, even if Mr. Gascoyne had allowed it.”

“Damnation!” Drum said. “I don’t wish to speak against your father, but what sort of a man was he, anyway?”

Her gaze swung back to him, her eyes dark. “He took in children who’d have been in the streets if he had not,” she said. “Kit was small when he was young so he could’ve been apprenticed to a sweep and never grown taller, and gotten some deadly sickness from being sent up filthy chimneys all day. Vic was a big boy who might have gone to a mason or a hauler and been made to work his heart out before his time, like a cart horse. As it is he’s a brilliant scholar. And Rob was always into mischief. He might have had an angry master, which means he mightn’t be here at all today.”

“And you?” Drum asked quietly, watching her expression.

She lifted one shoulder in a tiny shrug. Her lashes came down over her eyes. “Oh. Me,” she said softly, with a small, sad smile. “But I was a girl. Mr. Gascoyne didn’t understand them at all. He thought he was protecting me. Maybe he was. Who can say?”

He certainly couldn’t, he thought with a guilty start. So instead, he told her about what he’d read in the paper that morning.

T
HE BARN WAS QUICKLY RENOVATED
. A
USTIN
G
RIMES
hired the men who delivered the lumber from the mill to help with it. Drum watched the new walls rise from his window, aching with impatience to see the inside. Since he wasn’t permitted to go down the stairs he had to rely on everyone’s reports. When it was done, they came to his room to tell him of his triumph.

“There’s so much room! Room enough for
five
more horses,” Vin said excitedly. “The windows are so big you can climb up to the loft and look out and see the world.”

“There’s light everywhere! The loft’s huge,” Kit said enthusiastically. “Why, a fellow could sit up there and read until nightfall without ever lighting a lantern.”

“I can find no fault, my lord,” Grimes said smugly.

Drum’s other two servants stood in the little hall outside the bedroom because there was no room for them inside. They exchanged glances and grinned.

“The wood is superior. I’ve seldom seen the like,” Mrs. Tooke marveled.

“Oak,” Drum said, restraining an urge to bow.

“Golden oak,” she went on, “smooth and shining, and requiring little upkeep, no doubt. Well done, my lord.”

“The barn is altogether nicer and cleaner and bigger,” Rob crowed. “We should move in there instead of the house!”

There was a sudden silence as they all looked at Alexandria. She forced a laugh. “Maybe we should. Then we’d have to put Thunder in here. Do you think he’d like this bed or yours, Rob?”

Rob’s teeth worried his lip. “I suppose not, then.” He looked at her imploringly. “But it’s a wonderful place, Ally.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “and just too bad that it doesn’t match this place.”

Drum bit back his immediate response. Building them a matching house would have little effect on his finances, but that would be going too far. Putting an extension on a barn was one thing, buying a young woman a grand new home was another. He frowned. Alexandria had been right, in a way. There was a thin line between what the world would see as his self-indulgence and what they might think was her giving in to it—in other ways.

“But your home’s historic, Rob,” he said. “They’re making fewer thatched cottages every year. And history has value the modern can’t match.”

“Yes,” Alexandria agreed sweetly. “Modern folk miss all the fun we have. They don’t get the chance to knock themselves silly every time they go up and down
the stair if they forget to duck their heads. But the snugness is worth it. Why, we can be warm using only two sticks of wood in the hearth, so who needs room to turn around? We go outside if we want to do that. They certainly don’t have the pleasure of living with nature the way our ancestors did. People in modern houses may have swallows in their eaves, but I doubt they have earwigs and mice in their roofs, or the joy of redoing the thatch every year to keep even worse vermin out. It hardly matters, because the worse vermin enjoy living in our lovely historic walls more too.”

Drum relaxed. She had a sense of humor about it. His smile slipped as she went on.

“History has value, but progress has comforts,” she said reflectively. “Still…” She gazed out the window at the enormous new barn. “Now we have the luxury of both, don’t we? We’re certainly lucky. A huge addition to our barn, spanking clean and bright. To go with our tiny thatched cottage.
How
fortunate we are. Thank you, my lord,” she said, curtsying to him, too low.

He looked out the window and then back at her. She was being sarcastic, but he realized she was right. The barn didn’t match the house. They were horribly mismated. In fact, the barn didn’t even match itself anymore, with the new wing so out of place and proportion. It made the cottage look paltry; the cottage made it look overdone. Altogether, it looked like someone had run out of ideas or money. The cottage was a simple dwelling that, whatever it lacked, had possessed charm. Now the whole property looked unbalanced and unfinished. He’d done himself a favor, not her, when he’d improved her property for his own comfort.

“The barn will age in time,” Drum said, wincing at how inane that sounded.

“Absolutely,” Alexandria said through clenched teeth.

“I’m sorry,” Drum said softly. “You must know I was only trying to repay you somehow.”

She sighed. “Yes, and thank you. I’m sure in time it will look more mellow. I’ll plant flowers, we’ll become accustomed. But please, no more gifts. We took you in because you needed help. Anyone would have done the same. Repay us by getting well.”

“And getting on my horse and riding out?” he asked with a faint smile. “I will, as soon as I can. Doctor? My head is clear and so are my eyes. Why not let me leave?”

“I told you,” the doctor said. “in three more weeks, perhaps. Not a day less. Unless, of course, you want to walk with a cane the rest of your days?”

Drum didn’t know who sighed harder—he, Alexandria, the boys, or Mrs. Tooke.

Only the boys and Mrs. Tooke sighed with relief.

Alexandria came to Drum’s room that evening, carrying his dinner tray. She waited for him to look up before she stepped in. He was sitting in his chair again, looking gloomily out the window. He had a magazine on his lap, letters he’d written on his table.
His room? His table?
She was surprised at her own thoughts. He’d taken it over so completely she wondered if she’d ever think of it as hers again.

But he’d go one day soon, and she wondered if his presence would leave as readily. Mr. Gascoyne’s occupancy had been simple to erase. He’d kept the room so spare and cold that all she had to do was bring in pretty
things to expel his ghost. This man filled the place with wit and laughter. That would be harder to forget. And easier to miss.

“May I come in?” she asked when he lifted his head.

“Come in, sit, stay, talk, whatever you wish,” he said. “I’m languishing from remorse and loneliness. You can cure both.”

She put his tray down. “I think I’m accountable for one, and came to apologize for that. But I can’t see how you can suffer from the other. I was ungracious about your gift, forgive me. But loneliness? You have your servants and my household up here so often I don’t know how you have time to think, much less languish.”

“There’s talking and talking, my dear,” he said, raising the cover on one dish and taking a sniff of the puff of steam that billowed up. “Meat pie—
bliss
,” he said with satisfaction.

Then he fixed her with his knowing blue stare. “The boys amuse me, and I try to teach them things they have no way of knowing. Mrs. Tooke’s a lovely woman, but I’m afraid my station makes her very aware of her own now. I think, at heart, I make her sad, and I’m sorry for it. Grimes never oversteps the line between master and servant. That’s good for him, but bad for me now. Royce and Burdock, my men, can talk horses and memories of war. You’re the only one that I can talk to about anything and who understands every reference I make.”

“I do?”
she asked, laughing. “Coming it too strong, my lord, as the boys would say. I like some realism in my compliments. What do I know about London? The Continent? Society and its ways?”

“Most people in London haven’t read as much as you have. On balance, that makes it even. Plus, you appreciate a good jest and don’t let my title get in the way of good sense. Many people take my rank very seriously, which affects me too.” He grimaced. “My father, for example. Don’t misunderstand. I’m an English nobleman, and I’m delighted to have had a hand in sending Napoleon on his way, because the thought of titled heads rolling in the streets of Paris or London did not thrill me. Making a man’s name the most important thing about him, though, isn’t good for his soul or character. So it’s good to have someone stop me when I get too tyrannical. Or try to stop me,” he said regretfully, glancing out the window again.

He sighed. “It’s a handsome barn. For somewhere else. You were right. I was thinking we could have it thatched.”

“Oh, no!” she said quickly. “Thatch is a lot of work to keep up. Age will temper it. Don’t let it bother you.”

“I won’t if you won’t,” he said, looking at her steadily, his eyes filled with sincerity.

He’d be gone from here in weeks and she doubted he’d even think of her again, but he made her feel her forgiveness was the most important thing in his life. She wondered if he knew his power. Then laughed silently at herself. Of course he did. That was part of it.

“Fine,” she said, and tried to think how to change the subject so he’d stop watching her. She did much better when he didn’t keep looking at her. If they just talked and she could avoid the blazing azure fire of his eyes, no prickles of pleasure would ripple up and down her arms, there’d be no tingling at the back of her neck, her heart wouldn’t pick up its beat. Which was better
for all concerned, she told herself severely, and asked him his opinion about how long poor old mad King George would last.

They talked until she realized the lamps had to be lit and she had to go have her own dinner. After her meal, she tidied her hair, preparing herself for what was rapidly becoming one of the nicest parts of her new days. Then she and Mrs. Tooke went upstairs and crowded into Drum’s bedchamber with the boys so extra lessons could begin.

Drum held his little audience captivated. They joked as much as they read now, and hung on every wonderful anecdote Drum could remember. He remembered hilarious ones tonight. Mrs. Tooke sat smiling as she knitted. Grimes stood at the edges of shadow, listening, waiting to do his master’s bidding. And Alexandria beamed, watching them all.

It was a good, peaceful time. Alexandria glanced out the window and looked into the gathering night. Drum’s men were in their new quarters getting ready for sleep. She could see their lantern light spilling out of the high barn windows down to the garden, casting shadows where they’d never been before. Every day her life seemed to be growing larger, and her little cottage bigger in ways the barn never could, no matter how many walls they added.

Because the cottage was being filled with conversation, laughter, and memories to treasure down through the rest of her years. She had only one worry now; she was laughing too much. She’d always been warned about that. “Too much laughter leads to tears” was what she’d always been told. Tears weren’t tolerated either.

She supposed it made sense. Emotional children were harder to manage. Still, since Mr. Gascoyne had gone she’d encouraged the boys to laugh. Just the sound of it made her happy. Tonight she allowed herself to laugh like a loon and giggle until tears came to her eyes because this was a rare thing that would only happen for a little while, and for that little while, she would enjoy it.

If tomorrow brought real tears, she decided, she’d have at least earned them. It was only fair, she thought. She’d shed too many through no fault of her own.

The next day, however, brought astonishment.

Drum’s friends arrived after breakfast. Alexandria saw them as she was pouring a basin of dishwater out into the front yard. They spilled out of the three coaches that had suddenly pulled up in the drive, so elegant and beautifully dressed they seemed like fairy-tale lords and ladies, come from another world.

The three gentlemen that set their polished boots down in front of her house were handsome, strong, and obviously powerful in their persons and places in life. They were examples of the highest London ton which Alexandria had only seen before in illustrations from fashion plates. Their casual clothing consisted of fitted jackets, immaculate linen and high, intricately tied neckcloths. Wrinkle-free pantaloons encased their muscular legs, their half boots were as polished as their magnificent horses’ coats. One gentleman was tall, dark, and saturnine; one had dark gold hair and an extraordinary handsome face. The last was a rugged-looking fellow with military posture, attractive in spite of his outrageous red hair.

Alexandria was struck dumb by the gentlemen, but she actually gaped at the women with them. They were beautiful and graceful, and alit from their carriage like butterflies fluttering down to the ground. They were better dressed than the company Alexandria had seen at the best local weddings, although it was clear they were dressed casually for their class and kind. Their fashionable dresses were lovely hues with exquisite Madras shawls flung over their white shoulders against any chill in the morning air. Tiny tipped hats were perched on their perfectly coifed hair. Expensive as their clothing was, one look at their faces and figures showed they didn’t needed further embellishment.

There was a tiny, ethereally beautiful blond woman; a raven-haired beauty; and a stunning lady with honey-brown hair, somehow made even more lovely by her one imperfection, a thin scar on her otherwise faultlessly pure cheek.

Alexandria stood dumbfounded, feeling smaller and yet in a way larger and more awkward with every second and every refined thing she noted about her guests.
His guests,
she reminded herself. She absently plucked at the skirt of her often washed gown. They might have used it as a dustcloth, she thought.

Servants stepped out of another coach. Alexandria hastily counted. The six of them, and
three servants?
Lord! Where was she going to find room to sit them all down?

As the new arrivals stared at the barn in all its obviously newly built glory, the blond woman took a swaddled infant from the arms of her maid. She anxiously studied the face of the sleeping child. “Even a cannon can’t wake this one,” she said with pleasure as she
brushed her cheek against the baby’s head. “Wasn’t I absolutely right to take her along?” she asked no one in particular.

“It was absolutely the only way to save our necks,” one of the men muttered.

“Huh!” she said dismissively. “Now,” she said, looking around her impatiently, “where is he?”

They looked at the cottage, and finally saw Alexandria standing in the doorway. She forced herself to greet them. She clutched the basin in front of her as though for protection as she ducked her head in a bow. “I imagine you’re here to see the earl?” she asked, hoping no nervousness showed in her voice.