A Fresh Perspective, A Regency Romance (9 page)

“No. How did you know?”

“There is too little of your face to be seen for anyone to deem it familiar.”

“You do not like it?”

What a heel he was, to insult the bloody bonnet. She was doubtless proud of it, and hoping for compliments, not insult. Stopping her, so that they stood face to face, he forced her to look up at him, tilting her face upward with a knuckle beneath her lowered chin. “I would far rather look at your features, Nutmeg, than the most fashionable and flattering of bonnets.”

“Oh!” she blushed. Her hand rose, brushed against his, bringing her blush to deeper hue as she loosed the rustling ribbon that tied the bonnet in place. “Better?” She lifted it from her head.

“Much better,” he agreed, tousling her flattened curls. “Now do go on with your story. You were telling me Giovanni thought he recognized you?”

“Yes. I assured him we had never met before, that he was mistaken in assuming so.”

“Did he explain himself?”

She dangled the bonnet from its ribbons, carefully smoothing all wrinkles from the ties that had gone beneath her chin. “He puzzled over it a bit, apologizing all the while and reasserting over and over again that he never forgot a face, and was it not possible we had encountered one another.”

“Had you?”

“No. He introduced himself to Gussie and Tom, neither of whom he found in the least familiar, introduced us in turn to Lord Frost and his sister, whom he had met up with in transit from Italy to England. We compared notes on any place in which the two of us might have met.”

“Any luck?”

“None.” She began to twirl the dangling bonnet, a gesture so childlike it roused Reed’s most protective feelings.

“Was it all pretense then? A ploy to get to know you.”

She blushed, and letting go the bonnet, allowed the twisted ribbons to unwind in a feather-flying whirl of black and white. “No. He remembered at last. It was a statue I reminded him of.”

“Dear God! Not the satyr?”

“Yes, Reed, the satyr. But please do not take the Lord’s name in vain on my account.” She seemed to realize how unladylike her handling of the bonnet had become. Smoothing the ribbons she allowed the bonnet to hang lifelessly from her hand, more of a coal scuttle than ever.

“I do apologize,” he blurted, “but blast it all, I feel the perfect fool! You might never have met the fellow but for my blunder.”

“Strange, isn’t it, how life has thrown me, so soon, into the path of one of those who purchased my likeness in bronze?”

“Strange, indeed.” Reed could not like it that Giovanni, of all people, should have possession of Megan, if only in the form of a statue. “Did you ask him if you might buy the thing?”

“I did not! I cannot afford such luxuries. I merely agreed that it was a strange coincidence and let the matter drop.”

She was accustomed to practicing economies.

“Wisest, I suppose.” Considering the uncertain state of his own finances, he had best get used to practicing economies as well.

They reached the lake. Reed stood looking at the still, shadowed surface, listening to the occasional plop of a trout breaking the surface in search of insects, accompanied by the descending scale song of a warbler and the distant, explosive call of a coot. A heron stalked away from them--long necked elegance in the shallows. A frog sang a ratchety tune.

She sighed. “Giovanni insists it is Fate, or Destiny, or some such nonsense brings us together.”

“What kind of fellow is he? Do you care for him?”

A moorhen paddled past, red-faced head pumping. Her wake was all that remained evident of the bird’s passage by the time Megan gave answer.

“I do like him. He is creative, a good listener and generous. As to what kind of fellow he may be, Frost tells me that his father raises prize horses and bottles a remarkable wine, that he has several enormously productive vineyards outside Polermo. He would appear to have no shortage of money. It was he treated us to the entertainments we enjoyed the night you arrived.”

He bent to pick up a stone, and skipped it hard across the lake, wishing he might fling Giovanni so far.

“And the Frosts? What do you know of them?”

“Very little, although I have had the impression on more than one occasion that they preferred having Giovanni to themselves. What do you think of them?” Her smile faded. She bit down on her lower lip. “Laura Frost would seem to be quite taken with you.”

He skipped another stone, resolving in that instant to post a letter to his father in London enquiring into the backgrounds of both Giovanni Giamarco and the Frosts. He might be strapped for cash, but he still had connections.

“I hope you don’t mind me saying, but I wouldn’t want you getting in over your head, Nutmeg. This Italian looks the type to dally with a girl’s affections.”

She lifted the bonnet like a veil, and placed it once more upon her head. Chin lifted, she formed a jaunty bow. “I am in a mood for dalliance. I mean to educate myself in the art. If anyone is out of their depth it is you.”

“Why do you say that?” he asked irritably.

She turned to face the lake, features shielded from his scrutiny. “I think you are in danger of falling under Laura Frost’s spell.”

“And if I was, what harm?”

“None, as long as you realize she is a fortune hunter.”

“Why do you think so?”

“Why?” Wry laughter shook the ostrich feathers along the brim of the hat. “Because she is an expert in the art of seduction, Reed. I have watched her mesmerize any male with whom she comes into contact with that high-nosed primness at which she so skillfully pretends. She would eat your heart for breakfast and then get up and leave your empty shell behind her without the least sign of indigestion, unless she thought you in possession of pockets deep enough to keep her interest.”

“You are too severe.”

The bonnet whirled in his direction. Megan’s face was flushed. “Am I? Do you deny then, that she drew you away to work her wiles on you?”

He was shocked by her awareness. “You begin to sound motherly, Megan.” He spoke defensively, regretting the words as soon as they were uttered. She turned away, but not before he saw her wounded expression.

“Heaven forbid I should fear for your heart as much as you would seem prepared to fear for mine.” Her voice was muffled and sad.

“So sorry, Nutmeg. Let us not quarrel. I did not come here to quarrel with you.”

She did not turn to look at him again, merely stared at the lake and asked hollowly, “Why did you come?”

Chapter Ten

H
e never did get a chance to tell her. Perhaps that was best.

Augusta and Tom joined them, concluding opportunity for intimate confidences. The four walked back to the cottage where they entertained themselves playing cards until Reed wished the others good night. He went to his room to write his father, asking him for any information he might forward with regard to an Italian by the name of Giovanni Giamarco and his companions, Lord and Laura Frost. He ended his letter with a list of questions that had to do with his tally of figures and requested an answer with all possible speed. His fears grew daily upon examination of the ledgers.

It occurred to Reed, that it was wisest, after all, to hold tongue on all that he had meant to disclose to Megan, that his financial problem was, after all, family business.

That thought manifested itself again to him on the following day. The manifestation was a man, and the man a dark speck on the hillside emerging from the larger darkness that was the Buttermere Green Slate Quarry on Honister Crag.

“Look there! A trail-barrow,” Tom pointed out the moving figure to the party of seven who had gathered for a sight-seeing excursion of the quarry. He had to shout to be heard above the constant ring of chisels hammered against stone. They stood watching from the finishing floor, a raw, leveled area at the base of the hill where it had been demonstrated that the huge chunks of grey-green slate were hammered into slabs. Reed’s artistic sensibilities were more absorbed by the play of light and shadow across the beautiful, muted green shards of slate than by the men who worked them.

Tom, who knew about such things, explained “The slabs are broken into
clogs
which these men call
rivers
.” He pointed out the appropriate workers, “Those are split into individual slates and handed over to stone dressers who chisel away the edges, finishing the job.”

“The trail barrow he mentioned. Does he mean that dark speck up there?” Laura Frost spoke coyly into Reed’s ear. “May I look at him through one of those curious lenses you carry?”

“They will do you no good. . .” He started to explain that the image would be made smaller, not magnified as she doubtless wanted. She did not, or would not, hear him.

“Please.” Her breath tickled humidly. “Pretty please.” Rather than shout his excuses to her, or use her ear as she used his, he handed her the folio of Claude glasses. Observing them, Megan arched her brows in a suggestive manner, as if she caught him in the middle of an illicit exchange. How much higher would her brows have risen had she been privy to yesterday’s exchanges?

“Useless!” Miss Frost distracted him with another hiss, her hand possessively upon his shoulder as she returned the Claude glasses. “These do not enlarge upon the subject at all.”

Reed looked Megan’s way again, concerned she might misinterpret Miss Frost’s attentions. But Megan was watching the slater on the hillside while Tom waved at them to follow him away from the worst of the noise.

“He pulls a sledge that has been loaded with slate along a track up there, by way of two handles,” Tom shouted. “Like a horse, he goes before it. Can you see the thing kicking up dust behind him?”

Reed could. Miss Frost made no effort to look. She leaned heavily on his arm. “What a dreadfully noisy, boring, dirty place this is,” she said petulantly. “Take me away, Reed. Please, take me away.”

“Away? We have only just begun to view the place, and I find it fascinating.”

He was not the only one. Megan’s attention was firmly focused on the barrow man. Pointing to a line that came straight down the mountainside she shouted above the din. “He does not mean to come down by way of that track does he?”

“He does,” Tom contradicted her.

Even as he spoke the man plunged over the edge, the dark shape of his barrow fast on his heels.

“Oh dear,” shrieked Gussie. “Has he lost control?”

“No,” Megan gasped. “But it is sheer madness, what he is doing.”

Indeed, Reed was rather shocked by the spectacle himself. Did the man mean to outrun the heavy barrow straight down the mountainside? A reckless endeavor. A single misstep, or a jolt strong enough to wrench his hands from the barrow’s stangs and he would be flattened.

“Extremely dangerous,” Tom shouted gleefully. “But fascinating to watch. Countless cartloads of sightseers drive down from Borrowdale to watch these fellows make their daily runs.”

“I think it’s silly!” Miss Frost clutched at Reed’s arm. “There are far more sensible ways to make a living, surely.”

So distant were they, so noisy their surroundings, that there was no discernible sound connected to the strange progress of the figure in miniature. The sledge gathered speed. The man’s racing feet were lifted from the ground. Suspended by his grip upon the barrow’s stangs, he rode the incredible force of gravity downward

“Dear Lord. He’ll be killed!” Gussie hid her eyes behind her hand.

She could not stop watching for long. The sledge was a terribly compelling, crashing, grating momentum. Ungoverned and unstoppable, it threatened to engulf them all. Every muscle in the man’s highly developed arms and neck bulged in his effort to stay aboard the erratically pitching barrow. Like Hephaestos who had fallen for a day when thrown from Olympus by Zeus, this man seemingly fell down the mountainside for a nerve wracking stretch of time.

Unable to wrench his eyes away, Reed saw in the spectacle a mirrored manifestation of his own struggle. Thrown from his home at an early age, like Hephaestos, his family dragged a heavy load--of debt. It ran along the narrow track of people’s good will and patience in receiving payments due. A single misstep at this point and the Talcott’s would be crushed beneath the momentum of their folly.

In a cascade of dirt and pebbles, the barrow ground to a halt at the dressing ground.

His pulse as elevated as if he had run the course alongside the man, Reed approached the gasping, sweat drenched, red-faced creature.

“Have you no fear, man?” he asked.

Breathlessly the man answered, “Aye, but I don’t let it run away wit’ me.”

“How heavy is your load?”

“Not so heavy I cannot slide with it down the mountain.” The man laughed at his own obscurity. Beneath the grime he looked to be a young fellow.

Reed had to smile, so carefree was the slater’s manner, so cavalier his attitude. He thrust out his hand. “I am Reed, Reed Talcott, and it’s not every day I have the privilege of shaking the hand of a man who displays such courage.”

The slater hesitated to shake Reed’s immaculately gloved hand. “Beggin your pardon, guv, but I would not ruin your gloves. We use rosin, don’t you see, to help in gripping the stangs, and a right nasty mess they would make of your dabblers.” He held both hands out, palms up, to show the sticky amber smears that grimed his palms. When Reed removed his gloves and thrust forth instead his bare hand the slater shook his head with a grin, spit on each palm and wiped them as clean as he could down the legs of begrimed corduroy trews before jovially clasping Reed’s hand in a grip that threatened to break its every bone.

Reed tried not to wince. How callused and leathery the man’s fingers were! His own felt as pale and soft and spineless as earthworms in this weather worn grip. How would he hold up if required to labor daily? He had done nothing in his life so physically and mentally challenging as was this man’s daily run down the mountainside. Withall, the slater seemed happy with his lot. He grinned, brazenly exhibiting a mouthful of uneven, tobacco stained teeth.