A Lady Awakened (29 page)

E
ARLY THAT
evening she ventured to Mrs. Kearney’s room. Irregular. One ought to summon a housekeeper to the drawing room, and leave her the sanctity of her own chamber. Nevertheless here she was.

The woman was busy with silk thread and a small hook, making lace, she said, for a family christening gown. Martha admired the intricate pattern of loops, and insisted she keep on with her work as they spoke.

Another chair sat opposite Mrs. Kearney’s, so she sank into it. Light still shone through the window, burnishing metal surfaces—a mirror, the ring round a clock face on the mantel, a silver tray with tea things at the housekeeper’s side—and warming the autumn-colored carpet beneath them. She took a breath. “I’ve met someone who once worked in this house, so I’m told.” Her hands folded together in her lap. “I wonder if you will have any memory of her.”

“There’ve been so many come and gone.” Still plying her lace hook, the woman sent a quick glance to the row of ledgers on a shelf along the wall, testimony to all her time at Seton Park. “But perhaps. Did she say when she worked here?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t speak to her at all on the subject. Her husband is the one who mentioned it. But they have a daughter of fifteen or sixteen, so it must be at least that long since.”

She could see Mrs. Kearney striking a slew of names from her list of possible answers. The housekeeper pursed her mouth, and looked up. “Where did you meet her?”

“On the property just east. They’re laborers there. I don’t know what would have been her name, but she married a Mr. Weaver, and her Christian name is Livia, or perhaps Olivia.”

Mrs. Kearney was nodding already. “That’s one of the two.” She hooked another tiny loop of thread. “One of the two as was ruined. The other went to London and never came back, but she stayed in the country where she’d grown up.”

Yes. This was the suspicion that had chattered in some dark corner of her thoughts. She hadn’t yet allowed it into the light. Her fingers flexed, and tangled with one another. “Does her husband know?”

“That he does.” Another nod, as her hands worked steadily on. “He’d known her from a girl, and loved her nearly that long, I suppose. But once she got a post here, it should have been a comedown for her to marry a farmer’s son.”

“I can’t blame her for that.” Odd, this compulsion to defend a woman who surely would not welcome any such charity from her. “We’re not men, with so many ways to pull themselves up in the world. A woman has a duty to make the best marriage she can.”

“She was lucky to make any marriage at all, after what befell her. No one expected Mr. Weaver to renew his proposals. No one would have blamed him if he turned his back on her. But he loved her just that much.”

“That’s … commendable of him.” It was something more than commendable, but she couldn’t quite find the right descriptor. “Do you ever speak to her?”

“Not once in sixteen years.” Mrs. Kearney sighed, and let her hands go still. The lines about her eyes looked deeper. “I never faulted her for what happened. None among the staff here did. But if I pass her now on the road or in town, she fixes her eyes straight ahead and won’t know me.”

Chairs and tables and tea things went hazy as the world boiled itself down to two mere words. “Sixteen years.” But of course.
Dismissed all the same, because of what condition they found themselves in
. So Sheridan had said.

“Twice cursed, she was.” The lace hook started up again. “Any child should have been a painful reminder of the business, I expect. But an idiot child who’ll need care all her life …” She shook her head on an angle, and twisted her mouth. “I don’t know how she bears it. I never could.”

But one bore what one had to bear.
Could
never entered into the bargain. Though sometimes … perhaps … one might share out one’s burden among friends and well-wishers, and feel it lightened by the sharing. One did hear of that physic as efficacious. Even for a woman so chilly and inflexible as Mrs. Weaver, sympathy might do some good.

And why stop at sympathy? “Seton Park owes reparation to that woman. We owe something to that girl.” Her imprudent tongue kept pace with her thoughts. “Where Providence has failed someone, it falls to the rest of us to step into the breach.” Mopping up after the failings of Providence. Wouldn’t Mr. Atkins grow pale with horror if he heard her now.

So be it. Justice had a claim on her. Mrs. Weaver and her daughter had a claim to justice, long in arrears. She thanked Mrs. Kearney for the information, and took her leave. More than ever, she must find a way to keep control of the estate.

Chapter Thirteen

S
HE MIGHT
have told Mr. Mirkwood. Taking an interest in the laborer families as he did, he would probably like to know of this sad history. But when he came in that night, so taken up with what he’d learned of roofing and with the pleasures of the picnic, to burden him with dark secrets seemed cruel. Then after he’d had his satisfaction, and she her seed, he wanted to speak of the dairy project.

“The central difficulty is that I’ve got to make a profit.” He lay on his back, arms folded behind his head, a vague shape in the moonlight. “Granville and my father won’t stand for turning Pencarragh into a charitable endeavor. Though Lord knows we get income enough from our other properties, not to mention the ancient family fortune. Forgive me.” His face pointed itself toward her. “I really ought
not
to mention our worth.”

“Given how our acquaintance began, I believe a reference to money can be forgiven.”

His hand came across murky space to tweak her nose, then receded. “If I want any custom, I’ve got to set my prices low. But the larger producers can effect certain economies I cannot. Cows crammed together in sheds can be kept in greater numbers than cows that roam and need so much grazing land apiece.”

“Thinning the milk with water must reduce their expenses as well.” They stared into the same thoughtful distance. One had a not-unpleasant inkling of how an ox in yoked partnership must feel. Or a horse in harness, pulling alongside a fellow striver.

“If the market were different, I might hope people would be willing to pay more for superior quality. But families like the Weavers haven’t that luxury.”

“And any family who can afford that choice will almost certainly have their own cow.” There was the core of the problem. He would have a worthy product, but in the wrong place. “What you need is a pack of wealthy people who don’t keep cows.”

“Londoners on holiday.” She could hear his enjoyment in painting the fanciful picture with her. “Can we start a fashion for jaunts to the rural middle of Sussex?”

“We’ll cry up some local pond for its healing properties, and establish a spa.”

“Yes, and entice the Prince Regent into visiting. Then the rest of the
ton
will follow.”

“Theo.” She turned to him and came up on an elbow. “The Prince Regent already comes into Sussex. The
ton
does follow.”

“To Brighton.” He’d caught her caravan of thought and fallen right in line. “Brighton has as many wealthy people as any merchant could wish.”

“And they don’t travel with cows.” Her pulse quickened. “What if you were to take your products to market there—perhaps once every month or two weeks—and sell at such prices as wealthy people are accustomed to pay?”

“Then I could keep my prices low in this neighborhood.” His hand lifted from the pillow and wound itself in her hair, but without any solid purpose. His attention was elsewhere. “Only it might be too much to ask of my laborers, to make that journey. I think I must talk to them. After I’ve talked to Granville. Perhaps after I’ve approached my father in regard to the capital outlay. Or no, perhaps I’d better talk to the laborers first of all. I don’t know. Where had a man best begin with this sort of thing?”

Serious, conscientious, and seeking her opinion: he could have had anything he wanted of her in that moment. She pressed her lips together. Generosity demanded generosity in return. “Think on it. Sleep on it. You’ll make the right choice.”

She felt his pleasure as surely as though his skin were shuddering against hers. He was all but a virgin in this, the experience of being taken seriously. Perhaps no woman—perhaps no one at all—had ever gazed at him with quiet faith, and encouraged him to believe in his own abilities.

She oughtn’t to touch him. She ought to let him bask in this satisfaction, and not muddle it with anything else. Nevertheless her hand rose to clasp his wrist and carefully, very carefully, she leaned in and put her lips to the crest of his forehead. Nothing more than that. “Good night, Mr. Mirkwood,” she said, and turned over to go to sleep.

S
HE WOKE
the next morning to a half-empty bed. He was up already, moving about in the sluggish gray predawn. “Did I wake you?” he said, coming in from her dressing room. He must have gone to splash his face. He certainly hadn’t gone to dress: he wore not a stitch. In this light his body looked like something chiseled out of marble. Somebody’s statue come to life and now reaching for clothes, weary of its naked state. So different from the candlelit nakedness to which she’d grown accustomed. By candlelight he was nothing like a statue, his skin warm and vivid under that lambent illumination, and all alive with appetite as well.

“You didn’t wake me.” She rubbed a fist over her eyes. Thoughts were not coming quite coherently. “You do, usually, though.”

“Miss that, do you?” He tossed his shirt and trousers onto the armchair and stepped into his drawers. “Then I’ll be sure to not omit it tomorrow.”

Of course I don’t
miss
it
. She didn’t have to say that. He knew, and was only teasing.

She watched him dress. Gradually he covered his chiseled self, sitting in the armchair at last to pull on his boots. When that was done he came to the bedside and sank all the way down on his knees. His arms folded atop the mattress. His chin sank onto his arms. He looked at her, wordlessly.

His eyes wore the raw marks of too little sleep. His hair bent in odd directions. He needed to shave. Her hand, without awaiting her permission, strayed from the mattress and settled against his cheek, to know what that texture was like.

He turned his head and pressed his lips into her palm. Soft, unutterably soft, his kiss, where her skin tingled from the coarse touch of his tiny beard-bristles. Eyes closed, he stayed just so for several seconds, as though breathing in her hand’s particular scent. “Are you at liberty this afternoon?” he then said. He caught her hand in his and laid her palm once more against his cheek.

“I expect so. Unless you’ve recruited more callers.”

“Not yet.” His cheek rasped pleasantly over her hand as he angled his head to and fro. “And today I’d like you to come pay a call with me. I’ve wanted you to meet another of my laborers. An older man with some expertise in dairy farming.”

“Mr. Barrow. You’ve mentioned him before.”

“Indeed.” His fingers laced with hers as though he meant to keep her hand against his face forever. “He ought to be at home during the dinner hour. We might make a short visit.”

“I’d like that.”

“Very good then. I’ll call for you.” He turned her hand over and kissed her knuckles one by one. And she found she was sorry when he came to the last.

I
F SOMEONE
had told him, that first day in church, the course things would take between himself and the woman across the aisle, he should have roared with laughter until he slid right out of his pew and was ejected from the premises. If he’d been told to anticipate seduction, he should have imagined himself the seducer, gradually coaxing her to loosen her stays and let down her hair and learn to give over to pleasure.

“Is he a widower, Mr. Barrow?” She marched beside him, asking such questions, methodically preparing herself to make a good impression. He knew her habits by now.

“Never married and no family living nearby. All the more reason to call.” With one finger he crushed the painstaking folds of his cravat to bare his neck to the breeze on that side. A month ago his cravat was sacrosanct.