A Lady Awakened (32 page)

“I think of five and twenty cattle to start, and two bulls, and I’d hope to pay no more than eight pounds a head.” His spoon tapped deftly round the shell of his egg, a pleasing industrious sound to go with the agent’s scratching pencil and murmured calculations. “We might purchase at the fair in East Grinstead come December, though I understand most of the cattle there are brought from Wales. I rather like the sound of these cows from Jersey: good milk-producers, and small, so they won’t need as much fodder as your larger breeds.”

Granville put down his pencil and sat back. “Well.” Finally he picked up his tea. “You
have
been studying on the subject, haven’t you?”

Theo took off the top of his egg and spooned out a bite. “Mrs. Russell’s steward—the fellow who got me started with the thatching—has been helpful. And I’ve acquired a few documents. I don’t doubt my father will have a hundred questions, when I ask him to advance this money, and I’d like to be prepared with as many answers as I can.”

“I won’t discourage you from educating yourself.” The agent sipped more tea and set down his cup. “However you won’t need to persuade Sir Frederick of anything. When he arranged your stay here, he authorized releasing a certain amount of money in support of any such schemes you might conceive.”

“He did?” His spoon stopped, suspended halfway between his mouth and the plate. “He never said anything to me.”

“No, and he asked me not to broach it either. He didn’t want you looking for a way to spend the money. He preferred that the idea come first, the financing after.”

“Good Lord.” Silver clinked on china as he set the spoon down. “What on earth gave him the notion I would ever come up with any scheme?”

Granville lifted one shoulder, the suggestion of a smile just visible on his lips. “He’s had six and twenty years to observe you. He must have formed some idea of your capabilities.”

“Good Lord,” he said again. Beyond the agent, dust motes swirled idly in a sunbeam, inviting a man to drift away in thought. He would have laid money he knew exactly what Sir Frederick thought of his capabilities. Indeed he would have concurred with the assessment. Even now his father’s good opinion—if such it was—felt odd and ill-fitted, like a borrowed coat.

A coat borrowed from a woman, at that. None of this would have happened without the influence of Mrs. Russell. Would it? He might have wished, vaguely, for people to live a more comfortable life on his land, but he would never have applied himself to bettering their state. Would he?

“In fact you have funds enough at your disposal to forgo the investors altogether.” Granville sawed his toast into strips, his appetite at last making an appearance now Theo’s had been forgot. “But I confess I like the idea too much to recommend your dropping it. It strikes me as characteristic of the kind of landowner you will be.”

For an instant he wanted to laugh. Then the instant passed. There was nothing ludicrous, after all, in his being thought a certain kind of landowner. The kind who knew how to weave disparate interests together to make something for the benefit of all. He did, perhaps, have that talent.

“Then let me try your opinion on another possible use for Sir Frederick’s funds.” He reached for his tea. “The Reverend Mr. Atkins of Seton Park has spoken to me of the school he’s starting. What do you think of encouraging our laborers to send their children to him?”

M
ORE CALLERS
came. The magistrate Mr. Rivers and his wife that afternoon; a Miss and Mrs. Landers the next. The calls were of a proper duration, and the conversation just what it ought to be. Everyone approved Mr. Mirkwood’s benevolent aims. Everyone was pleased to know her. They insisted—such unsuspected kindness—that she must send to them for help with tenants, or servants, or any other matters difficult for a young lady to manage on her own. All but strangers until Mr. Mirkwood had rousted them out, they were true neighbors of a sudden, ready to look out for her interest in the name of duty and, perhaps, something more.

“I’ve never known a man to promote affection the way you do,” she said to him the night after the Landers ladies had called. “Not only toward yourself, I mean, but among people generally. I think this will be a better community for your having come.” Again she hadn’t sent the right signals, and he’d gone to his satisfaction alone. Likely he’d long since given up hope of bringing her with him.

“Go back to the bit about my promoting affection toward myself.” He lay beside her, sated, his hands absently plaiting a lock of her hair. “Do I do that, indeed?”

“Of course you do. Everyone who’s called has spoken of you so graciously. They’re fond of you already.” Coward. That was neither what he wanted to hear, nor what she truly wanted to say.

You have not known him four weeks. Any feelings a lady might develop for a gentleman in that span can only be illusory
. The admonition had truth behind it, and still, what but affection could make her wish she might say words more gratifying to them both?

Touch me
, she might say.
Promote what feelings you will
. The signals weren’t working, and she wouldn’t have many more opportunities. Thirty days now since the start of her last courses. Not unprecedented. Failure could announce itself at any time. Enough days without failure, too, would signal the end of their relation.

She closed her eyes, bringing on a citrus-scented darkness with starlike pinpoints of pleasure: the thousand tiny tugs to her scalp as he laid her strands of hair over and over each other. Occasionally his fingertips came in accidental, exquisite contact with her skin.

Touch me
. Tongue to the back of her top teeth would be the beginning. She could even say it with her eyes closed if she wished.

“You’ll come tomorrow, won’t you?” Of a sudden his hands left her hair. “When I meet with the laborers? I’ve asked Granville to be there and I’d like your presence as well, since you’ve been in on the thing from the start.” When she opened her eyes she saw him up on his elbows, regarding her as though he meant to will her into attendance.

Such absurd torment: never did he tempt her so strongly as when he forgot to be libidinous, and turned all his earnest attention on some responsibility or another. But she must follow his worthy lead, and let other thoughts go. “Of course I’ll come,” she said. “I wouldn’t dream of missing it.”

T
HE FACT
is, I know nothing of dairies but what I’ve read, or heard from others.” Theo sat at the head of his immense dining-room table, elbows on the tabletop and hands shaping the air as seemed appropriate to accompany his words. To stand would probably have lent him a more suitable air of command, but to sit this way encouraged his listeners to be at ease. “Also we must bear in mind that I shan’t be here to oversee things. I hope, at some point, to make my home in London again.” He gave a quick smile to Granville, at the table’s foot. Exile did take on a different cast, now he knew his father had put money aside in expectation of his turning out well. “Therefore the success of this venture will not be in my hands, but in all of yours. That being the case, I should like to hear what you all think of it. No deference, please. If you find it a harebrained scheme you must say so. Mr. Barrow to begin.”

He picked up his tea and sat back. At his right hand Mr. Barrow sat in an armchair brought from the drawing room, a counterpane over his shoulders. Not entirely recovered yet, but nearer every day.

Beyond the old man, who began to speak now of various dairy methods, he had a clear view of the far corner where Mrs. Russell perched in a second conscripted armchair. She’d declined a place at the table, preferring to observe from the periphery. She watched with keen attention, hands folded in her lap, back straight as a fireplace poker. Not really an armchair sort of woman, the widow.

Three weeks ago—hell, even two—he would not have recognized how she was enjoying herself. Her pleasure didn’t look like the pleasure of any other woman he knew. Well, sometimes it did. She’d taken unreserved delight in her callers, if one could judge by her manner on later recounting the visits to him.

“Have you thought of keeping a she-ass or two, in addition to the cows?” Mrs. Rowlandson said, drawing his attention back to the table. “Their milk is the best thing for sickly children, or motherless children, and I don’t believe we have any at all kept in the neighborhood.”

“There, now; I knew I had something to gain by including the ladies.” He set his elbows on the table and leaned forward again. “I’ve never heard of this. Will you tell me more?” From the corner of his eye he could see Mrs. Russell following the exchange. Had he harbored thoughts of her likely approval, in deciding to invite the laborers’ wives? Perhaps. And he wouldn’t be sorry for that. How could he be sorry for anything, watching a roomful of humble people gradually claim their own consequence?

M
ARTHA SAT
all the straighter, her posture sufficing for her and Mr. Mirkwood both. If he had asked, she would have told him not to sit so. Elbows on the table. Back and then forward in his chair, hands flourishing about as though he sat at a club among his fellows, debating the best way to style a cravat. She would have told him authority wore a cloak of cool decorum.

And she would have been wrong.

When had he become this man, as easy about command as though he were born to it? He gave respect in extravagant handfuls, never fearing he might diminish his own store—and indeed he did not. The more he deferred to the expertise of others, the farther they would follow him down any path. One could see that in the way people stepped up to undertake this or that part of his plan. Mr. Quigley and Mr. Weaver would drive to Brighton to survey the market there. Mr. Tinker would write to a drover cousin, investigating where to acquire the Jersey cows. And several of the wives already had ideas as to the best cheese varieties to produce.

He was in prodigious good spirits as the meeting ended, and would undoubtedly have come to speak to her but that he was waylaid by Mrs. Weaver, of all people. The woman put out her hand to him and said something to which he listened, grave-faced, before delivering his answer with a smile and a shake of his head.

“What did Mrs. Weaver have to say?” she must ask when he finally cleared a gauntlet of handshakes and well-wishes to arrive at her side. One couldn’t help remembering the woman’s all-but-certain knowledge of how things stood between them.

“Oh, nothing very much.” His happiness had a charge she could feel, as though he were a tree where lightning had struck and stayed to race through the branches. “We had a misunderstanding, early in my stay here, but we’ve put it to rights. Some other time I’ll give you the details. Just now I’ll see you home if you like, and you can tell me on the way what you thought of everything.”

And yes. That was exactly what she would like.

O
H, BUT
the meeting had gone well. No one had thought his plan ridiculous, and what was more, he’d known they wouldn’t. This management business was not beyond him, after all. Nothing, perhaps, was beyond him today.

With a stride that could cross subcontinents, he left the house behind. Mrs. Russell kept pace at his side, stealing looks at him in what she must suppose was a surreptitious way. “What is it?” he finally had to ask, turning to face her square. “Why do you look at me as though I’ve suddenly grown a second head?”

For all her attempts to be furtive, she did not look away now. “You’re a leader of men, Mirkwood. I should never have guessed it.”

They were the most thrilling words a woman had ever said to him. What suitable answer could he possibly give? He laughed and shook his head, lengthening his stride to pull a bit in front. “If so, I’ve only just become one. So there wouldn’t have been any way for you to guess.”

“No, I think you always have been.” Her own step quickened. She wouldn’t be left behind. “You only wanted the proper field on which to show it.”

Now
that
was the most thrilling thing he’d ever heard from a woman. His head felt light and his legs unsteady: who’d have known a man could get drunk on a lady’s good opinion?

The wooded path loomed up before them and as soon as they were under cover he reached for her. He would tell her, without flimsy words, how very much he—

“Please don’t.” She twisted and slipped from his grasp. “Not where we might be seen.”

“Where we won’t, then.”
For the love of reason, don’t make me wait until tonight
. “Is the bed still made up in that blue room, do you suppose?”

She glanced down his body as though to gauge the urgency of the question. Her glance skittered away. Urgency in spades.

Miraculously, then, she nodded. “I’ve nothing else planned today. Would you like to come for a visit?”

“You’ve had a look. What do you think I’d like?”

More miraculously yet, she smiled, a delicious, secret-keeping smile, and walked on without a word, leaving him to follow.

W
ITH DISPATCH
that would put a lady’s maid to shame he got her down to her stockings and chemise, but he lingered in undressing her hair. She enjoyed that—any man could see—so he gave her a good long while of it, unwinding every plait and combing through the tresses with his fingers. He’d sat her in the middle of the bedroom, on the stool he’d brought in from her dressing room, and he could see her serene, shut-eyed reflection in two different mirrors. His reflection as well. A nearly unclothed woman and a man with intentions for her, the tableau warmed and gilded by a handsbreadth of afternoon light.

He flicked his wrist, and a hairpin skipped and settled on a distant tabletop, its delicate percussion a garnish to the moment’s languorous mood. “I’d like to see you with your cap off under full sun,” he murmured, soft enough that she could take the words for indistinct music if she preferred. “All those plaits bound up, glowing in facets like honey in a cut-glass jar. And then, let down, like honey poured out.”