by Wilma Counts
When he could finally get away from the duty of receiving his mother’s guests, he was pleased to see that the navy captain, his sister, and her husband were part of a group that included Harriet and Chet, and Quint quickly joined that group.
He was not best pleased to discover an extraordinarily easy rapport between the navy man and Miss Mayfield. He wondered how deep that might go.
Chapter 9
That evening Harriet sat at her desk mulling over the events of the day. She had enjoyed the dowager’s tea far more than she had expected to. She especially enjoyed seeing the Powers couple again as well as the Douglases and Captain Morris. These were people with whom she had spent many an evening in company with Win and Anne. For a while this afternoon they had recaptured some their old sense of camaraderie. She was genuinely pleased to see that Quint made an effort to acquaint himself with these members of the community, for she knew they would be helpful to him as he tried to slash his way through the jungle of local politics and local social alliances. As the nominal head of Sedwick—until Phillip reaches his majority—Colonel Burnes will need people like these, perhaps more than he quite realizes yet, she thought.
What she had not enjoyed so heartily was seeing Edmund Humphreys again. Harriet knew the man was keen on making her the second Mrs. Humphreys, but Harriet had no inclination in that direction whatsoever, and she rather resented Lady Margaret’s trying to advance the man’s interests. Even before Win and Anne’s deaths, the dowager had often dropped comments about what a splendid match Humphreys would be for “a spinster such as Harriet” and how such a match would allow Harriet to remain near her beloved nieces and nephews “without unduly imposing on the family.”
It was not that Harriet had an active dislike of the man. She merely found him a bit of a bore. His conversation centered mostly on his acquaintance with this or that person of social prominence or possessions he thought might impress others, like a matched team or this new curricle, for instance. And she was well aware that his chief interest in her lay with the facts that her father had been a titled member of the aristocracy and that her grandfather not only held a title, but was known to have connections with the royal family.
Captain Cameron Morris, on the other hand, was very interesting, indeed. She had first met him at one of the local assemblies and thought him one of the handsomest men she had ever met. He was charming as well. Even in London he was likely to appear on many of the most exclusive lists of guests for a ball or social soiree. She recalled seeing him at two such affairs during her recent sojourn in the city where they had happily greeted each other and chatted amiably of matters “at home.” However, handsome as he was, charming as he was, Cameron did not loom large in Harriet’s mind as a romantic figure, mainly, she supposed, because she had always regarded him as such a dear friend. She saw little reason to alter that status.…
Her musings were interrupted by a knock at the door of her sitting room. She answered it to find Phillip and Maria there, dressed in their nightclothes and dressing gowns.
“I thought I had seen you both safely into the arms of Morpheus hours and hours ago,” she said. Curiosity overriding her attempt to sound stern, she held the door open for them to come in.
Maria giggled and Phillip said, “A few minutes ago, perhaps, but hours and hours? That is surely an extreme exaggeration, Aunt Harriet.”
“And Grandmother might see that reference to Morpheus as misleading the youth of England,” Maria said primly.
“Perhaps, but I doubt she will be feeding me wormwood for breakfast,” Harriet replied. “Now, what is that has you two darkening my doorstep at this late hour?” She gestured them to be seated on a settee upholstered in pale blue velvet and she took a matching chair nearby.
They both sighed and Phillip said, “We’ve been talking. It’s about our having to go away to school—”
“Did you speak with your uncle again? I saw the two of you talking as we were riding this morning.”
“I did speak with him. I suggested that we might hire a tutor such as Uncle Charles had done for Jeremy—just for a year or so—but Uncle Quint just seems to have his own idea in mind and won’t even consider anything else at all.” Phillip’s reply ended on what was almost a wail of frustration.
“What did he actually say?” Harriet asked.
“He said that would not be the same as going to school and working with people who will be my peers—learning and solving problems in groups,” Phillip said dully.
“He probably does have a point there,” Harriet said.
“Yes,” the boy agreed. “And I admitted as much. Aunt Harriet, it is not that I never want to go to Eton. Just not now. Not this year. I want to learn more of what it is to—to be Sedwick, you see.” He bowed his head. “I—I don’t w-want to b-be Sedwick, b-but I am. C-can I even do this?”
Harriet rose from her chair and went to his side. “Scoot over.” She sat beside him and put her arm around his shoulders and quickly felt Maria’s arm coming from the other side. “It is not a question of can you do it, Phillip. You are. You are Sedwick. And you are already doing it very well. Patterson, and Mrs. Ames, and Mrs. Hodges, Dolan—they all say you are assuming your duties better than anyone could have expected.”
He squinted up at her. “Th-they do?”
“They do. They will be very proud to serve you just as they served your father.”
“See? I told you so,” Maria said softly, giving him a little shake. This earned her a brotherly scowl.
Harriet squeezed his shoulder gently. “You will make mistakes. Many of them. But you will learn from them. And everyone—everyone—from the lowliest scullery maid to your Uncle Quint will be trying to help you along the way.”
“I think I can accept that, but I just do not see the need for me to leave—not now—not yet.”
Maria looked around her brother. “I tried to talk with Uncle Quint, too.”
“Did you?” Harriet asked. “What did he tell you?”
“He seemed less definite about a school for me. Perhaps more open to the idea of a governess for us girls—like maybe education matters less for girls.”
“I do hope you misunderstood him,” Harriet said.
Maria shrugged. “Perhaps I did.”
Phillip balled his hands into fists on his knees. “Is there nothing we can do, Aunt Harriet? Nothing at all? I do not want to go away this year. I am not ready. May I not have some say in such matters?”
Harriet sat silent for some moments, letting her hand drift up and down the boy’s back. Finally, she spoke slowly and softly. “Your Uncle Quint is your guardian, as you well know. He has the same legal powers as your father would have had, and I truly believe he means to fulfill that role in that spirit. I also believe that he has your best interests at heart.”
“But he won’t listen to me at all,” Phillip moaned.
“Or me,” Maria echoed.
Harriet rose and patted the boy on the shoulder. “In matters such as this, English law does not give women and children much room to maneuver. We are left mostly with the powers of persuasion. We still have some time before term starts. Perhaps we can persuade the colonel to change his mind.” She gestured for them to rise. “But come now. Once and for all, off to bed with you both.”
“Yes, ma’am,” they murmured and kissed her on the cheek as they departed.
* * * *
Quint was just coming up the stairs when he happened to see Phillip and Maria scurrying from Harriet’s room up the back stairs to the nursery rooms on the floor above. Now what was that all about—at this hour? he mused to himself as he turned toward his own chambers at the other end of the long hall. Is Miss Mayfield trying to undermine my authority on this infernal school business? Both Phillip and Maria had accosted him on the matter during the day, and, as he had fully determined earlier, he held his ground and made it clear that the cur
rent Earl of Sedwick would be going off for the same education his predecessors had had. As for Maria, he had been less adamant only because he was not as sure what their parents’ wishes had been regarding their daughter. He supposed that was a subject about which Harriet Mayfield might be able to enlighten him, but for some reason it went against the grain to have to ask her. Nevertheless…
He settled into bed and turned up his lamp, prepared to lose himself in a novel by Sir Walter Scott that he had been delighted to discover he had not read before. Medieval knights and feats of derring-do were what he needed at the moment. But his mind kept drifting to those two youngsters and their aunt. Especially the aunt. And those laughing gray eyes—or were they blue?—as she teased little Elly about the pink crystal of the brooch. He smiled to himself at the image. Surely she was not encouraging the older ones’ resistance to going to school. Was she?
Women!
And then there was that little bombshell his mother had let drop that evening. After a rather late light supper, the adults of the household had gathered in the drawing room to partake of tea or cognac. Harriet played the piano quietly, but idly; Quint and Chet were engaged in a card game at a side table; the dowager, at the main seating arrangement in the room, had been nattering on about the success of the afternoon’s tea to her companion, when suddenly her discussion evolved to her upcoming house party and guest list and seemed not so idle after all.
“You remember Lady Barbara Riverton, do you not, my son?” his mother called to him.
“Yes, of course,” he said in a neutral tone he was proud to have achieved.
“I thought you would.” His mother looked at him archly. “She’s a widow now, you know.”
“I had heard that.” Again, he was carefully noncommittal. He remembered very well reading that news in a well-worn newspaper in the Peninsula.
His mother babbled on, apparently unaware of, or intent on ignoring, his response. “Her period of mourning has been over for ages now and Lady Barbara is as popular as she ever was as a debutante. One of the ‘Winsome Widows’ as they are known. All three of them have accepted my invitation.”
“How nice,” Mrs. Hartley murmured over her teacup. “Your house party will surely be a success with such lively ladies in attendance.”
“I hope so,” Lady Margaret said. “Quinton, you should know that Lady Barbara added a postscript to her acceptance of my invitation. She said she is particularly looking forward to seeing you again.”
“Did she now?” Quint had then pointedly set his cognac glass aside to concentrate on the cribbage game he and Chet were playing.
Now, he pushed the novel under his pillow, turned out the light, and allowed his mind to drift to a painful period of the past. Barbara Newhouse had been the leading debutante the year Quint had come home on his first leave. Honey-blonde hair, green eyes, a laughing disposition, and a figure that had men salivating combined to make her that season’s “diamond of the first water.” With her encouragement—or so he thought—he had fallen, and fallen hard. But then she had none-too-gently informed him that it was simply impossible that a lowly viscount’s daughter with only a modest dowry could ever consider the suit of a second son with limited resources—regardless of how absolutely splendid that second son looked in his regimentals—especially as that second son’s older brother was already married and was on the way to producing an heir. So, at nineteen, the beauteous Barbara had been practical and married the immensely rich Lord Riverton, who had at the time been in his late fifties.
And Lieutenant Burnes? That stalwart fellow had returned to the battlefield and made himself the best kind of military officer he knew how. The British Army with its vast and varied “tail” and the constant change of location in headquarters offered opportunities now and then for romantic liaisons, but for Quint, anything that might have turned out to be serious had been somehow quashed by circumstances. He had usually just shrugged and accepted such as the vicissitudes of war. It was true that he had harbored some resentment against Barbara, but he understood the realities of her life—were they not the realities of his own life as well?
That phase of his life had long been buried. He did not welcome the thought of having it resurrected. Winsome widows, indeed! What the hell does that mean? And what did his mother mean, inviting them? Especially that one? Ah, well, this, too, will pass. He punched his pillow into submission and deliberately turned his mind to the morrow. The very air had smelled of rain this evening.…
* * * *
Since the excursion to visit the cottagers was to take place in the afternoon, Harriet divided her morning between spending time with the younger children and reviewing the material she had gathered on cottage industries in general, but especially on local cottage weavers. Some of these families had been weavers for generations—and had served the Sedwick estate for just as long. She remembered visiting many of them from time to time with Anne in the past, but on those occasions her interest had not been so focused as it would be today.
Knowing that country folk could be even stricter about the proprieties than the dowager herself and that, moreover, these country folk had been quite fond of the previous Earl of Sedwick, she dressed for this outing in the most proper of half-mourning attire: a medium gray linen gown with a finely woven darker gray woolen shawl about her shoulders. Her only spot of color was the children’s brooch, which she pinned at the throat of the high-neck dress. She appreciated what she took to be a nod of approval from Quint as he greeted her and Phillip in the entrance hall.
“I thought it best we not risk the open landau,” Quint said, ushering them out to the closed carriage and handing her in. “Still too much chance of more rain.”
“I suppose you are right,” she agreed, deliberately trying yet again to ignore that delicious physical reaction his touch seemed always to engender. “Summer rains can be unpredictable.” His fingers brushed hers as he handed her a basket, and for an instant, her gaze locked with his; she was sure he was as conscious of the current of…of…awareness between them as she was. Covering her own reaction, she concentrated on gathering her skirt to make room for Phillip and ask the boy, “Are you nervous, my dear?”
“About what?”
“Oh. We are taking the nonchalant mode, I see, for the new Lord Sedwick’s first real outing in that role.”
Phillip grimaced. “Aunt Harriet!”
She grinned at him. “All right. I’ll behave.”
Quint and Chet climbed in and sat opposite them and Quint signaled the driver to go ahead. They were also accompanied by two armed footmen, one on the bench with the driver, and one at the back of the carriage.
“You’ll do just fine, my lad,” Chet assured him. “An’ if we come acrost anyone as say you don’t, we’ll come back an’ dig us a dungeon under Sedwick Hall deeper ’n hell itself an’ confine ’em to it for all eternity! That’ll do ’em! Eh?”
Phillip giggled at Chet’s exaggerated accent. “And feed them a diet of burnt bread and water.”
“With maybe a spider for company,” Harriet added.
“You are a cruel lot,” Quint observed. “Good job our people are unlikely to need your ministrations.”
The rain held off as the carriage stopped in front of the first of the weavers’ cottages in a cluster of four cottages with surrounding outbuildings and farmland. Harriet knew that traditionally these families had survived as both artisans and farmers. The building at which they stopped was a two-storied structure of stone with a thatched roof. Approaching the covered stoop—Harriet, Phillip, then Quint and Chet—could hear the loud thwacks and thumps of the loom, and Harriet saw a young girl looking through a side window of what she took to be the living room on the right of the cottage door. Harriet lifted the knocker, but it had scarcely sounded once before the door was opened by a woman in her forties, wearing a kerchief on her head. Her husband stood at her side and behind them wer
e several children ranging in age from adolescents to toddlers.
“Hello, Miss Harriet,” the woman said. “What a nice surprise to see you! And Lord Phillip too. Oh! I mean, of course, it is Lord Sedwick now, is it not? I do apologize, my lord. It is just—”
“It is perfectly all right, Mrs. Enslow,” Phillip said with a smile. “I am not at all used to the title yet myself, you see. So, please. Make nothing of it.”
The woman dipped him a curtsy and said, “Thank you, my lord.” She stepped back. “Do come in.”
Harriet entered, followed by Phillip, then Quint and Chet. Harriet had been here before, but not at all sure that a weaver’s cottage was familiar territory to Colonel Lord Quinton Burnes, she found herself trying to view their surroundings through his eyes. The building itself was rather large, for it was a farmhouse, accommodating multi-generations of a family, as well as housing a large working loom. The room they entered was actually two rooms—off to the left was the room that held the loom and cupboards for storing wool and cloth and other things needed for the business of the weaver’s trade. On the right was the family living and dining area. It held a large dining table with chairs and benches such as would accommodate a family of perhaps a dozen people. The table was scrubbed to a fine shine and had a lace cloth in the middle with some small covered ceramic pots that Harriet assumed held often-used condiments. Other furniture in this half of the room included a horsehair sofa and two much worn upholstered chairs. In a place of honor was a bookstand that held a copy of the Bible.
A stone fireplace in the living room provided heat for the entire space and was situated so that it also provided much of the cooking facility for the kitchen in the room beyond. Outside the kitchen were sheds and barns for animals, tools, and so on. Family bedrooms were on the second floor. But the center of the dwelling—in every way—was the loom. The loom was the means by which the family survived.
As Harriet had suggested on the way, she made the introductions, then stepped aside. “Mr. and Mrs. Enslow, allow me to introduce his lordship’s guardian, Colonel Lord Quinton Burnes and his friend Mr. Chester Gibbons.”