Emerging from the walk, he followed the leftward curve of the path, glimpsing a well-kept farm on some further acreage, and the silhouette of a manor house in the distance. These sights were noted only in passing as he continued around the periphery of the house, the path ending at a small herb garden, where a middle-aged servant of comfortable proportions knelt in the dirt, cheerily clipping parsley and chives.
He had nearly reached her before she glanced up and, recognizing a stranger—and a gentleman at that—leapt to her feet, dusting her skirts and bobbing a nervous curtsey. “Oh, sir, begging your pardon, sir, I didn’t hear you come up!”
“It seems the entire household is afflicted with deafness,” he remarked curtly. “Is your mistress at home?”
The servant, in agitation, wiped her hands on her apron, darting alternate looks at an upper window in the house and out across the fields. “No, sir, it’s only Miss at home, with the master at the farm with Matthew and the mistress gone to the village. If you please, sir, we weren’t expecting visitors. It’s the maid’s day off,” she explained, as if the circumstance normally precluded unexpected company. Sir Joshua merely grunted, and the servant, with a visible swallow, added, “The mistress is expected back at any moment, if your honor should like to step into the house?”
Loathe to be one minute longer on his errand, he held out the letter. “No need. I trust I may leave this note with you, with the understanding that you will deliver it into Mrs. Breckinridge’s hands immediately upon her return.”
The letter was accompanied by half a crown, and the servant, receiving such unanticipated largesse from this very imposing gentleman, was stricken dumb, managing only several vigorous nods of the head and a double curtsey, and at last achieving the disjointed utterance of her gratitude for his honor’s trust and the assurance that his honor’s correspondence would be guarded with her life.
Sir Joshua, caring very little at this point whether or not his sister’s letter would, indeed, be delivered, bestowed upon the fluttering woman a brief bow, and turned and strode back down the path to the drive. Shaking off the dust of his feet, he leapt into his curricle and turned it, without a backward glance, toward civilization.
Upon reaching Branwell Cottage, Genevieve Breckinridge stopped to hang her coat in the hall to dry—mentally rehearsing her explanation to Sanford, her maid, for its deplorable state—then continued down the narrow passage, a parcel tucked under one arm. In the kitchen, she was met by the wide-eyed cook, who had been chopping herbs, but who at once dropped her knife to hasten her bulk around the table toward her mistress.
“This came for you today, ma’am. Delivered by hand, ma’am!” the cook announced breathlessly, diving a hand into her apron pocket and pressing a sealed billet writ on heavy, hot-pressed paper into Mrs. Breckinridge’s hands.
“Thank you, Sally,” her mistress said, taking in the cook’s agitation with the ghost of a smile about her lips. “You did very well to give it straight to me. It looks excessively official, does it not? Who could it be from, I wonder?”
Sally shook her mob-capped head. “Oh, ma’am, he never left a name, and begging your pardon, ma’am, I forgot to ask for it!”
“My, he must have been intimidating indeed.”
“Oh, he was, ma’am, ever so!” cried the cook, relief at her mistress’s ready understanding plain on her face. “Tall and dark and—”
“If you say handsome, Sally,” Mrs. Breckinridge cut in archly, tugging off her gloves, “I shall feel very ill-used at having been on your errand rather than being at hand to behold him myself.”
“No, ma’am, I wasn’t going to say that,” Sally hastened to reassure her. “He was well enough, I suppose, ma’am, but it would be too much to say he was handsome!”
“Oh, in that case,” said Mrs. Breckinridge, handing over the parcel to her, “I have nothing to regret, for tall and dark men are five a penny, I daresay. You are welcome to your merely tall, dark, and well enough stranger.”
The cook, who had taken the parcel automatically, looked scandalized. “As if I would ever take on so, Mrs. Breckinridge! Shame on you!”
“Well, Sally, you mustn’t put such shocking thoughts into my head by raving on about a tall, dark—”
“I was going to say imposing, ma’am,” Sally hastily interpolated, “for he was, like a judge!” The memory of the stranger overpowered her once more, and she closed her eyes, the parcel pressed to her bosom. “Oh, it fair gave me shivers to have him glowering down at me, as if I was a common criminal or some such, and him not knowing me from Eve!”
“Good heaven, Sally! Was it so bad?” Mrs. Breckinridge laid a reassuring hand on the cook’s shoulder. “Then I must count myself indebted to you for keeping me away, and sparing me such an interview. I shouldn’t wonder at my bursting out with something shockingly uncivil, and giving him the most disgraceful notions of me.” Her eyes grew wide at a sudden realization. “You are nothing less than heroic for averting that disaster. Lenora will be positively green when she hears of it!”
“Oh, no, ma’am!” cried the cook, pink with pleasure. “She could never, not of me!”
“Never underestimate your powers, Sally,” said Mrs. Breckinridge, her lips quivering. “However, you may be right. Lenora’s preferred variety of heroism smacks less of confrontation and more of long-suffering, I believe. And when one comes to think on it, you did not, after all, rescue me from ignominy, for though I escaped your tall, dark, imposing gentleman, I did meet an angry, disagreeable one on the road, who most unwillingly helped me to free my wagon from the mud, and made no secret of his disdain for such a cow-handed driver as I proved to be.” She shook her head grimly, remembering his coldness. “The sun, I fear, descends too rapidly upon the day of chivalry. My only consolation is that I shall probably never see him again.”
“I should hope not, ma’am!” Sally’s eyes had taken on a martial light at this disclosure. “What is he about, I’d like to know, to judge you as soon as clap eyes on you? And the man who don’t see fit to render service to a lady in need ain’t no gentleman, I say.”
“Oh, Sally, but he did render me service,” Mrs. Breckinridge said, her conscience requiring that she be just, “though he grumbled about it. And in the end, he apologized for his temper, rather inadequately, to be sure, but quite properly. So, we cannot, as Christians, give him up for lost.”
This pious attitude did not seem to impress the cook, for she huffed, “A true gentleman would never have lost his temper, and not needed a trumpery excuse.”
“Well, in all fairness, I did nothing to ease his disgust of me. No sooner had he helped me out of my embarrassment than I revealed to him that the cause of it was my yielding to a most despicable vice. I was obliged, you see, to tell him about our bet, which I have deservedly lost.” She sighed. “I fear he did not approve the tone of my mind.”
“And you the best lady I ever did know!” Sally then favored Mrs. Breckinridge with a detailed opinion of modern gentlemen in general, and tall, dark ones in particular, with an extremely vivid description of the set-down she would give one should he dare to insult her mistress within her hearing.
With becoming gravity, Mrs. Breckinridge attended to this diatribe until the cook drew breath, during which pause she gave such evidence of her unqualified approbation that Sally blushed rosily, and her mistress was able to escape the kitchen, her thoughts bent on the very interesting missive in her hands.
Mrs. Breckinridge could not imagine who the daunting gentleman could be who would deliver so very urgent a letter to her, for all her late husband’s cronies had ignored her after his death, and all his creditors had been satisfied for at least a twelvemonth. In the privacy of the hall, she took a good look at the letter’s florid direction and was at once seized by a dreadful memory, of the one man Bertram had known whose handwriting flowed like a woman’s, and whose reintroduction to her society would be
most painful. But the letter could not be from him. Surely, Lord Montrose had forgotten her very existence, as soon as Bertram’s last obligation to him had been paid!
With trembling hands, she broke the seal and opened the note, her eyes alighting on the signature: Lady Amelia Cammerby. Her relief knew no bounds; indeed, her feelings underwent so abrupt an alteration that she was obliged to steady herself against the hall table, and with soaring hope she eagerly digested the note’s contents. So satisfactory were they that no sooner had she read the last line than she hastened to the narrow staircase and up to the first floor, tugging impatiently at her bonnet strings and calling to her daughter.
Miss Lenora Breckinridge was to be found curled on the armchair in her bedchamber, engrossed in a novel she had borrowed from her dearest friend, Miss Elvira Chuddsley, who held a subscription to a circulating library in Berkhamsted. Having just reached the point of an alarming revelation that the insane monk was in actuality the heroine’s long-lost father, Lenora’s ears were understandably deaf to any sounds in the temporal world, and the precipitous entrance of her mother into the room wrenched her most distressingly back into reality. With admirable presence of mind, she thought to hide the book in the chair cushions, though this action proved unnecessary, for her mother was reading again a particularly enchanting line in the letter she held before her as she advanced into the room. Mrs. Breckinridge’s inattention was to her own peril, her path being strewn with two bandboxes, a stool, and a carelessly discarded pelisse and hat, and it was with baited breath that her daughter watched her precarious approach, while shoving the novel deeper into the cushions.
“Oh, my love,” breathed Mrs. Breckinridge, miraculously navigating to her daughter’s side unharmed. “Our prayers are answered. This letter is from Lady Cammerby, and bears the most delightful news.”
The novel was instantly forgot, the magnitude of this long expected and often despaired-of news such as to reduce even the most terrifying monk to obscurity, and Lenora clasped her hands to her breast, within which wild hopes now fluttered. “Mama! Mama! Oh, tell me at once! Has she agreed?”
“Yes! Oh!” sighed Mrs. Breckinridge, giving over the letter while sinking ecstatically onto the stool. “I cannot tell you how this news relieves me. A veritable world of weight off my shoulders!”
Lenora raised rapturous eyes from the hastily perused letter in her hands. “And she will bear the expense as well! Oh, Mama! I never dreamed!”
“I must say, I did dream it, my dear,” replied her mama, eyeing her askance, “for I know not how we could have borne it. Indeed, we could not have, and would rather have been obliged to postpone your debut.”
Lenora gasped. “Oh, Mama! Not another year! It would have been infamous to do so! I should have locked myself in my room, and—and gone into a decline!”
“An interesting fate, to be sure, my love,” replied Mrs. Breckinridge, patting her daughter’s hand sympathetically, “and I don’t doubt but that you would have enjoyed it prodigiously, but through the excellence and generosity of my dear friend, you shall never know such suffering!” She passed a hand over her eyes. “Nor shall I. Oh, my dearest, the dreadful worries I have had, waiting and wondering!” She clasped her daughter’s hand triumphantly. “But Providence has provided, and you shall have your London season!”
“Mama! Oh, I cannot speak for joy!” She bounced in her chair, but her passion was abruptly checked by a most lowering thought. “But will Tom agree to it?”
Her mother pressed her hand encouragingly. “He must, my love, for he is the last of all brothers to stand in the way of his sister’s happiness.”
“Indeed, I am the first to acknowledge his kindness to me,” Lenora hastened to reassure her, “and he is generous above all things—and I love him dearly, and should never wish to appear ungrateful.” She paused, as if experiencing an inward struggle, before blurting out, “But you must own that in matters of pride he can be quite odious.”
“It is true that pride has become somewhat of a sticking point with him, Lenora,” acknowledged her mother, gently, “but it is also true that Tom’s odious pride has kept us from an even more odious fate. Without his pride, a London season would be as unthinkable as it would be pointless.” She stood, straightening her skirts. “Never mind about Tom. I shall have a word with him, for you know I can always bring him round my thumb.”
Lenora’s attempt to stifle a giggle was unsuccessful, and her mother cast a significant look at her. “I have great expectations for you now, young lady, so you must trade that horrid novel with Elvira for her latest fashion plates, and decide which of my old dresses we shall make over, for though dear Amelia has offered to stand the nonsense, we shall not overstep her generosity. We must at least make a push not to appear encroaching.”
This elicited another gurgle from Lenora who, with heightened color, withdrew the offending book from its hiding place and laid it on the end table, pausing only to kiss her mother’s cheek before bounding out of the room to plunder the depths of various trunks in the attic.
Depositing her hat and gloves in her own room, and putting off her soiled dress for a fresh one, Mrs. Breckinridge descended the stairs in time to see her son, Mr. Thomas Breckinridge, lay his hat and gloves on the table in the hall.
Hurrying forward to assist in divesting him of his driving coat, she asked, “Why does Matthew not help you? I thought him with you.”
“He’s taking care of the horses, Mama, which he can do much more creditably than this sort of thing.” He grimaced as he straightened his coat. “I never missed Budley so much.”
“Nor I, dear.” She hung his caped coat in the hall beside her own. “But I am persuaded he is happier where he is now, no doubt managing St. Matthew’s staff with an iron hand and maintaining awful order among his supplicants. How does the farm?”
His look darkened. “We’ve hardly anything to put by, Mama, even for ourselves! Curse the wretched weather! Who knew it could rain so much? As if we lived in a downpour, and it carried half our soil down the canals.”
“Well, it is no more than I expected,” his mother said with a sigh. “But we shall contrive! We always do.”
The grimace softened, and Tom drew his mother’s arm through his, leading her toward the sitting room. “Though the farm has not done well this year, I have high hopes that the breeding season will be successful, and if that is the case, Mama, I trust that we shall be able to hire not only a new butler, but a housekeeper as well, and perhaps even a maid for Lenora.”
“Oh, Tom, after this setback you mustn’t worry about that. We do very well with Cook and Sanford.”
“That’s flim-flam, Mama, and you know it!” he retorted amiably, holding the sitting room open for her. “Just because Sanford and Sally would go to the ends of the earth for you, and do it every day, doesn’t mean you do anything very well!”
“You injure me, Tom!”
“That’s enough of your flummery, Mama! You’d work yourself to the bone before you’d admit to discontent, and our loyal retainers may any day determine that working below their station is not, after all, desirable to a higher wage elsewhere,” he said. “I’d liefer obviate that eventuality, if I may, ma’am.”
She turned fond eyes upon her son, and pressed his arm. “You take such care of us, Tom. Of course, I’d prefer to hire a housekeeper and maid, but surely there are other expenses that take priority.”
“No, Mama, there are not.” He bowed her onto the sofa. “Even with the loss of income from the farm this year, your excellent son has eliminated all other pressing needs, and now looks forward only to regaining the comforts of our position.”
She watched him thoughtfully as he went to the sideboard to pour himself a brandy. “Every day, I cannot believe my good fortune that you are so unlike your papa.”
He glanced keenly back at her. “I should hope I am not, Mama.”
�
�You are the very image of him, you know. All your growing-up years, I waited in terror for his vices to manifest themselves in you, because of that likeness. But you have proven me to be a great ninnyhammer, and I can be nothing but proud of you, Tom.”
He smiled rather pensively as he sat in the winged chair by the fire. “I confront his face daily in the mirror—a most effective deterrent to any temptation, I must say.”
“I have long ceased to anticipate excess in you, Tom, but now I fear you are in danger of falling too much to the other extreme. You spend so much time at business, and you are not yet even of age.”
“Oh, Mama, never fear,” he said with a mischievous glance. “You know I am not above a quiet card game, or a good ride to hounds, or standing up with a pretty girl at the assembly. And the investment of my time at business is beginning to pay off, with the promise of more time to spend at leisure when I do come of age.”
“Perhaps you should consider going up to Oxford after all, Tom,” suggested his mother. “All your friends are there.”
“I can’t deny I’ve thought of it,” he said, then leaned forward eagerly, grasping his glass between his hands. “But nothing equals the enjoyment of turning this land to account, Mama! Causing soil that has lain fallow for so many years to yield plenty, and watching our debts disappear as our stability grows—it’s beyond anything great! Even with this horrid summer that was more like winter, I’m more determined than ever to persevere. I must sound like the greatest bumpkin alive, but I wouldn’t change my position for the world. I love country life! I own I never thought I’d settle to it as I have.”
His mother’s eyes twinkled. “There is the proof that you are not, and never will be, like your papa. He could not abide the country. He stayed only when he could no longer afford a house in town, and could not rid himself of the land, for the entailment. Little did he know his constraints would be your legacy.”
Two in the Bush Page 2