The gazebo provided a space for fantasy, for daydreaming. It was not something that Augusta had often been given space for and, here, she found it quite easy to believe all things were possible.
“How ethereal it is!” she called to Lady Jane. “I can understand why you love it.”
However, Lady Jane had drifted from her position at the foot of the stairs. She was, in fact, nowhere within Augusta’s line of sight. I have not been up here so long, but perhaps she grew tired. The sun is rather bright, today.
Certain that she could find her own way back to the manor, or find wherever Lady Jane lingered, Augusta turned her attention back to the scenery. It was soothing and engaging all at once. Augusta could imagine spending hours in the little structure, thinking of nothing and, in some manner, everything. She truly could understand why Lady Jane preferred this spot above any of the others.
Her thoughts drifted as she continued to gaze at the animals that seemed content to wander in the lovely weather. Her mind did keep returning to thoughts of Lord Ainsworth, which were as inconvenient as they were insensible.
Something about the man spoke to her, she was reticent to admit, but what about him had specifically caught her interest was difficult to determine. She leaned against one of the posts of the gazebo, taking care not to disturb the flowers, and frowned.
You have not even known him long.
With a sigh, she regarded a group of the sheep, who appeared content to be heckled by a corvid who, in turn, seemed to think they had some secret food source it could not access. The large black bird, which was probably some kind of raven or crow, not that she could tell at this distance, would flutter closer to them inquisitively. The sheep, however, were not at all bothered by the intrusion. They would move, and the bird would follow.
I cannot believe I am envious of livestock, thought Augusta. She huffed and tried to think things through to their natural conclusion. Livestock, after all, was meant to be used, whether that was for some product or a task. She did not wish to be used; she wished to be free.
But unlike her, these animals had no qualms about their livelihoods or their places in life. They even seemed to have a sense of kinship among their own kind, something that she sorely lacked.
As Augusta’s eyes unfocused, taking in less and less of what lay before her, her own plight came sharply back into focus.
Dwelling here was akin to a wonderful fantasy, a dream from which she needed to wake. She was well mended now and felt far less pain. The excuses of her frail health and injuries were gone.
I shall have to go, and soon.
At the forefront of her mind was where she would go.
You cannot return to the village. Father is there and he may actually kill you out of rage. The force of her revulsion for her own sire bolstered her for a moment. “You are more resourceful than many, Augusta… you can find a life away from Brookfield,” she murmured to herself.
It was true that she was accomplished for her circumstances. Along with reading and writing, her mother had taught her to clean, sew, and knit. Under her own steam, Augusta had discovered she was quite talented at drawing, not that she envisioned any future for herself founded on that particular aptitude.
Surely, she was capable of obtaining a decent position as a maid or a housekeeper in some estate far away from Brookfield. She wished that she had possessed the presence of mind to filch her father’s stash of gambling money before running. It would have helped tremendously if she had a little money of her own to sustain her before she obtained a proper job. Wanly, Augusta ran her fingers through her hair, disturbing her cap.
No, it isn’t your cap—it’s Lady Jane’s, she reminded herself.
It would be shameless of her to ask for yet more help, although, to be fair, she had not even asked for what they’d tendered to her. And it was not as though she could simply wander, penniless, out of the manor and hope that she’d find a position within the day.
What was more, despite any shame that she herself might feel over asking for it or taking it, she knew that neither Lord Ainsworth nor Lady Jane would see it as shameful to help her. She thought it over carefully. Normally, she was suspect of those who might view her or her ilk as charity cases, but her hosts had demonstrated that they did not see her as such. She felt reasonably confident that she would not be disdained if she actively asked for help. The thought of following through with the act itself didn’t appeal to her at all. Yet, needs must. She could hardly expect to get anywhere new without funds.
But the very idea of leaving the manor devastated her. In all of three weeks, she had become accustomed to being a companion to Lady Jane. Though she did not have any aunts, she imagined that she could grow to love the woman as she might her own flesh and blood. The pending separation loomed like a deep shadow across the otherwise lovely gardens.
It’s more than that, though, isn’t it?
The chief cause of her misery was, inexplicably, Lord Ainsworth.
Since the night when they had played cards together, he had been warm toward her. More relaxed and genuine. He was attentive, polite, and far more hospitable. This was, she felt, more along the lines of how he had been before war touched his life so cruelly.
Augusta could not explain away the fact that she was attracted to him, and she had tried to tell herself that it was due to her comparative lack of exposure to men—well, good men—and the false sense of intimacy that being an invalid here had cultivated.
Neither Lady Jane nor Lord Ainsworth even knew her true name, for pity’s sake!
What real friendship could be built upon that deceit?
But she was fascinated by his love for his aunt, concerned by his hesitation to venture out of his own home for fear of what people might think of him, and thoroughly amazed that he had suffered so many losses and still retained his composure and presence of mind.
At this juncture in their acquaintance, she fancied that she comprehended him a little better, and surmised that if he was exposed to more of his friends and possibly, she shuddered to think, more women, his character would shift back to what it had been. Lady Jane’s plans might yet work on him, but it was too sad to think that in two months’ time—nearer the time of Lady Jane’s birthday—Augusta would presumably be absent from their lives.
Even if they wanted to employ you, you might not be given lodgings here… and then where would you be? You cannot go home.
Yes, she would miss both the duke and his aunt when it came time to leave them.
She worried her lower lip between her teeth, thinking. She would particularly miss the duke.
Then, the decidedly human sound of a foot in the grass below carried to her ears.
*
Will had been standing at the foot of the stairs for a long moment, engrossed with the sight of Miss Brooke in the gazebo. She was so preoccupied that she had not noticed him advancing at all. She was obviously deep within reflection. Occasionally her lips would move as though she spoke to herself, but he could not catch anything she might have said.
He took the opportunity to take in her beautiful, oval face and the lines of her fine figure. She was not a terribly tall woman, he knew, but she was not as fragile as he or Jane had first surmised. This was most likely due to the fact that she’d had to work, though they still did not know in what fashion.
She was not in need of fineries to catch his eye.
He knew because all she had worn since her arrival were Jane’s older things, and she still looked better and more lively than most of the women within his acquaintance.
While it might have been a little untoward, he had been watching her for the last five minutes and he’d decided even more firmly that she was transfixing in an unaffected manner.
She must have had some kind of good upbringing, he mused. She treats the servants too well to think herself above them, yet she can converse so well with us that she must have been educated.
From what he had seen, she had high morals, a strong spi
rit, and he knew that his aunt delighted in her company.
The matter of her origin remained very much unsettled. But it almost did not matter to him.
He had given her his word several days ago after deciding it was too much work to try to get her to speak on the matter, and her stubbornness was winning against his patience. Besides, he had reasoned, she was still recuperating. She’d gone outside to enjoy the sunshine, and he casually asked whether she had a garden at home. Immediately, he regretted it, for her face went closed, the honey-brown eyes went flinty.
“No,” she’d said. “We don’t.”
Through a great sigh, he replied, “I apologize if I offended you. I will say no more on the subject of your home while you remain with us.” But he could not resist asking more about her mysterious life, which he suspected was as mundane as could be, yet filled with some kind of domestic horror. “Do you come from Brookfield?”
She scowled. “I thought you said you weren’t going to talk about home.”
Carefully, he said, “I’m not. Not specifically. I just wonder where you are from.”
Miss Brooke turned away from him slightly, pretending to study the play of light on the pond before them. He waited for her to answer, and was not sure if she would. “I don’t hail from Brookfield. I have lived all over.”
“Why?”
She chewed on her bottom lip nervously. “I ask myself the same thing.”
Will thought, Her childhood must not have been easy. Instead of tugging that particular thread, he changed the subject. “What do you do when you are not bedridden?”
“For work, you mean?” Turning back to him, she eyed him warily. “I suppose it’s no secret that I’m not a lady.”
“Again, I do not mean to offend you.” He glanced at her hands, which were beautiful and rather delicate despite their calluses. At least their dry, chapped skin had improved immeasurably since she had been residing with him.
“I’m not,” she said. “No sense in being offended over it. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, though some wealthy folks might say so. Begging your pardon.” A large, orange fish glimmered near the water’s edge and she smiled at it before it drifted away from the shallows. “I should like to have a real occupation, but I do whatever work I can find as long as it’s not dangerous and won’t put my reputation amongst the gossips. I’ve done mending for neighbors, I’ve sold what I manage to knit, I cook and clean as I can.”
“But you can read and write. You are educated,” Will observed.
“Before she worked as a scullery maid, my mother was a nanny to three young ladies in the north. She was common, but she was able to learn, herself. Alongside the little ones. She was clever. They had a tutor in addition to her, and she and the tutor got on well enough, so she always remained when the girls had their lessons.”
Why did she not remain in that position? He knew that women who served as nannies did not remain so when they married, so it was possible that the reason was just that obvious. He recalled that his own nanny had left after her marriage. In the pit of his gut, though, he knew it was not true in Augusta’s mother’s case. “Then she… left the family’s employ?”
“She told me that she met my father because he worked for the household as a hostler.” Miss Brooke’s face grew pinched and tight. “I think he might have pressured her into a…” she paused in the search for the right words. “An association. They did marry after she… excuse me, Your Grace, but you did ask… discovered she was with child. But the lady of the house still believed Mama would set a bad example for her daughters and, so, she was dismissed.”
Miss Brooke watched another fish, a slim, yellow one with glowing scales.
“I am not so easy to shock, Miss Brooke,” said Will, after he was sure she was done speaking. “Especially not after keeping a practice in London, where the strangest, the cruelest, and the most unexpected things could come out of my patients’ mouths.” He’d listened, rapt, to the first deeply held bit of personal information she was willing to give him, and he did not want to stem the tide if she chose to divulge any more. To his mind, what Miss Brooke had described was not terribly outlandish. He did not mind, either, that she had referenced pregnancy out of wedlock. “I presume she was dismissed without a reference.” It was not a question.
“Yes, so she had to take the only position she could get.”
Will sighed, wishing he could express his pity, yet he was frozen in his own musings. He had heard of such things happening, and the only factor that might make them worse was that the father of the woman’s child could be the lord of the manor. He would not say to Miss Brooke that she was lucky her mother and father could marry. It would be terribly gauche of him. But at the very least, she could claim her own parentage.
Still, it had not been her mother’s fault, and he felt that she should not have been punished for what was very likely done under some duress.
Clearly, the woman before him was pragmatic. But what called to him was the way she spoke without bitterness, without an edge to her words. She had been wronged. She had been treated unfairly. So had her mother.
But it had not warped Miss Brooke. He admired that.
Irresistibly, he was now in the habit of contemplating her. Not just her origins, whatever those were, but her as she was before him.
More than once, he had caught himself looking upon her—admiring some remark she’d just made, or surreptitiously eyeing her bosom where it swelled out of the neckline of her dress.
He suspected that Jane had caught some of these stares, too, but she had just deigned not to comment.
I have to stop, especially now that I know what transpired between her mother and her father, he thought. It’s not gentlemanly.
But even now, he continued to watch her, thinking about how a painter might create a delightful scene of her reflecting within the gazebo.
“Lord Ainsworth,” she called, which jarred him from the thought of paintings. “I see you have decided to go outdoors on this fine day.”
“Aunt Jane sent me to fetch you,” he said. He did not quite think that his aunt had done so with any specific plan in mind, but also he could not entirely understand why she could not have just accompanied Miss Brooke back to the manor herself.
“Oh, goodness, have I been up here so long? I shall be down in a moment.”
Will immediately felt a sense of loss at the thought of her being removed from his sight. He hastened to reassure her. “No, you may take as long as you desire. My aunt is quite adamant when she believes something should be done, so I had no choice.” He chuckled. “When I suggested that perhaps you’d simply found something to catch your fancy in the gardens, she still insisted I come and find you.”
A smile lit up her face. Though he was often genuinely irked by Jane’s adamancy, he smiled, too. It’s part of her charm.
“I am sorry to have caused you any disruption,” she teased. “Lady Jane is, indeed, a strong-willed woman.”
“It’s quite all right. I think I needed to stretch my legs. At the least, it is important to take the air when one can.” He paused, then called, “Is that ludicrously enormous crow still bothering the sheep?”
She laughed enough for it to carry on the warm breeze. “Unless there is more than one, I do believe it is. You may come up to see for yourself,” she said.
He wasted no time in making his way up the stairs. “Ah, it never tires of this ritual,” he said when he was in the gazebo with her, stationing himself just so, so that he could continue to look at her while gazing into the fields below. He had observed the bird doing this over the last fortnight—dashing toward the ground, then the sheep, then hopping away as though it had never meant to cause a fuss. Of course, the sheep were hard to rattle as it was.
Complacent creatures, he thought.
He caught her smiling behind her hand but he said nothing about it.
She turned to watch with him. “Is it not the same with people, my lord?”
“H
ow so?”
“We play our games and have our rituals, often seeking just our own amusement. I feel the bird is simply amusing itself.”
Will considered this. “It is not being cruel, no.”
Her glance flickered over him. “Well… I didn’t mean to imply that man is not cruel.” Her eyes lingered on his scars, but he found that he did not mind and didn’t feel at all self-conscious under her pointed stare. “Only that we all play our games, whether or not we realize it. Some create no damage, whether physical or spiritual. On the other hand, some men delight in cruelty.”
This was taking a disturbingly philosophical bent, he decided. He was used to her obscuring or evading any talk of who she was, but he was not used to this nearly erudite, almost opaque way of speaking. Not from her. Though it was not because she was lacking in intelligence, that was plain. It was more that she did not seem to have a use for thinking more philosophically, and so she did not.
“Is there something in particular you wish to discuss, Miss Brooke?”
“No, but I find myself feeling very thoughtful, today.”
He could tell that she was lying, or at least diverting him from part of the truth. Her demeanor was hesitant, conflicted. “Perhaps it is the location. This specific one, I mean to say.”
Miss Brooke nodded. “It encourages introspection.” She smiled wistfully and when she exhaled, he felt her breath just barely on his face. It smelled of the coffee she had had earlier this afternoon. The gazebo barely fit both of them together, so they were nearer to one another than they had previously been while both were standing. “I don’t know if that is necessarily a bad thing.”
“It rather depends on what you are thinking about, doesn’t it?”
He was no stranger to introspection, and his own mind often went in directions he did not enjoy. It was not easy to avoid, so in the months since Salamanca, he had learned to allow the negative thoughts to wash over him, then he let them go. There was no other way to be about it. Otherwise, they could consume him. It was a skill cultivated by dedicated practice, and it was one he’d had to learn through trial and error.
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