He was so absorbed in his speculation that he did not notice he was no longer alone until a colossal splashing broke his contemplation.
‘Caesar! Get out of there, you beast!’
He looked around to see the hind legs and feathery tail of a dog plunging into the river and paddling away, then he was hailed by a female voice. The middle Upford daughter, Miss Aurelia, was striding towards the opposite bank from across the field. She was carrying a dog’s leash looped around one black-gloved hand.
‘Oh, Mr Harcourt, I did not expect to encounter you again so soon,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Is it deep?’ She gestured to the water and pulled her mouth to one side.
‘In places, but it would only come to my thighs here,’ Jonathan answered. Miss Upford stared intently at the part of his anatomy he had named and he felt a slight awkwardness at being examined.
‘That’s a relief. Mother would be devastated if Caesar came to harm.’
They both looked towards the dog—a King Charles Spaniel—which was swimming in joyous circles and looking far from in peril.
‘Good morning, Miss Upford,’ Jonathan said, finally recalling his manners and tipping his hat.
She dipped a curtsy and they stood looking at each other across the water. Her manner was not unfriendly but she did not seem particularly pleased to have met him.
‘I could say the same,’ he replied. ‘This is a lonely place to be walking.’
‘I like solitude,’ she said crisply. ‘Contrary to what society would have you believe, not all young ladies crave attention and company.’
She was wearing a walking dress the colour of ripe damsons. A matching capelet nipped in at her waist, emphasising the narrowness in contrast to her wide skirts. Her outfit was completed by a straw hat with a veil pulled over the top half of her face. She was currently peering at him from beneath with her chin tilted up. The effect was alluring, though she could only have dressed for herself if her walk was taking her to the boundary of her father’s estate and she had thought not to encounter anyone.
‘Then I should apologise for disturbing your peace,’ Jonathan said. ‘It gives me the opportunity to make another apology, however. I must crave your pardon for the dreadful mistake I made when I first encountered you. Will you forgive me?’
‘It was understandable given the circumstances.’ Miss Upford acknowledged his apology with a graceful tilt of her head. ‘Now, we know why I am walking through a field of wet grass,’ she said, gesturing at the spaniel who scrabbled out on to the bank beside her. ‘But why are you here?’
He indicated the mill buildings which could just be seen over the treetops. ‘This land belongs to the mill. I’m speculating how best to develop it.’
Miss Upford seized the dog deftly by the collar, doing her best to avoid the shower that erupted as he shook himself. ‘Heel, you silly boy! Mother refuses to let him go out with Father’s dogs.’
She fixed the leash to Caesar’s collar, then lifted her veil and gave Jonathan an interested look. ‘Oh, how do you plan to use the land?’
‘That very much depends on your father,’ Jonathan said. He drew out his watch and opened the cover. ‘In fact, I am due for an appointment with him at ten. Would you permit me to accompany you back to the house?’
She looked at him through narrowed eyes before answering.
‘Yes, you may.’ She hardly seemed overjoyed at the prospect, but then added, ‘If you walk a short way down to where the river turns, it becomes narrow. You could probably step over easily.’
He could undoubtedly, but something rose inside Jonathan. Pride, or a need to impress Miss Upford. Perhaps simply a wish to change her steely expression to something less severe. He took a few steps backwards, then took a running jump and landed on the opposite bank gracefully beside Miss Upford. Immediately Caesar began snarling and straining at the leash towards Jonathan, trying to leap at him. Jonathan stepped back, one boot sinking into a patch of mud.
‘Oh, do behave, you wretch!’ Miss Upford snapped, pulling vigorously until the dog subsided. It took Jonathan a moment to realise she wasn’t commanding him and he was in the process of standing up straighter. Their eyes met and she gave Jonathan an apologetic look with eyes the colour of coffee. They were fascinatingly dark, rimmed with short, thick lashes beneath straight brows and Jonathan could have spent the morning counting the individual flecks of caramel that speckled them.
Now he was closer to her he saw the rims were a little red and came to the conclusion she had been crying at some point. He remembered how downcast she had looked when she had taken his coat and hat in the hallway and how he had thought she was becoming ill. He had a terrible recollection of his mother, red eyed and weeping before she left Jonathan’s father. A stab of pity went through him and he wondered what could have made her so sad she chose to come to such a solitary place with the unruly Caesar. He almost had the urge to take her hand and squeeze it in an attempt to offer comfort.
The idea took him by surprise. Perhaps Edward was right and he had spent too long avoiding the company of women if something so simple could draw such an odd impulsive sympathy from him. He gestured in the direction of the path back towards the house, but Miss Upford shook her head.
‘I wanted to walk along the river. Do you mind?’
Jonathan shook his head and they walked side by side along the bank, doing their best to avoid the longest of the grass. Jonathan considered offering her an arm, but she seemed perfectly happy walking independently and pulling the dog on the leash to stop him diving in. Her manner was remarkably efficient and a far cry from the other young ladies Jonathan had encountered.
‘Why were you carrying a bucket and wearing an apron?’ he asked.
‘The task needed to be done. As Mother explained, we aren’t a complete household yet. I see no point in expecting someone else to take a task on if I can do it without much inconvenience to myself.’
‘I commend your approach to life,’ Jonathan said, tipping the brim of his hat and finding he truly meant it. As they reached the bend in the river he slowed down.
‘This is the reason I am coming to speak to your father,’ he said. He gestured to the bend in the Bollin which narrowed as it flowed in a narrow horseshoe through the mill grounds. ‘You see, everything on this side of the river belongs to your father and I would like to purchase the land where the loop of the river goes into mine.’
Miss Upford looked at him inquisitively. ‘What would you possibly do with one more field?’ she asked in wonderment.
‘My mill is powered by water,’ Jonathan explained. ‘A single wheel drives the shaft that powers the looms. Over time the river has silted up and narrowed, meaning the wheel turns slowly.’
‘So it is the river you need, not the land,’ Miss Upford said. ‘You could divert the flow into a straighter line and the water will flow faster.’
‘Well done, that’s absolutely right.’ Jonathan smiled approvingly and Miss Upford’s elegant brows came together.
‘It’s a very simple concept to grasp, Mr Harcourt. Even a woman is able to understand such a thing.’
Jonathan floundered. ‘I wasn’t implying you couldn’t, I hope.’
She gave him another frosty smile, but there had been a flicker of surprise in her intelligent brown eyes that Jonathan had liked.
‘It’s both the river and the land I want,’ he said, hoping to break the atmosphere that had suddenly descended. ‘I don’t have the space to expand at the moment as I’d like to. I have plans, you see.’
He left the idea dangling, but she didn’t ask him to elaborate so he walked on in silence and soon they reached the bridge across the Bollin and the road that led either back to Macclesfield or to Sir Robert’s house. Miss Upford drew the leash tighter and drew her veil down, but not before Jonathan saw that her eyes were a little less red than when they had met.
; ‘Perhaps you should make your own way to the house,’ she suggested, glancing towards the double gates of the house. ‘I’ll walk on a little further towards the town before I turn back.’
So she did not want to be seen with him, Jonathan thought. Would her father disapprove of her walking out with a man without a chaperon? He bowed, trying not to mind that their conversation was at an end. As she walked away he called after her.
‘Miss Upford?’
She looked back over her shoulder, giving Jonathan an excellent view of her slender neck, straight back and narrow waist.
‘Why does your mother refuse to let Caesar walk with the other dogs?’ he asked.
She gave a full smile; the first he had seen. It lit her face and her eyes glowed with mischief that was apparent even beneath her veil.
‘He has ambitions above his station. He tries either to fight or to mount them, depending on their sex.’
Jonathan concealed a grin at the image of the boisterous King Charles trying to reach the relevant part of the towering Setters.
‘It’s good to have ambitions,’ he remarked, which received an even more brilliant smile that vanished almost immediately. Either she thought such humour was too ribald a subject or she was deliberately trying to maintain a frosty demeanour, but as she walked swiftly away he was sure he saw her shoulders shaking with laughter.
Chapter Three
Sir Robert received Jonathan in the same office they had spoken in on his previous visit, but Jonathan noted that, now business was being done, the baronet sat behind his desk and looked down at Jonathan, who sat on a comfortable but markedly lower chair at the other side of the expanse of oak.
After a few preliminaries regarding the weather, Sir Robert said, ‘I believe you arrived at the gates with my daughter. What are you doing with Aurelia?’
Jonathan explained the circumstances in which they had met, hoping to assure Sir Robert that it had been entirely coincidental. That explained her insistence in leaving him to walk alone. Did the baronet suspect he had compromised the girl? he wondered.
‘I was surveying the river and the back of the mill,’ he explained with a smile. ‘Which brings me on to my purpose here today, if you will permit me to begin.’
He outlined his plans and named what he considered a generous price. ‘Siddon Hall is my ancestral home,’ Sir Robert said sternly. ‘Six generations of Upfords have lived here and my forefathers built it with the sweat from their brows and the blood from their swords.’ He stood and walked to the crest carved into the oak panelling above the fireplace, staring upwards. ‘Now you expect me to relinquish part of that estate so that you can grow rich yourself! Do you think I have no pride in my heritage, young man, because you yourself have humble beginnings?’
Jonathan forced a smile on to his face and clenched his jaw. It was on the tip of his tongue to remark that if Sir Robert cared so much about his land why had he been an absentee landlord for so many years and why had he left his property in such a state that his own daughters were forced to garden and play housemaid? Moreover, the land was being used for no purpose. He held his tongue, knowing that to say something so rash would put an end to any possible negotiation and suspecting this was a clumsy opening gambit to encourage him to raise the price. Something which he had no intention of doing.
‘I believe our price is fair for the land,’ he said. ‘However, if you yourself have plans to use it I would not dream of standing in your way, Sir Robert. I shall not take any more of your time and shall bid you good morning.’
He stood and gave a polite bow before turning for the door.
‘Wait,’ Sir Robert commanded. ‘I should, perhaps, explain my reasons.’
‘If you wish,’ Jonathan said pleasantly, returning to his chair.
Sir Robert’s eyes were full of cunning. They were similar to Miss Aurelia’s, but lacking in the bright intelligence of hers at the riverside.
‘I have concerns besides sentimentality,’ Sir Robert said wistfully. ‘I have not been blessed with a son and, when I die, the Upford baronetcy will pass to a distant nephew. My income from the land is the only means I have for providing dowries for my three daughters.’
He returned to his chair and shook his head sadly. ‘I worry greatly about their futures as they are all yet unmarried.’
He gave Jonathan a penetrating stare. ‘As you are yourself, I believe.’
Jonathan nodded cautiously as a creeping sense of nausea began to creep over him.
‘If I knew that at least one of my daughters was provided for, I would feel easier about selling off their inheritance,’ Sir Robert said. ‘If only I could be sure that at least one of them was secure in her future...’
He tailed off and stared out of the window. Jonathan said nothing. If Sir Robert was intending what Jonathan suspected he was, then in turn Jonathan would make him say the words himself.
Sir Robert beckoned Jonathan to join him at the window. The three Misses Upford were walking around the grounds. Miss Aurelia had rid herself of Caesar and was walking arm in arm with her older sister. They made a graceful pair as their full skirts swayed from side to side in unison as they walked and Jonathan could not ignore the slight fluttering in his heart at the sight of them. They were very beautiful, he acknowledged to himself, though Cassandra had the edge with her slender figure and delicate features.
If he was married to one of these women, would it be so terrible after all?
‘I am reluctant to lose my ancestral home.’ Sir Robert sighed in what Jonathan thought was an overly theatrical manner as if he were in a melodrama. ‘If the land were part of my daughter’s marriage settlement, I dare say I could come to agreeable terms.’
Jonathan hid his surprise well. Sir Robert was not only intending to saddle Jonathan with an unwanted wife, but also to still extract the money from him. Really, he had to admire the man’s cheek. He could no longer bear to suffer the baronet’s clumsy hints.
‘Do you suggest I should take one of your daughters in lieu of the price?’
Sir Robert went red and began to bluster.
‘You know nothing of me,’ Jonathan interrupted. He glanced again at the girls and remembered how insistent Miss Aurelia had been that they were not seen together. ‘Why would you be so eager to give me one of your daughters in marriage?’
‘I’ve seen the street where you live,’ Sir Robert said. ‘It’s a grand enough place for a man of your class. I dare say you could keep my daughter in the manner she has been raised in. Even though your origins are much humbler.’
Jonathan said nothing. He was not sure whether this was a compliment or censure. An aristocrat such as Sir Robert saw the entitlement to a grand house and surroundings as his birthright, but many in his position resented men of Jonathan’s social class for daring to create their own wealth. He noted that Sir Robert had clearly been investigating him, indicating his interest had been piqued at their first meeting.
Jonathan’s home was a town house a few streets away from the mill in a respectable street with a small square and garden. It was on the same plan as Edward’s house: double fronted and three storeyed, with a private garden and privy. It was bigger than the house in which he had lived until his mother’s death, yet considerably smaller than the house they had fled from when leaving Durham.
Jonathan bit his tongue. If Sir Robert knew of the grand house set in waterside grounds near Durham that Jonathan and his mother had left he would not be quite so quick to judge. He also knew the rumours that Sir Robert was more in need of money than he was letting on.
‘Likes a game of cards or two, so I’ve heard,’ the factory foreman had said and grinned when he had overheard Jonathan and Edward discussing the morning’s appointments. He had received a cold response, but Edward later admitted the baronet was known to be incautious when it came to naming his stakes.
‘I may have made
my money through trade,’ Jonathan said proudly, ‘but every penny has been honestly earned and I have no doubt in the slightest I could provide everything your daughter would need.’
Everything apart from affection, he thought wryly. His marriage would be as much of a business deal as if he were ordering the purchase of a thousand spools of silk thread. Growing impatient of skirting around matters, he put his hands together and looked at Sir Robert over the top of the desk.
‘My wife will bear no title, nor will my children, but they will never want for anything. Moreover, they will, in turn, inherit a considerable fortune. But let me make it quite clear that the woman in question does not have to be your daughter.’
He sat back and folded his arms, content to wait until Sir Robert made his next move. The reason for Sir Robert’s apparent failure at the card tables became clear because not more than a minute had passed before he thrust his chair backwards, his face red, and leapt to his feet.
‘I hope you did not mistake my intention,’ Sir Robert said. ‘You must forgive a father’s concern—after all, it is only natural I want to ensure my dear girls are settled in good homes. I’ve seen your current home and I also know the street where you spent your youth. You’ve climbed high, Mr Harcourt, and I believe you could climb higher still. I could help you with that. Allow me to invite you to dinner on Thursday evening. We neighbours should get to know each other better and you may find you are more inclined to accept my proposal after meeting my daughters again. I shall look over the figures you have suggested and see if they are a fair recompense for losing the land.’
Jonathan accepted, keen to be gone from Sir Robert’s presence. As he made his way down the long driveway, tipping his hat to the sisters who were walking through the overgrown knot garden, he mused that the least appealing part of the whole process might be gaining Sir Robert as a relation!
The Silk Merchant's Convenient Wife Page 4