A Reluctant Courtship

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  “An excellent notion. Daffodils will look fine in the spring.”

  On Thursday, they visited two more cottages. Both appeared fine inside, with comfortable chairs in the parlor and some rather nice china dishes set on the dresser in the kitchen. The wife in the first cottage proved to be the eldest sister of one of Honore’s playmates, and the second housewife the youngest. Honore’s friend had married and moved to Dorset.

  The table in the second house bore a row of loaves made from the coarse grain that was the usual in the country tenant homes—bread that Honore had preferred to the fine white bread she received at home. When Honore, Deborah, and Miss Morrow departed, the wife wrapped up a loaf in a fold of newspaper and pressed it into Honore’s hands. “For helping me Tom.” She whispered the words.

  Honore stared at her. “Who?”

  The woman glanced at the other ladies, then moved even closer. “Me Tom nearly drown t’ other night, but you and your young man saved him.”

  “But I—” Honore caught her breath. Her heart began to race. With an effort of will, she managed not to crush the loaf against her chest in her excitement.

  She must not be excited. This could mean nothing but that Tom had been out fishing on that windy night she and Ashmoor had gotten the rope. Then again, it could mean this woman’s husband worked with the smugglers and trusted Honore enough to thank her for her help, little as it had been.

  It also meant he and his companion knew she had been out in the middle of the night.

  She must not concern herself with that. She must concentrate on the gift of knowing the identity of one man who might be able to help her obtain the information she needed for her mission.

  “If we can ever do aught to help, miss,” the woman said, “never you hesitate to ask.”

  “Thank you. I will remember that.”

  Honore fairly bounded to catch up with Deborah and Miss Morrow. “She gave me a loaf of bread.” Her breathless explanation was unnecessary.

  Deborah’s brow furrowed. “Odd she would not give me one, as I will be mistress of this land soon.”

  “She likely thinks you too grand to want such humble fare.” Honore smiled.

  Deborah did not. Her lips turned down at the corners, and she said nothing all the way back to the gate behind the dower house. Instead of coming into the dower house as she had on Tuesday for a cup of tea, Deborah declined Honore’s invitation to taste the bread.

  “That woman is right. I only like the finest of white flours.” She drifted off toward the house, gown, cloak, and hat ribbons floating behind her.

  “If I had not seen them,” Miss Morrow mused, “I would think that child had no feet.”

  “Child?” Honore snorted. “She is a year older than Beau.”

  Miss Morrow gave Honore a sharp glance. “Why have you taken against her?”

  “Her remark about the bread. It was truly arrogant.”

  “You cannot imagine she would go untouched by her mother’s attitude, can you?”

  “I had hoped.” Honore sighed. “Or maybe she was just hurt that farm wife gave it to me and not her.”

  “Yes, quite possibly.” Miss Morrow gave Honore a sidelong glance. “So perhaps you should tell me why she singled you out.”

  Honore started across the garden to the dower house. “I would rather not.”

  “I was afraid you might say that, which means you have been indiscreet again.”

  “Yes, I have. I mean I was. I mean—oh no.” She stumbled to a halt at the sight of her brother glaring at her from the book room window.

  Too late to go in another direction. She must simply brazen out whatever had brought him to the dower house in the middle of the afternoon.

  She mounted the fan-shaped steps and flung open the front door. “What do you want, Beau?”

  “To know where you have been.” He stalked out of the book room and stood in the middle of the tiny entryway with his arms crossed over his chest. “Where you have been with my fiancée.”

  “Ask her. I do not answer to you.”

  “You are under my roof.”

  “No, I am under the roof of the dower house. When you exiled me here, you washed your hands of controlling my movements.”

  “I am responsible for you.” For a moment, his expression softened. “And Deborah. I do not care so much that she has called on you. It is in her nature to be kind, but if you have led her astray—”

  “I have not. We called on some tenants is all.” Suddenly Honore wanted to go to her bed and sleep for about a week. “Now will you leave me?”

  “As long as you assure me you were not meeting some man,” Beau said.

  Honore snorted quite indelicately. “No, I was not meeting some man. I have decided not to marry until someone sensible finds me an acceptable husband I can trust to be upright and honest.”

  Beau’s eyes narrowed. “Not Ashmoor?”

  Too weary in body and spirit to dissemble, Honore said, “There is no hope there, Beau, if nothing else because I care for him.”

  Miss Morrow gasped.

  Beau’s eyebrows nearly reached his hairline. “You cannot think he is . . . like his father.”

  “Or my last beau?” Honore curled her upper lip then shook her head. “No, not that. If his father was a murderer, it did not pass down to the son. But you can trust me not to be tossing my hat over the windmill for Lord Americus Ashmoor.” The very words hurt her heart.

  Unable to speak any longer, she brushed past her brother and started up the steps, still carrying the loaf of bread.

  “Miss Bainbridge.” Miss Morrow hastened to follow. “Honore.” She caught up with her at the top of the steps and laid her hand on her arm. “Surely you do not think Lord Ashmoor is guilty of the smuggling.”

  “I love him, which makes me fear something is wrong with him.” There, she had admitted it aloud. And in front of her brother, who stood at the bottom of the steps scowling up at her.

  “If he is up to chicanery,” he declared, his face fierce, “I will find out no matter what it takes to protect you.”

  “Never fear, Beau, I am already making plans to do the same.” Or she would be as soon as she reached her bedchamber.

  But she did not need to go as far as her bedchamber to know the time had come to ask favors of the childhood friends and their relatives with whom she had become reacquainted.

  22

  With Philo and Chilcott on either side of him like some sort of bodyguards, Meric strode down the hill to the market. They followed a crowd of mostly housewives, maids, and a handful of men in common garb with baskets and market wallets tucked beneath their arms. Every man, woman, and child amongst them checked at the sight of the men from Poole House. Most glanced quickly away. Others tried to pretend they weren’t staring from beneath bonnet and hat brims. A few stared openly.

  “A curiosity to have us here, apparently.” Meric didn’t attempt to make his voice inaudible to anyone close.

  Philo glanced askance at his brother. “It’s not as though we’re buying fish and fowl for the dinner table.”

  “Or buying anything at all.” Chilcott’s sigh gusted enough to flutter the ribbons streaming from the back of a maid’s hat brim too close in front of him. Or maybe that was simply the breeze off the harbor lifting the black streamers.

  “Why are we here?” Philo asked the question while focusing his attention on the young woman with the ribbons. “Pretty little thing, isn’t she?”

  “Quite beneath you, Mr. Poole.” Chilcott’s breath should have shone with frost, so cold was his tone. “You might have wed a farmer’s daughter in New York, but here you need to think higher in the event you are the heir.”

  “And any more accidents, he just might be.” Meric shuddered.

  Two days earlier, he had received word that his horses were boarded in an inn stable on the Portsmouth to London road, and would he collect them or pay up. Philo had wanted to go after them, but Meric refused his request in the event the mes
sage was a trap. He sent two grooms from Ashmoor instead. If all went well with that, Meric intended to go to Hampshire himself and make enquiries regarding who had left the horses there. His miscreant coachman, obviously, but the innkeeper or servants might know more.

  “You are more cautious now, my lord.” Chilcott laid a hand on his hip. Beneath his greatcoat he wore a pistol, as did Meric and Philo.

  Not that a pistol would have saved him from going over the cliff if the carriage had slid down any faster.

  Meric paused on the steep descent and peered over the heads of the crowd to the harbor still a long way down. Never before had heights frightened him. He hadn’t flinched when rescuing Miss Bainbridge. But now he woke in the middle of the night with the sensation that he had been tumbling and tumbling and tumbling, and wakefulness had barely saved him from striking bottom.

  As he stood there on the steep Clovelly street, the sensation returned. He would have gone back home to the flat land and secure walled garden of his house—or, better yet, the inlands of his estate away from cliffs—if he had been alone, if he didn’t expect to find Miss Honore Bainbridge somewhere in this throng.

  A note had arrived the day before telling him to do so, though not that directly. I am considering attending the market day tomorrow, had been her precise wording. You should come. You never know what you might learn.

  The note had sent a surge of excitement racing through him that he quickly suppressed. Nothing he or Philo had tried had revealed information thus far. Indeed, people shut their mouths when either of the Pooles drew near.

  They certainly did there in the market. A wave of silence rippled out as though they were stones tossed into a still pond. Once they reached a point too far away to hear the words of anyone, the conversations recommenced.

  “I feel like a prisoner on the way to the gallows.” Philo made no attempt to lower his voice. “Or do the crowds cheer when they pass?”

  “Depends on the crime.” Chilcott took the question seriously.

  Meric continued to scan the crowd in search of a hat that appeared more expensive than the rest bobbing around the street. Or maybe a glimpse of honey-gold hair or a lovely face with eyes the color of the October sky and lips so pink they looked rouged or recently kissed.

  He flinched at that. For shame. He never should have kissed her without being willing to offer for her. He wanted God to honor his prayers while he behaved in a way that did not at all honor the Lord. And she hadn’t forgiven him, which made forgiving himself difficult.

  Seeing her made repenting of his actions difficult. All Sunday afternoon, he wanted to hold her, tell her to forget about his duty, about the reputation he must keep clean to protect his inheritance for the sake of his family, about her reputation that might damage his. He wanted to kiss her until her tears sprang from joy, not anger and frustration with him and his inability to put her in front of family.

  The intervening days hadn’t stopped the longing.

  If not for the promise of information he might like, Meric would have turned around and headed back up the hill and avoided seeing Miss Bainbridge again. As it was, he paused beside a woman shouting about the winkles she was selling and opened his mouth to tell Philo to find Miss Bainbridge and obtain her information.

  But she appeared beside him in that instant. One minute a phalanx of schoolboys pushed noisily through the throng, and the next Miss Honore Bainbridge touched his arm, sending a lightning bolt through him. “Let’s go examine that table of wooden toys.” She slipped her arm through his so that he could not evade her without being unforgivably rude.

  As if he hadn’t already been unforgivably rude to her.

  “They look more like ornaments than toys.” He nodded to Miss Morrow.

  She gave him a half smile and fixed her attention on a table piled with embroidered handkerchiefs. Chilcott joined her there and she started to move away, but he pressed a bit of muslin into her hand, so she had to stay or appear to steal it.

  “Clever man, my steward.” Meric bent his head toward Miss Bainbridge so she would be sure to hear him. “She seems to be refusing to speak with him as long as he thinks I should stay away from you.”

  “No, as long as he thinks she should stay away from me.” She twisted up her face. “Like the rest of the county, except for my charming future sister-in-law.”

  “Ah, Miss Deborah Dunbar of the wispy voice.”

  Miss Bainbridge laughed. “She does seem wispy, but she’s a strong girl in many ways. It gives me hope that she will send her mother packing as soon as she and Bainbridge are wed.”

  They reached the table of wooden carvings. None rose more than two or three inches, and the subject matter centered on animals—most real like cats and dogs, the rest fanciful creatures like griffins, dragons, and even a harpy.

  Miss Bainbridge picked up the latter. “I can think of half a dozen ladies to whom I could send this, though I suppose that would not be nice of me.”

  “Not at all.” Meric picked up one of the felines, a fat creature with a definite sneer. “Maybe this instead?”

  “Oh, the cats.” Miss Bainbridge laughed.

  He smiled into her sparkling blue eyes. Their gazes locked. Then he remembered when they had discussed whether or not to call Misses Devenish and Babbage cats, and his gaze dropped to her mouth.

  She released his arm and stumbled as though he’d shoved her. “Do not.” Her voice was hoarse. “I need to tell you something. We can discuss from there whether or not we can or should do anything else, if this means anything, if—” She covered her own mouth with gloved fingers.

  Meric turned to the wizened old man behind the counter of carvings. “I’ll take all three of your cat carvings.”

  “One and six,” came the laconic response.

  Meric handed the man a guinea.

  “He means one shilling and sixpence,” Miss Bainbridge said.

  Meric’s ears heated despite the cold of the day. “I still get the money confused.”

  “One of them there rebels, are you?” The old man frowned. “Not sure I can be selling to no traitor to the Crown.”

  “Do not be absurd, Mr. Ricks,” Miss Bainbridge snapped. “This is Lord Ashmoor. It is not his fault he was raised in foreign parts.”

  “Humph.” Ricks took the two shillings Meric gave him and made no move to give him the sixpence he owed him in return.

  “Mr. Ricks,” Miss Bainbridge said in severe tones, “you owe him sixpence.”

  “Let him have it.” Meric turned away without picking up the carvings.

  Not since he had gone down to Albany with Father for the first time as a lad of twelve had he made such a stupid error with money. By dark, the story would range the entire breadth and length of Devonshire of how much of a dolt was the new Lord Ashmoor with his coin. And they would remark on his companion, a lady he should not be near in public.

  He crossed the street to where Chilcott and Miss Morrow still stood beside the handkerchiefs. They gazed at one another as though no one else were around. Neither even blinked when Meric strode up to the table.

  Philo had vanished from sight.

  But Miss Bainbridge did not. She bustled up to him with a parcel beneath her arm and sixpence shining on her palm. “Take this.” She thrust the package at him. “But perhaps you need a real cat from someone who will not try to steal from you.”

  He took the package and dropped it into one of his capacious coat pockets. “I hardly notice less sixpence, Miss Bainbridge.”

  “You will if you give them away to everyone. Goodness, my lord, do you need a keeper?”

  He did around her, someone to drag him in the opposite direction.

  “Just more lessons on the money cant. Now what is it you need to tell me? We’ve already made enough of a spectacle today, not to mention those two.” He glanced at Chilcott and Morrow.

  Miss Bainbridge giggled. “She cannot decide which man she prefers. They are both eligible and they both adore her, but Chilcott
thinks he can tell her what to do and with whom to associate.” Her face suddenly sobering, she bent over the handkerchiefs, sorting through a pile with various initials embroidered on one corner. “How much, Mrs. Lee?”

  Did she know everyone?

  “Sixpence. They be only muslin.” The middle-aged lady in widow’s black gave Miss Bainbridge a gentle and kind smile. “For you, Miss Bainbridge, I’d be selling them for three for a shilling. And they’re as soft as you please now, as I washed the cloth many times before doing the stitching.”

  They all knew her and liked her, apparently not caring about her past misdeeds.

  Or maybe having forgiven her for them as a Christian should?

  Meric shifted from foot to foot, suddenly uncomfortable in the crowd and with the smells of raw fish and overcooked sausages. He needed a walk in the open. Better yet, a walk through a forest where he could smell the drying leaves crunching beneath his feet this time of year and sniff for a hint of snow on the wind.

  Beside him, Miss Bainbridge handed over two shillings. “It’s exquisite stitching. I’ll take six.” She selected one with an H and then others with flowers along one edge.

  The woman offered to wrap them for her. Miss Bainbridge declined and tucked five of the squares into the little bag hanging from her wrist, making its sides bulge. Then she started to walk away from him, dropping the sixth handkerchief at his feet.

  He stooped to pick it up, and when he rose, she had vanished into the crowd. But she had left him a message tucked into the folds of the kerchief.

  “Dropping her handkerchief for you, is she, my lord?” The widow behind the table winked at him. “You won’t be finding a nicer lady in all the county and likely further. No matter what t’ others say of her, she be a good girl. Spoiled, allowed to run wild, but good for all that.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I believe you’re right.” He smiled at the woman and turned back to again look for Miss Bainbridge.