“That wasn’t a warning?”
Fenwick’s smile was sweet, though Hadrian had reason to know the knife ever present at his side was lethally sharp. “That was a promise, love. The fair Lily will cut your balls off even if you are discreet, should she learn you intend to build on your friendship with Avie.”
“Harsh.” But friendly enough on this lovely morning. “Lily seems devoted to Avie, and the perfect lady’s companion.” If a bit fretful.
They turned onto the trail that led to the Blessings stable yard. “You’re not after ladylike behavior from our Avie, are you?”
“One doesn’t admit such a thing. I’d have Avie decide what she wants and doesn’t want.”
“This time, you mean. That’s the entire point of the exercise, isn’t it?”
Hadrian added penetrating insight to Fenwick’s short list of good qualities, rare bouts of penetrating insight.
“May I ask why you haven’t given Avie the opportunity to choose, Fenwick?”
“What makes you think I haven’t?” Fenwick’s sleepy, sensuous, satisfied smile made Hadrian’s fingers itch to hold a sharp knife against certain parts of Fenwick’s anatomy.
Which impulse deserved consideration, because in several years of marriage, Hadrian could never once recall being jealous of Rue.
“You haven’t made Avie any offers,” Hadrian said. “She would not be as relaxed and trusting of you if you had.” Would never have danced with him in public, either.
“She doesn’t view me as anything other than an unruly brother, and she’s needed that more than a doting swain, at least up to this point.”
Fenwick’s explanation made sense, though it felt incomplete. He’d been on the property for years, which could make dallying convenient, but also, when one wanted privacy, solitude, or an end to the dallying, mortally inconvenient.
“You’re making it too complicated,” Fenwick said as they turned into the Blessings stable yard. “I’m Avie’s friend and her steward, and I’ll be her henchman should Collins show his ugly, evil face, but she’s weighed me in the scales and found me wanting, Bothwell. Not so, you.”
A fine speech—complete with a reference to the book of Daniel, chapter five, verse 27—though fundamentally mendacious.
“You’ve weighed yourself in the scales and come up with the idea you’re wanting,” Hadrian said, “but there’s more to this situation than you can perceive, and discretion forbids that I share it with you.”
“Have to get you drunk then, for the tale wants telling, and I’d take it with me to my grave.” He winked at Hadrian, then hopped off his horse, landing as softly as a kitten.
* * *
Hadrian decided on a sneak attack and went around to the back of the Blessings manor house, thinking to use an entrance other than the front door. He came upon Avie denuding a bed of pansies of its fallen soldiers, a tartan blanket spread beneath her knees.
He dropped beside her and pulled off a dead blossom. “You should be wearing a hat, shouldn’t you?”
Avie smiled over at him, momentarily disorienting him, for her eyes held a shy greeting and maybe a hint of challenge. “Shouldn’t you as well?”
He pulled off his riding gloves.
“I’ve taken to not wearing a hat when I ride out,” Hadrian said, plucking off a blue and yellow bloom that was nowhere near wilted. “I lose it when Caesar stretches his legs, and then I have to hunt it up, lest my staff be wroth with me.” He tucked the flower behind her ear and sat back to survey the results. “How are you, Avie?”
“Well, thank you, and you?”
“Better now,” he said, moving the flower to her other ear. “Why are there no green flowers?”
“Grass flowers are green,” she said, setting her shears and his gloves in a wicker basket. “Let me see your hands.”
Hadrian held out his left hand. She took it in both of hers and examined the healing blisters and nicks.
“Improving,” she allowed. “You’re likely riding every day, and scribbling away for hours on estate correspondence, and otherwise not allowing your hands to idle.”
He gave her his right, for holding hands with her made a pretty day even more agreeable. “Surely you’ll want to inspect both?”
“You’re as bad as Ashton Fenwick. This hand has not healed as well.”
“I use it more, and shearing left it in worse condition. You should kiss it better.”
Her lashes lowered, and he thought she would deliver him some sermon about Fenwick being a sorry influence—which he was, thank ye gods—or perhaps get to her feet and put some distance between them, which she should.
She smoothed her fingers over his knuckles, then turned his hand over and laid her cheek against his palm.
And holy God, if the entire household of servants were not likely glued to the windows watching their every move, Hadrian would have pressed her back, down onto the blanket, and started in kissing her right then and there.
Spring in Cumberland was a force to be reckoned with.
Avie saved him from hopeless folly by giving him back his hand and picking up her shears.
“It’s good of you to call, Hadrian.” Her tone was friendly, dismissively so.
“Bother that. You show me a little affection, then retreat to the Highlands, Avie. I’ve come to issue an invitation.”
“I’m quite busy,” she said, snipping off one spent bloom after another.
“You’re quite worried somebody saw us touching, but I do enjoy your touch, Avie Portmaine, any place, any time, anywhere on my person. You aren’t the only one who feels a little isolated.”
She kept to her task, but her very focus confirmed she was listening to him. “A little?”
“That woman in York was a damned desperate measure for a man still wearing a collar. Pathetically desperate.”
“Not pathetic,” she said between snips. “You’re a man.”
Must she make his very gender synonymous with a class of felon?
“Guilty as charged, but I proposed not only to the two women in Rosecroft village least likely to have me, I proposed to one of them twice. That’s three failed proposals within a couple of years of Rue’s death.”
She paused in her pruning to regard him in puzzlement. “Three, Hadrian?”
What fiend had claimed confession was good for the soul?
“The one lady went on to marry a man I consider a friend, and that made for no little awkwardness.”
“You asked her twice?” He could see Avie trying to picture it, the choir boy and the reluctant damsel, and he hoped it gave her some indication of how far gone he’d been.
The memory troubled his dignity sorely, though it troubled his heart not at all.
“I would have accepted marriage, dallying, anything she’d give me.” Hadrian pinched off a wilted bloom and tossed it over his shoulder. “The lady allowed me exactly two kisses, then turned around and plighted her troth with St. Just. I’m convinced he allowed me to buy Caesar as a consolation for my failed suit. The horse is the finest quality, and yet, the pity was quite lowering.”
“Oh, Hadrian.” Avie’s tone conveyed understanding, and a touch of humor, precisely the reception this tale deserved. “What a busy place, little Rosecroft village.”
“What a frustrating, lonely place.” Hadrian pinched off another bloom and tossed that one aside too. “So come on a picnic with me.” He’d pondered late into the night on how best to begin his siege, and the out of doors had struck him as offering the most privacy.
“A picnic?”
“Up at the old slate quarry. The pond is lovely and not too far on foot.”
Avis snipped away with her shears, a sound that reminded Hadrian of bleating sheep and cool ale. “Not far at all. Today is warm.”
“While you’ve been gardening half the morning. I’m asking, Avie. I’ll beg or bribe, if I must. With Harold gone, I rattle around Landover, trying to give the servants enough to do, and waiting for Fen to tell me haying ha
s arrived so I can wreck my hands all over again, just to have you kiss them better.”
Avis snatched off a blossom that looked quite healthy. “Hush that talk.”
“You want to go on this picnic. I’ll read you poetry.”
Her smile was back, and how he rejoiced to see it. “You hated reading me poetry.”
“I’m older and wiser now. I know more poetry.” He knew some naughty poetry now, too, in English, French and even Latin.
“Dignity, Mr. Bothwell,” she chided. “Come for me at one of the clock, and I will have selected the most vapid, sleep-inducing poetry ever written.”
Victory, of a sort. Hadrian retrieved his gloves, rose and drew her to her feet. “Walk me to my horse and prepare to waste an afternoon with me.”
“You can find your horse on your own. You’ve distracted me from my task long enough, and if I’m to waste an hour with you later today, I’d best be productive now.”
Two hours, at least.
“So pragmatic.” Hadrian kissed her cheek—Fenwick would have expected at least that of him. “I will see you later, and we can walk up to the quarry.”
“Shall I pack the hamper?”
“You shall not. I will tend to the details. You will wear a comfortable old dress and shoes you can take off when you want to dip your toes in the water.”
She looked interested in that, so he stole another kiss and went on his way, swaggering a bit for the benefit of the gaze he hoped she had clapped on his backside.
* * *
Avis had no business wasting even an hour with Hadrian Bothwell. The dower house hadn’t had residents since Avis’s great-grandmother’s day and had become a glorified storage facility in the intervening generations. For five years, Avis had promised herself she’d weed out the gold from the dross, but with her twenty-eighth birthday behind her, the task felt abruptly urgent.
“Have you considered how you’ll landscape the dower house?” Lily asked as Avis arranged a bowl of pansies on the sideboard in her personal sitting room.
“I have not,” Avis replied, shifting a certain blue and yellow bloom a half inch. “I can tend to that when I’ve moved in and have a better sense of the place.”
When she knew she could tolerate living there, in much closer quarters with Lily.
“I’m still not sure setting up your own household is the best idea, Avis.” Lily frowned at the pansies, and Avis knew, she just knew, Lily wanted to move the blue and yellow specimen back where it had been.
“The dower house won’t be my own household. It will be a private part of this household, and you’ll be with me.”
“There will be talk,” Lily said hesitantly.
“There is always talk, but living in the dower house should send a signal that the talk can die down. By moving there, I officially acknowledge my spinsterhood.”
For all that such a notion ought to hold relief, Avis also admitted to resentment. Most women her age had several children, some ladies had even been widowed and remarried.
“You’re young yet, not even thirty. You danced with Fenwick, and everybody saw you. Spinsters don’t waltz with handsome single men.”
Lily had conveniently forgotten her own dance with Hadrian. “You think Ashton is handsome?”
Lily peered into the bowl of pansies, as if ensuring Avis had given them water. “He has a certain animal appeal, and as steward he has privileges others do not. Privileges he abuses.”
Perhaps he did. Lily enjoyed a few privileges herself. Rearranging Avis’s flowers was not among them.
“I could have refused his invitation to dance. Ashton was being Ashton, and I enjoyed the dance.” Avis had enjoyed the dance with Hadrian far more. Thank goodness Lily couldn’t get her sermonizing teeth into that topic.
Something approaching exasperation flashed in Lily’s eyes, and Avis resisted the impulse to hurl the bowl of flowers through the window.
Avis planted her fists on her hips. “Just say it, Lily. I should not have danced with one of few men I can honestly call a friend, or if I had to dance with him, I should not have enjoyed it. Better yet, if I had to dance with him, and I enjoyed the experience, I should dissemble, and carry on, as if spending a few minutes in a simple social pastime was a great imposition, as if I could not wait to escape Ashton’s company.”
This small display of temper felt daring, and altogether too good.
“Avis, he held you too closely, he whispered in your ear as he led you about, and he met the eye of anybody who thought to gape at the spectacle the two of you created. I say these things so you’ll be honest with yourself. I hope you did enjoy the dance, because you’ll pay a price for your pleasure, one I do not wish to see extracted from you merely so Fenwick can crow that he danced the pretty with a titled lady.”
Lily shifted the pansy, and that she even touched the flower Hadrian had tucked behind Avis’s ear was blasphemous.
“I hurt for you,” Lily went on. “I know you should be able to dance with anybody you choose, to call on anyone you choose, to live wherever you choose, but we are ladies, and such freedoms are beyond us if we’re to be regarded as worthy of our station.”
The patience in Lily’s tone, the implied condescension, and the pity sliced at Avis today more sharply than ever. Lily was doing her job, serving as a companion and guide, as a friend, regarding matters with which Avis lacked both experience and confidence.
And friends were honest with each other.
“These flowers will be happier on the table in the servants’ parlor.” Where they’d be safe from Lily’s meddling. Avis picked up the bowl and shifted the pansy back where it belonged. “What time will the glazier come?”
“You’d have to ask Fenwick. Will I see you at luncheon?”
“You will not. I’d best be on my way if I’m to catch Fen before he’s off to parts unknown.”
“Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? Send the man a note.”
“He’s my steward,” Avis rejoined, the words coming out more abruptly than she’d intended. “I will not disrespect him by communicating exclusively in notes and imperatives, Lily.”
“Of course not,” Lily said, though her gaze held reproach. “I know you respect his work, and I meant nothing to the contrary.”
Avis took her leave, the bowl of pansies in her hands. Lily did mean to disrespect Ashton Fenwick. The woman flat disapproved of him and always had, and worse, the feeling appeared to be mutual.
Walking up to the quarry pond with Hadrian would be a relief, Avis decided as she changed into half-boots. Lily would likely have a scold to deliver at tea time, but that was hours hence, and sufficient unto the moment, or so it felt to Avis, were the remonstrations thereof.
* * *
When Hadrian came ambling around the side of the house, Avis made sure to again be in the garden, lest Lily become aware of their plans and invite herself along as chaperone.
“You’re still ordained, aren’t you?” Avis asked him.
“I am,” Hadrian replied, helping her to her feet, “but retired, more or less.”
“You’ll hear my confession then.”
“I will not.” He seemed amused, not affronted.
“I want to strangle dear Lily.”
Hadrian slipped her arm through his. “You and Fen both.” He seemed to sense Avis wasn’t entirely jesting, which in itself lightened Avis’s spirits.
“Are we to dine on fresh air and sunshine, Hadrian?”
“I’ve already taken our hamper up to the quarry. Why are you contemplating murder?”
Torture and murder, in fact. “Lily is a good person, the daughter of clergy and an example of ladylike deportment. I am not a good person. She doesn’t mean to be a walking reproach to me, but she is. She simply is, and I suspect that’s why Benjamin and Wilhelm hired her.”
“They hired her because they’ve abandoned you up here,” Hadrian said, and though his tone was mild, his words held a gratifying hint of accusation. “Miss Prentiss is a
sop to their consciences, but Avie, if she isn’t congenial company, then write her a character and tell her to find another position.”
“I can’t do that.” Though a part of her wanted to do exactly that, which was different. Very different. “Where will she go? I can’t bear to think of her having to listen to some crotchety dowager carping for her dish of tea, or having to take the dowager’s crotchety little dog walking every hour in all kinds of weather.”
“You’re too kind, Avis. Lily might end up as a finishing governess if she’s really so intent on the social niceties, or a companion to a widow who likes to travel, but it’s up to Lily to find a position she can enjoy. Give her plenty of severance and send her on her way.”
“With what excuse?” Avis wailed softly. “That I want to be alone, rattling around Blessings without benefit of any female companionship whatsoever? Do you know how that would look?”
Hadrian stopped walking and put his arms around her. Avis should have protested, though they’d passed from the view of the house, and his embrace was exactly, perfectly right.
“I’m a ninnyhammer,” Avis mumbled against his throat. Worse, she was a ninnyhammer who knew better than to pass up the chance to be held, simply held, in the arms of a friend. She’d pushed him away earlier in the day, figuratively, because this need for physical comfort was growing with time, not diminishing.
“You’re a ninnyhammer who’s sensitive to the needs of others, perhaps at the expense of your own. Mayhap you have a calling in the church, though of course, one would never mistake you for a good person.”
“A nunnery, Hadrian?” She stepped back, lest she spend the entire afternoon in his embrace. “Had I been allowed to retreat to a nunnery, much awkwardness might have been avoided.”
While Avis regretted alluding to the past, Hadrian slid an arm around her shoulders and resumed their walk. “Besides being a theological impossibility for a devout member of the Church of England, you’d go mad at a nunnery within a week.”
“Mad?” Part of her was going mad at her family home.
“The church comprises all manner of people, Avie. Most of them good folk, some of them very good, but a liberal portion of the not-good-at-all also gravitate to the church. Because they’re masquerading as holy, they can be very bad, indeed. I have friends among the Papists and Dissenters, and know of what I speak. No nunneries for you, my lady.”
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