Over the course of that first week, her husband’s dream became hers as well. She started to picture the gardens at Stonemoor as vibrant with roses and irises, even though they were full of brown, straggly weeds. She hired some boys to clear out those weeds and turn over the soil. A group of men repaired the drive, and Abby herself repainted the sign.
Two important events lifted Abby’s spirits. The first was when trunks of her clothes arrived from London. Her mother had sent them to her along with a note praying that Abby was well. She’d also packed linens, fine milled soaps, sachets, and a journal of housekeeping hints that she had thoughtfully written out.
This told Abby that although her parents might not be pleased with her decision, they hadn’t truly cut her off.
She sat down and wrote her mother a long letter about the goings-on at Stonemoor. When she was done, she surprised herself with how much she’d had to share. In fact, her life before Stonemoor seemed shallow and empty when compared with how she now spent her hours.
The other important event was the day Destinada arrived. This was the Andalusian mare Andres had convinced the duke of Holburn to buy and cover with his prized Thoroughbred.
Abby had never seen a more beautiful horse—or met a kinder one. The mare was snowy white, and her mane and tail were like silk. The mare was in foal but appeared pleased with her state and with the stall Andres and his grooms had labored to prepare.
For the first time, Abby bonded with an animal. Because they’d lived in town, her parents had not wanted animals. Abby was charmed by how this horse knew her. Every morning after her tea and before the start of her day, Abby would pay Destinada a visit. Once, she was late going to the stables and Destinada waited by her paddock gate, flicking her tail with impatience for Abby to appear.
The other horses liked Abby, too. Andres did not believe in treats, but Abby always had a little something to share with them—and with the barn cat.
The cat had shown up one day during their second week. Abby had caught Andres sneaking food to him. The cat was not like one of Mrs. Rivers’s fat tabbies; he was a scrappy-looking thing that was all skin and bone.
Andres had immediately apologized for keeping the cat when he’d known she hadn’t been able to tolerate them, but Abby hadn’t had the heart to send the kitty away. And the truth be told, the cat hadn’t made her eyes water … perhaps because she’d only seen him out in the barn.
Whatever the reason, within his first three days of taking up residence at Stonemoor, he killed a huge, fat rat, and not another was ever found there again. Andres named him Pedro. The name made Abby laugh, especially since Pedro followed Andres around the stables like a faithful dog.
Abby’s favorite time was in the evening, when she and Andres would make their plans for the next day. Usually this was after they’d made love. She’d lie in his arms and they’d talk about anything and everything.
Andres teased about the flock of ducks and geese they would purchase once the weather was warmer. And there would be a cow, he promised, and they would make their own cheese instead of purchasing it from the neighbors.
Abby had plans for the gardens. She’d lived all her life in town and had not watched anything but flowers grow. However, Cook’s insistence on an herb and vegetable garden had sparked Abby’s curiosity.
Her husband predicted she was becoming a farmer’s wife, and the thought filled her with a deep satisfaction. He was happy, too. And in that way, with the sharing of dreams and plans, they’d fall asleep.
The days grew shorter. There was talk of Christmas. It was not far away, and it was a time of family and friends.
Abby and Andres started attending services at St. Andrew’s Anglican church in Corbridge. Faith was important to her. The first time he took her, Abby worried a bit about how Andres would feel inside such a church, but he acted completely relaxed and seemed to enjoy the services.
Afterward, the warden, a Mr. Gardner, introduced them to all the local gentry. They were soon flooded with invitations for dinner. A good number of locals were also interested in Destinada’s foal when it was born. Andres told Abby he was surprised. He had not thought there would be such enthusiasm this far north for the Andalusian breed, but he and Abby soon discovered the gentry were a well-heeled lot. Newcastle-Upon-Tyne was a bustling harbor town. Its residents seemed more aware of the world beyond England’s shores than the Londoners had been.
Furthermore, country women didn’t hesitate to call on each other. Their calls had more to do with the need for company than an interest in social status. Yes, there were a few who preened and carried on, but most of the women were open and honest. Abby began making friends. She soon started driving the pony cart Andres had purchased for her, paying return calls. She was finding her neighbors to have a wealth of knowledge about gardening and housekeeping.
Many of the local homes had very rich furnishings. From Celeste Higgins, Lady Landsdowne, Abby learned where to buy thick India carpets to cover Stonemoor’s floors at a quarter of the price such goods would cost in London. However, Abby turned her nose up at china and porcelains and set her table with local pottery. To her surprise, her neighbors followed suit.
Around the middle of December, Andres and Abby hosted a dinner party to thank their new friends for so generously including them in the local society. They didn’t have the rooms for the guests to spend the night so they held the party in the middle of the day.
Following a Christmas tradition from Spain, Andres built a fire—a Hogueras, he called it. Their guests were from all levels of Corbridge society, from the church warden and priest to the squire and Lord and Lady Landsdowne. They gathered around the Hogueras, drinking wassail, made from the recipe in the journal Abby’s mother had sent, and enjoying themselves—until Andres informed them of the rest of the tradition. As a guard against illness, the men were called upon to jump the Hogueras.
No Englishman with a bit of punch in him could resist such a challenge. Andres went first, demonstrating his Spanish prowess and almost burning his breeches—but he did gain good health for him and Abby for the new year, or so he claimed. Many attempted to follow suit, to great hilarity. The affair was an enormous success.
The following Sunday, when Abby and Andres walked into St. Andrew’s church, she felt part of a large, welcoming community and there by her own right.
Abby had never been popular. She’d always lived under the shadow of her uncle, the duke of Banfield, and her much prettier cousins. At Stonemoor, she was the mistress. There was no one else to compare her to. Nor did the friendly, good-hearted people of Corbridge seem to wonder why a man as handsome as her husband was with her—until a few days later, when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and noticed she was changing.
They were to be guests of Jonathan and Celeste, Lord and Lady Landsdowne, for dinner that evening. Celeste had begged them to come. Their house would be overflowing with her relatives, and she’d sworn it was always deadly dull. She wanted Andres to build a Hogueras for them and teach her guests how to jump over it. She claimed their relatives were all dreary and boring and needed some enlivening.
Abby was taking a moment to decide what she wished to wear and what needed to be packed, when her reflection caught her by surprise. In truth, her days were so busy that there was little time to primp. She rarely even glanced at herself.
Now she leaned close to the mirror, uncertain if her eyes deceived her. But it was true. Her marriage had given her confidence. New maturity and happiness showed in her face. She’d grown softer. Her eyes were alive with purpose, and she’d lost the petulant lines around her mouth.
She even carried herself differently, as if her less rigid attitude had relaxed her entire body and given her grace.
For that evening, she decided to wear her hair down with a velvet cap on her head. Her gown had some of that same blue velvet.
Andres liked the look and showed his appreciation with kisses that Abby couldn’t refuse. They were newly married, af
ter all, and enjoying every moment of it. Consequently, they were late arriving at Lord and Lady Landsdowne’s house. The butler greeted them with the information that all the other guests were assembled and dinner would soon be served. Abby gave Andres a covert pinch, a reminder that their being late was his fault.
He appeared unrepentant.
The Landsdownes’ ancestral home was the Georgian manse Andres had once described Stonemoor as being. It had enough rooms to store an army, but Abby discovered she liked her Tudor hovel. It was a fraction of the size of the Landsdowne property, but she felt it had personality and charm.
The sitting room was crowded with guests when Andres and Abby came down from the bedroom they’d been given. Most of the guests were from London.
Abby was surprised. Celeste had told her there would be family, but Abby had not expected such a large, extensive family.
Jonathan claimed Andres’s attention while Celeste took Abby’s arm and started leading her around the room, introducing her as an honored guest.
There were so many people. Abby knew she couldn’t remember all their names. She’d just met Celeste’s three maiden aunts and was being brought over to a new group more of their age—when she stopped, stunned.
Freddie Sherwin stood by the fireplace.
Abby hadn’t even realized he was here until she’d almost come upon him. And when she did recognize him, she felt him a stranger.
He didn’t share that reaction. He’d obviously been anticipating the meeting. Abby knew Freddie’s ways. His pleasure at surprising her was in his eyes and the smug set of his mouth.
Celeste introduced him. “This is my second cousin, Lord Frederick Sherwin, here for the holiday. We so rarely have him with us,” she confided. “He’s heir to the earl of Bossley.”
Freddie interceded. “Lady Vasconia and I are old friends.”
He bowed, but as his gaze came up, it scanned her body, undressing her with his eyes. He’d never done that before—at least, not that she’d been able to tell. Of course, now that Andres had introduced her to the sensual side of life, she understood a great deal more about men.
Both confused by his presence and offended by his presumption, Abby took a step back—and bumped into the commanding figure of her husband.
Chapter Fifteen
Andres was outraged Sherwin was here.
He’d barely noticed the man in London. At the time, he’d had a host of his own concerns to worry about.
However, the moment he heard his name and saw Abby’s reaction to him, his memory of Sherwin took on the intensity of an arrow in flight.
This was Abby’s “Freddie,” the man she’d loved enough to beg him to run away with her. The man who, not that long ago in Banfield’s library, had suggested she marry someone else and then they could be lovers.
Jealousy was an alien emotion for Andres. He’d yearned for things, wanted them … but he’d never experienced jealousy’s power to burn a hole in the heart.
He did so now.
Common sense reminded him that he had been the one to suggest marriage to Abby. This had not been a ruse on her part. However, it took all of his self-control to not grab her and carry her out of the house now. This minute.
He placed his hands on her shoulders, a husbandly gesture. “Sherwin?” he heard himself say, his voice almost pleasant. “Have we ever met? Ah, yes, in London—” Andres shook his head, as if memory returned. “You commented on the knot in my neck cloth. Begged to know my secret. Did you ever master the knot?”
The knot jibe was a deliberate poke. Everyone around them could see that Sherwin had indeed attempted a poor execution of Andres’s famed knot. For a dandy like Sherwin, such attention could be intimidating.
The man’s face flushed. Andres smiled, enjoying his rival’s discomfort.
The butler’s “Dinner is served” interrupted them before Sherwin had to respond.
Andres wasted no time in offering his wife his arm. He and Abby started to follow the others to the dining room, but Celeste chastised them all, “Please, please, I find parties where everyone stays with their own little twosomes so tedious. I have names at place settings around the table, but let us start now. I want every gentleman to escort a woman he doesn’t know into dinner. That includes you, my love,” she said to Jonathan.
There was a shuffling around. Andres did not want to give Abby up. Sherwin went right for her, but Andres blocked him with the reminder, “Our hostess says someone we don’t know.”
“I know everyone here,” Sherwin countered, but Abby had taken matters in her own hands. While the two men had been squaring off, she’d placed her hand on the arm of a much older gent who needed a cane to walk.
Pleased at his wife’s choice, Andres felt a tug on his own arm as a woman slid her hand around it. He turned and found himself chosen by the local squire’s oldest daughter, a very bosomy woman of some eighteen to twenty years of age. Her dress was extremely low cut so that what she had was right there for him to see.
Andres had to look away, wishing the toothsome girl had had the good sense to cover up—and his gaze met his wife’s.
She’d caught him eyeing the girl’s overabundant cleavage, and she let him know with a lift of her eyebrow that she expected his vision not to stray again—but there was a smile on her face, too.
He winked at her. There was only one woman to his tastes—and that was his palomita.
Abby’s shy, pleased, answering smile as she leaned over to listen better to what her escort had to say told him she’d understood.
And Andres was humbled by love. His life had been empty before her. What a gift it was to be so close to someone that you could communicate with using no more than a look or a nod.
If “Freddie” thought he was going to come between that, he was wrong. Andres would rip him in two.
However, doubt raised its ugly head during dinner.
Celeste had been true to her word. Couples did not sit together but were interspersed all around the table. Andres found himself surrounded by some of Jonathan’s matronly aunts and the squire’s flirtatious daughter.
Abby sat close to Sherwin.
It seemed to Andres the conversation from that end of the table was livelier than where he was. Sherwin’s voice could be heard over the laughter. He was witty, clever, and English.
Whereas Andres was definitely the outsider.
Over the soup course, Jonathan’s oldest aunt, an outspoken, wizened woman called Dame Edith, demanded to know why he talked strangely.
“I have an accent, my lady,” he said politely, in deference to her aged years.
“What sort?” she barked.
“Spanish. I am from Spain.”
Dame Edith contorted her face as if trying to remember where Spain was.
The gentleman on her right, Robert Ramey, a local barrister, thought he’d be helpful by telling her, “That country is one of our enemies. The Spanish allied themselves with Bonaparte.”
“My family did not,” Andres quickly assured her and everyone else listening. “If we had, I’d be in Spain at this moment.” The moment his words hit the air, he realized they were not particularly reassuring. “I mean to say, my family did not support Napoleon and lost all for it.”
Too late he realized how unsettling he sounded.
His attempt to remove doubts failed. He smiled at Dame Edith, but she didn’t smile back and continued to watch him with suspicion throughout the rest of the dinner. She was so concerned, she barely touched her food, spending her time tearing her bread into pieces and downing repeated glasses of wine.
The others around him thought it great fun, especially Ramey, who did apologize after the women had withdrawn. “I didn’t know the biddy was going to think you some French spy,” he said to Andres, chuckling over the joke.
“What is this about?” Sherwin piped up with interest, and of course Ramey told him. Andres didn’t think he’d escape the story for the rest of the time he was there—and he was rig
ht.
When the men joined the ladies, Sherwin made sure that everyone knew the story. Dame Edith had fallen asleep in a chair by the fire, presumably from overindulgence, which added even more to the telling.
Those who thought they were sophisticated twittered away. Another group laughed but eyed Andres with Dame Edith’s same suspicion.
The squire’s daughter shyly touched his hand and whispered to him, “I don’t think you are a traitor.”
Andres murmured some bit of nonsense about gratitude, but he caught sight of the squire, who scowled at Andres in a manner that would have made Banker Montross proud. Andres moved across the room and found that most of the men had broken into small groups that didn’t seem open to him.
This wasn’t the first time he’d sensed that his foreignness kept him on the fringes. Sometimes it added to his celebrity, and other times it made him an outsider. Usually the latter.
Only this time was different. He planned on establishing a life for himself here. In the past, when he’d found things not to his liking, he’d moved on. He’d left, to try his luck somewhere else.
But the time had come for him to set down roots. He wanted to breed his horses and watch them grow. He wanted to train and gain a reputation for something other than his looks. He wanted to be a man like his sire, one who was well respected in his community.
Abby seemed not to notice there was an issue. She and Celeste had their heads together in a corner, and Abby appeared to be enjoying herself. She’d been readily embraced by those around them.
She caught Andres’s eye and gave him a brilliant smile, but then Sherwin walked right over to her and whispered something in her ear. She pulled back and started to shake her head no, laughing.
Sherwin turned to the others. “Lady Vasconia is too shy, but I know she has a lovely voice. She sings like a bird. And we want her to entertain us. Please.”
His Christmas Pleasure Page 18