by Mary Nichols
‘You are very careful of him.’
‘He is careful of me. Treat a man right and he will remain loyal.’
‘You know, you are very like Mark. Not so much in looks, but in your philosophy. It must be a family trait. How close is his relationship with you?’
‘Our mothers were sisters. My mother died when I was at school. She was perfectly well when I was home for the Easter break, but she had gone before I was due home for the summer.’
‘I am sorry. It must have been very hard for you.’
‘It was. I was particularly close to her. She taught me so much about the countryside, about her charitable work, about forgiveness and tolerance...’ His voice cracked and he swallowed hard.
She put out a hand to touch his arm, but did not speak. He looked down at the hand and she withdrew it hastily. ‘I must go and see how Bessie is doing.’ She left him to gather himself in private. If she had stayed a moment longer, she would have put her arms about him to comfort him and that would have been completely the wrong thing to do. A proud man like he was would not have appreciated it.
Bessie was sitting close to the fender in the kitchen with a blanket round her, warming her hands on a hot tankard. The farmer’s wife was working round her, stirring the contents of a large cooking pot that hung above the flames. On the rough table was a board containing bread, a dish of butter and a pile of plates.
‘Mrs Brown, is there anything I can do to help?’ she asked.
‘Gracious me, no, my lady. Please go back to his lordship. I will bring food to you directly. I have given your maid a herbal remedy for I fear she has taken cold. The coachman has gone to fetch her bag. I will make up a bed for her in our spare room. It is used by our grandchildren when they come to stay, but they are not here now.’
It sounded as if she expected her uninvited visitors to stay overnight. Sophie went back to report the fact to Adam. ‘I don’t know where she is going to put us all,’ she said. ‘It is a fairly substantial farmhouse, but I doubt it extends to more than three bedchambers. Besides, I collect you are anxious to be on your way. If Bessie cannot travel, then you had better leave us here and go on without us. Mark will come and fetch us in due course.’
‘Don’t be a ninnyhammer, Sophie.’
‘I am not a ninnyhammer. It is a perfectly sensible suggestion.’
‘It is not. Mark entrusted me to see you safely home and that is what I intend to do. What do you take me for?’
She smiled. ‘Not a ninnyhammer, at any rate.’
‘I apologise for that, but you must see that I could never leave you.’
‘Never?’ she queried, raising her eyebrows at him.
‘You know what I mean. I must go and speak to the good lady of the house.’
* * *
He strode from the room before he said something he would regret. She was really getting inside his skin with her flashes of insight interspersed with outspokenness and brave attempts to flirt with him. She was a strange mixture of naivety and wisdom and he was never quite sure how to respond to her. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her.
He found Mrs Brown in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches to a homely meal. ‘Madam,’ he began. ‘I asked for food, not a feast, and I fear we have put you to a great deal of trouble...’
‘We have plenty of food, my lord, if not much else. You are welcome. I would not leave a dog out in this weather.’ This statement was borne out by the fact that the mongrel was lying on a rough blanket under the table.
‘My cousin tells me that you are going to find a bed for her maid.’
‘Yes. She i’n’t well. I don’t think she oughta travel until she is better, begging your pardon, my lord.’
‘In that case, we must all stay. My cousin will not go on without her and I will not go on without my cousin.’
‘My lord...’ Bessie protested. ‘I shall manage.’
He turned to look at her, huddled in the corner enveloped in a blanket. Her eyes were puffy and her nose red. ‘We will decide on that tomorrow. It is to be hoped your mistress does not succumb.’ Turning back to their hostess, he said, ‘Do you have a room for Miss Cavenhurst?’
‘Yes, my lord, but...’ She paused and he guessed she was weighing up the prospect of giving up her own bed to one of them.
‘The men will manage in the coach,’ he told her. ‘Someone ought to keep an eye on it, in any case. I will do very well on the sofa.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I am. And you do not need to lay up the table in the parlour. We can all eat in here. We do not want to put you to any more inconvenience than we can help.’
‘Very well, my lord, I’ll do as you say. It will be ready in five minutes.’
‘I will go and fetch the men.’
‘It’s still a-rainin’. Take Mr Brown’s big coat.’ She nodded to where it hung on the back of the door.
He draped it over his shoulders and made his way across the flooded yard and into the barn. Alfred and the coachman were sitting in the coach talking about the dwindling prospects of going on. ‘It’s still rainin’, but there ain’t no more thunder and lightning,’ Joe was saying. ‘I reckon we could make it through.’
‘Through what?’ Adam asked.
‘The flood, my lord,’ Farley replied. ‘I went to take a look. There’s a dip in the road as it goes down to the river. It’s about two feet deep. I rode Swift through it, though she wasn’t keen. The bridge is an old stone one and looked sound to me and the road is passable beyond it.’
‘We are not going on today,’ Adam said. ‘Miss Sadler has caught cold and the good farmer’s wife is making up a bed for her, which means we all have to stay. There is a meal waiting for us in the farm kitchen, so let us go and have it. We will worry about tomorrow when it comes.’
‘I don’t reckon we ought to leave the coach unattended,’ Joe said.
‘Then you stay here and I’ll have something sent out to you. Alfred, come with me.’
They picked their way over the muddy farmyard. The rain was easing and the water was slowly draining away. ‘I reckon it will be gone by tomorrow,’ Farley said. ‘Pity about Miss Sadler.’
‘Yes. Did you hear the horse just after we turned into the barn?’
‘Yes, my lord.’ He grinned. ‘Galloped right past, he did. I wonder how far he got before he twigged he’d lost us.’
Adam laughed. ‘However far it was, he will have been very wet.’
‘Serve him right.’
‘Not a word now.’
They entered the house and made their way to the kitchen, where a substantial meal was set out on the big table. Bessie was no longer there and he assumed she had gone to bed. Mr Brown and Sophie were already seated at the table. She looked up as they entered. ‘Is everything all right?’ she asked.
‘Yes. The coachman is staying with his vehicle. I wonder, Mrs Brown, if I might take something out to him?’
‘I’ll take it,’ Farley said, holding out his hand for the plate their hostess was already filling.
Adam sat down next to Sophie. ‘How is Miss Sadler?’
‘She is feeling rather sorry for herself, but Mrs Brown gave her a herbal remedy to help her to sleep and assures me it will cure anything. I am inclined to believe her. Bessie pulled a sour face when she drank it.’ She paused. ‘I am sorry to be so much trouble to you...’ She almost added ‘my lord’, but remembered in time, they were supposed to be on more familiar terms.
‘It cannot be helped, Sophie. It means we will be a day or two later reaching Hadlea, that’s all.’ He evidently did remember. Hearing him say her name gave her a warm glow of pleasure. What a fool she was to be uplifted by such a little thing.
Chapter Eleven
Cooped up in the farmhouse with nothing
to do and everyone itching to be gone did not help frayed nerves. Sophie looked after Bessie and did her best to help Mrs Brown. Joe used the time to check over every inch of the coach: the wheels and axles, though he knew they were sound, replacing leather that was even partially worn and cleaning it inside and out. By the time he had finished it looked as good as new. He groomed the horses until their coats were gleaming and combed and plaited their manes and tails, tying them with ribbons.
‘Good enough for the showground,’ Adam told him. ‘Well done.’
Adam himself was at a loose end. He went round the fields with the farmer. ‘It’s going to be a poor winter,’ Mr Brown muttered, looking at the wet, blackened wheat crop. ‘I’ll have to plough that in.’
‘You harvested the barley and oats before the storm?’
‘Aye, but they were only a few acres. They had a poor start on account o’ the cold weather in spring, but June and July made up for it and in the end I got it in early, but it don’ make up for the loss of the wheat. It were all but ready. I was goin’ into town to hire some extra help this next week.’ He sighed. ‘I don’ know what we’re a-goin’ to do. We’ll have to rely on the livestock. Thank God, tha’s healthy.’
Adam made a mental note to make sure the man was more than adequately paid for their board and lodging when they left.
* * *
On the third day, now without his eyepatch, he rode into Newmarket on Swift to obtain more provisions for Mrs Brown, to mail a letter to Mark explaining the situation and to find out if there were any strangers in the town. That turned out to be a vain exercise; the place was full of strangers come for the racing and he had no idea what the man looked like. Of course he and Alfred might have imagined the galloping horse, or it could have been a local man in a hurry to be home out of the rain.
He went back to the farm to find Sophie in the barn talking to Joe and Alfred. She was smiling. ‘Bessie has recovered,’ she told him. ‘We are ready to go on.’
‘Are you sure?’ he asked, studying her. After three days of caring for her maid, she was looking tired, but she had washed her hair and put on a fresh gingham dress taken from her trunk. ‘Your maid may have recovered, but what about you?’
‘I am perfectly well. You must be anxious to be on your way, and I am sure Mrs Brown will be glad to see us gone. I fear we have been a sore trial to her.’
‘Then we will leave tomorrow morning. Alfred, you ride on ahead and arrange for fresh horses. We will meet you at Downham Market. Give Swift a drink and her oats now and let her rest.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Sophie, can you be ready?’
‘Easily.’
They walked up to the farmhouse together. ‘It has been a strange few days,’ she said. ‘I have learned something of what it is to be a farmer’s wife. I knew it was a hard life, but I never realised before just how hard. It has made me so much more sympathetic to those not so fortunate as I am.’
‘I am sure you have always been sympathetic,’ he murmured. ‘Mark has told me how helpful you are with his orphans.’
‘They have had a dreadful life and I like to do what I can to help make their lives a little easier. I find it rewarding.’ She looked up at him. His eye still bore a faint bruise. ‘I believe that is how you feel towards your workers. I read the report of your speech in the newspaper.’
‘Yes, but it is not enough, Sophie. I failed to do any good.’
Calling each other by their given names seemed perfectly natural now. He had become more at ease with her. His up-and-down moods, teasing one minute, scolding the next, seemed to have vanished and they conversed like old friends, like cousins, she supposed. It wasn’t what she wanted exactly, because she was as much in love with him as ever, but it would have to do. ‘You have done me a lot of good,’ she murmured.
He looked sharply at her, one eyebrow raised. She laughed. ‘You have made me grow up, Adam.’
‘You would have done that without my help.’
‘Perhaps, but not so quickly and not with so much pleasure.’
‘Oh, Sophie,’ he said. ‘Don’t ever change, will you?’
She had no answer to that and they went into the farmhouse to tell Mr and Mrs Brown they were leaving the next morning.
* * *
Goodbyes said and with Mr Brown clutching more sovereigns than he had ever seen together before, they climbed in the carriage and were on their way. The floods had receded and though they had left mud on the roads and there was still water in the potholes, the weather was fine and they made good time. Alfred Farley had made sure there were fresh horses waiting for them at each stop and they reached Downham Market in the early afternoon, where they stopped for a meal while the last set of horses were harnessed.
‘We should be in Hadlea before dark,’ Adam told Sophie as they resumed their journey. Farley was once again riding behind them on Swift. Bessie, still sniffling a little, was sitting on the opposite seat with her feet up, wrapped in a blanket. Mrs Brown had given her another dose of her remedy to make her more comfortable for the journey and she was dozing. ‘I will take you home first and then go on to Broadacres. No doubt you will be glad to be reunited with your parents.’
‘Yes,’ she said, but she had mixed feelings about the end of the journey. Of course she wanted to be home and see Mama and Papa again, but it would also mean saying goodbye to Adam. In the past few days they had been thrown together in more intimacy than would have been allowed under normal circumstances. She had become used to having him close, seeing him every day and all day, getting to know every nuance of his character, laughing with him, arguing with him, eating with him, doing everything but sleep together. It had served to reinforce her abiding love for him and she wished it could go on forever. She longed for him to become more intimate, but he seemed content with the way things were.
Aunt Emmeline had said she needed to make a push, but how to do it, she did not know. If she tried to flirt, he flirted back, but somehow left her feeling belittled. If she quizzed him, he answered politely or avoided answering by changing the subject. Once or twice she had caught him looking at her with an expression she could not fathom, as if she were a problem. And before the day was out, they would part.
‘How long do you think you will stay at Broadacres?’ she asked, clutching at straws.
‘A few days.’
‘And then it will be back to Saddleworth?’
‘Yes.’
‘No doubt you, too, will be glad to be home.’
‘Yes. I have been too long away.’
‘Is there someone waiting there for you?’
He looked at her sharply, wondering what had prompted the question. ‘A great many people,’ he said. ‘Staff, workers...’
‘No, I meant a lady.’
‘Oh, I see, still fishing on behalf of your friend.’
‘No, I am not. I am persuaded that is a lost cause. I just wondered who the mare was meant for. You said she was for a lady.’
He laughed. ‘She is. Mark asked me to buy her for Jane. It is to be a surprise birthday gift from him.’
‘Jane?’ she queried in surprise.
‘Yes, your sister. You know her best. Do you think she will like her present?’
It was Jane’s birthday on the fifteenth of July and she had all but forgotten it. ‘She will love the mare,’ she said. ‘It is just like Mark to think of something like that. He is always surprising her with gifts. Jane might even let me ride her now and again and then I will think of you.’
‘Will you?’ he murmured.
‘Of course. How could I forget you after...after what we have been through together?’
‘It has been rather unforgettable,’ he said with a smile.
‘Tell me about Saddleworth,’ she said. ‘Then I can picture you there when yo
u are gone.’
‘Saddleworth is situated in a long valley between Yorkshire and Lancashire, and is made up of four small hamlets: Quick Mere, Lord’s Mere, Shaw Mere and Friar Mere. It is famous for its woollen cloth, much of it superfine.’
‘Ah, that is why you wear such well-made coats—the wool is woven in your mill.’
‘Yes, and grown on my land. Friar Mere was once an estate belonging to the Black Friars, but it is part of my estate now. We grow a few crops but it is mostly sheep.’
‘And the house?’
‘Blackfriars sits on the hill above the valley. It was once the home of the friars. Anne started to refurbish it, but the alterations were not finished before she died, so it is half very old and draughty and half an elegant modern home.’
‘You didn’t go on with the work?’
‘No. I saw no reason to. Besides, I was kept very busy with the estate and the mill.’ He paused. ‘If I can persuade Mark and Jane to come on a visit, they could bring you, too, and you would see it for yourself.’
‘I should like that,’ she murmured.
The countryside they were passing through was flatter than it had been, the land was criss-crossed with dykes and there were water mills everywhere. They were not cantering now because Adam had not planned to change the horses again and it was a longer-than-usual stage. They were moving at a leisurely trot, a pace that suited Sophie if only because it gave her a little longer to sit close to Adam, to feel his thigh close to hers, his arm touching hers, his warmth spreading all down that side of her, knowing it would be the last time.
And there was Hadlea, the village where she had been born and brought up, with its main street lined with cottages. There was the Fox and Hounds, standing on its corner, there the church, and there, after a few minutes more, the gates of Greystone Manor. ‘Home,’ Adam said as the carriage drew to a stop outside the front door.
Joe hardly had time to jump down, open the carriage door and let down the step before Lady Cavenhurst came out to meet them. Sophie tumbled out and into her arms.