Not this time. She would let him think what he may.
“Was it difficult for you?”
“What, sir?”
“Never having a proper home as a child.”
It seemed she would have to have this conversation again.
“I didn’t enjoy moving from town to town, but I never doubted that others had it worse than I. I never considered leaving my father. We would meet all manner of people on the road…petted daughters in silk dresses and spoiled sons squabbling over wooden swords. Houses where the smell of baking bread would drift out of doorways…and always when I was the hungriest or the most tired but when we still had hours until we could settle for the night. There were comfortable houses with a mother and a father and food on the table but the children still had sad eyes. The eyes where you know their parents were not kind. I knew my father would never hurt me or neglect me. I was never so desperate to escape as Jean.”
Perhaps he was uncomfortable with the conversation or perhaps the mood had become too somber again, especially after a day that was supposed to be given to frivolity because he changed the subject.
“How was your day at the fair? My sisters always return ill from eating too many sweets and purchase far more ribbon than they could ever use.” He glanced down at her basket and she wasn’t surprised. Its shifting contents did make a noticeable thunk against the wicker edges occasionally.
She blushed slightly, her fingers whitening on the basket handle before she sternly told herself that there was nothing of which to be ashamed.
“I purchased a book of children’s stories,” she admitted, her gaze staring at the horizon of the road. “It’s a translation of the German brothers’ tales.”
“Oh, is it a gift for a child?”
“No, it’s for my own entertainment.”
Obviously attempting to make up for his faux pas, he offered, “I brought some books with me that you are welcome to read after you finish that one. Balzac might not be to your taste but Dumas’s Count has thrilled countless people…”
“I can’t read French,” she interrupted. She perused his books when she dusted his room, curious to see what she’d find there. All novels and three of them in French.
“Perhaps Ivanhoe then. It’s a romance and my sister, Georgiana, adored it. She complains bitterly that we no longer have knights roaming the countryside and rescuing maidens. I haven’t had the opportunity to read it yet, but you are welcome to it.”
“Oh, I could never, sir,” because that is what people said when near strangers or employers showed kindness.
“Of course, you could,” Mr. Attwood tossed back carelessly. “It’s not as if I’m giving it to you. My sister would threaten my murder if I returned without it. Actually, you’d be doing me a favor by reading it. You could then give me a full report and I could assure her that I’ve finally finished it.”
“Thank you, sir.” It meant nothing to him, a small kindness as forgettable as holding open a door for a lady, but Mia found her previous exhaustion lifted from her shoulders despite the long walk home.
Chapter 6
“Is the stove impaired?” Dominic asked in exasperation as he approached Mia. The cottage’s stove was its only convenience, and it seemed only fitting that it would need service after a week of habitation.
“No, but the day is already too warm to heat up the cottage. I thought I’d cook your breakfast outdoors and then do the wash while the weather is so pleasant.” Mia continued to build the fire, carefully laying twigs and sticks on top of sturdier logs. He could see the foundation of stones she had already stacked to protect the dry summer grass.
Dominic nodded approvingly merely because there was nothing else to do. She already had everything well in hand.
“Why don’t you go riding before breakfast?” she suggested, striking a match, and carefully setting the smallest twigs aflame. She frowned at the matchbox. “We’re nearly out of lucifers. I’ll have to purchase more before supper. I don’t think the cottage even has a tinderbox, but I’ve never been a dab hand with them in any case.”
“Perhaps I’ll go with you,” Dominic said, surprising himself again. He never offered to accompany with his sisters’ shopping on Regent Street much less to waste hours of his day fetching matches from the local village.
“If you like,” Mia replied while she poked at the fire again.
Which was irritating. He had once sent a duke’s daughter girl into paroxysms of nervous giggles by asking her dance. A debutante had breathlessly divulged that she considered the day he took her on a carriage ride as the most delightful day of her life.
Of course, he wasn’t courting Mia as he had those women. He had put her firmly in the category of servant. If, after the long walk back from the fair, he had glanced over and thought her passably pretty, it had only been because that old man had told him how all those men had pursued her.
She certainly didn’t have the sloping shoulders that current fashion dictated woman display. He found he preferred her squared shoulders and ramrod posture over the wilting flowers of femininity he was typically surrounded by. While he dismissed her figure as being negligible when they had first met, he now saw she hadn’t the hourglass figure that women were to aspire, but she definitely had something filling out the top of her bodice. And her layers of petticoats couldn’t completely hide the curve of her…
“Mia,” He was desperate to take his mind off her attributes and put her firmly back into the servant category. “You may be able to assist me.”
“Yes?” She plopped butter in the cast-iron pan and set it on a stone just outside the still weak flames.
“I need an interpreter. I can’t understand one word of the local vernacular.” Dominic slightly exaggerated but it was close enough to the truth. “They all chatter on and then look at me expectantly, but I can’t decipher their meaning at all. I believe that one elderly fellow referred to me as a duck yesterday.”
He wasn’t even going to mention the bizarre behavior of the girl sitting in the nettles beside the road. And there was that young man who had hailed him just to tell him of a particularly pleasant and very secluded swimming pond in the vicinity. The fellow had given him a wink and knowing nod which was baffling; Dominic had never given any indication in any conversation that he was particularly interested in swimming. Madness was running rampant throughout Lincolnshire.
Mia smiled slightly, those deep dimples that fascinated him nearly making an appearance.
“Mr. Brewerly? He’s more than likely chaffing you a bit, but ‘duck’ is no way insulting. It’s a common thing to call a friend or acquaintance.”
“It’s not just the vocabulary. I can’t understand the accent at all. All the words are mangled together, and the pronunciation is deplorable.”
“We’re in an odd spot here. Some parts of Lincolnshire speak like southerners while the others sound like they’re from Yorkshire.”
“I don’t have difficulty understanding you,” Dominic pointed out.
“Because I’m speaking as you do,” Mia said with a laugh as she bent and checked the pan to see if the butter had melted. She raised an eyebrow as she patronizingly enunciated, “People always trust a hawker a bit more if he sounds like someone he may associate with at a local inn, church, or gentlemen’s club. And ladies always prefer a gentleman who understands their delicate sensibilities.”
Dominic reared back a little. If he had closed his eyes, he could have sworn he was listening to his sister, Edith, or any number of other genteel London ladies. Of course, Mia had also widened her eyes and raised the pitch of voice, making her sound and appear like one of Edith’s earnest and eager-to-please friends parroting a chaperone’s advice.
“Did you notice that I don’t pronounce the ‘r’ in ‘hawker’ or ‘more’?” Mia grinned widely and this time both dimples were visible. “That’s a new development among your lot’s younger people. It took my father a year to discover that. He had to listen to many a young gir
l arguing with her parents about fripperies before he realized it.”
“A new development in my people?” Dominic frowned. Edith may have dropped her r’s on occasion, but Dominic assumed it was to annoy their mother and himself. It certainly wasn’t a habit or even a new way of speaking. Edith spoke the Queen’s proper English with the dignity and pronunciation of any other well-bred young lady.
“Language is always changing. My father said he’s met Americans who speak just as the elderly people did when he was young. Perhaps Americans still speak like our ancestors did a century ago,” Mia mused as she poured the egg mixture into the sizzling butter.
Dominic imagined the elegant portrait of his great-grandfather, Percival Attwood, in his long curling wig, opening his mouth only to speak those headache-inducing flat tones of Americans. Utterly preposterous.
“How far does your father journey?”
“Oh, he usually travels north in the spring, perhaps as far as the border and then he travels slowly south to the southern shores to find a place to settle for the winter. The road conditions make it difficult to travel in the winter. I think one day we spent more time pushing the wagon out of the mud than we did riding on top.” Mia filled a plate with the now fluffy eggs. “The table is already set, sir. I’ll bring these to you inside.”
“Oh.” The thought of another solitary dinner appealed as much as another solitary ride.
And his disinterest must have been visible because Mia quickly offered, “Or I can fetch a chair and the table, and you can dine outdoors.”
Dominic had partaken of meals outdoors, of course. His mother once had a garden party where it seemed that every stick of furniture had been transported outdoors so they could dine under the stars on a particularly clear night. But the niceties had still been observed. Breakfasting at that scratched and wobbling little table seemed ridiculous.
“I could spread a blanket from the bed on the ground. You could recline on that?” Mia then suggested. “I’m doing the wash today so it will be clean again before nightfall.”
Recline on the ground like one of those dissolute faux French aristocrats? Dominic was about to give a scathing reply but the sight of Mia standing there, her eyes so very blue and so eager to please, made him pause and then give a nod. What harm could there be? It wasn’t as if any of his peers was going to cross the hill that morning and see him sprawled so inelegantly.
She spread the blanket on the ground and then ran inside to fetch the utensils, water glass, and napkins she had left on the table. She laid them next to him and then returned to the pan to add more butter for her own breakfast.
“These customs and people are foreign to me though we live in the same country.” Dominic carefully balanced the eggs and took a bite. They were a bit dry, but she’d added some herb that made them almost edible. “It’s as if I’m Gulliver and this is the new land in my travels.”
“Do you think we will tie you down with ropes?” Mia asked, her periwinkle eyes alit with amusement.
Dominic nearly choked on his eggs as her words conjured a disconcerting image. It wasn’t the locals who were brandishing the ropes in his imagination. In his fantasy Mia’s attire in no way resembled Jonathan Swift’s depictions of a Lilliputian and her intentions for rendering him immobile were very, very different.
“No, perhaps more like Robinson Crusoe!” Dominic seized on another traveler who didn’t encourage his reverie of illicit acts with the locals. As far as Dominic could recall, Crusoe didn’t encounter a single female in the entire novel.
“I’m not familiar with the fellow,” Mia said politely, tipping the newly cooked eggs onto her own plate.
“Oh, he’s an Englishman who seeks his fortune and shipwrecks in South America. With some ingenuity, he survived for years. He does meet a native he refers to as Friday. Friday helps him in many ways and together they defeat cannibals.”
“So a typical sailor’s yarn?” Mia said, laughing. “You should hear some of the tales they tell in Liverpool. I don’t know which I’d prefer to defend myself against – one of their monstrous whales or this Crusoe’s cannibals. Perhaps it’s a good thing I’ve never strayed from England’s safe shores.”
She finished her last bite of egg and then swiped his own plate and fork from the blanket to set them on top her own dishes.
“Now I’ll just clean these up and then I’ll get started on the wash, sir,” she said, all polite efficiency as she placed everything into the frying pan and walked off toward the cottage again.
Dominic felt dismissed but he could hardly be insulted. He doubted any housemaid ever dawdled over breakfast and chattered about novels. Mrs. Enderby, Swithun Hall’s housekeeper, would be infuriated and have the girl on chamber pot duties for a month.
Solitude was a foreign notion to him. He’d always been surrounded by people. First family and servants, then school mates in his formative years before returning to the comfort and crowds of home. He usually longed for privacy. He had always been more comfortable with his own company than the incessant and inane conversations that he usually had to politely bear. Now he almost wanted Mia to return so they could speak more about her silly notions on American accents and perhaps some of those sailors’ tales from their global adventures.
But that could only be because she was the only person for miles. Like Friday and Crusoe, they would be very unlikely companions if there had been anyone else tolerable in the vicinity.
∞∞∞
Mia returned from washing dishes and found, to her relief, that Mr. Attwood had taken himself off somewhere. Which was good. She didn’t need a bored, lazy, aristocrat under foot. And it had been easy to ignore him earlier in the week. They hadn’t interacted other than the barest of pleasantries.
But then he had insisted on walking her home. She could have ignored that too. She’d been walked home from church and other events before by a half-dozen men over the years. Those men had made polite conversation while subtly and sometimes quite overtly tallying what they offered as a potential husband. They also had been sizing up her qualities as a mate. Those awkward conversations were more like interviews for a house position but those minutes of conversation with Mr. Attwood were almost like speaking with a friend…or someone who had the potential to be one. She had precious few of those.
But she had never felt that clench in her stomach when chatting with Reverend Martin or when she shelled peas in the summer afternoon with Lettice. Just seeing Mr. Attwood lounging on the blanket, the morning sun highlighting his perfect features and lighting his dark blond hair into a golden halo, had made her so nervous that she nearly dropped her breakfast in the fire. And she didn’t need to fool herself into thinking it could be the kind of ‘friendship’ that needn’t end badly.
Mia lifted the large pot off of the fire and set it on the flat river stones. She plopped some soft, dark soap into the water and watched it dissolve for a moment before scooping a bit more into the washwater. She usually didn’t use quite so much but Mr. Attwood was paying her well and she could always make more in some of her free hours.
She dunked the first set of shirts into the water, plunging them beneath the surface with the washing beetle and giving them an extra pounding just for good measure. She was about to test the water to see if the shirts were still too hot to touch when she saw Mr. Attwood coming around the side of the cottage. He had changed again, likely because he had finished mucking out the horse’s stall. He always washed up after the chore and she could see that his hair was still damp by his ears.
She quickly turned back to the wash, focusing on the job at hand. She would not admire the strength of his jawline or how his long legs powerfully strode across the grass. She wouldn’t.
“Mia!” he called out, his tone harsh.
“Yes, sir?” she called over her shoulder, though she kept her eyes on the tangle of clothes she shifted between her hands.
“The fire!”
She turned to see what could cause him so much co
nsternation but didn’t see anything amiss. The flames were leaping merrily in her fire ring despite her not adding any fuel in the past half hour.
Mia glanced up again and saw the look of horror on Mr. Attwood’s usually impassive features as he rushed toward her and then realized that the odor of burning paper was not coming from the woodfire itself. She arched her back and twisted so she was able to grasp the back of her skirts. It seemed her apron strings had been set alight and had then caught the edge of her gown.
She began to bunch up the fabric in an effort to smother the flame before she was unceremoniously tossed face-first to the ground. With a surprised grunt, she fell into the grass but before she could protest, Mr. Attwood kneeled beside her and began folding her skirts and petticoats on top of each other. After a few seconds, he jumped to his feet again and Mia assumed the fire was out and cautiously rolled over.
“Thank you,” she said breathlessly. “I really should…”
But before she could say anything else, he clasped her left hand and hauled her to her feet. His frown was fierce as he picked up her right hand and examined it before lifting her into his arms and striding back around the side of the cottage.
“Uh, I believe I can walk.” Mia was unsure how to react to this behavior. She didn’t feel in any physical danger…Mr. Attwood had never given her a lascivious look much less given her the impression that any of his intentions were untoward…but she was confused at his urgency.
He didn’t take her into the cottage but kept walking directly to the stream that separated the cottage from the road. He set her on the ground by the water’s edge before taking ahold of her arm and plunging her hand into the chilly, trickling water. Mia gasped, lost her balance despite being on her knees, and nearly toppled in the stream head-first. Everything was happening in a blur, but Mr. Attwood kept a firm hold of the back of her bodice. It seemed useless to argue or struggle; his features remained grim as he stared at her hand beneath the stream’s surface.
One Enchanted Summer Page 6