One Enchanted Summer
Page 10
“I was sharing a whiskey or two or three,” Dominic shrugged, “with Lord Pritchard. He had newly joined the club, but we had attended Harrow together years ago. He ascertained that I was dispirited, and I eventually admitted to my discontent. It was upon his suggestion that I came here.”
“But why here?” There had to be other pastoral fields closer to London instead of a four-day journey to Lincolnshire.
“Lord Pritchard had read about an American who had forsaken all others for years. His return to nature had rejuvenated him. I had considered a journey to the Continent or perhaps just a sojourn to Bath or Brighton. My mother and sisters were eager to come along when I mentioned a possible trip so the destination had to be a location they would never venture.”
“A place completely devoid of society and amusements?” Mia said drily as she sat in the seat across the table from him, setting her still empty pitcher next to the jumble of posies.
“Precisely. Lord Pritchard had inherited this cottage and offered it to me for the summer. He knew that the steward hadn’t found another tenant as yet. He didn’t reveal the cottage’s lack of amenities and servants though. I was shocked to arrive and find my trunks and cases stacked in the bedchamber and not a soul for miles.”
“There must have been some miscommunication with Lord Pritchard’s steward,” Mia suggested.
“Hardly. I am quite certain that, when I see Lord Pritchard next, he will gleefully ask me about my stay, amused beyond measure at the thought of me floundering. It was only by God’s grace and the devil’s own luck that I came across your father who offered your services. I don’t even know what possessed me to take him up on his offer.”
“He did save your life,” Mia reminded him with a laugh.
“That’s a bit of an exaggeration. It was two rather drunk fellows who thought that Monaco would fetch a fine price. Their other companion was trying to dissuade them of the criminal notion the entire time.” Misinterpreting Mia’s infuriated gasp as annoyance at his ingratitude, Dominic held up a placating hand. “I do appreciate your father’s intervention though. The incident perhaps could have turned violent.”
“My father said there was four of them and it was only his quick thinking that saved you from being pummeled into pudding and left on the roadside without even the clothes on your back!” Mia yelped. “He thought his assistance was worth a whole pound? Ludicrous!”
“Worth every penny.” He longer looked embarrassed over his revelation; instead he appeared thoroughly entertained at how Tom Tillman had spun himself into the role of savior.
Mia glared at Dominic in irritation since her father wasn’t present for her ranting. “Oh, he’ll get an earful the next time he passes through. I tell him off right proper. Imagine, him taking advantage of your generosity. And he’ll be retelling that bit of blather in every inn and pub from here to Cornwall!”
Dominic shrugged, his eyes crinkling at the corners, obviously unconcerned with her father’s exaggeration retelling of the incident and amused by her indignation.
Giving herself a mental shake, Mia forced herself to ignore her father’s flummery and focus on Dominic’s revelation of what had brought him to her little corner of England.
“Mr. Attwood, what do you do when at your family home? I suppose managing an estate takes a great deal of your time.”
“No, our steward oversees the estate. He’s been with us since my father was a boy. I do visit the tenants and villagers once a year, but they never have a complaint. And the estate has been profitable for forty years. It hardly needs my attention.” Dominic scowled again as if the revelation of his solvent holdings was anything but cheering.
“Describe your typical day. You wake in the morning…”
“I wake around ten. I breakfast. I ride Monaco. I may fence or practice archery. My sisters sometimes cajole me into joining them in the village or at a neighbor’s. We usually attend a dinner or host a few guests. If I’m in London, I usually attend Parliament when in session. Attend balls. Ride through the park…” His voice trailed off as he gave the account of his activities and seemed to realize how fruitless they were.
“Do you enjoy politics?”
“I vote when called,” he evaded her question.
“So you lived rather aimlessly there and decided to make a change and now live aimlessly here?” Dominic’s dark eyes showed no expression, but Mia knew he was furious with her observation. She hurriedly added, “Perhaps you should attempt a business.”
“A gentleman can’t be in trade.” He turned his head away from her, clearly disgusted at her lack of understanding of his role in society.
“Perhaps you can create something just for your own satisfaction then. Look how pleased you were with repairing the table,” she pointed out.
“Gentlemen don’t…”
“Do your sisters embroider?” Mia interrupted.
“Yes.”
“Do they sell their handicrafts?”
“No, they only…” he trailed off, uncomfortable with how she had backed him verbally into a corner.
“No, they make a handkerchief or a chair cushion or a pillow and admire their work. It’s the satisfaction at the finishing that they enjoy, the feeling of accomplishment. For some people, that’s part of their being – creating something even if they are the only one enjoying it.” Mia gave the table a nudge to remind him of his effort. “You could attempt something a bit more difficult than a table repair. Or you could take up gardening. Become a farrier or a blacksmith or…”
“Lords don’t partake in manual labor.” Dominic continued to scowl at the repaired table as if it now was offending him.
“Gentlemen can chase after foxes, take actresses as mistresses, pummel each other as entertainment, but an honest day’s labor is beneath their dignity?” Mia scoffed as she rose from the table, slightly exasperated with him but mostly at society as a whole. She threw some wood into the bottom of the stove and jerkily pulled the matchbox from the cupboard. “Your kind do everything to keep your pride and your money but then can’t enjoy a single moment without worrying what others think. You’ve built your own prison and your peers are the goalers.”
Mia struck the match multiple times, but it refused to catch, and she tossed it into the woodpile. She fumbled for another stick.
She shouldn’t have spoken to him so. Certainly insolent. She wouldn’t be surprised if he terminated her employment. And for the life of her, she didn’t know why she had spoken so plainly. She’d always been able to hold her tongue even when her employers had silly rules and foolish demands. For over a decade, she’d nodded politely and kept her face impassive even while mentally peeling with laughter.
But she knew why she had been so candid. She had thought he was different. Or perhaps she just wanted him to be.
She heard the chair scrape across the floor as he rose from the table and she braced herself for some harsh words of his own.
“I’m still not familiar with the local vernacular. When your friend left, she said something about Bill’s mother?”
It seemed he was willing to pretend that their discussion never happened. Relaxing her stiff shoulders, Mia flicked the new match, and it flared instantly. She tossed it into the stove’s belly.
“Oh, she said, ‘It’s black over Bill’s mother.’” Mia turned towards him again. He had removed his jacket and vest and was standing in his shirtsleeves by the open door, the afternoon light making a halo around his silhouette. “It merely means that it may rain.”
“Oh.” He leaned against the doorframe briefly, looking up at the sky. It had darkened to an ominous gray during their discussion. “Well, I suppose I can attempt to be a bit more productive today, despite my lordly status. I’ll just be certain that Monaco has enough dry feed and water or I might be caught in a downpour later. Wish me luck.”
“Why?” It hardly seemed dangerous to walk the fifty steps to Monaco’s stable; he’d done it a hundred times before without incident.
He ducked out the door, but he threw her a cocky grin over his shoulder as he left.
Her face immediately flooding with color, Mia resisted the urge throw his hideous bouquet of poisonous flowers after him.
Chapter 10
“Hard wood? Hard wood? I’ll show her hard wood,” Dominic muttered under his breath as he carried four large pieces of oak? ash? elm? back to the cottage. Mia had told him that morning that she was leaving to find more firewood and he had quickly volunteered for the task.
As the rain pounded the cottage’s roof three nights earlier, he had mulled her words and decided that her suggestion had merit. For one, he had felt a great deal of pride when that table was no longer threatening to send glasses tumbling to the floor. For another, if he did find enjoyment or satisfaction in this labor, who was there to question him? Mia and a few farmers? What could be the harm?
Over the past two days, he had taken Monaco for his usual ride and found himself scanning the area for a chore to be done. He assisted getting a stubborn cow back into her enclosure. The local farrier asked Dominic to hold a particularly skittish horse’s reins while a new shoe was hammered into place. He’d stumbled upon Mr. Brewerly, the old gossip from the fair when Dominic first arrived, attempting to mow a large expanse of lawn. He had volunteered to man the scythe, the primitive tool still cutting down the grass blades surprisingly efficiently. Dominic had muttered that the children of the town must be desperate for entertainment after a crowd started to gather to watch him work and the old man had explained that the newly shorn lawn was to be a bowling green. Mr. Brewerly then insisted that Dominic have the honor of the first pitch. The children had cheered when Dominic rolled the first ball across the lush blanket of green and then whooped in excitement when he gave an elaborate bow, indicating the new space was all theirs.
“How does it feel to be a criminal?” Mr. Brewerly had asked with a toothless grin while they both watched the children scamper across the lawn without any care for bowling rules or each other’s safety.
“A criminal?”
“Those posh bastards are deciding if we peasants are allowed to play lawn bowls now. They’re voting next month.”
Dominic had shifted uncomfortably. He’d forgotten about that particular act coming to the vote in August.
“I thought they didn’t enforce those ancient laws in any case.”
“They don’t. But that’s why we have to play it now. There’s something sweeter about thumbing your nose at those toffs.” Mr. Brewerly had clapped him on the shoulder with a gnarled hand. “I’ll have Mia break you out of gaol if you’re nibbed.”
Dominic had arrived back at the cottage and convinced Mia to walk with him to the village after dinner where she could witness his handiwork. He beat her roundly at bowls but the children who gathered to watch had declared the outcome unfair because it was obvious Dominic was not a novice at the game.
That night, there was an ache in his shoulders and back, but Dominic couldn’t stop grinning while remembering the look on the villagers’ faces when they saw what he’d done…or the pride on Mia’s face when Reverend Martin had grudgingly thanked him for his contribution. There must exist in him a few drops of laborer’s blood that hadn’t been successfully bred out; some ancient ancestor who enjoyed the heft of scythe and the satisfaction of a job well done.
And a little bit more than the contentment he felt with himself was the attention he earned from Mia. It seemed many women enjoyed watching men engaging in physical feats that a gentleman should be far too sophisticated to undertake. Dominic recalled a gardener hoisting himself up a tree to fetch Edith’s kite and both Georgiana and Venetia watching him with glittering eyes and open mouths. He had ordered them into the house in annoyance, but he had to admit that he wouldn’t mind Mia admiring him in such a way.
Ignoring his inner voice asking why he wanted Mia to stare at him with parted lips, he had just hefted the ax over his shoulder and sauntered his way out the cottage door when Mia called after him to only cut down a hardwood tree. He had waved her off like an annoying insect while his mind scrambled for the scientific method that could deduce the density of a tree.
Now he wished that he stumbled across someone in the forest who could give him some guidance but, alas, he was alone. After tapping his knuckles against a dozen trees and staring thoughtfully at leaves, trunks, and even limbs, Dominic shrugged and started hacking at the tree in closest proximity. He soon had tossed his jacket and necktie aside and was seriously considering throwing his shirt onto the growing pile of clothes when the damned thing finally gave up and eased its way to the forest floor with a slight creak. Dominic gave an undignified whoop and sneered at his conquered foe until he realized that he still had to split the trunk into logs that would actually fit in the stove.
His shirt came off.
He may have wasted the entire afternoon, but his chest swelled again with the pride of accomplishing something as he had stomped purposefully back towards the cottage precariously balancing the ax on top of his neat pile of firewood. He was a little irritated at Mia for not suggesting he bring the warped and slowly rotting wheelbarrow that leaned against the stable, but he was also honest enough to admit that he would have scoffed at the idea only an hour ago. Now he would have to make several more trips to his vanquished opponent’s gravesite to collect the pieces he had left behind.
Dominic rounded the bend, his mind flashing to the moment when Mia would admire his physical feat of felling such a tree, her eyes widening at the breadth of his shoulders (he decided that arriving without a shirt would be too overwhelming for her delicate sensibilities and now that it clung to his slightly sweaty body anyway, it wouldn’t appear as if he was trying too hard to impress her) when he spied a figure leaving the cottage door and a snarl immediately curled his lip.
He recognized the boy as some pimply youth that Dominic had seen eagerly bending Mia’s ear at the fair until his dragon of a mother had dragged him away. At the time, he had been curious if Mia could be that desperate but from what that old crofter, Mr. Brewerly, had said, it seemed unlikely that Mia, who had turned down half the bachelors in the shire, would have anything to do with the sapling.
So it further infuriated him when Mia came to the door and called something out after the boy that made the youth turn and wave again, a ridiculous grin spreading across his rather plain, almost horsey face before he jauntily stepped over the little bridge that spanned the river and started up the road towards Dominic.
It seemed Mia’s parting words had enchanted the young fool because he was nearly upon Dominic, his mouth still split wide in a ludicrous grin and a flush on his face, before noticing him. Scowling darkly, Dominic felt great satisfaction when the idiot stumbled slightly before bobbing his head and muttering, “Sir,” and hurried past him.
“Why was that boy here?” Dominic demanded as he stomped through the door and deposited the wood with a crash next to the stove. The ax slid sideways off the wood pile and the metal head hit the cast-iron stove’s side with an ear-splitting clang.
“Who? Randolph King?” Mia asked, appearing thoroughly confused and not someone set out to break hearts from eighteen to eighty throughout the valley. Completely ignoring his imperious look that had sent even his sisters quaking, she picked up a piece of his very fine wood and frowned – frowned! – as she set it back onto the pile with a twist on her lips and her eyebrows raised as if she were unimpressed. “I told you, we can’t burn green wood. You’ll have to stack in the woodpile behind the cottage. It may be ready by winter. I’ll place an order for seasoned wood next time I go to town.”
“I don’t know his name,” Dominic replied, ignoring her comments on his perfectly acceptable logs. “I don’t know how it is done here, but in London, entertaining is not permitted, especially when the master is not home.
You shouldn’t allow strangers inside at all. He could be a thief or…some other unsavory character.”
Mia’s sable eyebrows had risen further and further until it seemed those same eyebrows were nearly even with the point of the widow’s peak in her dark brown hair but at the end of Dominic’s frosty speech, they abruptly returned to their normal position on her face and she had the nerve to smile – to laugh at him! – so widely that her dimples showed in both cheeks.
“Randolph King is harmless. Now that I think of it, I should have asked while he was here if he had any seasoned wood he didn’t currently need. He’d likely give me a good price for that too. And if you haven’t noticed, the door doesn’t even lock. I could hardly keep thieves and murderers out even if I wished.” Mia opened the oven door and began cleaning the ashes out of the stove into a metal bucket and Dominic had the insulting feeling that he was the one being dismissed.
“Why was he here?” Dominic demanded again, knowing he sounded unreasonable and surly but, by God, here he was out hacking down forests to keep her warm while she flirted with fledglings in his own home! Well, Lord Pritchard’s home but it was under his care. He was practically its guardian now.
“He came to tell me that his crop is almost ready, and he knew I’d be interested,” Mia replied calmly as she walked past him out the door leaving Dominic to trail after her like a dog. Infuriating!
“What crop?” Dominic sneered as he followed Mia around the side of the cottage. It was obviously some excuse for that bumpkin to make eyes at Mia. Mia bought everything in the village with his money and hadn’t needed to contact a farmer or cropper the entire month he resided in the cottage with her. Now that Mrs. Marwood was supplying their supper, Mia had only visited the village twice in the past week.
Mia pulled off the lid of the large barrel that Dominic recognized from the day she had arrived at the cottage. It was the same one she had her father haul to the back of the cottage. She dumped the ashes in the top, tapping the metal bucket against the side with a bang. With a sigh of obvious exasperation, she turned back to him, those startling blue eyes now bright with annoyance.