“Daniel has been to visit us,” Letty sniffed, tugging a handkerchief from her sleeve. “He’s written, and he’s hardly arrived to Haddondale. I’m not saying no, David. I’m saying not yet. Please, please, not yet.”
The baby pounded merrily away, occasionally landing a blow on Fairly’s ear, while Letty collapsed, weeping, on his other shoulder.
Not yet was progress, but grudging, small progress. Fairly sent up a prayer that Danny wouldn’t run off to join the Navy before the adults in his life sorted out their various guilts, obligations, and options.
With that thought, the baby landed a stout smack on Fairly’s cheek.
* * *
The dower house loomed in Daniel’s awareness like a promised land, solitudinous for the immediate future, and agreeably free of luxuries, comforts, and distracting kisses. Like all promised lands, however, establishing residency there was taking time and effort.
“Books, Mr. Banks,” said the footman, Ralph, setting a wooden box on the desk that served as Daniel’s command post at the dower house. “Lady Kirsten says boys need books, and this lot of duplicates from the library will get you started.”
“Did Lady Kirsten indicate when the moving process might be complete?” Daniel asked.
Daniel had avoided her ladyship outside of mealtimes. Her gaze had taken on a speculative, analytical quality, as if she were mentally weighing him on some scales known only to her.
Or perhaps she was planning another kiss to his cheek.
“Her ladyship does things in her own time,” Ralph said, putting a half-dozen books on shelves built into the opposite wall. “Lady Nita kept us organized, but Lady Kirsten knew who was slacking. Can’t abide dust and fairly hates cobwebs, does Lady Kirsten.”
Another half-dozen volumes went up on the shelves, right next to the diaries written by Daniel’s father. Daniel had placed the journals where they’d be in his direct line of sight, hoping that gazing upon them regularly might inspire him to actually read them.
“You admire Lady Kirsten’s priorities?” Daniel asked.
Ralph paused, a volume of Wordsworth in his hand. He was a young man, probably not yet twenty, with sandy hair and a friendly countenance. Like most footmen, he also filled out his livery with a complement of muscle.
“It’s like this, Mr. Banks. The Quality can live in a house their whole lives and not see the very place that shelters them. Lady Kirsten sees the house and the people who work there. If she says the chimney lamps are to be cleaned, she’ll notice if they’re cleaned—and if they’re not.”
Wordsworth was followed by Blake, Burns, Pope, Sheridan—many winters’ worth of fine reading.
Though young boys would enjoy these selections in only small doses.
Ralph took the now-empty box from Daniel’s desk. “Luncheon be ready, Mr. Banks. We can bring a tray up from the kitchen if you’d like to take your meal here today.”
A sleety rain had turned the garden to mud, and the thought of traversing that mud to join the Haddonfield family for the midday meal daunted.
“I’ll come down to the kitchen shortly,” Daniel said. “If you’d send word to the manor house that I’ll bide with my books until supper?”
“Consider it done, sir.”
Ralph withdrew, a young fellow content to be of service to others. Had he any scriptural bent, he’d have made a fine curate.
Daniel put the two dozen volumes in alphabetical order by author, then repaired to the kitchen. An army of maids had been busy for two days on the lowest floor, scrubbing every room from the corners out, shining up windows with vinegar, rubbing beeswax and lemon oil into the woodwork, and hanging lavender sachets by the score.
Footmen had been dispatched to the top floors, though Daniel had decided against turning the maids’ quarters into a schoolroom. The top of any house was hard to keep warm in winter or cool in summer, so the former music room was pressed into service as a place of learning.
The dower property was a sizable dwelling, as would befit a lady with the rank of countess. In only two days’ time, a sense of happy industry had settled over the building.
Would that Daniel could attain such an air himself.
The kitchen was at the back of the house, in proximity to the gardens, the summer kitchen, the henhouse, and the dairy. As Daniel approached, he heard a female voice coming from the hallway that led to the pantries and a back entrance.
“They were my father’s boots,” the lady said. “I would not entrust them to just anybody.”
“The old earl’s boots?” came the wondering reply. A child’s voice, a small boy, probably the boot boy.
“His lordship wore his riding boots even when he could no longer sit a horse. They were special to him, and I know you’ll do a good job with them.”
Lady Kirsten, though her tone held none of its customary starch. From the shadowed corridor, Daniel ventured a peek into the nearest pantry.
Her ladyship sat on a rough plank bench, a small blond boy beside her, a pair of handsome field boots in the boy’s lap.
“They’re already clean,” the child said. “They want a bit of polish though. Cook says I’m lazy, because I’m not fast, but I’m not lazy. When do you need these boots, milady?”
“You must be patient with Cook, Jeremy. She’s never polished a pair of boots and doesn’t know how long the job ought to take. A roast won’t cook faster merely because the master is hungry, will it?”
“No, milady. It’s the same with boots. The leather should dry first, and the oil has to soak in, and the polish can’t go on too quick after that. Ralph taught me, because he was the boots once, when he was young. He said to always try my best, and so that’s what I do.”
Her ladyship wore no cap, her full-length apron was streaked with dust, and her blond hair was sagging free of its bun on one side. She looked like a senior maid after a hard day’s cleaning, not like an earl’s daughter. Sitting beside the small boy who was beset by a small boy’s challenges, she also looked like a kindly older cousin or an aunt.
Or like…a mother.
“That’s all any of us can do, Jeremy,” she said, “is try our best, even when people forget to say thank you. You can work at these boots on a day when it isn’t raining, because I know the present earl will always have muddy boots for you on the rainy days.”
“And he has big, muddy boots,” Jeremy replied, hopping off the bench. “The biggest in the shire, Ralph says. Good day, my lady!”
Jeremy scampered off, nearly knocking into Daniel with his prize. Lady Kirsten remained on the bench, though it was too late to pretend she hadn’t seen Daniel.
“Mr. Banks, hello. I told the kitchen to send your luncheon up on a tray if you were inclined to bide here rather than join the family.”
She wouldn’t meet Daniel’s gaze, and that bothered him. The lady who offered a slightly imprudent kiss to her married vicar, the lady who always spoke her mind and made war on cobwebs, should not feel any awkwardness on Daniel’s account.
He took the place formerly occupied by young Jeremy. “Are you missing your midday meal, my lady?”
“I hadn’t planned on it, but then one of the maids closed a door on her finger, and a footman dropped a trunk on another fellow’s foot. For the past few years, my sister Nita took on the running of the household, but the dower house never received much attention.”
“I thank you, then, for your efforts. I’ll enjoy biding here until the vicarage can be put to rights.”
Silence, awkward and unusual, sprang up between them.
Daniel waded back into the conversation, because that’s what a vicar did. “Thank you for the books. I’ll enjoy those too. I’ll have a look around the vicarage later this week and see if I can find any Latin grammars or extra copies of Robinson Crusoe.”
Some sentiment was boiling through Lady Kirsten. Dani
el could feel it, like when an outburst would well up from Danny if he’d been overtaxed and hungry for too long.
Daniel waited, because that was also what vicars did.
“I saw you,” Lady Kirsten said, brushing briskly at a smudge on her apron. “In the library yesterday. I came upon you.”
The library—? One of the loveliest naps Daniel could recall. Dozing off in a public room wasn’t exactly proper, but neither was Lady Kirsten a Puritan spinster.
“You found me napping? I’m sorry if my manners deserted me. Perhaps I snore? Your brothers led me to believe the Sabbath nap in the library was a fraternal institution. When I awoke, I was alone.”
And well rested, for a change.
“You weren’t snoring. Your boots were off, though.”
Whatever was she getting at? “My apologies, both for being unshod and for the shocking state of my stockings.” Olivia’s skill with a needle had been limited, at best. Even though Daniel could afford new stockings, he inflicted her workmanship on his feet as a penance for not admitting Olivia’s true nature to himself far sooner.
A vague wisp of a half-remembered dream brushed Daniel’s awareness. He recalled being angry and gleeful at the same time, like an adolescent boy.
“You’ll not find me asleep in the public rooms again, my lady. I’ll have chambers here, and my napping can be done in a proper bed.” Or at the church offices. Daniel had long ago developed the ability to nap sitting at his desk or stretched out on a church pew. Anywhere but his own home.
“All you recall is napping?” her ladyship asked.
What else would he have been doing? “Your brother Nicholas snores. That’s the last thought I recall before dropping off. Why?”
The smudge on Lady Kirsten’s apron had been spread, not diminished, by her attempts to brush it off, and still she fussed at it.
“No reason, Mr. Banks. I often find my brothers at their slumbers in the library. My father had the same habit. I expect the next earl will too.”
Why did you kiss me? Except Daniel knew why: she’d kissed him because she’d wanted to.
“Do you like children, Lady Kirsten?”
The batting and brushing stopped. She smoothed her apron flat over her lap. “Very much. Children are honest and want little from us. I prefer them to most adults. I intend to be a relentlessly doting aunt, and my siblings will have no say in the matter.”
She popped to her feet, so Daniel also stood. “Are you playing truant from the midday meal at Belle Maison, my lady?”
From the kitchen, the scent of hot food cut through the faint odor of lavender and lemons. Beef stew, perhaps, or a cottage pie. Heaven, to a man who’d bolted breakfast and spent the morning rearranging furniture.
“I dread crossing the garden,” Lady Kirsten said. “Susannah has taken to reading old issues of La Belle Assembleé, Della is memorizing Debrett’s, and the countess talks only of fashion. Nobody does anything. With all the tea and cakes they consume, my sisters ought to be the size of Nicholas’s mare.”
“Most would envy them their idleness,” Daniel said, though he did not. The earl gave a good account of himself, tending to significant acreage and mercantile interests, but the women were bored.
One of the women was mortally bored, though never boring.
“I want to take the vicarage in hand,” Lady Kirsten said, marching from the pantry. “I doubt I’ll have time before we leave for Town. Lemon and beeswax won’t cure rising damp anyway.”
Nothing cured rising damp save for replacing every scrap of affected wood. “You’re leaving soon, then?”
The prospect of distance from Lady Kirsten should have been a relief. She was unconventional, discontent, and unpredictable. Worse yet, she was patient with small boys, had a strong streak of domestic competence, and could not dissemble even to appease appearances.
Most troublesome of all, Daniel liked her. A lot.
“Leah hasn’t chosen a date for our departure,” she said, jamming the errant loop of hair back into her bun. “But leave we shall. When we’re assured the roads are passable, we’re off to London. You will have started with your academy by then.”
“My scholars? Three small boys taking the odd swipe at Latin does not an academy make.”
“I smell fresh bread.” Lady Kirsten’s pace increased, then she halted to twist a sachet from behind a curtain. “Nicholas told George that in addition to Digby and the Blumenthal brats, you’re to take on both of Squire Webber’s sons. He aspires to send them to public school, but they lack a foundation.”
And years of dedicated tutors had been unable to remedy that lack? “I think you had better join me for lunch,” Daniel said, resuming their progress toward a hot meal.
“I believe I shall. I adore a hearty beef stew with bread and butter on a cold, rainy day. Cook uses Mama’s recipe, and I’m partial to it.”
Peasant fare for an earl’s daughter. Daniel liked her entirely too well.
A scullery maid set places for them at a wooden table heavy enough to double as a threshing floor, while Lady Kirsten served up bowls of steaming stew and Daniel sliced the bread. Daniel held the lady’s chair, and then, without even a nod in the direction of further small talk, took shameless advantage of his companion.
“I want to know every detail you can share about my scholars, Lady Kirsten. They’re shaping up to be a pack of ne’er-do-wells, scamps, and scapegraces. One wonders if the parish isn’t attempting to run me off rather than welcome me.”
She snapped her serviette across her lap. “They’re out-and-out rotters, every one, save for Digby, but George says he’s showing dubious potential. Don’t steal all the butter.”
Daniel passed her ladyship the plate of butter, small golden molds in the shape of roses.
“Your butter, and Lord-we-thank-Thee-for-this-food, amen. Now tell me about these scoundrels.”
Lady Kirsten sat back, her smile indulgent. “I’ve known these boys since they were babies, Mr. Banks. They’re full of energy and mischief, and there’s not a Latin scholar among them. They are truly, truly awful.”
* * *
“Mama’s husband wants to send me away to school,” Danny informed Loki. “He doesn’t know what to do with me.”
Danny undid the braid he’d twisted into his pony’s mane, for he hadn’t made a very tidy job of it. Loki was the best part of living with Mama—Danny would remember to call her Aunt Letty if anybody came by.
Sometimes Loki was the only good part of living here. He was black and white and nearly as fast as a full-grown horse.
“I like Mama’s husband well enough,” Danny said, making another try for the braid while Loki munched on a pile of hay. “But the viscount likes Mama best of all, and I don’t know what to call him.”
The viscount—David, Viscount Fairly—wasn’t Danny’s papa and had said Danny must not call him Papa. Danny’s first papa had died, before.
Before life had gone all widdershins, and Papa—Uncle Daniel—had given Danny back to Mama—who had been plain Aunt Letty until then—before Danny’s previous mama, Olivia, Papa’s—Uncle Daniel’s—wife, had gone away.
Before now, when Danny no longer knew what to call anybody or where a boy could hide when he needed time to think.
“My mama from before was always mad at me,” Danny said. He’d again tried to braid too much coarse mane together, and the braid was too short and wide.
“I hate it here,” he whispered to his pony. “Mama’s husband never takes me up before him because I have you, but I’m not allowed to jump anything when I ride you. Don’t worry. We’ll jump soon. Mama’s husband has said when the ground is firmer, that’s the time to jump.”
Loki lifted his tail and broke wind with the casual ease of a well-fed equine.
“Beelzebub’s farts stink worse than yours,” Danny said, and abruptly a lump
formed in his throat and he leaned into his pony’s neck. “You’re my best pony, but I miss Zubbie.”
He missed Beelzebub’s farts, which had always made him laugh because they were so awful. Papa had laughed too and said to thank God for the horse’s good health.
“Papa doesn’t want me either, and he won’t come visit ever again. Mama won’t take me to visit him, and I’m mad at him too.”
And Danny missed his papa so, or his uncle Daniel or whatever he was supposed to call the person who’d loved him and raised him for five years.
“I hate it here,” he said as a hot tear slid down his cheek. “I hate to cry too, and I hate porridge—Papa always let me share his buttered toast. And I hate chocolate, and I hate not jumping, and I hate the stupid old vicar here who says the stupid service forever and ever.”
Loki shifted, nearly mashing Danny’s toes with a pony hoof.
“I’m sinning,” Danny said, “and I don’t care. What’s the point of honoring my father and mother if my days upon the earth are miserable? What’s the point of going to the service if it only makes me bored and have to use the necessary?”
What was the point of anything?
When Papa wrestled with a problem, he prayed about it.
Prayer hadn’t done anything to make Danny’s heart ache less.
“Papa also went for a long ride,” Danny said. “He galloped and jumped and galloped some more, until Beelzebub had the fidgets worked out and was all muddy and ready for a nap.”
Outside the viscount’s vast stable, the rain had finally stopped, but the grooms were bustling about, and the ground was all over mud.
Danny wiped his cheek on his sleeve—crying was for babies—and whispered into his pony’s hairy ear.
“Tomorrow morning, after your breakfast has settled, we’ll go for a mad gallop, and then we’ll feel better.”
He patted his pony before he left the stall, though like any equine, Loki was mostly interested in his hay. Danny didn’t bother undoing the last attempt at a braid, for it had come undone all on its own.
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