“I would be delighted to accept your invitation,” she said at last, trying not to notice the way Lady Colbourne’s face fell at the words. “I can imagine no greater company, and I will try to be of assistance in any way I can.”
Lady Colbourne looked as though she meant to say something else, but in the end she simply turned on her heel and walked away. Diana walked gracefully after her, and Nora turned to Gerard.
“Are you quite all right with this?” she asked quietly. “I know that our arrangement is –”
“Miss Pembroke,” he said with a gentle smile. “I can think of your addition to my family party in only positive terms. Worry yourself no further on the subject, I pray you.”
He bowed and, turning on his heel, was gone in a moment.
Chapter 21
Gerard woke the first morning back in Holcombe feeling the weight of a thousand worries on his chest. His mother had explained the whole matter to him on the carriage ride back from the museum, or as much of the matter as was known to her at the time. But he had not understood the full extent of the emergency until he’d arrived the day before at his childhood home and sat down with the land agent to discuss the affair.
“It is very simple,” the man had said. “We pulled out our seed for planting and found that it had mouldered wrongly over the wet months. We can’t use but a tenth of it, if that, and we’ll lose much of what we had to spare trying to buy more at this stage in the season. I don’t even know if our crops will come up as they ought.”
It was a blow, indeed, and to add to that Gerard had learned that three tenants had given up their houses and left for greener pastures. He didn’t have enough men to work the fields, nor money from the rent or fields to tend in the first place. It was a blow that indeed needed the regular supervision of the Lord of Holcombe, and it needed his creativity too – but Gerard felt as though he had none. The land agent told him to think it over, and then to bring his thoughts to their meeting in two days’ time. It seemed like an eternity. Gerard wondered how he would squander away those two days without doing something worthwhile. He dressed in riding clothes, itching to go about the land again and see that everything was in order, and walked down to breakfast.
He was surprised to find that Nora and Diana were already there, chattering away over toast and tea. Nora looked up at the sight of him and smiled, her brown hair in a loose sort of arrangement about her face, a pink gown bringing out the colour in her cheeks.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Good morning.” He was surprised by how at ease she made him feel. All the weight was still bearing down on him, and yet looking at her seemed to give him a sort of light hope. “What are you ladies thinking to do today?”
“Diana was just telling me about your livery. The way she describes it leads me to believe that you have stables to rival those of Dearbrooke, and we were going to go on a ride this afternoon.”
“Perhaps you will consider moving your ride to the morning time,” Gerard said, surprising himself a bit with the suggestion. “I was planning on going about the property myself, and if you are both satisfied to sit through some of the more boring fields as well as the picturesque, I would be glad of the company.”
“Now this is new,” Diana said with a slight smile. She turned to Nora. “You see, Gerard is very particular about his business, and he absolutely never mixes it with pleasure. Are you planning on asking us our opinion regarding the goings on at Holcombe, brother?”
“Of course not,” he said quickly, buttering toast. “I look only for your fine companionship.”
He looked up and caught Nora eying him with a quizzical brow.
“What is it?” he asked. “You look as though a thought had crossed your mind that you wished to share.”
She smiled, and there was an impish gleam in her eyes. She took a quick sip of tea and stood suddenly from the table. “I wouldn’t dream of sharing it, Lord Colbourne. Not when my main function is fine companionship.”
She and Diana slipped away from the table at that, leaving Gerard feeling a mixture of amusement and annoyance. Nora had a way of turning him on his head that he was not certain he entirely liked. She was playful, and yet somehow, he felt as though he had been scolded, which was not a feeling he entirely enjoyed.
After the meal, the three went to the livery and chose their horses, Nora seeming more at ease in the stables than she had ever seemed in the ballrooms of London. She ran her hands along the neck of her mare with a singular tenderness, moving about the straw and muck as though she had no concern whatsoever for her boots or shoes or even safety. Gerard thought that he had never seen a woman quite so unaware of her own grace. When he helped her into her saddle he couldn’t help noticing the way the open air and outdoors had brought a light into her pretty eyes.
“My lady,” he said, bowing his head before walking back and climbing astride his own mount.
They rode quickly along the eastern side of the property, dropping down into a valley of sorts that ran up either bank of a cool, clear stream. The stream was bubbling in a familiar tune that Gerard had heard all his life. Nora looked at it with tenderness.
“I suppose you raced boats down this stream as a boy,” she said with a smile. “My brothers and I were never patient enough to fashion them out of paper, but we’d tie together little rafts of twigs and see which would make it the furthest.”
Gerard looked over at her in amusement. “I suppose you are going to tell me that yours won?”
“Hardly,” she laughed, a sound that mimicked the stream beautifully. “Mine were always the largest and the grandest, but such things tend to get caught in the weeds or tripped up on the dry rocks in the centre of the stream. William’s were always thin and light and went much further between the rocks without catching in wrong places.” She tilted her head to the side and addressed Diana, her laughing eyes never leaving Gerard’s face. “Tell me, Diana, was your brother always so proper as he is now, or did you ever see him racing boats in the stream outside?”
Diana laughed quietly. “Gerard is so much older than I – I don’t remember him as a boy, only as a young man. I assure you he has never raced a boat in my presence.”
All of a sudden, Nora pulled up her horse and, in a swift movement, dismounted to the ground below. Gerard stopped as well, intrigued.
“Miss Pembroke, if that is the extent of your endurance in horseback endeavours, I fear this journey today is going to be a good deal too long for you.”
“Don’t tease,” she retorted with a light laugh. “No, if you have always been this severe, I think it only just that we ought to have a race here and now, so as to see whether or not you have the skills necessary for nautical navigation.”
“I never pretended a career in nautical navigation, so the skills seem rather a moot point,” Gerard said, but he couldn’t keep the smile from his face as he dismounted alongside a giggling Diana. By the minute Nora was filling their life with the sort of impulsive joy that Gerard had always seen in her and had never experienced for himself. He felt a slew of doubts in his head telling him to tend to the rest of the ride, to avoid childish endeavours, to set a good example for Diana…but then he looked at Diana, and he saw in her laughing eyes the childhood that she so often seemed to have left behind her. “I will warn you,” he said, “that despite your disparaging comments on the subject, I did race boats in my time, and I was quite good.”
Instead of picking up twigs as Nora and Diana were doing, however, he took one of the large, flat, flexible leaves of a nearby poplar tree and, breaking it loose from the branch so it was still green and pliable, bent up the sides and fastened them together with a twig that was much smaller than the Nora had busied herself with tying together. He mounted a sail in the middle, and then brought it to the other two with a smile.
“I find that the lighter crafts travel faster and further,” he said.
Nora looked at the little leaf with amazement in her face. “Why, Lord Colbourne �
� I do believe you have a bit of a knack for this sort of thing. I never would have imagined it.” She stood up quickly and presented her bundle of twigs for examination. “But I will warn you, the lightest crafts may be swift, but it will do you no good if yours is overtaken by my warship. You will be cast under to the great and swirling deep, never to be seen from again.”
They set their ships afloat on the bubbling stream and stood watching with amusement as their leaves and bundles battled rapids and disappeared in the distance. Diana seemed utterly delighted, smiling brightly. “You know,” she said, as they remounted their horses, “I would never have thought that I’d missed anything growing up here at Holcombe, but I see that there were some childish pursuits that I would have greatly enjoyed.”
“It is a gift to grow up with brothers,” Nora admitted, “but I will tell you that I do not consider the odd bit of boat racing to be a childish pursuit only. I think many simple outdoor pleasures can and should be captured by the grown adult mincing away their hours in proper engagements.”
Diana sighed. “I do love the way you speak, Nora.”
Gerard couldn’t help but agree, and though he said nothing to Nora, he found his eyes kept drifting over to survey the way she sat upon her horse – elegant and free, with the breeze ruffling her brown curls. He could see something elegant in her wild nature that he hadn’t been able to perceive in London. She was well-suited to country life, and he realised as he looked at her in the dappled light of the passing trees that she had been like a painting hung in the House of Lords in London – a beautiful thing that no one could appreciate in that setting.
Near the end of their ride, after they’d passed the empty houses of some of the tenants that had gone their own way, Diana rode ahead and left Nora and Gerard for a moment to their own confidence. He strove to find a thing worth saying.
“What do you think of Holcombe?” he asked at last. He expected the sort of immediate answer that one always got in the city – a proper exclamation on the grandeur of the place. But what he got was a long silence, and then a quiet, thoughtful reply.
“It is beautiful,” she said. “Although not in the same way as my country home. I find it strange to go out to a grand estate nestled in the English countryside and to find that I feel a certain heaviness even in the springtime.”
“A heaviness?” Gerard felt only curiosity.
Nora nodded, her face sober. “I wonder if it was always this way, or only after your father died.” She suddenly seemed to hear her own words, for she looked up at him with a pained expression. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to be insensitive.”
“You were not. At least, I didn’t take it that way.” Gerard felt strangely moved by her honesty. “I feel the same way, actually. In fact, I probably feel it more strongly than you do, for I remember when this place was alive with colour and life under my father’s guidance. I feel his loss sorely, and I believe the land and estate does as well. I think the tenants are leaving because –” he realised with a start that he was sharing matters of intimate business with a young woman, something he had never grown up learning to do, something that would be considered incredibly improper by his mother. He hoped he had not caused her any insult, and finished lamely, “I think that the heaviness you feel is there, and I am eager to bring some life back into this beautiful place.”
“I do appreciate the quiet, however,” Nora said softly. Gerard smiled at that, and she laughed. “I know that you will think me silly,” she added, “for I have been told all my life that quiet is something I sorely require.”
“You do have a way of inserting yourself in conversation that would leave one to believe you were never at a loss for an opinion,” Gerard said.
“Well, I’m not,” she quipped happily. “But I do appreciate quiet. I love to paint, as you know, but I feel in London with the sound of carriages rolling by and people knocking at the door and missives arriving and departing so quickly that I can’t think or imagine what I need to. The canvas just sits before me and mocks.”
“Perhaps you will take advantage of our location while you are here and paint some?” Gerard asked. “I have seen none of your work, and I think it is a loss.”
“I do not believe you will consider it such a loss when you’ve had a chance to see what you’re missing,” Nora said with a smile. She had a way of effortless self-degradation that Gerard found amusing. He had always detested false modesty in other people, but he couldn’t say that was Nora’s particular affliction because when she made a joke at her own expense she always seemed to leave it at that, as though she didn’t really mind that her art wasn’t as grand as the art she admired. She just knew its quality and accepted it regardless.
“It is majestic,” she said after a pause.
“Your painting?”
“No!” she laughed. “I was thinking again of Holcombe, and I think that as grand as it is, the majesty of it stirs me to wonder. I think it fits your mother very well, unless you consider such a statement to be impertinent. But she always reminds me of a queen somehow.”
Gerard smiled and didn’t respond. They rode on quietly through the lane until Diana came back around the corner, urging her horse in their direction to accompany them the last little bit to the stable. It wasn’t until they were unsaddled and walking together back to the house that Gerard realised with a start that the weight that had settled on his chest that morning had mysteriously lifted, and he felt able to face the world of responsibility again.
Chapter 22
“William!” Nora fairly tumbled down the stairs at the sight of her brother stepping into the main entryway to Holcombe with his hat in his hand and a smile on his face. She skipped down the last few steps and came to a stop in front of him with a little curtsy. “I’m delighted to see you. I know you promised to visit, but only a week has passed since I left London and I hardly imagined you would be here so soon.”
William smiled. “I visit Gerard often, you know – do not think that my prompt arrival has anything at all to do with my favourite little sister.”
Nora smiled, delighted. “Well, I’m glad you’ve come. Diana – I mean, Lady Diana – and I were outside all morning working on painting and such, and I’d just gone upstairs to tend to fetch a bit of yellow ochre powder. You should come outside to the garden where we’re sitting.”
In the short time she’d been at Holcombe, Nora found herself beginning to find the parts of the great, sad estate that she actually enjoyed. Though Lady Colbourne had taken pains to point out the excellent moulding, the expensive marble, and the elegant busts lining the entryway, Nora had instead found solace in the gardens behind the house, and the orchard that arched beautifully over a path to the lake beyond.
She had also found herself settling in more comfortably with Gerard, who seemed to be willing to set aside his worries about the estate when he was in her presence. They’d rambled about the property with Diana almost every day now, and she saw a certain quickness of wit and delight in beauty in him that she hadn’t known before.
“I had guessed that you were painting,” William said with a quick laugh. He reached forward and smudged something from her cheek. “You have blue on the tips of your hair, and a bit on your nose as well.”
Nora reached up with a smile to scrub the spot with the edge of her pinafore, and as she did so she heard Gerard’s heavy step in the hall and he appeared around the corner with a broad smile of greeting for her brother. “William! What a delight to see you today. I was just going out on a walk and about to ask Nora and Diana to accompany me.”
“Oh, Diana will not be able to,” Nora said with a smile. “She and your mother are doing needlepoint in the garden beside me, and your mother insists that afterwards she turns in for a bit of music practice.”
“Then it will be just the three of us.” Gerard waved to the footman standing nearby. “Please, bring Mr Pembroke’s bags inside and set them up in the guest room near mine. Do you need to change or refresh yourself
after your travels, William?”
A Baron Worth Loving: A Historical Regency Romance Book Page 13