“He’s scarpered.” The other fellow grinned. “My sister’s husband’s brother works for old Holderman, and the nepphie’s dog lazy, by him.”
The earl’s temper threatened to seize the day, and he shifted his gaze to the blue heavens. “It appears I am without a steward, without a mechanic, and without the means to replace either.”
“You are not without resources,” Miss Farnum said, collecting empty mugs. “Perhaps you’d walk me back to the kitchens while the gentlemen enjoy a few minutes in the shade, my lord?”
He had the presence of mind not to explode when his laborers were within earshot, but once they’d rounded the corner of the house, he stopped and glared at Miss Farnum.
“Are you humoring me, madam?”
“Good heavens.” She tossed a glance up at him. “Why would I bother to do that?”
“Because,” he ground out, forced to move his feet because she was moving hers, “I am almost angry enough to fire the lot of them, pack up my horses, and ride back down to London.”
“If you think that’s what you should do, no one can stop you. I can, however, offer you something to eat before you go.”
“What?” He blinked, feeling like a bear who’d just realized he was charging in the wrong direction. “Food?”
“If you wouldn’t mind?” Miss Farnum, carrying the tray, gestured with her chin toward the kitchen door. She stepped back so he could hold it for her before following her into the cool interior of the big kitchen.
“Hello, Rosecroft.” Winnie, wearing a heavily floured pinafore, beamed at him from where she stood on a chair at the big wooden worktable. “I’m rolling the pie dough.”
“And doing an excellent job,” Miss Farnum piped up before turning her gaze on the earl. “Sit you down, milord, and we’ll plot your campaign.”
“You
are
humoring me.” But his disgust was laced with reluctant humor.
“I am feeding you,” she corrected him, setting a plate down before him with two fat pastries on it and more cookies. “Eat, and all will look better. Cider or lemonade?”
“Either.” He bit into a pastry only to find it was filled with ham, eggs, a little bacon, and some seasonings that made it a considerable improvement over its previous incarnation—and worlds beyond a mean old scone.
“Better?” Miss Farnum asked, plunking down a tankard of lemonade before him.
“Much,” he said around a mouthful of culinary heaven. “The pastries, that is. They are much improved.”
“You will be, too.” She flashed him a grin. “Not so much flour, wee Winnie, and don’t forget a dash of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and allspice.”
“You are making apple tarts?” The earl’s nose fairly twitched with anticipation.
“We are,” Winnie said, “but you get dessert only if you eat your vegetables.”
“I will eat my vegetables. I’d also best be on my way back to the ongoing debacle that is my fountain.”
“Why not send Stevens off to collect Timmens from his fishing instead, as it appears you won’t need Stevens in the stables for the present?” Miss Farnum suggested from where she was watching Winnie roll out dough. “And as for Holderman’s disappearance, good riddance, I’d say. My guess is you could call upon Lord Amery to serve at least temporarily and see a great deal more accomplished.”
“I cannot impose on a guest, Miss Farnum.”
“Why can’t you?” The voice was masculine and slightly amused. Douglas sauntered in, hands in his pockets, cuffs turned back. “I was prepared to ride out with you this morning but found you were not at the stables and not expected to ride before luncheon.”
“Caesar’s lame, and I cannot impose on you to serve as my land steward in Holderman’s absence.”
“Is the man ill?” Douglas reached for a cinnamon cookie, closed his eyes, and sniffed at it before taking a bite. “Wonderful.” He gestured with the remaining cookie. “My compliments.”
“I’m making the pie dough.” Winnie waved her rolling pin for emphasis.
“Miss Winnie, good morning.” Douglas bent down and planted a loud smacker on her cheek. “You are going to abandon me for the charms of pie dough?”
“Only for today.”
“I am desolated, but I can be revived by ample doses of cinnamon cookie. St. Just, how can I be of service?”
The earl blew out a breath and scrubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “The steward has departed for the comforts of his uncle’s estate, and I have two crews, one of which is idling by the cistern; the other is supposedly mending wall, but I can’t be sure of that, and the roofing fellows are supposed to be on grounds this morning, as well. Then, too, you reminded me I’ve yet to inspect my own home farm, and while I’ve ridden some of the paths in the wood, I can’t say I’ve taken note of the deadfall… for starters.”
Douglas looked like he was concentrating on something in the distance for a mere instant, then nodded his head.
“I can toddle by the stonemasons,” he suggested, “then saddle up Regis and nip past the home farm, perhaps take a peek at the wood on the way. But what about the haying?”
“Damned haying.” The earl closed his eyes in exasperation. “I don’t know what kind of storage we have on the property, and I haven’t seen a team of anything big enough to pull a hay wagon.”
Miss Farnum glanced from the earl to the viscount. “The hay barn stands empty between the home farm and pastures, and Mr. Mortimer can bring a wagon and team tomorrow if you ask him. He might be able to scare up two, in fact, and some more crew, because his wife’s people have their own small holding just up the river.”
“Mortimer’s the one with the nose?” the earl asked, snagging two more cookies.
“The one with the smile. Where shall I serve lunch, and did you expect the men to bring their own?”
“I did, or I told Holderman those were my terms. You can bring it…” He glanced up at the clock and saw the morning was half gone. “I’ll come back to the house.”
“And I can do likewise,” Douglas chimed in. “Winnie, I will pine for the sight of you until then.”
“’Bye, Lord Amery.” She waved a floured paw but didn’t look up from her dough.
“He will pine,” the earl growled at Douglas’s retreating back. “Winnie, you must learn to make a fellow work for your attention.”
“I must?” Winnie did look up and blinked at him in disarming confusion. “But I like Lord Amery.”
“I know.” The earl made one last foray at the cookies. “And you want to borrow him for your temporary papa, you little traitor. I should have you court-martialed for treason.”
“Treason?”
“High treason.” The earl nodded then dipped his head to blow a rude noise against her neck. “Until luncheon.”
Emmie watched him disappear, letting the back door bang loudly in his wake, while Winnie’s squeals of delighted indignation faded to a huge, bashful smile.
“So, Bronwyn, what shall we feed your admirers for lunch on this glorious summer day?”
“They like sweet things,” Winnie observed, frowning at her pie dough. “Especially the earl. He ate a
lot
of cookies, Miss Emmie.”
“He did, but he is a big, strong, hungry fellow, and this is his kitchen. He does like sweets, however, on that you are absolutely correct.”
He liked sweetness, and if Winnie’s conquest of him was any indication, he liked innocence, as well—two qualities Emmaline Farnum had not called her own for a good long, lonely, miserable while.
She cast her mind back to the previous day, to the sight of the earl half naked, sweating, his muscles bulging with exertion as he hefted rocks Emmie could never have budged. She ought to have been scandalized, but she’d been… fascinated. And then he’d asked her about his wall, standing so close to her she could feel the heat of him, feel his breath on her neck as he’d spoken virtually in her ear.
Indecent thoughts. A man who liked sweetness and innocence would be appalled to know how Emmie was recalling him, how she’d wanted him to turn his head just a fraction and put his mouth on her flesh. Emmie ought to be appalled herself.
She really ought to be.
The earl glanced around his dinner table and felt a soothing sense of sweetness. The day had started well, then veered temporarily toward frustration, but soon righted itself. He was in good company, had consumed a wonderful meal, and felt a pleasant sense of accomplishment.
“If you gentlemen want to linger over your port, I can absent myself,” Emmie volunteered. “The day has been very, very long, and my bed is calling me.”
“You are adequately settled in?” the earl asked, rising as she gained her feet.
“I am. So I will bid you both a good night.”
Douglas rose, as well, and wished her good night, but sat back down and nodded when the earl gestured with the decanter.
“She is such a lovely woman,” Douglas observed. “I think the child owes much to her care.”
“I don’t know how much care she was able to take of Winnie.” The earl frowned as he poured their drinks. “She is lovely. She does a better job with my apple tart recipe than I do, and I can promise you, Douglas, it won’t be just stale scones for breakfast tomorrow.”
They got out the cribbage board and whiled away another hour until they’d both won two games. As they ambled up the stairs, thunder rumbled in the distance and Douglas turned to survey his host.
“Will you be able to sleep?”
“Are you offering to read me a bedtime story, Amery?”
Douglas eyed him dispassionately. “I hired a fellow for my stables who served under you on the Peninsula. I have to warn him any time I plan to discharge a firearm, and thunderstorms unnerved him completely for the first six months of his employ. He hid in the wine cellars to get away from them. Flat reduced him to tears.”
“They don’t reduce me to tears. Let me light your candles.” He preceded Douglas into his bedroom and lit a candle on each side of the bed, only to find Douglas regarding him solemnly as he moved around the room.
“I would, you know.”
The earl paused by the door. “You would what?”
“I’d read you a bedtime story, beat you at cribbage, get you drunk. I’d do anything I could to make it better.”
“There’s nothing to do,” the earl said, shaking his head. “But thank you for the sentiment.”
“You’re wrong.”
“About?”
“There are things to do, and you are doing them. Now get to bed.” Douglas’s words were gentle. “You have more dragons to slay tomorrow, and you really must not compound your woes with avoidable exhaustion.”
“Good night, Douglas.” The earl blew him a kiss and left without a sound, but stood for a long moment in the corridor. Thunder did not reduce him to tears, but neither did it ease his slumbers. The storm was moving closer, lumbering across the hills at its own ponderous pace, but not yet upon them.
A belt of Dutch courage might see him more quickly asleep. He headed back downstairs to the library by the light of his single candle and found the brandy decanter on the sideboard. He had knocked back a tot of what really should have been sipped and was contemplating pouring another, when the library door opened slowly, and Miss Emmaline Farnum peered around the frame.
“I could not tell if there was a light in here or not,” she said. “Will I disturb you if I get a book?”
“You will not.” Of course he was lying. She eased around the door, closing it behind her, and glided in, carrying a single candle. The breeze from the windows winked it out, but not before the earl saw she was barefoot and clad only in a nightgown and wrapper.
“You are having trouble sleeping?” he asked, drawing the windows closed and offering her his candle to relight her own.
“I am. I am not used to having to be up or asleep or anything at a particular hour, as long as my baking is done.”
“You and Winnie seem to run on your own clocks,” the earl remarked, leaning a hip on his desk and watching her peering at book titles.
“I suppose we do have that in common, though I tried to always know where Winnie was, at least approximately. This summer…” She frowned at a book.
The earl shoved away from his desk. “This summer, Winnie has gotten more and more daring and more and more mobile. Douglas told me she’s made a pest of herself in the livery and frequents the back porch of a certain old gentleman who gives her peppermints and has a dog.”
“Grandpapa Hirschmann? He’s not always sober, but probably harmless, as is his dog.”
“I am imbibing as we speak.” The earl gestured with his empty snifter. “Care to join me?”
“A lady does not drink strong spirits,” she recited, taking out a book and opening it to the first page.
“A lady has the option of sleeping in as late as she pleases,” the earl rejoined, watching her. “Miss Emmaline Farnum does not.” He poured her a half finger into his glass and brought it to her, holding it up to her mouth. “Sip slowly.”
“Your hands are cold.” She frowned, wrapping her hand over his and bringing the glass to her lips. A clap of thunder close by had her pausing, listening, then sipping carefully.
“It warms the insides,” the earl said, watching her with a slight smile.
“Oh, my lands.” Emmie’s gaze lifted to his. “It most assuredly does. The scent is lovely, the feel of the glass in the hand pleasurable, and the heat wonderful, but the actual flavor is rather… different.”
“Its appeal grows, but I’d still caution you to sip slowly. Shall we sit?”
She looked torn, but then the thunder sounded again, causing the earl to hunch his shoulders in a brief involuntary bracing. After the artillery bombardments came the cavalry charges into the enemy’s waiting lines of infantry…
“I will finish my drink,” she said, taking a seat on the sofa. He pulled up a wing chair, and from the look on her face, surprised his guest by lifting his stocking feet to the coffee table.
He met her eyes with a challenging smile. “We men like to stomp around in our boots almost as much as we like to take our damned boots off at day’s end.”
“We women are of like mind.” She wiggled the bare toes of one foot at him, smiling in the dim light. “But you do not enjoy storms, I think, whereas I do.”
“I do not, but it’s getting better. Slowly.”
“Congratulate yourself on your good timing,” she said, passing her brandy under her nose. “If you’d cut hay today, this storm would have been a nuisance. Now we’ll probably have a few fair days, and your hay can be cut and stowed safely.”
“Good point.” The earl crossed his feet, wondering if this was what Amery and his wife discussed at the end of the day. “If the weather does remain fair, I would like to take Winnie with me into town soon.”
Emmie nodded but pulled her feet up under her, making herself look smaller and even a little defensive.
“Miss Farnum, nobody will treat her badly in my company.”
“They would not dare,” she agreed, but her tone was off. A little flippant or bitter.
“But?” He sipped his drink and tried not to focus on the way candlelight glinted off her hair, which was swept back into a soft, disheveled bun at her nape.
“Winnie will parade around town with you,” she said, an edge to her voice, “and have a grand time as long as you are at her side. Emboldened by your escort and her happy experiences, she will wander there again on her own, and sooner or later, somebody will treat her like the pariah she is.”
“Go on.” He was a bastard, but he hadn’t considered this.
“I wonder, when I watch you and Lord Amery cosseting and fussing over Winnie, if I don’t do her a disservice by allowing such attentions. She is desperate for your regard and affection, your time, and yet she cannot grow to depend on it. Still, her instincts are right: She is deserving of just such care, and had her father been a decent man, she would have had at least some of that from him.”
“But?” The earl watched the emotions play across the lady’s face and saw there was much she wasn’t saying.
“But she cannot grow to rely on such from others,” Emmie said, setting her drink down with a definite clink. “Sooner or later, you will return to London or take a wife, and Winnie will be sent off, to school, to a poor relation, to somewhere. Her future is not that of the legitimate daughter of an earl, and she must learn to rely on herself.”
“As you have?” He watched as she rose and started pacing the room. She crossed her arms and hunched her shoulders, her expression troubled.
“Of course as I have.” She nodded then startled as thunder rumbled even closer. “Winnie deserves the hugs and cuddles and compliments and guidance you give her, but what she deserves and what life will hand her are two different things. She needs to know not every friendly gentleman who offers her a buss on the cheek can be trusted to respect her.”
The first few drops of rain spattered the window, and the earl rose, securing the French doors and moving the candelabra to the mantel. Lightning flashed, two heartbeats went by, then thunder rumbled again.
“Miss Farnum.” He waited until she’d turned to face him at the end of the space in which she paced, then held out her drink to her. “It warms and it steadies the nerves.”
He let her approach him and didn’t speak again until she was taking a sip of her drink, almost finishing it.
“Let us discuss these points you raise, as I think you are largely in a state over nothing.” He paused as a great boom of thunder sounded, the breeze became a whistling wind, and rain began to pelt the windows in angry, slapping sheets. The candles flickered and went out, and in the dark, his companion gave a small, startled, “Yeep.”
“I’ve dropped my drink,” she said, a barely noticeable quaver in her voice. “My apologies, my lord. If you’ll just…”
“Hold still.” He hadn’t meant to be giving a command, exactly. “If you move, you might step on the glass, and it will slice your foot open.” He hoisted her easily against his chest, one arm under her knees, the other around her shoulders. “Arms around my neck,” he growled, but rather than taking her to the door, he moved across the room to sit in a large, overstuffed wing chair.
“You can put me down,” she said, and in his arms, her spine was stiff, her body rigid.
“Soon,” he replied, arranging her legs over the arm of the chair. “This will do for now.”
“It will
not
do,” she protested, but she put her arms around his neck, and St. Just would have sworn he felt her nose graze his collarbone.
As the rain pounded against the windows and the wind rattled the panes, the earl settled them in the chair. His hand moved in slow sweeps along her back, and his chin rested against her temple. He was stealing comfort from her under the guise of protecting her feet; he knew it; she likely knew it, as well.
“It occurs to me,” he said as if she weren’t ensconced in his very lap, “you labor under a misapprehension with regard to my role in Winnie’s life.” He tucked her a little more securely against him and heard her sigh.
“What is your role in Winnie’s life?” She wasn’t fighting him, but neither was she comfortable cuddled up in the chair with him. Well, she shouldn’t be, but he wasn’t about to turn her loose quite yet.
“I hold myself responsible for orphaning her,” he said. “I must be as a parent to her and provide for her in every way a parent would. I owe her this, and to be honest, it… absolves me, somehow, to do it for her.”
“You would take her from Rosecroft?” Her voice was careful, but a load of emotion was being kept in check.
“Sooner or later, children leave home, Emmaline Farnum. I did not expect to spend my life under my father’s roof. Winnie already has the beginnings of a lady’s education. You forget her Aunt Anna will be a duchess. Winnie will be handsomely dowered, she’ll make a come-out, she will have every advantage a young lady of good family deserves. It’s no less than was done for my sister Maggie, who is my father’s by-blow. The duchess insisted on it.”
“You would do this for Winnie?” Emmie asked, and in his arms, the earl felt a tremor pass through her.
“Of course.” She went silent but shuddered again. When it happened a third time, he realized the woman he was holding was near tears, and he forgot all about thunder, artillery, and infantry.
“Miss Farnum?” She burrowed into his chest. “Emmaline?” The crying was still not audible, but her body gave off heat, and when he bent his face to her, his nose grazed her damp cheek. “Hush, now.” He gathered her into his embrace and stroked her hair back from her face in a long, slow caress. “You mustn’t take on. Winnie won’t go anywhere for many years, and you will always be dear to her.”
He pattered on, no longer aware of the storm outside, so wrapped up was he with this much more personal upheaval. Her words came back to him, the words about Winnie’s deserving and not having a papa’s affections, Winnie’s not being able to trust a gentleman’s advances, Winnie’s being sent away.
Winnie, indeed.
He let her cry, and soothed and comforted as best he could, but eventually she quieted.
“I am mortified,” she whispered, her face pressed to his chest. “You will think me an unfit influence on Bronwyn.”
“I think you very brave,” he said, his nose brushing her forehead. “Very resourceful but also a little tired of being such a good girl and more than a little lonely.”