by Kelly Bowen
“I appreciate it.” The twitch to her lips threatened to expand into a smile. “Please feel free to offer insult to my delicate sensibilities again. But do it soon. I need a drainage ditch dug in the next few days.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Excellent.” She paused. “Is there something else you needed Mr. Blackmore?”
“Yes. Your help. A full day of your time.” He would need to visit the sawmill and quarry and he wanted her with him.
Miss Murray gazed at him, the green-grey depths appraising him. “A full day?”
“Yes. My foreman has arrived from London and we will need to visit both the quarry and the sawmill to see about getting the materials required. As you pointed out, your recommendations and introductions will make this process so much quicker. I’d like to begin work on Greybourne as soon as possible.”
“A full day of my time is valuable.”
“I recognize that.”
“I’ll need funds for a second seed drill.”
“Done.”
“And a horse to pull it.”
“Fine.”
Miss Murray opened her mouth to speak.
“Don’t push your luck,” he said, though he found himself smiling as he said it.
She grinned back at him and an instant rush of desire twisted through him. If she were to ask for the crown jewels at this moment, he would find a way to give them to her.
Mrs. Thorpe was looking between them, wide-eyed. She cleared her throat loudly and pushed the ribbon-wrapped bundle into Henry’s hands. “Since the two of you are so amenable, maybe you can convince her to put this on.”
Henry fumbled with the box before righting it. It was heavier than he expected. “What is this?”
“A gown.” Mrs. Thorpe gave Miss Murray a pointed look.
“That I am not accepting,” she said vehemently.
“That you will accept if only because it could be sold after you wear it,” Mrs. Thorpe corrected.
“I—” Miss Murray hesitated before dropping her eyes and mumbling something that sounded an awful lot like bloody hell.
“A gown for what?” Henry asked. “And from whom?”
Miss Murray’s lip curled but she didn’t answer.
“From Mr. Newton,” Mrs. Thorpe told him. “Delivered to the manor today for Miss Murray to wear to the soiree that he hosts at the end of every planting season for all his neighbours.”
“Neighbours who own the land, not work it,” Miss Murray muttered under her breath, barely loud enough for Henry to hear.
Mrs. Thorpe glanced at the sun slanting through the tall windows. “You’re going to be late.”
Miss Murray made a rude noise. “Then I’ll go as I am.”
“Why must you go at all?” Henry turned the box over in his hands, the idea of another man giving Miss Murray a gift as personal as a new gown not sitting well with him at all.
“It was part of my agreement with him.”
Henry stared at her blankly.
“In exchange for the use of his plough after ours broke,” she elaborated wearily.
“Not exactly a hardship,” Mrs. Thorpe sniffed. “Most women would jump at the chance to put on a pretty dress and eat expensive food and drink fancy drinks. Especially with a man as handsome and as wealthy as Mr. Newton.”
Miss Murray made a face. “I am not most women.”
“He’s enamoured with you,” the housekeeper opined.
“He’s enamoured with the idea of making me something I’m not.”
Mrs. Thorpe huffed her exasperation. “At the very least, stop dragging your feet and get on with you. Or the next time you need something from Mr. Newton—”
Maeve snatched the box out of Henry’s hands. “Fine.”
“Good.” Mrs. Thorpe sniffed again and bustled away.
“I’ll go with you,” Henry said impulsively.
Miss Murray nearly dropped the box. “What?”
“I’ll go with you to this soiree. It would be my pleasure to escort you.” The more he thought about it, the more he loathed the idea of Maeve Murray departing alone to be lavished with the attentions of another man for an entire evening.
Miss Murray seemed to collect herself. “I appreciate your offer, Mr. Blackmore, but that is not necessary. You need not waste your time—”
“I am a neighbour, am I not? What’s more, I am the son of a duke, which has no relevance here save for the fact that despite my best efforts as a youth, I am very good at soirees.” He tried to make it light. Not desperate.
“Mr. Blackmore—”
“Henry.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Call me Henry. If we’re to be working together for the foreseeable future, please just call me Henry.”
“Umm.”
“I’ve made you uncomfortable.”
Her lips twitched. “No more so than a man I have no interest in buying me a dress I do not want.”
“I can promise not to buy you any dresses in the future.”
“How about buying me an ox?”
“We can talk about that on the way to the soiree.”
She laughed and it was the most beautiful thing Henry had ever heard. “Very well, Henry,” she said. “That is an offer I can’t refuse.”
His name on her lips caught him like a blow to the chest. It was suddenly difficult to draw in a full breath.
“You have something to wear?”
It took several heartbeats for him to understand her question. “Yes.” He managed to get his tongue working in a mouth that had gone desert-dry.
She studied him. “If I am to use your given name, then I insist you use mine. It seems only fair.”
Henry could only nod, the intimacy of this agreement something that he hadn’t fully thought out when he had made his impulsive request. It suggested a relationship that went far beyond a mere partnership of circumstance and convenience.
Maeve hefted the box. “Mrs. Thorpe will put my head on a pike if I get mud on this,” she said. “Will you wait while I have a quick bath before we go?”
I’ll wait forever. That melodramatic response better suited to a London stage than an Essex hall was on the tip of his tongue. Good Lord but someone was going to accuse him of being besotted next. For a moment, he felt a twinge of sympathy for Gerald Newton.
“Of course. I’ll wait.”
Chapter Nine
Henry had his gelding and one of Greybourne’s horses saddled and waiting in the stable yard when Maeve emerged from the battered door that led through to the kitchens. Whatever composure he thought he might have collected scattered again. He’d thought Maeve beautiful in her rough field clothes but as she was, picking her way across the yard, she was positively incandescent. The rich moss colour of the silk made her eyes impossibly green. Her dark hair, still damp from her bath, had been pulled up on the crown of her head, ebony curls escaping to frame her face. The gown cinched just below her breasts with a silver ribbon, the scooped bodice edging a décolletage of creamy skin.
Jealous possessiveness reared its ugly head and it was everything he could do not to scoop her up in his arms and carry her back into the house. Henry fully recognized the idiocy of that because Maeve Murray did not belong to him or Gerald Newton or any other man. Maeve belonged to no one but herself. Which made her all that more seductive.
“You’re breathtaking,” he said, stepping away from the horses to meet her.
Maeve blushed furiously.
Henry took a fierce satisfaction from that. “I’m sorry. I’ve made you uncomfortable again.”
She grimaced slightly and twisted in the restrictive silk, struggling to smooth the shoulder of her gown. “I’m fairly sure the dress is doing that all by itself.”
“Here. Let me.” The embroidered edge of the bodice had turned under and without considering what he was doing, Henry slipped his fingers under the seam against her skin, just below her collarbone.
Beneath his touch, Maeve froz
e, though he could feel the rapid beat of her pulse against the back of his fingers. Arousal gripped him and heated his blood instantly. Visions of him lifting his fingers and gently peeling that silk away from her body slipped into his mind. Maeve still hadn’t moved, only her parted lips and the rapid rise and fall of her chest betraying that she was feeling whatever this was too. Henry was on a very slippery slope here and he knew it.
With deliberate movements, he ran his fingers under the edge of her bodice, untwisting the seam and gently smoothing it over her shoulder. It was an epic force of willpower to withdraw his hand and not explore the slope of her breasts and the smooth column of her neck. To not let his lips travel over her heated skin to the edge of her jaw and then—
“We should go,” she rasped.
“Yes,” he agreed. Before he did something that he regretted.
“I…I um… I’m going to need a hand up,” she said, gesturing helplessly at her skirts.
“Of course.” Henry gritted his teeth. Good God. He was going to have to put his hands on her all over again. He reminded himself that he was a gentleman. A gentleman with restraint and some self-respect. Yet no woman had ever managed to turn him inside out the way Maeve did. And she did it without even looking at him.
He was in trouble.
“Why haven’t you ever come back to Greybourne before now, Henry?”
They had been riding in silence since they had left the manor, Henry trying vainly to think of a suitable topic of conversation that would smooth over whatever had happened in that yard. He had failed, only able to replay the feel of her skin beneath his fingers, the warmth of her body beneath his hands as he had helped her mount.
“I’m sorry,” she said at his silence. “You don’t have to answer th—”
“I was avoiding Greybourne,” he said. “Just like I was avoiding the chapel the other morning.” This topic wasn’t what he had in mind but it served its purpose. And he owed her the truth.
“Because of what happened to your brother.”
“Yes.” He stared straight ahead, the old, familiar guilt slithering into his gut. “It sounds stupid, I know.”
“It does not sound stupid. It sounds human.”
Henry toyed with a loose thread on the bottom of his coat, wondering at the ease in which truth seemed to slip out of him in this woman’s presence.
“Charlie loved that little chapel,” he told her. “It predates the manor by two centuries and he was infatuated with the idea that great knights might have sought comfort or refuge within its walls. He liked to imagine their caparisoned destriers riding up to the tiny building, pages and squires in brilliant livery following, and ladies with long flowing hair beneath their crowns.” He smiled sadly. “He wanted me to restore it the way it would have looked in the thirteenth century. I made all sorts of plans and drawings to do just that. But I never did it.” He hadn’t thought about those drawings in a long time.
“Tell me something else about Charlie.”
Henry’s fingers tightened on the reins and his gelding tossed its head in annoyance. He forced his hand to relax. “Why?”
“Because I want to know what he was like.”
“Why?”
Her forehead creased faintly. “Because he was your brother.”
Henry had never talked about Charlie since his death. Not to his colleagues, not to his friends, and certainly not to his family. He had no idea why he should do so here.
“He was very good at catching frogs,” he heard himself say.
“Frogs?”
“He was obsessed with them. He’d spend hours catching them in the ponds at home and then hours drawing and painting them. His governess despaired and confiscated all his paints and paper. Illustration of amphibians was not a worthy endeavor for the son of a duke, though Charlie somehow had someone who kept slipping him paper and drawing tools.”
“You.”
“Of course.” He smiled at the memory. “At the end of the day he’d let all the frogs go back into the pond. He probably caught the same frog fifty times.”
Beside him, Maeve smiled. “He was kind to creatures. That says a lot about a person.”
“He was kind to everyone. He had a good heart and he touched the heart of everyone around him simply by being himself.”
“You miss him.”
The guilt in his gut pushed up into his throat. “After he died, my family never spoke of him again. It was like he never existed. He lays in a cold grave in London and as far as I can tell, I am the only one who ever visits.”
Maeve reined her horse to a stop. “Grief is hard,” she said. “For everyone. And each person deals with loss differently.”
Henry’s gelding stopped next to hers. “That doesn’t justify forgetting him altogether.”
“I want to show you something.” She turned her horse off the road and up the grassy hill.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
“We’ll be late to your soiree.”
“I don’t care.”
Henry followed Maeve as she crested the ridge and guided her horse through a stand of oaks. The trees were massive, an old growth forest that had escaped the woodman’s axe, their canopy spread like a leafy green roof over their heads. She wound through the trunks until she came to a small clearing filled with wood anemone, their tiny white faces turned up to the sun that spilled through the break in the covering above.
Henry stared, his horse ambling to a stop. In the center of the trees, sat a carved wooden angel, mounted on a heavy base. The figure was sitting, her wings spread out behind her, her gaze directed upward to the patch of cerulean sky. Her robes swirled around her body, pooling at her feet. The figure was beautifully rendered, the exquisite craftsmanship capturing an expression of peace and hope.
So taken was Henry with the angel, it took him a second to realize that they weren’t alone. Alfred Baxter was in the clearing just beyond the carving, a small posy of yellow flowers in his hand. He bent and laid them at the base of the figure before straightening.
Maeve had slid from her horse and Henry followed suit.
“Wait here,” she said, and without waiting for his response, took the reins from his hand and led the two animals off to the side to secure them.
“Good evening, Mr. Blackmore.” Alfred Baxter was approaching Henry, clutching a cap in one of his hands.
“Good evening,” Henry replied, studying the farmer.
The thinning white strands of Baxter’s hair stood up on end and deep lines were carved into his face. He looked exhausted.
“I hope we weren’t disturbing you.”
“No, no. I was just on my way home.” Baxter’s face suddenly creased into a wide smile. “Passed Isaac Dunlop on the way back from Chelmsford,” he said. “And he had a fine-looking plough blade in the back of the wagon. Many thanks to you for that, Mr. Blackmore.”
“Of course.” Henry found himself shifting uncomfortably at the man’s clear gratitude. Gratitude that Henry wasn’t sure that he deserved given that a new plough blade was a mere drop in the bucket amid a sea of needs.
“Why do you stay here?” Henry asked without thinking. “At Greybourne?”
Alfred dusted his cap off on his thigh. “Raised my boys on this land. Lot of good memories here. Can’t leave those behind.”
“Where are they now?” Henry asked. “Your sons?”
Baxter’s hands fell to his sides and he looked down. “Both killed during the wars.”
Henry closed his eyes briefly. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” Baxter lifted his head, his tired eyes sliding past Henry to where Maeve had led the horses. “But Miss Maeve has been like a daughter. Filled a hole in our hearts we didn’t think we would survive.” He patted Henry on his sleeve. “I’m glad you’re here, Mr. Blackmore. Miss Maeve works so hard on our behalf, not asking for anything for herself. If I can be so bold, I implore you to heed her advice. With your help, Greybourne could flourish.�
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The disquiet Henry had felt earlier intensified. Miss Murray had clearly not informed the tenants of Greybourne what he was really doing here.
“Mr. Baxter,” Maeve appeared beside him, a little breathless. “Are you leaving already?”
“Aye.” Baxter smiled fondly at Maeve. “You are a vision, my dear.”
Maeve glanced down at her dress. “Thank you. Mr. Newton has invited us to a soiree.”
“Ah. Then have a lovely time.” He settled his cap back over his hair. “Time to rest these weary bones.”
Henry watched as the man disappeared through the trees.
“You didn’t tell him why I’m here,” he said to Maeve. “He still thinks I’m here to fix the estate.”
“You did buy us a new plough blade. And most recently, a new seed drill and horse. And I haven’t forgotten about that ox.”
“You shouldn’t mislead him, Miss Murray—”
“You’re right. I’ll tell him. Soon.” She touched his sleeve. “But I didn’t bring you here to talk about money and equipment. I wanted to show you this place.”
Henry sighed but returned his attention to the enchanting angel that sat in the center of the clearing. “This is incredible work,” he said. “It belongs in a cathedral.”
“Thank you.”
Henry gaped at her. “You did this?”
“Yes.” Maeve smoothed a hand down her skirts. “A long time ago.”
“You never told me that you were an artist.”
“It’s just a hobby. Was just a hobby,” she corrected herself. “I don’t do much carving anymore. No time.” She glanced at him and reached for his hand like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Come with me.”
“What is this place really?” he asked, letting her tug him toward the angel.
“A place to come to think,” she said. “Or to remember.”
“For you?”
“Sometimes.” She hesitated before she spoke. “There is many a day that I go to the churchyard in the village. I can sit in front of my father’s grave and talk to him. Tell him things. Funny things. Hard things. It sounds stupid, I know—”
