Four
“There you are!”
Bellefonte advanced into the library, his tone suggesting Tremaine had been hiding for days, rather than drafting correspondence in plain sight for the past hour.
“I’m writing to your brother Beckman,” Tremaine said. Beckman the Rapturously Married. “He’ll expect a full accounting of my sojourn among his siblings. Have you anything you’d like to include with my epistle?”
Bellefonte again took a position with his back to the roaring hearth. The earl was an informal sort. Tremaine’s grandfather had often assumed that very posture before more rustic hearths.
“I like the smell of a wood fire,” Bellefonte said. “Though I’d be better off selling the wood, I’m sure. You may warn Beckman I’m sending Lady Nita to him in the spring, so he’d best ensure all in his ambit are in excellent health. From there, she can visit our brother Ethan, and I’ve any number of friends who’d be delighted to host her over the summer. My grandmother, Lady Warne, loves showing my sisters off at house parties.”
Tremaine sprinkled sand over the page, for he and the Earl of Bellefonte had a few matters to clear up of a more pressing nature than social correspondence.
“Are you scolding me, Bellefonte, for accompanying your sister on an outing that you, a team of elephants, and a host of archangels could not have dissuaded her from?”
Women rallied around babies, and Tremaine had no quarrel with that. None at all. Women were supposed to be protective of the little ones, and most women were.
“You are a guest in my home, a friend to my younger brother—who has few enough friends—and you mean well,” Bellefonte said. His tone implied a list of transgressions recited at the local magistrate’s parlor session. “I’m not scolding you.”
Bellefonte made a quarter turn so he faced Tremaine without giving up proximity to the fire’s heat.
“Relieved to hear it,” Tremaine replied. “Shall we discuss your sheep, then? I might be a guest, though I’m a guest who would not be under your roof but for a desire to purchase those sheep.”
Lest any thoroughly domesticated earls develop aspirations in other directions.
Bellefonte rubbed a hand over the hip closest to the fire. “Right, my sheep. We’ll get to those. Why aren’t you married, St. Michael? Beckman said you proposed to Miss Polonaise Hunt earlier this winter.”
The list of reasons to thrash Beckman Haddonfield was growing by the hour.
“Miss Hunt turned me down,” Tremaine said. Polly was now the Marchioness of Hesketh—also head over ears in love with her grouchy, taciturn, tenderhearted marquess. “A near miss, from my perspective.”
And from the lady’s, no doubt. Tremaine hadn’t dared solicit Lord Hesketh’s opinion, lest the marquess’s sentiments be conveyed at thirty paces.
“You’re amenable to marriage in the general case?” Bellefonte asked.
“We were discussing your merino sheep, Bellefonte. The herd appears in good condition, but if you continue inbreeding, you’ll soon have a greater incidence of ill health, smaller specimens, and stillbirths.”
Bellefonte rested an elbow on the mantel, which he could do easily because of his excessive height.
“So you’ll use my sheep for outcrosses, then? Improve the wool in the local strains, improve the health of the merino offspring?”
“That would make sense.” As would selling some of the pure individuals in France, the United States, or other countries. Sheep were hardy enough to tolerate sea voyages well, under decent conditions.
“And yet you do not commit to that course,” Bellefonte mused. “Others are interested in these sheep, though I’ve only recently become aware of that.”
Tremaine remained seated at the desk and busied himself pouring the sand off his letter, capping the ink, and tossing the parings from the quill pen into the dustbin. Bellefonte was a good negotiator, but if he was as cash poor as most of the aristocracy, he was in a bad bargaining position.
“Others might be interested in your sheep, my lord, but others are not here. Others probably lack the coin I can bring to bear on the situation, and others won’t maximize the value of those sheep as I can.”
“Others will marry my sisters.”
Or maybe Bellefonte was a brilliant negotiator.
“Bellefonte, allow me to instruct you about sheep,” Tremaine said, “for I blush to inform you I am an expert on the species. Sheep move about on four legs. They grow wool, they bleat. They tend to dwell in herds, and according to some, the breeding rams have an objectionable aroma.
“Sisters, by contrast, typically move about on two legs,” Tremaine continued, approaching the hearth. “They may laugh, speak, or whine. They ordinarily do not bleat. They take great pride in their hair—which has little resemblance to wool—tend to pleasant scents, and go exactly where they please, when they please. They do not dwell in placid herds, chewing their cud until the shepherd directs them to another pasture. I am interested in the sheep, and only the sheep.”
“You want the sheep; I want my sisters happily and safely married. Beckman has spoken highly of you.”
For which Tremaine really must pummel dear Beckman when next they met. Perhaps Hesketh was due a few blows as well, for the aristocracy kept close tabs on each other, and the marquess might have had a hand in any scheme that saw Tremaine marched up the church aisle.
“The issue is not what you want, Bellefonte,” Tremaine said, “but rather what your womenfolk want. I have not detected matrimonial interest from them.” Interest, yes, the same interest with which the ewes looked over a new collie or watched a horseman canter by, but not matrimonial interest. Nobody was in marital rut in this household, excepting perhaps Bellefonte himself.
“Edward Nash is heir to a baronet,” Bellefonte said. “His papa and mine rode to hounds together, and our pews are situated across the aisle from each other. He owns a tidy holding not two miles distant—Stonebridge—and he quotes poetry to Susannah.”
Tremaine had ridden by that tidy holding and recalled the property because the sign naming it was anything but discreet.
“Nash offers to relieve you of a sister, while I offer you only money. What a credit to your priorities, Bellefonte.”
Bellefonte’s reputation was one of unfailing good cheer, though his blue eyes had abruptly turned colder than the skies over Kent.
“Nash offers to make my sister happy. Susannah is retiring in the extreme. She didn’t take, and she loves her books. I love—”
Pity for the earl required that Tremaine make a study of the library’s red, blue, and cream carpets, which were wool, probably Scottish wool. The sheep suited to northern climes grew a coarse, durable product that could withstand years of trampling.
“You love your sisters, my lord, and the prospect of seeing Lady Susannah across the church aisle every Sunday is less daunting than the notion that she might catch the eye of some Italian count.”
Or, heaven defend the lady, a Scottish wool nabob?
“Nash’s sister dwells with him too,” Bellefonte said, turning another quarter, so he faced the fire. “Susannah wouldn’t be the sole female in his household. She’d have children in due course, and what woman doesn’t want children?”
Addy Chalmers, for one.
Tremaine’s own mother, possibly, though in Bellefonte’s world, women sought husbands as a necessary predicate to having children.
“Bellefonte, you must do as you see fit with your sheep. I am prepared to buy the entire herd, but only the entire herd. Their value decreases significantly if you send one-third down the lane as Lady Susannah’s bridal attendants and another third to sale in London. The remaining third will be in far less demand for breeding purposes if you disperse your herd, and I’ll have fewer specimens with which to improve my own stock, which is vast.”
Bellefonte wandered to the desk, where he lifted the lid off a blue ceramic bowl and brought the dish to Tremaine.
“Have a ginger biscuit,” the
earl said. “Haggling on an empty stomach isn’t well advised.”
Tremaine took one. Bellefonte helped himself to three, put the dish back on the desk, and moved to the shelves lining the inside wall of the library.
“My countess likes you,” the earl said, “my brothers like you. I think Nita might like you too.”
Ah, so all that dodging about the sheep, and poor, shy Lady Susannah had been so much diversion. Tremaine took a nibble of a spicy biscuit lest he admit that he liked Lady Nita.
Respected her too.
“Lady Nita was simply looking in on a woman recently brought to bed with child,” Tremaine said. “I wanted to see some of your property and accomplished that aim.”
Bellefonte left off perusing a small volume bound in red leather, and considered one of his two remaining biscuits.
“You were spying on my acres?”
“Gathering information about a possible business associate. Have you broached the matter of Lady Nita’s upcoming travel with the woman herself?”
Not that Tremaine would raise the topic with her or mention it to Beckman. He hoped to be gone before Bellefonte undertook that folly.
“Nita will never forgive me if I send her away,” the earl said, “but spring can bring influenza and worse, and she has no care for what contagion could do to this household.”
Thank the celestial powers, Bellefonte at least understood the need to curb his sister’s more dangerous charitable impulses.
“You do not mention the risk that Lady Nita herself might fall ill,” Tremaine said.
English physicians interviewed patients. They did not touch them in the usual course and often didn’t even visit the sickroom. If contagion was a significant issue, then a family member might relay symptoms to the doctor, who’d prescribe nostrums from the safety of his cozy study.
Lady Nita apparently observed no such precautions.
Bellefonte snapped his book closed. “There’s no point mentioning the risk of contagion to Lady Nita, such is my sister’s disdain for common sense. Nita’s healthy as a tinker’s donkey, and nothing I say, promise, threaten, or shout makes any difference to her.”
An image sprang up in Tremaine’s mind of Lady Nita crouching by the shivering lamb, ready to do battle for its life if Tremaine had intended the little beast harm.
“Have you tried asking the lady to comply with your wishes, my lord?” For sooner or later, she’d fall ill, if not die, as a consequence of her kindheartedness.
Bellefonte consumed his third biscuit thoughtfully. “I haven’t tried asking. I should, though Nita can drive me to shouting more quickly than the rest of my siblings put together.”
Well, of course. Demure, sensible Lady Nita left her brother no choice but to rant and carry on like a squalling infant.
“With your sisters, as with your sheep, I’m sure you’ll do as you see fit, my lord. I’m off at week’s end to arrange travel to Germany if we can’t come to terms on your herd of merinos.”
“Talk to George, then, if you’re bound for the Continent. He’s recently returned and has good recall for which inns are clean, which of the packet captains sober. Beckman was our vagabond, but George might take up the post.”
Beckman had traveled to escape bad memories, while George Haddonfield appeared the soul of sunny charm. Interesting.
“If we cannot come to terms, I will certainly confer with George. And, Bellefonte?”
The earl dusted biscuit crumbs from his hands.
“Lady Susannah might be happy with this poetical baronet-in-waiting,” Tremaine said, “but I suggest you make a thorough study of the man’s finances before you send her into his arms. Near his manor house, all is in good repair. The surrounding tenant farms, however, have sagging fences, tumbling stone walls, weedy cornfields, and overgrown hedges. Those sheep wouldn’t be on Nash’s property for a day before they’d be loose about the shire, wreaking havoc in your neighbors’ gardens, and comporting themselves like strumpets with the local flocks.”
Tremaine ate the last bite of his ginger biscuit, retrieved his letter, and left Nicholas, Lord of Many Sisters, contemplating the remaining supply of biscuits.
* * *
Nita sought the warmth of the kitchen, for worse than being bone tired was being bone tired and hungry—which Addy Chalmers likely had been for years.
As Nita fetched the butter from the window box and unwrapped a loaf of bread, she recalled Addy mentioning Mary’s father’s family. Perhaps the unwritten etiquette of vice prohibited such a topic, for Addy had never before referred in Nita’s hearing to the fathers of her children.
If she even knew who they were.
Nita poured cider into a pot and swung it over the coals of the cooking fire. Cinnamon would have made a nice addition, also an expensive one.
“Lady Nita, I’m surprised to find you awake at such a late hour.”
Tremaine St. Michael leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb, his cravat missing, his shirtsleeves turned back, and his shirt open at the throat. Nita liked the look of him, his bustling energy and fine tailoring made more approachable by a touch of weariness and informality.
“Mr. St. Michael, good evening. Have you wandered below stairs in search of a posset?”
How long had he been lounging there, watching Nita putter around in her dressing gown and slippers like a scullery maid?
“I’m peckish,” he said, prowling into the room. Hungry men walked differently from the well-fed variety, as if they switched imaginary tails and twitched imaginary whiskers. “Too much time in the elements, trotting about the frozen lanes and swinging an ax.” He peered into Nita’s pot of cider. “What have you there?”
“Cider. You’re welcome to join me.” She made that offer partly out of hospitality and partly out of wistfulness. Mr. St. Michael would be leaving soon, and his company was oddly agreeable.
“You’re content with bread and butter?” he asked. “Your brother has a fondness for ginger biscuits.”
“Nicholas does. George can’t abide them. What are you looking for?” Mr. St. Michael was peering into cupboards much as Nita’s brothers did, holding up the table lamp to illuminate his plundering.
“I’m looking for spices. Cider wants—there it is.” He set the lamp down and brought a small jar to the hearth, sprinkling something into the cider. The scent of cinnamon rose as he returned the jar to the cupboard. “I suspect if I looked long enough, I could find the ginger biscuits too.”
Ginger biscuits dipped in mulled cider turned a late-night snack into something altogether more delectable.
“Biscuits are in that crock near the window.”
Mr. St. Michael brought the entire crock to the raised hearth and pulled up a low stool before the fire.
“Does Lady Susannah truly fancy that literary squire?” he asked.
Nita swung the steaming cider off the coals. “I hope not.” She prayed not. “Why do you ask?”
“The earl would have me believe that yonder squire will pluck up his courage to make an offer for Lady Susannah if her dowry includes a lot of valuable sheep. If this is so, the squire is stupid and your brother not much brighter.”
Nita liked that Mr. St. Michael was blunt, for that allowed her to be blunt too.
“The squire is arrogant, Mr. St. Michael, and Nicholas has too much on his mind. Why do you insult them?”
Nita poured cider into mugs, set those on the hearth, then fetched the bread and butter and a cold, red apple. A feast, by the lights of many.
By her lights too. She settled in on the hearth, where heat lingered in the stones from the day’s cooking.
“Sheep are generally regarded as simple animals,” Mr. St. Michael said, “easily panicked, without much sense. They are deemed thus by the man who curses them when they find the single weakness in any fence or wall, when they do as they jolly well please despite the collie barking and racing about, or when they’re solving a problem—such as a lack of fodder—their owner has ignored.”
He took a sip of cider while the scents of cinnamon and apples filled the kitchen. The hearth was warm, the cider delicious, and Mr. St. Michael’s odd accent—at once rough and plush—absolutely appropriate for his chosen topic.
“The squire’s fences are a disgrace,” he went on. “I doubt he has a decent sheep dog, and his fields are all in want of marling, from what I could see. He cannot possibly provide adequate care for one of the most valuable herds in England. These biscuits are excellent.”
Nita dipped a ginger biscuit in cider and took a bite. Spicy, sweet, warm, and as comforting as the company of a man who didn’t mince words and who did care about his sheep.
“Quite lovely,” Nita murmured.
“You could sort out the squire in short order, Nita Haddonfield, and yet you disdain marriage. I wonder why.”
Nita liked this about Mr. St. Michael too. Liked that his mind was restless and curious, that he tackled real questions and left platitudes about the weather to the less stalwart.
“You’ve apparently disdained marriage yourself,” she said.
He cradled his mug in both hands, as if warmth—any warmth—must not be squandered.
“I’m skeptical of the institution’s virtues,” he said, “and well aware of its limitations. My parents’ union was not cordial, particularly for my mother, and yet she didn’t even try to extricate herself when she had the opportunity. Your brother seems happy with his countess.”
A tactful, if enormous, understatement.
“Nicholas and Leah are besotted. For them, marriage makes sense. I’ve already been the lady of the manor and did not have to submit to a husband’s dominion to obtain that status. My mother died, my brothers went off on various quests, and my father grew to rely on me. The staff answered to me, the tenants looked to me for guidance, and I developed a taste for independence.”
Rather like Nita was developing a taste for ginger biscuits and cider.
Tremaine's True Love Page 7
