1818_Isabel

by Suzanne Enoch

  “I see.”

  What the devil could he say to ease her frown? Because it abruptly seemed very important that he do so. “Isabel, y—”

  “I do not believe in fire-breathing dragons,” she cut in sharply. “I do believe there is more in this world than what you see around you at this moment in time. I’ve never seen the wind twisting into a funnel all the way up to the sky, but I believe the people who say they’ve seen such a thing. And where would you find evidence for that?”

  “Wind storms and magic are two different things.”

  “You believe as you wish. I shall do the same.”

  “Th—”

  She lifted a hand. “No. I am finished with this discussion. And before you say that you pity my ignorance, I pity that you can’t believe just a little bit of magic exists in the world.” With that, she folded her arms across her chest and turned as far away from him as she could on the narrow wooden seat.

  Adam clenched his jaw. She’d asked him to speak the truth, and he’d done so. It was hardly his fault that she didn’t like what he’d said. At the same time, an employee arguing with an employer as he had would, in any other circumstances, likely become unemployed at this point.

  But he wondered how Lord Alton would respond if she told him she was a descendant of Merlin and Nimue. If it would help the viscount secure her extremely lucrative timber rights, he would more than likely humor her. Of course growing up in the area, handsome Geoffrey probably knew the legends already.

  Which left him, an outsider no one had bothered to tell, so that he had no option but to be surprised when she broadsided him with it. Adam drew in a hard breath. Yes, the legend had surprised him; her belief in the legend had stunned him.

  Should he have lied about that? Should he have smiled and said that of course he believed in magic? How else could one explain rainbows and cyclonic winds? And what was he supposed to do now – show her tricks and then explain them away with logic and science? Just accept that a woman of eighteen years – his employer – believed in magic?

  He supposed he would have to do just that if he wanted to remain at Nimway Hall, which he did. She didn’t seem likely to change her mind, and he damned well wouldn’t change his.

  8

  Well, what would you have thought of him, truly, if he’d said he saw fairies in the garden and pigs that flew themselves to market?”

  Isabel frowned at Jane, missing a step and nearly tripping over a basket of straw dolls. “I would have thought he was mocking me, just as you are.”

  Jane’s generally affable expression drew into a scowl of her own. “Miss Isabel, I’ve known you since you were one year old, when your mama decided you should have an English nanny. I read all those books to you. I played evil knights and brave princesses with you. I have never, and I will never, mock you.”

  Sometimes Isabel still felt like that little girl, thinking before she’d thought it through, letting her own feelings dictate how she reacted to others. “I apologize, Jane. You have been a staunch ally since before I can remember. That stupid man has had me tilting at windmills for three days. Everything I hear is an insult, and I must defend myself.”

  “Adam Driscoll has never seen magic, Isabel. Truth be told, have you? Perhaps he only requires some patience. And some proof.”

  Isabel opened her mouth to reply that of course she’d seen magic – Jane had slept through that glorious first sunrise at Nimway Hall, but that hadn’t been her fault. And that had been magical. But if she mentioned it, her companion would want to know what she considered the difference between magic and magical, and they would both end in foul moods. “You’ve heard about the orb and my parents, just as I have,” she said instead. “And so many other things.”

  “Yes, I have. And I’ve seen you spend hours digging through every room and the attic looking for that orb, without success. It might have been a metaphor, you know.”

  “You’ve seen the birthmark behind my left shoulder. That is the orb. It’s not a meta—”

  “Just please keep in mind, my dove, that a very few years ago here in England they believed enough in magic to burn witches. And now they toss old ladies into Bedlam for saying their cats talk to them. Neither sounds particularly appealing.”

  “Now I’m a potential Bedlamite. Wonderful. Well, for your information, Mist has yet to speak to me.”

  It felt easier as they walked through the crowded market to make Jane’s warning into a half-offended jest. She knew full well what her companion meant, though – that perhaps it wasn’t Adam Driscoll who’d been unreasonable last Friday.

  She’d barely spoken to him since then, and only when strictly necessary. Despite that, their luncheon in the meadow had been a spectacular success, and her head still spun from meeting so many people. People for whose well-being she was now responsible, and who’d been so pleased to have her there despite the fact that she now had a very good grasp on the fact that Nimway worked on a much grander scale than anything she’d previously experienced.

  That had made her sleep restless for the past few nights, and after the picnic yesterday she hadn’t slept at all. It was also the reason she hadn’t changed her mind yet again about Mr. Driscoll and sent him packing. Still, the more quickly she learned his job and how he went about it, the sooner she could part ways with this man whose imagination seemed firmly stuck in the mud. And whomever she hired to replace him would not be as blasted stubborn.

  “I believe that is your beau coming this way, Isabel,” Jane whispered, wrenching her out of her mental morass. “If you keep frowning like that, you’ll send him fleeing.”

  “He’s not my beau,” she returned, sending a smile in Lord Alton’s direction as the viscount approached, a single yellow rose in one hand. Not yet, anyway. But his odds had certainly improved once she’d heard the unsatisfactory philosophy of her unsuitable steward. And that was just as well.

  “Good morning, Isabel,” he greeted her, sweeping a bow and at the same time taking hold of her fingers to kiss her knuckles. “I am not skilled in the language of flowers, but my gardener informs me that yellow roses signify sorrow or regret. I then decided that must also include apologies, though I could be completely wrong. I make no guarantees.” With that he held the rose out to her.

  Isabel laughed, curtsying as she took the flower. At least someone had a sense of humor. No wonder Adam didn’t like him. “Thank you, my lord. And please do stop apologizing. The affront was slight, at best.”

  His smile deepening, he moved around beside her to offer his arm. “Then let me show you a very fine example of a village market.”

  “Please do.”

  With Jane trailing behind them, they wandered among the wagons and boxes and blankets and more elaborate stalls, accepting samples of strawberries and other fresh flowers, spending pennies and shillings on delicate seed- and shell-bracelets, a variety of jams and preserves, and a pair of pretty knitted gloves. At every stall they had to stop and chat, met by eager farmers and craftsmen who’d lived their lives on land she owned. She received still more invitations to visit, questions about livestock the answers for which she had to defer to Lord Alton, and one complaint about a neighbor’s sheep dog scaring cows and putting them off milk for a week.

  “They adore you already,” Geoffrey noted, as she finished promising to speak to the dog’s owner. “They’ve missed having a guardian here since your grandmother left.”

  Her heart thudding, she looked up at him. “You know about the guardians of Nimway Hall?”

  “I grew up ten miles from here. I daresay all your neighbors have cast jealous gazes at your fertile fields and thick wood and asked how and why, that despite the fact that we already know the answer: the land was long ago blessed by Merlin and the Lady Nimue, and their descendants continue their legacy.”

  “And do you believe that?” she asked, carefully keeping her expression neutral. This line of questioning hadn’t gone at all well when she’d attempted it with Adam.

&
nbsp; The viscount chuckled. “’There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy’,” he said, snagging an orange and tossing it into the air to catch it again.

  “Precisely! The worst a naysayer can claim is that they haven’t personally witnessed anything.”

  His gaze on her, he abruptly flashed her another smile. “I have no proof the tales aren’t true, and it’s ungentlemanly to disparage a lady’s ancestry. There are a plenitude of tales surrounding Glastonbury and King Arthur. And how do you explain Stonehenge without bringing magic and Merlin into the equation?”

  “Thank you for saying that.” And thank goodness someone else felt as she did. She only wished stuffy Mr. Driscoll had been there to overhear. And she wished she’d thought of the example of Stonehenge. She would certainly bring it up to him the next time they spoke – if they spoke.

  Alton inclined his head. “Ask any of your tenants, Isabel. They know precisely who you are, and from whom you’re descended.”

  Nearly everyone she’d met had certainly made their respect for her clear enough, whether she’d done anything to earn that or not. Some of them had seemed almost…overcome at seeing her. She’d put that to them being without a landlord for so long then suddenly having one knocking on the door, but it had been eye-opening. People needed her, and for some reason she hadn’t expected that. “May I ask you something, Geoffrey?”

  “Of course.”

  “Does all this become…routine? The—” She stopped as a young girl curtsied and handed her a fistful of cornflowers. “Thank you, my sweet,” she said, smiling and bringing the flowers to her nose. “These are lovely.”

  Blushing, the girl pranced off to rejoin her parents at their stall, which boasted loaves of delightful-smelling fresh bread. Isabel immediately signaled Jane to purchase two loaves for breakfast tomorrow.

  “Routine, yes,” the viscount responded, once they’d passed by the stall. “I can’t tell you how many pretty rocks or flowers my steward or I’ve received, all in hopes one of us will be charmed enough to pay for repairing a roof or purchasing a new milk cow to replace the dried-up one the poor family will have to eat if I cruelly turn them down.”

  She chuckled at his dramatics. “I’m pleased I enjoy pretty rocks, then.”

  “Oh, you’ve no idea. One farmer claimed that because my grandfather had given his grandfather a pair of pigs, I was therefore responsible for replacing a sow because, and I quote, ‘the pigs is used to being a pair’. As if I was the one to let the thing out to eat rabbit droppings or whatever it got into.”

  He wasn’t jesting. As that realization struck her, Isabel could only hope her mouth wasn’t agape. “That seems rather cynical,” she said slowly. “You do help your tenants, do you not? Who else would they turn to?”

  One of his arched brows dipped. “Oh.” Geoffrey gave a forced-sounding laugh. “I was only jesting, Isabel. There’s no need to be distressed. Each household has an agreement with me, some of them made generations ago. Within each agreement has been laid out the rent the tenant pays, either in blunt or in goods produced, and what repairs, support, etcetera, the landlord is obligated to supply. I always fulfill my end of that bargain. Flowers and tea cakes and claims of broken pig hearts aren’t necessary.”

  Did she have such contracts and agreements? If so, where were they? She would have to ask Adam, blast it all. But at least it explained Alton’s position in regard to his tenants. With two properties, he likely had far more people for whom he was responsible than she did. That explained why he held to the agreements so closely. It still felt…too by the book, as if she could decide not to help a farmer purchase a badly needed new cow or pig because a centuries-old piece of paper said she didn’t have any legal duty to do so.

  It seemed cold-hearted and his jest – if that was what it had been – rather sharp-edged, but she didn’t know enough about any of this to pronounce judgment. Especially against someone with far more experience than she had. Adam, at least, seemed to think she lacked a certain mental discipline, and perhaps in this he was correct.

  “Of course I couldn’t resist bringing you a flower, either, so who am I to say?” Alton commented into the silence, his easy smile reappearing.

  For goodness’s sake he was charming. Far more so than her rude steward. “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “Perhaps meeting you for luncheon wasn’t such a poor idea, after all.”

  “You are a very wise young lady,” he returned. “We missed our chance last Wednesday, but perhaps the one two days from hence will suffice?”

  “I believe it will.”

  Adam leaned against the flimsy wall of a stall, arms crossed over his chest and his half-lidded gaze on the couple halfway across the market square. He couldn’t hear what they said, but he damned well recognized the frequent smiles and hands touching and the idiotic yellow rose.

  Three older brothers kept him from inheriting his father’s barony, but he was still a damned aristocrat. He wasn’t a viscount, certainly, and apparently unforgivably he worked with his hands and had very little in the way of money. Or perhaps more unfortunately, he’d spoken his mind to his employer.

  “I can make you a smaller one, if you’d like,” came from beside him.

  Shaking himself, Adam straightened. “That’s not necessary, Hayward. Miss Isabel would like to begin a proper apiary. I think two hives to begin with. And we know these bees like living in square things.”

  The old farmer snorted. “I did hear about that. A mahogany chest of drawers, they say, once owned by Henry the Eighth. Now it’s got bee shit and honey all over it.”

  So now it was old Henry. A few days ago it had only been George the Third. The chest was getting older and more valuable by the day, despite the obvious neglect to which they were subjecting it. And that was how tales began. If he and Isabel ever spoke again, he would use her beehive as an example. “I’ll throw in an extra quid if you’ll help me move the bees out of the chest and into the hives.”

  The farmer grinned. “For a quid I’ll do it myself, Mr. Driscoll.”

  Adam stuck out his hand. “That is a deal.”

  He and the farmer shook on it, and Hayward agreed to have the box hives ready by Friday. It would have been just as easy to send to London for them, but Adam would only have done that as a last resort. Anything that helped grow the local economy would help Nimway thrive, and Hayward’s own hives were legendary for the quality of their honey.

  The luncheon yesterday had left the house short of butter and salt and a few other kitchen basics, so he wasn’t surprised to see Mrs. Dall, the cook, a few stalls away making purchases for the household. He should have thought of holding a gathering on Isabel’s behalf, but considering how well it had gone he was glad the idea had been hers. Despite his frustration with her, her openness and easy friendship spoke well for the future of the property. Her tenants were only just beginning to feel comfortable enough to speak honestly with him, and over the course of one luncheon she’d done what it had taken him weeks to accomplish.

  He, of course, would have to remember that her request for honesty from him didn’t include his views on magic. From what he could see of Isabel and Alton this morning, she either hadn’t brought up the fact that she believed a ball could vanish from one hand and appear in the other, or she had done so – and the viscount had then quoted Hamlet about there being more things than man could explain. Never mind that Hamlet was at its heart a well-spoken ghost story. Of course it would have supernatural elements in it. That didn’t make it true.

  “Was there something more you wanted, Mr. Driscoll?” Hayward asked. “God knows I’m happy to have you spend your money here.”

  Adam pulled himself back to the market once more. “Hmm? No. Sorry, I was just lost in a daydream.”

  “She’s pretty enough to send even an old man like me dreaming,” the farmer noted, following Adam’s gaze.

  Damnation. “I wasn’t—”

  “If she’s heard
the orb speak Lord Alton’s name, lad, you’ll have to settle for your daydreams.”

  Orb? The same orb for which Isabel had been searching? “There’s another shilling in it for you if you tell me what this orb is, Hayward.”

  “I ain’t ever set eyes on it, but I’ve heard it’s old. Older than time, maybe. Some say it’s a crystal. Some say it was the capstone of Merlin’s very staff. Old Widow May swears it’s part of a giant’s crown.”

  Magic again, of course. That explanation hardly seemed worth a shilling since he’d heard much the same thing at the picnic yesterday, but he’d given his word. Digging into a pocket, he produced a coin and set it into the chuckling Hayward’s palm.

  “Anything else you want to know, you come see me.” The farmer walked forward to greet another visitor to his stall. “And don’t you worry, Mr. Driscoll. I’ll deliver those hives to you myself come Friday.”

  Adam nodded, mentally crossing his fingers that he’d run through the ill luck where the bees were concerned. If he wanted to keep his job he couldn’t afford another fiasco. Especially now. As quickly as he could, keeping well away from Isabel and her escort mostly so he wouldn’t be tempted – more tempted – to punch the viscount, he met with the other people he needed to see this morning.

  That finished, he sent the laughing pair a last, annoyed glare, then reclaimed Orion and headed back toward the escarpment and the house beyond. He, at least, had work to do today. Even as that petty thought crossed his mind, though, he admitted it wasn’t fair. Yes, she had a great deal to learn about Nimway Hall, its occupants, and which bits of it required the most careful attention. She also needed to become acquainted with the entire rhythm of the place, with its quirks and its characters, and thus far she’d very nearly outstripped him in that regard. And being in the market square today was part of that. The company she kept there didn’t matter.

  Stephens and his son, young Stephens, were already clearing the last of the rubble from the front of the garden, so Adam trotted up the stairs to his bedchamber to change into his work clothes. Even at a minimum size the orangery would entail moving a dozen bushes and a flower bed in addition to the warped steps and railing, and he wanted it all finished before Mr. Hodgins arrived tomorrow.