In the interests of dawdling in the shade, Trent pointed the gelding toward the home wood, a great sprawling mess of trees, underbrush, bridle paths, and meandering streams. Small boys could spend entire summers in such a wood and never miss their beds. Of course, Trent was not a small boy.
Arthur’s ears pricked forward in the sun-dappled depths of the wood, drawing Trent’s thoughts away from shady hammocks and long, peaceful naps. He followed Arthur’s gaze and heard splashing from the largest pond on his property. Trent urged the gelding a few feet off the path and swung down from the saddle.
How he’d clamber aboard an eighteen-hand mount without a step was a puzzle for another time.
The horse obligingly cocked a hip and settled in to doze in the shade while Trent passed noiselessly through the brush. Another splash, then a female voice singing a folk tune—something about “green grow the rushes”—carried across the summer air.
The woman had a sturdy contralto, suited to a sturdy tune, and she was sturdy as well. Trent was taken aback to find her standing in the shallows of the pond happy-as-she-pleased, wearing only a summer-length shift—and a very damp summer-length shift at that. Her long, dark hair rippled down her back as she trailed a line-and-pole fishing rod across the water and sang—to the fish?
A dairymaid playing truant on a pretty summer day, or a laundress or other menial. She had the defined arm muscles of a dairymaid and the earthy ease with her body that Trent associated with females unburdened by the designation “lady.” While he stood mesmerized, she set the pole on the bank and, still standing in the water, began to plait her hair.
God above, she was a lovely sight. Trent resisted the urge—even urges had deserted him until recently—to tug off his boots, shed his clothes, and wade out to her side, there to do nothing in particular but be naked in the sunshine with her.
Sobriety could make a man daft, but not that daft. Rather than yield to his impulses, he stood among the trees and looked and gawked and looked some more, as if his eyes had been thirsty for this very image.
For anything that might make him wake up.
The lady was comfortable in the water, occasionally reaching down to splash herself. The shift became an erotic enhancement to bare flesh, outlining her figure, peaking her nipples, and creating a damp shadow at the juncture of her thighs. Her shape was thoroughly feminine—she had real breasts, real hips, not some caricature created by whalebone, buckram and clever stitching. When she lifted her arms to pin her braid on her head, the wet material shifted so one pink, tightly furled nipple slipped momentarily into view.
The image was purely, bracingly lovely. Trent mentally thanked the Widow Lady Rammel for causing him to be in that spot at that moment. He resolved to come fishing himself in the same pond and to vicariously join the dairymaid in her pleasures. The thought wasn’t even sexual—he hadn’t had those impulses for some time—but it was a sensual, happy thought.
And precious as a result.
He silently withdrew and walked Arthur some distance before using a handy stump to mount. Reluctant to leave the wood, he let the horse wander up one path and down the next until the hour approached noon.
“Come along,” he said, turning Arthur to the east. “We have a widow to condole. No more of your prevarications.”
All too soon, Trent was ushered into a pleasant family parlor done up all in cabbage roses; pale, gleaming oak; and sunshine. He steeled himself to endure not only the thoroughly feminine décor, but also fifteen minutes of social hell, tepid tea, and useless platitudes. When he turned to greet his hostess, however, the only thought in his head didn’t bear verbalizing:
She’s not a dairymaid.
Chapter Two
Ellie’s first thought was that Trenton Lindsey, Lord Amherst, had been to war. They’d been introduced at a local assembly several years before, and then he’d been an impressive specimen. Tall, fit, and possessed of dark, sparkling eyes to go with his dark, thick hair. He’d had an animal magnetism that Dane, for all his blond good looks, had lacked.
Now, Amherst was gaunt, his eyes shadowed, his clothing beautifully tailored but too loose and several seasons out of fashion.
“Lord Amherst.” Ellie curtsied and held out her hand. “A great pleasure. It’s too hot for tea, and the veranda will allow us some shade. May I offer you lemonade, hock, or sangaree?”
“Anything cold would be a pleasure.”
Ellie attributed his surprised expression to her sortie out of first mourning attire. She was in lilac, one of her favorite colors and one abundantly represented in her summer wardrobe. Dane would not have been pleased with her departure from strict decorum.
Which was just too perishing bad.
“We are neighbors, are we not?” Ellie inquired as he offered his arm and escorted her to the back terrace. The gesture reminded her that Amherst had married several years back. Thus, he sported the kind of understated good manners husbands usually acquired—some husbands.
“Your land marches with mine this side of the trees,” Amherst replied. “I don’t recall your gardens being this extensive.”
Had Dane even noticed the gardens?
“They used to be smaller, but I am not prone to idleness, and when the weather is fine, I like to be out of doors. Gardening provides the subterfuge of productivity and the pleasure of the flowers.” Then too, even new widows were permitted to dig in their own gardens.
He tarried at the door to the shaded veranda to sniff at a potted pink rose. “Which is your favorite flower?”
Amherst snapped off the rose and offered it to her, the gesture so effortlessly congenial it took Ellie a moment to comprehend that the rose was for her.
“Forgive me,” he said, his smile faltering the longer Ellie stared at the rose. “I do not socialize a great deal, and my small talk is rusty.”
Ellie accepted the bloom, careful of the thorns. “Please allow your small talk to crumble into oblivion. I am heartily sick of sitting through every recipe in the shire for restorative tisanes, and everybody’s favorite Bible passage for difficult times. At least a discussion of flowers is novel.”
Her escort was quiet. Had she disconcerted him or even shocked him? Maybe mourning went on so terribly long because months were needed to get the knack of being a proper widow.
A proper, discreet widow?
“You’ll not be planting lilies again,” Amherst said.
Because they were standing in the doorway, Ellie caught his scent.
He smelled wonderful—masculine but sweet, spicy, alluring, clean, intriguing. She could have stood there all morning, trying to sort and classify the pleasures of his scent.
Carrying a child did this—made the faculties more acute, more delicate.
She picked up the thread of the conversation. “I won’t be planting lilies, no. I’ve already put off blacks at home. Scandalous of me.”
“Sensible of you. The departed are gone. They don’t care what we wear.”
“You don’t think my late husband is peering down at me from some cloud? Commenting to St. Peter that I never was a very biddable wife?” That would be the least of Dane’s complaints.
“You didn’t force him onto that horse, Lady Rammel.” Amherst’s voice was so calm, so quiet, Ellie almost missed the keen insight of his observation.
She stayed right where she was, next to him in the shady doorway, while birds sang to each other in the nearby wood, and flowers turned their faces up to the welcoming sun.
“Say that again, my lord.”
“Your husband’s death was not your fault,” Amherst said slowly, clearly. “By reputation in the clubs, Dane Hampton loved to ride to hounds, loved the drunken steeplechase, loved to cut a dash on his bloodstock. He died doing what he loved, and he was lucky. You are lucky, in fact, that he died while frolicking with his hounds. His demise wasn’t your fault, and it wasn’t a bad death.”
Ellie wanted to make him say those same words all over again, but instead searched for
a rejoinder.
And found none.
“Thank you.” She’d focused so intently on his words that it came as something of a surprise to see her hand still tucked in the crook of his elbow. Life was brimful of surprises recently. “These calls ought to come with a manual of deportment, and what you’ve just said should be the first required words.”
A smile threatened at the corners of his mouth. “I have no favorite Bible passage, and I’m fresh out of recipes for tisanes.”
“I like the verse about the lilies of the field, about neither toiling nor spinning, but still meriting the Almighty’s notice,” Ellie said, making herself step back. She liked Lord Amherst, liked that he wasn’t too self-conscious to stand near her, and that he didn’t spout platitudes. “Because that passage mentions lilies of the field, the scent of which now makes me ill, I’ll have to search out a new one.”
“You haven’t told me your favorite flower.” Amherst followed her onto the veranda, and Ellie silently conceded the point: Flowers were alive, Bible verses were not. Two different sources of comfort, one dear to her, one expected by her neighbors.
All of her neighbors, save one.
“Lily of the valley,” she decided. “For its scent. Roses, for sheer delicacy of appearance. Lilacs, for the confirmation they bring of spring, though they lack the stamina for bouquets. We’’re given so many worthy flowers, it’s hard to choose. Shall we be seated?”
He handed her into a chair at a wrought iron grouping at one end of the veranda, then took a seat beside her. Not across from her, but beside. How was it she’d had such a pleasant sort of neighbor all these years and had never become acquainted with him?
“Would you be willing to look over my gardens?” he asked, the chair scraping back as he arranged long legs before him. “I’ve allowed Crossbridge to suffer some neglect in recent months. I’m focused on the crops, the buildings, that sort of thing, but the estate once had lovely grounds.”
“Surely you have a head gardener, my lord?” But she wanted to do this. She wanted to make something pretty grow for her quiet, insightful neighbor and maybe make the acquaintance of his wife, if her ladyship were out from Town.
Friends being in shorter supply than she’d realized. When had she become so isolated—and why?
She also wanted to get off her own property and could slip over to Amherst’s gardens without anybody knowing she’d been truant from her grieving post.
Anybody but Dane. Ellie wanted to aim her face at the sky and stick her tongue out.
“Crossbridge has staff,” Lord Amherst said. “They have much to do simply holding back the march of time. The home wood encroaches on the pastures, for example, and my gardeners are busy clearing the fence rows, cleaning up several years of frost heave, and trimming the hedges. My flowers have been orphaned.”
On the third finger of Ellie’s left hand, a fat, shiny diamond caught a beam of summer sun. She took her rings off when she gardened.
“Dane left a daughter.” Heat flooded up Ellie’s neck, and she wondered if pregnancy also unhinged the jaw and the common sense. Amherst was a neighbor, true, and he’d likely know about Andy if he bothered to attend services, but he was a stranger.
A handkerchief appeared in her peripheral vision, snow white, monogrammed in purple, and edged with gold—also laden with his lovely scent. Ellie would not have suspected her slightly rumpled, out-of-fashion, overly lean neighbor of hidden regal tendencies, but his instincts were excellent.
“Perishing Halifax.” She snatched the handkerchief and brought it to her eyes, though she hadn’t cried for days. “Forgive me.”
“You are not the one who left a daughter,” Amherst replied evenly. “Perhaps the forgiveness is needed elsewhere.” He didn’t pat her hand, didn’t move any closer, didn’t murmur nonsense about time healing and God’s infernal will. He lounged at his ease two feet away and let her have her tears.
“Andy is eight.” Ellie blotted her eyes again. “Coriander. She’s young enough to miss her papa sorely. Dane was decent to her.”
Amherst still said nothing as Ellie defended Dane’s memory. Dane had been decent to Andy, once Ellie had staged the first and only row of their married life and insisted the child be raised at Deerhaven.
“People will tell you the grief eases, Lady Rammel, and in some ways, it does. Life tugs you forward, and you add good memories to the store of losses. The losses don’t cease hurting, though, not altogether.”
Ellie stopped dabbing at her eyes. “Perhaps you’d better keep a Bible verse or two in your pocket, my lord. Your honesty is particularly bracing.”
Also curiously welcome.
He inclined his head, not smiling. “My apologies. Grief is an old shoe that fits each foot differently, and I shouldn’t prognosticate for others. Keep the handkerchief.”
“My thanks.” Ellie took a surreptitious sniff of his heavenly scent and signaled the footman tactfully waiting a distance away with the tray. “What shall you have, Lord Amherst? Cold tea, hot tea, sangaree, hock, or lemonade. Alas, no tisanes.”
“Good company can be a tisane. I’ll enjoy some lemonade.” He didn’t smile with his mouth so much as he did with dark eyes that crinkled at the corners. Dane would have liked Amherst, which was something of a comfort.
Ellie garnished his glass of lemonade with mint and lavender, which seemed to make it ever so much more palatable. When she’d poured for herself—now, lemonade appealed—she held up her glass in a toast.
“To consolation.”
He politely raised his glass a few inches and sipped, his expression considering.
“You’ve a rebel in your kitchen. I’ve come across the mint with lemonade before, but not the lavender.”
Ellie sampled her drink, finding it exactly to her taste, rather like Lord Amherst’s brand of condolence call. “My own recipe. Not everybody likes it. Andy says I’m daft.”
“An outspoken young lady. One wonders where she might have acquired such a trait.”
“Are you teasing me?”
“On page forty-two of the manual, you will find that teasing is required.” Amherst’s tone was grave. “Right after ladylike sniffles and before a recitation of platitudes.”
“Useless platitudes.” Ellie couldn’t help but smile, because teasing was indeed a consolation. “Were you sincere in requesting my help with your gardens, or was that a recommendation from the manual as well?”
He held the wet sprig of mint under his lordly nose, and Ellie realized he might tease her, but he wasn’t a man given to simple banter. Dane had bantered easily and merrily. She’d found it charming—at first.
“The request was sincere. I’m short of staff, and the gardens are, of necessity, a low priority. I would not want to intrude on a time of grief, but I can use the help. Beyond a certain point, even the most well-designed garden can’t be rescued, and my plots are approaching chaos.”
The best-planned marriages could reach the same state of untenable disrepair all too easily. Ellie liked that his lordship would admit he needed help, though it threw into high relief that Dane had not needed her, except to produce an heir. In his lifetime, that priority had been untended to.
“Chaos sounds intriguing,” Ellie said. “Weather permitting, expect me on hand tomorrow. What time suits?”
“It’s cooler in the morning.” Amherst removed the lavender sprig from his drink and placed it on the tray, when Dane would have either pitched it into the pansies or consumed his drink, garnish and all. “We’ll tour the grounds, and you can give me your first impression. I’m usually off on my rounds by eight.”
“That will suit.”
Nothing in his tone suggested he was merely being polite by making this request, but Ellie still had a sense her neighbor was somehow dodging. She signaled the footman again. This time, he brought over a tray bearing a cold collation of meat, cheese, condiments, and sliced bread. “I thought you might enjoy some sustenance, my lord. May I fix you a sandwich?”
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Amherst set his drink down and picked up the lavender. “I’ll pass, but you should eat, my lady.”
“You truly don’t mind?” She did momentary battle with a craving for a bite of cheese—a sharp cheddar with dill would be splendid. “I’m famished, if you must know, but then, I lack the petite dimensions of a proper English beauty and probably always will.” Swimming and fishing always put a sharpish edge on her appetite, even as they soothed her nerves.
An odd smile crossed Amherst’s features. Even gaunt and dispensing sympathy, he was attractive, particularly when he smiled. Then too, there was his scent, his subtle humor, his gentlemanly manners. If all that weren’t enough to endear him as a neighbor, he was also…kind.
Amherst twiddled the lavender, the scent rising on the breeze, while Ellie prattled on about flowers and consumed a real sandwich—not some stingy gesture with watercress and a pinchpenny dab of butter. All the while, as he made appropriate replies and sipped his drink. Ellie sensed that he drew pleasure simply from watching her eat.
Dane might have winked at her and joked about getting her a larger mount.
Eating for two was less guilt-inducing than eating for one. When Ellie rose to see her guest out, though, she stood too quickly and had to seize his arm while the sounds of the summer day faded behind an ominous roaring.
“Steady on, my lady.”
He was stronger than he looked, bracing her against his body until the dizziness faded and Ellie’s head was filled once again with the lovely scent of his person.
“Take your time,” he murmured, making no move to step back. “Shall I call for a maid?”
“I’m fine.” She’d been far from fine for at least two months, and possibly for much longer than that. “Though perhaps when you’ve gone, I might have a lie down.”
He peered at her, and Ellie became aware—more aware—that he was quite tall, taller even than Dane, who’d been proud to top six feet. And wasn’t that like a man, to be proud of something he’d had nothing to do with, no control over whatsoever?
Trenton: Lord Of Loss Page 2
