If the girls noticed anything amiss, they made no comment. Jean's fire had nearly gone out, but that was all right. She had won the wager, and the log was almost consumed. She worked at the fire, adding a small log, and was aware that Miss Bluestone watched her the while.
"I mean to keep it burning until Mr. Sholto inspects it."
"Perhaps he has forgot it." Miss Bluestone's tone was neutral.
Perhaps he had. It was a desolating thought. Well, he'd come once, no, twice, counting the day he brought his gangly assistants. Surely he'd come again.
Exasperated with herself, she went upstairs and began a letter to Elizabeth. Liz deserved a reply. Jean crumpled two sheets of paper. Somehow she could not manage the light tone the letter required, though she was relieved to have the confrontation with Hugh over and done with. No doubt he was disappointed. Or his father was.
She rose from the desk, walked to the window, and looked out at the lake bed. Patches of mud showed through the snow, and pools had collected in the lowest places, as if the lake meant to re-create itself. The folly looked odd sitting on its piers like a stilt-house.
A clump of men emerged from the direction of the stables and walked along the shore, Mr. Sholto among them. She thought she also saw Durbin, Jem, and Mr. Chips. Ah, and the two boys, the assistants. They were deep in discussion. She knew he, Sholto, meant to strengthen the weak bank.
She was pulling on her pelisse with the thought of joining them when she was assailed by a question that required an answer. It was almost time for the midday meal. Why was she dressing to go out into the cold to join six men on a muddy lake shore uninvited?
Because she wanted to see Mr. Sholto. And why did she want to see Mr. Sholto? Because she wanted him to inspect her yule fire? Because she wanted to boast about baking bread? Because she wanted to know how old his housekeeper was? No.
The plain truth was that she had done it again. She had fallen in love, or, more precisely, allowed herself to become infatuated. With Tom's steward.
Hugh Fremont had been a mere diversion, poor man, a victim of her flight from the truth. She had permitted him to court her because she was frightened by her feelings for Sholto. They had been strong, she acknowledged, by the time of the Moores' dinner.
She sat in the chair by her dressing table, one arm in the sleeve of her pelisse, and stared at her pale face. Elizabeth had told her to listen to her heart. Unfortunately, her heart in this instance was wrong. Foolish? Misguided? Wrong.
For a good half year before Fanny's death, Jean had seen scarcely any man outside the family. And she had been sunk in gloom. Like Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream, she would no doubt have succumbed to the first man she saw. She would have fallen madly in love with Mr. Tidmarsh had the vicar presented himself to her as the post-chaise passed through Earl's Brecon on the day of the flood.
What a creature she was. Alexander Sholto was merely a good-natured fellow with an over-developed sense of responsibility and a quirky taste in jokes. He had taken a mild interest in her, because she was odd. That had to be it. She amused him. She was, she reflected bitterly, a figure of comedy in the neighbourhood in any case, because of her infamous attempt to follow Owen Davies to Upper Canada ten years before.
Sholto had lived in Earl's Brecon then with the Moores. Her pursuit of Owen must have been a nine-day's wonder in the village. Sholto had to know of it. He probably thought her a flighty piece.
As for her feelings for him, she had known who he was for more than twelve years and felt not the slightest attraction.
He was not even handsome. Well, he wasn't an antidote, but he didn't resemble either a Greek god or a Renaissance statue. He was probably an inch shorter than Hugh Fremont and two stone lighter. A wiry nobody who always lost his hat and didn't have the common sense not to row a boat when he'd broken his collarbone. And what if the Brecon servants, Charles Wharton, her sister Fanny, Miss Bluestone, Mrs. Moore the elder, Mrs. Graves the cook, Mrs. Smollet, the vicar, and Sholto's housekeeper of indeterminate years thought he was a nonpareil? Jean was not going to be influenced by mere opinion.
When the gong signaled that Agnew was ready to serve their nuncheon, she made a dignified descent. Not trusting her voice, she spoke hardly at all through the entire meal. She tended to her yule log only because the girls would have noticed if she hadn't. And Sholto did not come from the muddy lake shore to inspect her fire.
By the time she could go up again to hide in her bedchamber, she felt like howling. What a way to start the New Year. However, she was the daughter of a long line of noblemen on her father's side and a longer line of fierce Highland warriors on her mother's. She would not give way to misery. She was even angry enough to do some thinking.
The first problem was her infatuation. She would have to wait for it to go away. She was sure--well, fairly sure--it would. She would have to endure the symptoms, including a foolish desire to follow Mr. Sholto about like a tantony pig. With any luck, a few weeks would see the worst symptoms fade into indifference.
In case they didn't, just in case, she ought to know more of him. It was true that he was not of her rank, but few men under the age of seventy were. Two of her sisters had married into the nobility, further depleting the supply. Tom was an excellent husband. The same could not be said of Lord Kinnaird. Fifty-fifty were not good odds.
But who insisted that Jean marry a nobleman? Maggie's Johnny was the son of a clergyman. No one had objected to Johnny. Anne's MP came from a family of lawyers--barristers and solicitors, not landed gentry, but prosperous and influential. As far as Jean knew, Sholto was the son of one of the Lothian tenants. What of that? Mr. Waring was also Clanross's tenant. Had he been single and twenty years younger he would not have been considered ineligible.
Jean had the sinking feeling that Sholto's father had been a small farmer, however, not a wealthy investor in canals with a taste for hunting. Quillan, again had he been single and younger, would not have been a suitable candidate for Jean's hand, though he was a prosperous farmer on the edge of gentility. His younger son had attended university. A daughter had married a physician. Jean was sure Sholto's family were not nearly so elevated, and that any suggestion of such an alliance would be considered shocking.
She told herself she didn't care, and if her attraction to him offended her sister Kitty, so much the better. But Jean knew she would be sad if it offended Anne or Elizabeth and devastated if Maggie were to object. That thought was so melancholy her mind fled from it.
Last, though certainly not least, she must ferret out some clew as to how Sholto felt about her, if he felt anything other than simple toleration.
No. All wrong. Backwards. I ought to start there. So far, she had no more evidence of his sentiments than the yule log, a few shared jokes, and the refrain of "Bonny Jean Cameron."
What had Liz said? Jean must seek a man she could trust.
The unlikelihood of that gave her the megrims.
* * * *
It continued snowing all afternoon and night, but she woke to crisp sunshine that bounced light from every white surface in the room. She squinted at the clock. Late. Nearly ten. Her fire! She leapt from bed, scrambled into her robe, and yanked the bell for hot water.
Dawson appeared almost at once.
"Oh, Dawson, I let my fire go out!"
"Not to worry, me lady. I give it a good poke and threw on another log." The maid poured hot water into the basin and stirred the bedroom fire to life for good measure. The room was cold.
Jean thanked her in a small voice, humbled by her kind competence.
She ate a piece of toast in the kitchen and listened to Mrs. Graves's philosophy of bread-making, accompanied by Georgy on the harpsichord. Georgy was practicing a new piece in the sitting room, and that meant repetition, which was, for some reason, less bearable on the harpsichord than on the spinet.
Cook cocked her head. "My land, it's like listening to china breaking, isn't it?"
Jean rose from the stool by
the kitchen table. "It is indeed. I've had enough of it. Please say you'll tell me more about bread tomorrow. For now, I believe I'll take a walk in the snow." She thought Cook looked relieved when she left the kitchen. Polly smiled.
Upstairs, Jean dressed for the cold hastily and peeked out the window at the lake. There they were on the shore--Mr. Sholto and the boys. They talked and gesticulated, arms flailing. Puffs of steam from their breath showed the way the wind blew. The boys carried striped poles and what looked like chains on sticks. What in the world were they doing? She snatched her gloves and winter bonnet and raced down the stairs.
They were engaged in surveying, with Sholto holding the pole with its mounted disc whilst the lads dashed about measuring angles and altitudes. He stood very still but contrived to carry on a polite conversation. The weather? Brilliant. But cold, definitely cold, my lady. She wished he were less formal.
"Why are they doing a survey? I daresay the cadastre pinned down every feature of the landscape decades ago."
"Centuries," he said on a puff of steam. "As soon as the land was granted." Jean's ancestor had been a marcher lord, helping to hold the Welsh border. The name of the estate, which was also the eldest son's courtesy title, was Welsh, odd in smug Lincolnshire.
"The lads want to build a coffer dam," Sholto was saying. "That way we can be sure the stonework dries completely--or so they say. I fancy they just want to make something."
"And you're going to let them?"
"I'm a soft touch." He laughed at her expression, and one of the boys protested because Sholto jiggled the post he was holding. He straightened it. "We may not build a dam, but they need to practice the skills."
"You're a surveyor?"
"I had some training." He left it at that.
The icy air bit through Jean's pelisse. "Will you not join us for our midday meal?"
He didn't reply at once. She felt his wariness.
"I'll speak to Mrs. Graves."
"I daresay she'd like to see Billy again. Very well. Thank you. I meant to feed them at Brecon when the cold got to them."
Jean had not intended to invite the boys, but half a loaf was better than none. She wished them well with their surveying and made her way back past the stables to the dower house. It was too cold for a leisurely stroll.
Georgy's concert had ended, so Mrs. Graves was in a good mood. She agreed to serve everyone hot soup, if Billy and young Duncan, that was the other one's name, would eat in the kitchen and keep her company. Jean encouraged that idea.
In keeping with her resolve, she sat back and listened as the meal progressed. She did not pursue, she observed. Sholto was polite and cryptic to a fault, but the other ladies didn't seem to notice, probably because they were chattering so much themselves they weren't hearing silences. If Miss Bluestone didn't chatter, she was more talkative than usual.
"And I daresay you're glad they're back," she was saying to Sholto after a long discussion of the proposed coffer dam.
"The lads? Yes, though I'll miss making the rounds of the farms myself." He took a sip of wine. "I've accounts to catch up on." He didn't sound as if the prospect of bookkeeping delighted him.
Nothing happened. Nothing was revealed. But he had sat down with Jean's friends and family and broken bread. Bread that she had made herself the day before.
When he had gone, Jean took up her journal. Her attraction to him had not weakened, but it was early days yet. She flipped over to a fresh page, drew a long breath, and set out to make a plan of attack.
She was not going to court Mr. Sholto, not exactly. She was going to find out who he was and what he felt about her, and she was going to test her own feelings. If she had learnt anything from her labour with the yule log, what she had learnt was patience. She thought of Robert the Bruce and the persistent spider. Patience and persistence. It would be a long, slow campaign of exploration, a kind of Advent leading to a new beginning, and she would keep a calendar.
She would, she decided, campaign in secret. She would tell no one what she was about, not her sisters at the dower house, nor in Scotland, nor London, not Miss Bluestone, certainly not Mr. Sholto.
The period of full mourning for Fanny would be over in June. Caro could then marry her dull Mr. Barnet and Georgy emerge from the schoolroom. Time enough for their spinster sister to grow out of infatuation--or to learn trust. Time for anything.
That night Jean finally let the fire in the sitting room burn itself out. She no longer needed it. She took an empty vial from her dresser, filled it with ashes from the log, and set it beside her looking glass to remind her of patience and persistence. And passion.
9.
Robert Burns's birthday was celebrated on January 25. That was not a fact Jean knew until she and Miss Bluestone received an invitation from Mr. Sholto to a Burns dinner at the inn in Earl's Brecon.
The invitation came early, just after breakfast. It was addressed to Miss Bluestone, and young Billy delivered it by hand on his way to see his grandmother again. Jean, Alice, and the governess were in the sitting room when Agnew brought it. He handed it over on a salver and withdrew at once, looking irritated. He disliked carrying messages.
Miss Bluestone scanned the note and showed it to Jean. "What do you think? I'm inclined to refuse."
No! Jean forced herself to speak in easy tones. "It sounds amusing. I like Burns's songs."
"But you're in mourning." Miss Bluestone hesitated. "And the ill-natured might sniff at the notion of an unwed lady dining with a young man in public, even with others present."
"You'll be there to lend me countenance."
"May I know what the note says?" Alice's eyes glittered.
Miss Bluestone passed her the invitation.
As Alice read, Jean came close to panic. She must go, she had to go, she needed to go. Good fortune prevented her from blurting that out. Good fortune and Alice.
Alice was horrified. "What is Mr. Sholto thinking of? Everyone knows Burns was a philanderer! A mad Jacobite! A common ploughman! Byron at least was a lord. No, indeed, Jean. You must not go. I draw the line at that."
A red haze formed before Jean's eyes. Why had she not sent Alice to Scotland the day after Christmas?
Miss Bluestone was frowning. At Alice.
"Perhaps you're confusing me with my young sisters. May I remind you that I am almost eight and twenty, not a green girl." Jean kept her voice quiet with an effort. "You're entitled to your opinion, Alice. However, I beg you to remember that you do not govern me in this." Or in anything else.
Alice blinked.
Jean wished she had not used the word 'govern.' She cast an apologetic look at Miss Bluestone, but the governess was still watching Alice.
It occurred to Jean to wonder why Alice had not been invited to dine. The girls were clearly too young, if what one heard of Burns dinners was true. Although ladies attended on occasion, the celebrations had been known to turn into raucous all-male events where whisky flowed like water. Jean had enough confidence in Mr. Sholto's judgment to believe he would not allow that to happen. If it did, she would learn something of him she hadn't known. She felt a shiver of delicious anticipation.
"Well!" Alice flounced from the room.
Jean said, "I'm sorry, Miss Bluestone, but I will not submit to Alice's distempered freaks."
To her surprise, Miss Bluestone nodded. "She has less than common sense." Jean had never before heard her utter a criticism of Alice. She must have been exasperated, probably because Alice had cut the ground from beneath her own moderate objections.
However, she smiled at Jean, calm and imperturbable as ever. "We shall have to read Mr. Burns's poetry before the dinner. I am not acquainted with his longer works." Burns's love songs had enjoyed a revival of popularity, along with other things Scottish, like Walter Scott's novels and the alarming tartans he invented for families who had never in their history worn the plaid.
Jean suppressed a grin. What would Miss Bluestone make of "Holy Willie's Prayer?" "I wonder
why Mr. Sholto did not entrust the meal to his housekeeper. Mr. Tidmarsh told me that's his usual practice."
"Like the Christmas feast?" Miss Bluestone shook her head. "You could not have dined in Mr. Sholto's cottage, Jean. I should have had to draw the line at that." She gave a rueful smile.
"And I," Jean said lightly.
Miss Bluestone let out a relieved breath. "A private parlour at the inn must be considered unexceptionable."
"Then you mean to say yes?"
"If you do."
It was Jean's turn to expel a breath of pure relief.
* * * *
Durbin drove Jean and Miss Bluestone in the barouche landau. By then, a week later, they had a better idea of what company they might expect at the dinner. Among others, Mrs. Moore was coming, escorted by her son. Jean hoped the widow had steeled herself for an evening spent listening to a foreign tongue.
Miss Bluestone had had time to digest "Holy Willie's Prayer." She was brave, if a trifle grim. "Lord, hear my earnest cry and pray'r, Against that Presbyt'ry o' Ayr!" As they drew up before the torch-lit hostelry, Jean felt the fizz of laughter, like good champagne.
The innkeeper received the earl's daughter himself, handing Jean down and giving Miss Bluestone his help as well. Durbin touched his hat and drove off to the stables.
They were ushered up a dark oaken stairway to the first storey where the buzz of conversation indicated the party was under way. Someone was tuning a fiddle.
When Mr. Sholto gave a dinner he didn't stint. The room glowed with wax candles, and a coal fire would make it hot before the evening was over. With Jean and Miss Bluestone there were twelve diners milling about and two musicians. Fortunately, Sholto had hired the larger of the two private dining rooms the inn boasted.
He came forward to greet them and thank them for coming then took them both to the foot of table where an elderly woman was already ensconced. He brought Jean to her, rather than vice versa as protocol dictated, because she was crippled with arthritis. Mrs. Showers had agreed, he said, smiling down at her, to act as his hostess.
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