by June Calvin
That evening the mood at Beaumont was celebratory. With the return of the workers Corbright had lured away, the harvest would speed up considerably. Rev. Milton Ormhill, Jason and Olivia’s uncle, dined with them. Busy with his own farm as well as parish work, he had not heard the full story of the two wagers. He clucked his tongue disapprovingly as he heard the details of the marriage wager.
“Knew I shouldn’t have left you at the tavern,” he growled, then deprived the rebuke of any sting by laughing heartily. “Not fair to Lord Edmund by half!” When he heard of Olivia’s hay wain wager, he crowed, “Clever girl,” and urged them to tell him the tale in all its details. Jason gladly obliged. The elder Ormhill’s craggy face glowed with pleasure as he listened to his nephew tell of his efforts to stack the hay, and Olivia’s chortling reminder of the inglorious outcome. Lavinia vied with her niece in describing Jason’s appearance as he emerged from the hay mountain, and Olivia’s once he had revenged himself by pitching hay on her.
“And poor Lord Edmund, who quite successfully delivered his own load, found himself buried in hay at their hands for no other sin than being nearby.” Lavinia chuckled.
“It is a good thing Corbright came up when he did,” Jason said, waggling a finger at her, “or you would have been next.”
“You wouldn’t have dared!”
“Oh, would I not have?”
Their uncle interrupted. “Corbright? What business had he there?”
Edmund inferred from the elderly man’s tone of voice that Corbright was no favorite of his.
“Well, that is quite a tale,” Jason began.
Olivia cleared her throat loudly. Her uncle shared with his niece and nephew the tendency to a quick temper, so she preferred that he not hear all of Corbright’s actions. When throat clearing and a kick under the table did not stop her brother’s headlong determination to retell the story, she interrupted. “Uncle does not want to hear all of that, Jason. Only you will be very happy to learn, Uncle Milton, that Corbright handsomely apologized for paying such high wages that he monopolized the valley’s workers, and has promised to return to the normal price.”
“What?” Lavinia looked, quite bewildered, from nephew to niece. “This is the first I have heard of it. When did this happen? For he behaved quite abominably at lunch yesterday, so much so that Jason forbade him to come on Ormhill land. And did you not have to go to High Wycombe today to hire new workers?”
Jason laughed. “You’ll be pleased to know that just as we started, Corbright sent Olivia a note. And quite a note it was, too. You should have seen her blush.”
“He . . . he said certain things which I am not at all sure he meant. But as I said, he did agree to lower his wages.”
“Ah.” Uncle Milton smiled at last. “If he keeps to that, it will be excellent, for I, too, am having difficulty getting people to harvest my acres, few though they are.”
“Few! Tch. What will Lord Edmund think, our poor relation having so small a living to farm.” Lavinia clucked her tongue at her brother.
“At least I have a crop to be harvested,” the elder Ormhill retorted. “That farm of yours is all but abandoned.”
“I’ll have you know I have received a very handsome offer to purchase that abandoned farm.”
“Purchase! You’d have to give it away.”
Olivia interrupted before hostilities could break out. The sight of their elders bickering was not an edifying one, though all too frequent. “Lord Edmund will think far less of us for falling into a family feud.”
“No, nor have you yet heard the best of the day’s news.”
“Jason . . .” Olivia’s voice shrilled with vexation.
“Livvy has promised to begin going about in society again. To go to London for the Season, in fact.”
Pandemonium broke out. Livvy hotly denied such intentions, Jason just as hotly asserted that she must keep her word, Lavinia exclaimed and pressed for details, and Uncle Milton shouted praise to the Lord for the working of miracles, jumped up, and bussed his niece noisily on the cheek.
Edmund could not help laughing at the scene, and the servants who had been bustling about serving the meal observed with huge grins on their faces. Olivia, mortified, finally succeeded in quieting her family by screaming at the top of her lungs, “Please, do try for a little decorum.”
Astonishment stopped them all in midsentence, and though Jason muttered, “You are a fine one to talk,” the elder Ormhills subsided at once, chagrin written on their faces.
“Lord Edmund already knows us for a harum-scarum lot,” Lavinia said, flapping her hand at him. “What must he think now?”
“Bedlamites,” Edmund responded, smiling broadly. “I have never been more entertained. Please do not stop on my account.”
“Decorum be hanged. You told Corbright you would go to London for the Season, and go you must, or—”
“That will do, Jason.” The reverend Ormhill, when he wished to do so, spoke with authority, and Jason instantly closed his mouth, though he sat with a mulish scowl on his face for the rest of the meal.
A change of subject was clearly in order. “But do you then really intend to remain here, working for Olivia?” Reverend Ormhill turned toward Edmund.
“I do. She has agreed to teach me about estate management. It has always been my ambition to learn about advanced agricultural practices. I had hoped one day to farm my own estate, but shall have to content myself with working for others, once I know enough to have something to offer a prospective employer.”
“I see.” Uncle Milton sucked contemplatively on his lower lip.
“Shall we have a game of whist after dinner?” Lavinia asked hopefully.
“The very thing,” her brother replied. “I propose, gentlemen, that we forego our port and join the ladies instantly.”
Jason had other ideas. “A glass of port first, I think.” He waggled his eyebrows significantly at his uncle, who acquiesced, reassuring Lavinia that they would not linger. “I wanted to tell you a bit more of the events of the day,” Jason said once the ladies had withdrawn. “Olivia is all in a pelter to keep matters quiet, but it may be that she and Corbright will make it up.”
Reverend Ormhill took up the port and poured himself a generous glass. “You think so? It is quite a surprise to me. He clearly intended to do serious damage to her purse—and yours—just a day or two ago.”
“A lovers’ quarrel, is what he said. Unknown to us, he has been courting her through the mail and once in an accidental meeting. And he made amends most handsomely for the haying problem, or tried to. Had all of his estate workers out in the north meadow this morning, in an effort to help us catch up. She wouldn’t accept it—descended upon him like some avenging angel—but he showed he’d learned something about her, at least. Said he had been wrong to criticize her for managing our estates, that if she’d have him, he’d leave the management of her land in her hands, that sort of thing.”
“How did the decision to go to London come about?”
Jason chuckled. “You know her temper, Uncle. He goaded her into it by claiming that she has been wearing the willow for him for three years. And she has, too.”
“I don’t know. Certainly she was very upset at first, but I thought she had come to the conclusion she was well out of it. As had I.”
“It could have been sour grapes on her part,” Jason declared. “At any rate, he said he intends to court her, and I wouldn’t count him out.”
“I do not trust the man. What say you, Lord Edmund?”
Edmund frowned. If indeed what had gone on between Olivia Ormhill and Corbright was just a lovers’ quarrel, he would not be thanked for throwing a wet blanket on their reunion. Still, he liked the Ormhills too well to withhold information that might prevent her from making a tragic mistake. “I know something of the man, from younger days. He was a treacherous friend and dangerous foe then. What mitigating effect age and a love that has survived three years might have upon him, I do not know.”
“You mentioned something about his luring you into a leaky boat, yesterday.” Jason put his elbows on the table and leaned forward.
“A childhood prank?” Reverend Ormhill sounded dismissive.
“Some might say so, though he was eighteen at the time. I was twelve. I wanted very much to be noticed and accepted by him and my oldest brother, Carl. I suppose I made a nuisance of myself. At any rate, I asked them to teach me to row a scull. Carl repulsed me as violently as he always did, but Franklin espoused my cause, or so it seemed. He promised to teach me when he found a suitable boat. A week later he put me up before him on his horse and with Carl following, took me to a nearby stream. I should have known from Carl’s grin that all was not as it seemed. Franklin instructed me to get into a rather rickety-looking scull, then shoved it hard, out far enough from shore that it caught the current. Away I went, without oars. And it did leak. It is fortunate for me that I could swim.”
“Did Corbright intend the current to take you?” Jason asked.
“Under my father’s angry questioning, he claimed that he did not.”
“Of course he would say that,” Milton mused disapprovingly.
“Is that all you know to Corbright’s disadvantage?” Jason asked dismissively.
“That was the worst of several similar incidents.” Edmund shrugged, sorry to see that Jason took such cruelty lightly, or let his desire to see his sister wed blind him.
“Are you going to play whist or not?” Lavinia stuck her head in the door to the dining room and looked challengingly at the group.
They all rose and filed into the drawing room. Edmund wandered over to the piano instead of going to the table that was already set up for cards.
“Come, Lord Edmund. You must make up the fourth,” Lavinia bade him.
“I will have to beg off, being quite penniless.”
“Nonsense. We play only for chicken stakes.” Reverend Ormhill beckoned him to the table.
“However small the stakes, remember that Jason quite cleaned me out. I have only managed to win back a few items of my clothing at billiards.” Edmund smiled to show he felt no distress, and sat down to noodle at the piano.
“You misunderstood yesterday’s stakes,” Jason said, cutting across Olivia’s equally emphatic “You should have a fat purse, according to our wager.”
Edmund looked from one to another in surprise.
“Remember, I stipulated that if the two of you could not bring your wagons to the barn full of hay, you were to have your belongings and your winnings to the point that Jason began to drink heavily.”
Edmund thought back, not remembering her precise wording. “But we changed the terms—”
“Not that part of them.” Jason stalked over to the piano looking as if he meant to drag Edmund physically to the table. “I’ve a pretty fair idea of what I owe you, and will put it in your hands when we go upstairs. Now come along and let me win some of it back.”
“But Miss Ormhill won’t be able to play if I join you.”
“I rarely play, and when I do, I usually manage to infuriate my partner,” Olivia assured him. “I have a good deal of bookkeeping to do, and welcome the opportunity to catch up on some of it.”
Edmund looked at the expectant faces of the other three and surrendered. He would have preferred to look across the table at Olivia rather than Lavinia, of course, but found the older woman a canny partner. His fortunes had improved by several shillings when the card game broke up.
Olivia retired to her office, ostensibly to do some bookkeeping. But her real purpose could have been inferred from the magazine she half hid in the folds of her skirt as she excused herself.
After lighting the branch of candles on her desk, Olivia smoothed open her aunt’s copy of La Belle Assemblée and began studying the current fashions depicted and described therein. It had been several years since she had paid much attention to London fashions, and she knew her wardrobe was sadly out of date.
At odd moments during the day Corbright’s taunt had come back to her: “If you were not still wearing the willow for me, you would have found a husband by now.”
She simply could not bear that people thought she wore the willow for Corbright. She must take more care with her appearance, and begin going about in society. Was it only his taunt that made her feel thus, or his protestations of love? Or had someone else made her newly aware of herself as a woman? She knew only that, deep within her, feelings she had long suppressed were stirring. She wished to be attractive; she wished to have some pleasure in life, rather than the continual round of care and worry that had become her lot since her father’s death.
“Then it is true?”
Olivia jumped, almost guiltily, at the sound of her aunt’s voice. “What?” She attempted to hide the magazine under some papers on her desk.
“It is true that you are going to London for the Season?”
Olivia shook her head. “What makes you think that?”
“Don’t pretend you haven’t got my magazine. I sought it to take to bed with me. Even if I couldn’t see a corner of it peeking out, I would know, for they don’t get up and walk away on their own.”
Olivia sighed and brought the magazine out into the open. “Yes, I have it, but what that has to do with London, I cannot imagine.”
“You need to begin planning your wardrobe, of course.”
“If I were going to London, I would.”
“Jason would have a conniption if he heard this!” Aunt Lavinia put her hands on her hips. “He talks of it as a fait accompli.”
“Actually I was thinking of the Flintridge assembly.”
Lavinia clapped her hands. “Even better. You are going to begin this fall.”
“Begin what?” Olivia asked irritably. “Dressing?”
“Going about in society. Corbright drove you away, and now he is drawing you back.”
“Do you, too, think I have been wearing the willow for Corbright?”
“Haven’t you?”
“No! Emphatically no! It is true enough that I haven’t gone about in society much, but does no one realize how much time these estates take?”
Lavinia held up her hand. “Pax, niece. I know how hard you work. Still, you could have found time to attend the assemblies and at least a few neighborly dances and dinner parties. You used to love to dance.”
“Which is why I have decided to begin attending such again. Not because Corbright beckoned to me!” She lifted her chin defiantly.
“Humph!” Lavinia snorted her doubts. “You do mean to go to London, don’t you? For Jason will be beside himself if you do not.”
Olivia looked down at the magazine. “Perhaps. Oh, I suppose I must. At least this year I may leave without fear of finding the estate falling down when I return.”
“Lord Edmund?”
“Yes. He seems quite capable and sincerely interested in the work. I expect he will be sufficiently prepared to stand in my stead next spring.”
“That is excellent. He truly is a fine young man. Pity he is penniless. Pity your interests are fixed elsewhere.”
“That isn’t true,” she snapped.
“Isn’t it?” Lavinia looked shrewdly at her niece.
“Should it be? What do you think of Franklin? Of his behavior, and his motives?”
Lavinia dropped her eyes, fiddled with the sleeve of her gown, then popped up to go to the windows and gaze out at the night sky. At last, she said in a soft voice, “I am not at all sure of his sincerity.”
“Nor am I.”
Lavinia whirled around. “Then why the sudden interest—”
“When he said I had been wearing the willow for him, it started me thinking about things. It is true, I did stay at home and brood for quite a while. But then I threw myself into estate matters. Well, I had to, hadn’t I, after I found that traitor Dalton stealing us blind? And then, when I went to my first dance after our broken engagement . . .”
“He was there, parading his new
wife. . . .”
“Exactly! And everyone looking sideways at me, some with pity, some with cruel amusement. It just made me so angry. And so sad. Soon I stopped going out. Goodness knows there was plenty to occupy me here on our property. But it was never my ambition to spend my life as an estate manager. I wanted a home and a family. Children.” She said the last word on a long sigh.
“Children.” Lavinia’s tone was even more wistful. “I had so hoped to have little grandnieces and nephews by now! And as it is Corbright who has restored you to your senses, I suppose I must at least suspend judgment as to his intentions.”
“Oh, his intentions I have no doubt of. It is his reasons I question. Aunt Lavinia, do you think it possible that Corbright still has feelings for me? If he ever had.”
“I don’t know. His behavior the other day at the harvest confused me. One minute he was flirting and saluting you, the next threatening. Then the note Jason spoke of. Not having seen it, I cannot judge. . . .”
“I want you to see it.” After fishing around in a desk drawer for a few minutes, she took out a small packet of letters. She withdrew Corbright’s conciliatory note. “Read this, and tell me what you think.”
Lavinia read the note over twice. Olivia watched her expression, hoping for some clue, but her aunt had a countenance that did not easily betray her emotions.
At last she looked up. “Livvy, it is well written. I can see why you might give him the benefit of the doubt. And there have been others, I see. Are they in the same vein?”
“If possible, more loverlike. In one of them he actually proposed! Even had I been eager to receive his attentions, I thought it unseemly to begin addressing me so soon after his wife’s death.”
“As do I. Why was I not aware of them before?”
Livvy looked beyond her aunt, gazing into nothingness for a moment. “I wasn’t sure myself how I felt about them.”
“You didn’t want me pushing you toward him,” Lavinia said regretfully.
“Partly it was that. Aunt, you haven’t given me your opinion.”
“Oh, Livvy, you know how little I understand of these things. My lack of beauty, linked with a small dowry and an overly protective father, meant I had no suitors to speak of. I’ve lived my life as spinsterish a spinster as ever was.”
