25
Sir Henry Mayne was nearly as baffled by Colonel Falk's conduct as Lady Sarah when Richard wrote him a polite but firm refusal of hospitality and repeated the request for a cottage. But Sir Henry was not as military-minded as his sister Frances, and contained his disappointment with only a few grumbles, which he directed at Emily. "Ungrateful whelp" was the strongest term he uttered. Emily understood him to be reconciled to finding Colonel Falk a house.
"There's the Lodge."
Emily shook her head. "It's a five mile walk from the Lodge to Wellfield. Besides, it's too large."
"He don't want a dashed hovel."
"No, of course not, Papa. There's Aunt Maud's little house."
Sir Henry guffawed, and Emily was forced to a reluctant answering smile. Her great-aunt had lived out her twilight years in a tiny ornate bandbox that still reeked of femininity.
"There is Watkins's cottage at Mellings Parva." Watkins had been Sir Henry's first bailiff and his father's before him, a venerable old man who treated the infant Emily to bull's-eyes as she walked with her nurse to the village.
"Dash it, not a gentleman's residence."
"If we were near a town I daresay Colonel Falk would let rooms. Watkins's cottage is more spacious than that, and it is in fair condition, isn't it?"
"Well..."
"You've not let it!" Sir Henry had been looking for a tenant for the cottage since Watkins's death the previous winter.
Sir Henry shook his head, "No, but I don't like the idea."
"Oh, Papa, times change. I daresay Colonel Falk would be perfectly content with Watkins's house. There are four rooms, the windows are large, the kitchen has a pump, and there's a proper writing desk--unless you've hauled off the furnishings."
"It's as it was in Watkins's time. Place wants a coat of lime. Tiles loose. Dash it, it's cluttered with the old man's gewgaws."
"Do you mend the tiles. I'll give it a good cleaning," Emily said firmly. "And you may take out the lumber. Watkins's cottage will do very well."
Still grumbling, Sir Henry acceded.
As August dragged on, Emily, having seen the cottage refurbished, changed the water in the vases she had confidently placed on every flat surface. Then she changed the flowers. Sir Henry received a bank draught for three months' rent, which inspired him to stump up with a load of wood and an extra bookcase. Emily aired the linen and dusted. It rained--proof positive the roof no longer leaked--and cleared off again for what would probably be the last wine of summer.
On her third flower changing expedition Emily took polishing cloths and a duster and made a thorough, critical inspection.
The kitchen-scullery-dining room of Watkins's cottage was a large low-ceilinged room made surprisingly light by two small windows and a fresh coat of lime. The gay chintz curtains Emily had hung made it cheerful. The hearth shone with scrubbing and so did the round oak table. Watkins had left an oak dresser, too, against the interior wall. In it Emily had placed such dishes and cutlery as she judged Colonel Falk might need, including three sturdy pewter mugs for the children.
Emily swept the already spotless flags briskly and took the blue bowl of marigolds from the table to the pump for fresh water. A few drops of priming and a hearty push on the handle produced a stream of artesian water. The interior pump was the one great luxury the cottage boasted--the well water was reputed to be the sweetest for several miles around.
She had emptied the vase of stale water and laid the unfaded flowers on the slate drainboard. She stood dreamily letting the water pulse over her hands. It was a warm day and the cool rush felt pleasant. Slowly the stream waned to a trickle and Emily filled her bowl. She replaced the marigolds, critically nipping off a brownish bloom with her fingers, dried the bowl and her hands on her apron, and turned.
Richard Falk was standing in the door from the passage, watching her silently. Emily clutched the bowl to her bosom and stared. It was improbable that she was seeing visions in broad daylight.
"Hullo, Mrs. Foster." His voice at least sounded familiar. "Playing the housemaid?" The remark, while not flattering, was reassuring.
Emily flushed, laughing a little, and set the bowl on the table. "Caught in the act. How do you, sir? I'm very glad to see you." She yanked the apron off and advanced to him, her hand outstretched in welcome.
He took it left-handed, which made her flush again. His right arm was still in a sling and his right coat sleeve hung empty. She ought to have thought. However, his clasp on her still damp paw was warm and quite real, and Emily's happiness overpowered her confusion. "We'd nearly given you up for this week," she confided, smiling at him. "The children have been wonderfully impatient. Did you drive from Dover? Have you come in Sir Robert's carriage? Where's McGrath?"
At her tumbling questions he smiled, too, leaving Emily breathless. "To answer you in reverse order, McGrath is at the inn with our gear. We came on the mail coach. From London."
"Good heavens."
He looked a little pale but otherwise remarkably well, Emily thought, and well turned out in a new brown coat and buckskins. And remarkably handsome, too. She was apt to forget what a handsome man he was. He wore his thick brown hair longer than usual, to hide the scar, she supposed. It served the purpose and she liked the effect much better than a proper Stanhope crop.
He noticed that they were still holding hands and disengaged gently. "Shall you show me the house? I wasn't sure I'd picked the right cottage, but there was an ominous-looking woman with a broom across the lane, so I chose this one."
"How fortunate you didn't go up to her. Mrs. Hibbert feuded with Watkins for years. She's our local witch."
He was startled into laughter, a pleasant and thoroughly distracting sound.
Emily contrived not to throw her arms around him. Propriety, Emily, propriety. "You've had a tiresome journey. Ought you to have walked from the inn?"
"Nothing wrong with my legs." He was still amused. "Lead on, ma'am."
She showed him Watkins's parlour, with the rosewood secretary for his writing and the settle and the chairs for the children. It was a less attractive room than the kitchen, smaller because the bedroom behind it cut off a third of the space, but the red Turkey carpet had cheered it up. She was glad she'd brought that and the bowl of daisies on the mantel.
"I daresay you'll be wanting more room for books. Papa will bring the estate carpenter down to you when you've settled in. The bedroom is rather poky. There's room above for McGrath and Peggy to have a little privacy. Do you think it will do? It's not at all far to Wellfield House. Half a mile along the lane."
"Mrs. Foster--"
"And I think you should be calling me Emily," she went on greatly daring. "We've been acquainted for a long time now, Richard, and I abhor ceremony. Besides, I'll never remember to call you Colonel. I've only just got used to Major." She crashed to a stop and ventured a look at him.
His eyes were grave. "You're very kind. Emily." He let out a long breath and looked about the room. "I like the house. It's far better than anything I could have found for myself."
"I thought perhaps you'd find it too small."
"Small!" His brows shot up and he grinned, with the predictable effect on Emily's pulse. "You have an extravagant idea of my expectations. I've just spent two months in a back bedchamber with a panorama of chimney pots. This looks like Versailles."
Emily laughed. "I've saved the best for last." She led him down the narrow passageway to the back door. "You see, I knew you'd be wanting to have the children to yourself some of the time, and no cottage, however spacious, can contain such spirited children without bursting. When you writ Papa to find you a house I remembered Watkin's garden."
A bit of weeding and pruning had improved the overgrown plot out of all compass. Emily gazed about her with satisfaction. The afternoon sun showed the garden at its best. The apple trees were heavy with green fruit, the grass a trifle brown, perhaps, but tidy, just right for romping children. Sir Henry had caused his carpe
nter to put up a swing in the far tree, and the bench beneath the nearer one shone with new paint. Along the grey stone wall the autumn flowers, freed from choking weeds, flared in cheerful riot, yellow and orange and scarlet, a patch of delphiniums like a bit of blue sky in one corner. It was not a large garden, but it would be large enough.
She danced across the grass feeling rather like a pleased child herself. Amy and Matt had tested the swing already and pronounced it serviceable, but Emily was glad she hadn't brought the children with her. Perhaps she should have, but for once she had not wanted their company, and she certainly did not want it now. The thought made her self-conscious again.
She turned back, wanting reassurance, to find that Richard stood in the doorway. He was watching her, frowning, perhaps because of the light. Sir Robert had said he suffered from headaches.
"Do you not like the garden?"
He walked slowly over to the bench and sat down on it. "Very much, Mrs. Foster."
"Emily," she corrected. She gave the swing a push and went to stand before him. The swing moved back and forth in shorter and shorter arcs.
In the afternoon light the marks of Richard's ordeal were plainer than they had been in the gentler light of the kitchen, and his eyes were troubled. He looked very tired. "Emily, then. I'm glad I found you here alone. The children are apt to be an impediment to rational speech."
Emily smiled. "True. What did you wish to say?"
"That I owe you an apology."
Emily stared, blank.
The headache, or frown, if that was what it was, still tugged at his brows. "You will have wondered why I didn't warn you long ago of my...inconvenient antecedents." He looked away.
Emily blinked. "Oh. Do you mean Lady Sarah and so on?"
"And so on," he repeated, grim. "I shan't pretend that I would have told you from the first, but I daresay I'd have got to it. I believed I'd seen the last of them, you see."
"I like Lady Sarah," Emily said feebly. "It's all over now. Isn't it?"
"I hope so."
"Sir Robert has been everything that is kind."
"Yes."
She sat gingerly at the other end of the bench and cocked her head, enquiring.
In the tree's shade his eyes were very dark. "Will you tell me something? If I'd made a clean breast of things from the first, from the time my solicitor answered your advertisement, would you have consented to take the children?"
She hesitated just too long.
He sighed and looked away. "Well, there you have my reason. Not very honourable, but I was desperate enough to be ruthless."
"I believe the Duke of Newsham did not know of their existence at the time," she offered by way of comfort.
"It didn't occur to me that he would discover them, either. My tactical blunder was Bevis. I'd forgot he's my mother's cousin, and would probably run into one or another of her children."
Emily turned that over in her mind. If Bevis were Richard's mother's cousin, then he was also Richard's cousin. She wondered if that fact had ever crossed either man's mind. "Then the encounter with Lady Sarah was almost inevitable?"
"I daresay."
Emily groped for the words to express her confused feelings. "Pray don't refine too much upon it. I've had a few anxious moments, but the children are happy and in the pink of health. That's what counts. Shall you come with me now to see them?"
He started to say something and stopped, rubbing at his forehead. "I thought...this evening." His hand dropped. "That is, what time do they go down for the night?"
"Tommy at half past eight and the other two at nine."
"Early."
Such hours were rather late for children. In winter they went to bed earlier. Emily suppressed a smile. Clearly Amy and Tommy would lead a strange life if, God forbid, their father took them off with him. Her amusement faded and she shivered a little. "Why don't you come to dinner? Papa and Aunt Fan are coming, and the vicar. They'd be very glad to welcome you. We dine at seven."
"I'd like to thank Sir Henry for the house." Richard hesitated, then smiled ruefully. "I confess I'd prefer not to display my famous one-handed fork trick just yet."
Emily flushed. That was the second time she'd forgot his disability. He would be thinking her remarkably insensitive. "If you'd rather not I won't press you, though I assure you no one would stare."
"I'm sure they're all far too well-bred. It's mostly vanity. I hate being so confounded clumsy." His smile faded. "If you dine at seven I can see that my coming at eight would be inconvenient to you. I'll walk up in the morning. I'd come now, but McGrath will appear at any moment bearing potions and salves and lint. If I don't cooperate he'll sit on my head."
Emily rose, reluctant to leave. "There's no need to wait till morning to see the children, Richard. Come at eight, before Tommy falls asleep. Phillida will show you up to the nursery for a nice private reunion, and then, when you've seen the children, you can come down to the withdrawing room for a glass of Papa's sherry."
He demurred politely, but Emily set herself to persuade him. She didn't intend to tell anyone but Phillida of his arrival. Let it be a surprise. A splendid surprise, as it had been to her.
He escorted her as far as the stile that led to the private footpath. McGrath had come with the inn porter, bearing the luggage, glowering. Peggy would have a reunion, too.
Emily walked slowly home, hugging her pleasure to herself. When she finally reached the house she hesitated to go in, for it seemed to her that her feelings must be written all over her face.
She looked in on the children's supper, mildly surprised to find them unchanged and unconscious of change. She settled a dispute between Matt and Amy, admired Tommy's expertise with the silver fork her father had given him, and catching Peggy's sharp eyes on her, escaped to make last minute arrangements for dinner. That done, she dressed with great care in a new muslin trimmed in blue ribands. After critical inspection of her flushed cheeks, her bright blue eyes, her shining brown curls under the merest wisp of a lace cap, Emily decided that she didn't look in the least like a housemaid. What she looked was nervous.
26
The vicar, Mr. Wheeler, was coming for dinner. A fiftyish widower who instructed Matt and half a dozen other sprouts in the rudiments of Latin, Wheeler had already proposed to Emily three times, and she knew she would hear his heavy gallantries this night with special impatience. If the same florid phrases had fallen from Richard Falk's lips she would have drunk them in like a greedy shark. She wrinkled her nose at the hussy in the glass and stuck out her tongue. Housemaid, indeed. Laughing at herself, she went down to greet her aunt and father.
They had brought Mr. Wheeler with them, a circumstance which allowed Emily to put dinner forward a quarter hour. No one remarked the briskness of the preliminaries. Her father had spent the day making an extra crop of hay in his water meadow and declared himself sharp-set. Mr. Wheeler had no such excuse for appetite but dug in with relish anyway. Between masculine munching and Aunt Fan's detailed account of a visit with a widowed friend in Winchester, Emily had scarcely to say a word. The dining room lay at the back of the house overlooking the orchard. She had some hope that Richard's arrival might pass undetected--if Phillida had understood her instructions.
"Off your feed, Emma?"
Startled, Emily dropped her fork on the plate and met her father's disapproving gaze.
"Gel don't eat enough to keep a bird alive," Sir Henry grumbled.
"It's the heat, Henry." Aunt Fan cut a bit of sprout. "Debilitating."
How absurd they were. Emily swallowed a bubble of laughter. "Yes, indeed. If the good weather keeps on in this tiresome way I shall go into a decline. Do have one of those doves, Mr. Wheeler. Mrs. Harry is trying a new sauce and will be wanting your opinion. Wine, Papa?"
The moment passed. It was wonderful, however, what a tedious business a dinner could be. So many side dishes to be tasted and judged. So much fuss. Would Papa really insist on smelling the cork of that tolerable little
hock Emily had purchased in Winchester? Would Richard's knock occur as Phillida was serving a course? Would the meal never end?
Eight o'clock whirred and bonged in the middle of the sweet, but nothing untoward happened. Perhaps Richard had suffered a relapse or just decided not to come. When Phillida brought in the savoury, however, it was obvious from the maid's air of portent--and from the way she dropped the cheese slicer and knocked over Mr. Wheeler's water glass--that Something had Occurred.
Emily mopped, apologised, and excused herself. She followed the flustered servant out into the hall.
"Has he come?"
"Oh, Mrs. Foster! Through the kitchen, and Mr. McGrath with him. Didn't Mrs. Harry give a shriek." Phillida giggled. "I showed 'un up to nursery. Such a to-do as I never heard. Mrs. McGrath fair had the vapours."
"Hush, Phillida. Let us finish this meal in decent order. Try not to pour the coffee over Sir Henry." Emily returned to the dining room, suppressing her excitement as best she could.
"Clumsy wench, that Phillida," Sir Henry growled. "I wonder you put up with her, Emily."
Mr. Wheeler had leapt to hold Emily's chair. "But Mrs. Foster's soft heart must prevent her turning off so faithful a servant, Sir Henry."
Emily bit back a snicker and slipped into her place. Old softhearted Emily.
"What's happening, Emily?" Aunt Fan, alive as usual upon all suits. "Out with it, gel."
Emily gave up. "Oh, it's just Colonel Falk."
Under their startled gaze her false insouciance deserted her. She gave Aunt Fan an apologetic glance, adding, "He came this afternoon. On the mail coach. Phillida has just taken him up to see the children."
Sir Henry exploded. "Upon my word! Have you no manners, Emma? Didn't you ask the poor devil to dine?"
Emily soothed and explained, and restrained her relations from trooping up to the schoolroom at once. Mr. Wheeler was struck dumb. He kept looking from one to another with the air of a bewildered horse. Sir Henry grumbled. Aunt Fan exclaimed. Emily began to enjoy the sensation of controlling events.
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