“You didn’t garden over in Yorkshire?”
“Not after the first couple of years.” Hadrian paused in his consumption of the strawberries. “The congregants were an odd lot. It became apparent I was to buy my produce from them and use their choice of horse for my transportation, and their choice of housekeeper for my vicarage.”
“This sounds more like being a child at the whim of the nursery staff than it does being the spiritual leader of a community.”
She’d put words to something he’d avoided admitting even under the heading of honest thoughts.
“All clergy must resign themselves to a paradox,” Hadrian said, eyeing a particularly large strawberry. “You are a leader, but in such way that nobody is offended, threatened, imposed upon, or otherwise inconvenienced. You effect this miracle not only because you are a shining example of diplomacy, humility, and self-sacrifice, but also because the folk you’re leading stock your larder, shingle your roof and, if they’ve a mind to, write to your bishop.”
“What would your bishop say, if this paradox chafed and the hypocrisy became too oppressive?”
“He’d say get the hell out of the church.” Hadrian set the strawberry down. “I’m sorry, that was not well phrased.” He rose, but caught the expression on his hostess’s face.
Not shocked. Smiling, the minx.
“As a young man, you were intent on joining the military,” she said. “You were intent on subduing the enemy and growing rich in foreign climes. Maybe you were the one who suffered the subduing.”
“Suffered nominally, perhaps.” Though others suffered far worse fates. “But subdued, apparently not.”
A cheering thought, which had been in short supply lately.
“Good for you, Hay Bothwell.” She smiled again, that soft, wonderful smile, and the word alluring popped into Hadrian’s head. “Never admit defeat.”
“Is that the Portmaine motto?”
“It’s my motto,” she said, getting to her feet and again slipping her arm through his. “Let’s walk off a little of our meal, shall we?”
“If you like.” He let her lead him from the bright little parlor, up to the Portmaine portrait gallery, which looked out over the sprawling back gardens.
“I do this with Harold,” Hadrian said. “When I’ve been gone we spend a few minutes the next morning greeting the ancestors.”
“A ritual. One with meaning.”
“Yes.” Her insight pleased him, tremendously, because so many of the supposedly holy rituals had felt devoid of meaning. Theatre conducted to facilitate a social gathering for the village, nothing more.
“Between ritual and routine lies a word of difference,” Avis said, pausing before the first Viscount Hazelton. “Did you know he had twelve children and they all lived to adulthood?”
“He was lucky, or his children were.” Hadrian would have missed her expression, except he turned his head to study the old fellow in his hose and collar.
Avis Portmaine did want children, desperately. Good God Almighty. The look in her eyes, the sorrow tracing her mouth, and the resolve in her spine all spoke of longing to the point of pain.
Hadrian strolled her past the viscount. “I’ve considered it fortunate that I did not have children with Rue. They would be struggling along with only me for a family, and any son would be burdened with expectation of Harold’s title, and yet he’d be simply a clergyman’s son, and that would be difficult.”
“One could see it thus.” Avis considered the next viscount’s more austere countenance. Her gaze shifted then, brows knitting as she glanced out the window. “I wonder where Fen has been. He was supposed to meet with his shepherds this morning.”
“Fen?”
“Ashton Fenwick, our steward. He’s ridden out, perhaps enjoying the air as you did.”
“But?”
“But the man is in the saddle more days than not. He has no need of an aimless ride, and as spring advances, we must organize.”
As Hadrian needed to get organized. “For?”
“Lambing is almost done. Before we can drive the sheep up to summer pastures, we must get through shearing and dipping, and all that goes on while plowing and planting are tended to, and foaling, and calving, and we often work in concert with Landover’s crews on such things, but Harold has been distracted this year.”
“I am not distracted. I am, rather, terrified of the responsibility my brother is tossing onto my shoulders.” The first time Hadrian had admitted as much, to himself or anyone else.
“Summer would have been a better time for Harold to travel, but fear not, we’ll look after you.”
They stood by the window, the morning light bringing out rich red highlights in Avis’s hair, while down in the stable yard, her steward dismounted and handed his horse off. Hadrian could see the faintest of lines radiating from Avis’s eyes, lines that would turn into laugh lines and crinkle with humor.
“I’ve a favor to ask,” Hadrian said, because in some regard, he did need looking after—so did she. “Come to services with me this Sunday.”
She moved away from the sunny window. “Hadrian, I do not enjoy attending.”
“You think I will?” He tugged her down onto a cushioned window bench and kept her fingers laced with his lest she flee before he’d wheedled his boon from her.
She studied their hands. “You’re a churchman, or the nearest thing to it, and Hal will go with you. If you’re worried about forgetting names, or not recognizing—”
“I’m not a churchman,” he said. “I’m not sure I ever was, and yet I’ll be an object of interest, and the local vicar will be friendly but cautious, and then some some-damned-body will spout a piece of scripture, and someone else will reply with another little snippet, and all the while, they’ll be watching me, to see how I manage, as if I’m the former but aging champion in an ecclesiastical game of battledore.”
“You want me to be your decoy?”
“Not a decoy. Well, perhaps, or at least a distraction. Do you truly never attend?”
“I’ve been to some weddings. Occasionally I go at Yuletide to hear the children sing. I avoid Easter, though I often supply the flowers.”
“I can make sure Hal comes along, and we’ll have strength in numbers. You’ll do it, then?”
He couldn’t read what passed through her eyes, but she squeezed his fingers, then slipped her hand from his.
“Just this once Hay Bothwell, and you are not to let me out of your sight.”
“Nor shall you to take your gaze from my defenseless little self. Harold will be of no use whatsoever. He’s too distracted with his upcoming travels.”
They spent a few more minutes discussing the arrangements, and then Hadrian made his excuses, Lady Avis still on his arm as they approached the stables. She swung along beside him, matching his stride easily.
“Fen!” She dropped Hadrian’s arm to hail a great brute of a fellow emerging from the stables. “Come meet Mr. Hadrian Bothwell. He’ll manage Landover in Harold’s absence.”
“Mr. Bothwell.” Fenwick barely inclined his head, as a dark eyebrow swooped upward. “You’re the vicar, aren’t you?”
“Former vicar. I’m also Harold’s younger brother, and he’s asked this of me. I will look forward to working with you this spring.”
“Will you now?” The eyebrow lowered and humor flashed in dark, dark eyes. The buccaneering air was complemented by a substantial knife sheathed at his side and a certain slouching grace. “Can’t say I’ve ever seen a vicar actually work.”
“Recall your manners, or I’ll turn you over my knee, Fen,” Lady Avis scolded. “Hadrian is an old and very dear friend, as well as a neighbor. You’re to treat him like family, and none of your nonsense.”
Fenwick regarded the lady with a martyred air. “Lady Avis is forever threatening. I’ve yet to grace this knee of hers, not even once.”
“Because you’re all bluster, while I mean every word I say.”
“Is this the v
icar’s beast?” Fenwick asked when Caesar was led from the stables.
I am not a vicar. “He is. I bought him from St. Just before leaving my last post.”
Fenwick gave a low, appreciative whistle and ran a hand down the gelding’s neck. “We’re in the presence of royalty, Lady Avie. I’d heard St. Just moved up north, but I didn’t know he had any stock with him.”
“A few youngsters with more to follow this year,” Hadrian said, willing to let his horse be admired by all comers. “You’re welcome to take him out some day. He’s a perfect gentleman.”
“And up to my weight,” Fenwick said, eyeing Caesar’s muscular flanks. “Lady Avie, can you spare your vicar for a bit? I’ve a mind to try this beast. St. Just mounts are legendary.”
“You were supposed to meet with the shepherds, Ashton.”
“Already did, my lady.” Fenwick hunkered and ran a caressing hand down Caesar’s right foreleg. “You could come with us, keep an eye on me and make sure your vicar doesn’t come to any harm.”
He straightened and frankly leered at Avis, whose mouth thinned with impatience.
“So I can watch the two of you race neck or nothing over rabbit holes like a pair of heedless boys? Thank you, no. When will shearing start?”
They would have, too—raced over bad terrain for stupid, masculine reasons. Hadrian—Lady Avis’s old and very dear friend—resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at Fenwick.
“Bothwell’s herds spent more time on the hills than ours, so we should take off their wool first,” Fen said, all business. “A couple more weeks to let the weather moderate and to finish up with the foaling, and we’ll be ready to start, assuming his holiness, the vicar, agrees?”
“The former vicar,” Hadrian said, quite pleasantly. “I’ll likely agree once I’ve conferred with my brother on the matter. Is that your horse?”
A wizened groom led a big, raw-boned chestnut gelding from the stables.
Fen smiled at his horse the way some papas smiled at their firstborn sons. “You see before you Handsome Folly, also know as Handy, who, like his owner, is a fellow of hidden depths and unfaltering loyalties.”
Oh, for pity’s sake. In the next instant, an odd sort of pleasure welled, as Hadrian realized he was no longer a vicar. Truly, absolutely, in every fashion, he was free of his former vocation and could banter with this Fenwick fellow in any manner he pleased.
“He’s as loyal to his bucket of oats as you are to your mug of ale,” Avis scoffed. “Handy is less likely to be cutting up anyone’s peace with his blather. Gentlemen, I’m off, for I never did finish my strawberries. Hadrian.” She went up on her toes and kissed his cheek. “Lovely to have you home. I’ve missed you terribly, so call as often as you can. Fen, behave.”
“Yes, yes.” Fen waved his riding crop in circles. “Or over your dainty knee I will go. I’m trembling.”
Avis snatched the riding crop from his hand, whacked him smartly on his backside, passed the crop to Hadrian and strode off.
“I adore that woman,” Fen said, watching her retreat. “I do fear the sentiment is not mutual.”
“If your adoration is always so respectfully expressed,” Hadrian said dryly, “then one can hardly wonder why it would be.” He passed over the crop, shifted to check Handy’s girth, and put the stirrups up a hole, while Fenwick let Hadrian’s leathers down a hole.
For all his banter and charm, Hadrian’s first impression of Fenwick stuck with him: a big, dark brute.
Who called his employer Lady Avie and got his behind smacked for his cheek. That part, Hadrian had rather enjoyed.
Fen swung up and patted Caesar’s neck. “Where shall we take them?”
“I haven’t done much riding since coming back.” Coming home. “If you don’t mind spending time on Landover’s side of the property line, there used to be a nice trail through the deer park.”
“Lay on, Macduff.” Fenwick gestured with his crop, then fell in beside Hadrian and Handy at the trot.
They rode along in silence, Hadrian using the time to explore Handy’s responses. Handy was not as elegant as Caesar and could not boast youthful exuberance, or a perfect distribution of parts, but he was exquisitely trained.
“He’ll do one-tempis, won’t he?” Hadrian asked.
“When he’s warmed up. How does a lowly vicar know of matters equestrian?”
Former vicar, thank the Deity. “I thought I would become a dragoon at one point. I spent all my summers tearing around the neighborhood on horseback. Harold always saw to it I had good horses, and what boy doesn’t have at least a phase of horse madness?”
“What rich boy? How does one go from a horse-mad dragoon acolyte to a lowly vicar in the West Riding?”
“One grows up,” Hadrian said shortly. “You’ve pranced around enough. Let’s see what your boy can do between here and the property line.” He touched his heels to Handy’s sides, and the gelding gave a mighty, happy leap forward, followed by a flat-out, breakneck gallop over the relatively level ground before them.
Caesar put his heart into it and came level with Handy’s shoulder, but the older horse was the more wily—knew how to conserve his energy, when to leap and when to swerve—and beat Caesar by half a neck when they flew over the stone wall separating Blessings and Landover.
“Good lad.” Hadrian patted the horse soundly, and damned if the beast didn’t break into a little display of piaffe. “Pay attention, Caesar, my boy. You want to grow up to be just like him.”
“While I want to survive to tell of his victory,” Fenwick groused, but he was patting his horse too. “Handy likes a good romp, and I tend to forget that.”
“What about you? Do you share his fondness for a good romp?”
The humor in Fenwick’s eyes took on an unfriendly gleam. “Will you counsel me to temperance, Vicar?”
“You are very familiar with your employer.” Disrespectful of her, almost.
“So you’ll join the pack of jackals hereabouts who attribute all manner of venery to her? I am disappointed, Vicar, as I did so like your horse.” He was out of the saddle and putting the stirrups up a hole.
“How long have you known Lady Avis?” Hadrian asked, and what the hell was Fenwick nattering on about?
“Long enough to know your pontificating company is not fit to lick her boots,” Fenwick said with a great pretense of pleasantness. “That woman has been through more misery than you can imagine, Bothwell, and she’s weathered it—every bit of it—on her own. Her brothers are larking about all over creation while Avie tends the family seat, and her sister is too busy poaching other people’s children to bother coming north for even a week or two. Get off my horse, now.”
“So you can put out my lights?” Hadrian crossed his wrists over the pommel and regarded Fenwick from Handy’s back. “I think not.”
“I can drag you out of the saddle, but I’ll withhold the beating you deserve because Avie would not appreciate the talk. Know this, though: When, like the rest of her neighbors, you don’t come calling ever again, I will still be her friend and honored to serve her in any way I can.”
Now this was interesting—also disturbing. “By finding me in a dark alley some night and beating me to a pulp?”
Fenwick gave Caesar a final, gentle pat. “If you’re not off my horse in five seconds, then I’ll swat this one on his handsome quarters and leave you to walk home.”
Hadrian swung down. “I did not impugn the lady, not intentionally or otherwise, Fenwick. I asked a question, rather, pertaining to you, and here you are, spouting violence at me on Bothwell land.”
Fenwick had made the mistake many men did, of assuming vicars sprang out of whole, pious cloth the day they took holy orders, no schoolboy scraps or university fisticuffs to hone their violent abilities.
“You asked if I enjoy a romp, your holiness. I am a healthy male without attachments. You may draw your own conclusions.”
Fenwick snatched Handy’s reins and would have swung up without bot
hering to let the stirrups down a hole, but Hadrian spoke slowly and distinctly, as if reciting a prayer.
“I was the one who found her.”
Fenwick snorted. “Found her what? Languishing away here in Cumberland?”
“Twelve years ago,” Hadrian said. “I was the one who found her, not two hundred yards over that rise, bruised, bleeding, half-naked and incoherent, her hands so cold they’d freeze your soul. If you trifle with Lady Avis, I shall kill you.”
The words came out of Hadrian’s own mouth, he heard them, and he meant them, but he had no idea where they’d come from.
Fenwick paused in his fussing with his stirrup leathers. “You mean this. You’d bloody kill me.”
“In a heartbeat, and Hal would prime the gun for me.”
Fenwick finished adjusting his equipment while Hadrian gloried, gloried in a purely violent impulse.
Fenwick swung into the saddle and for a moment simply sat on his unmoving horse. “Mount up, Saint Peter. We shouldn’t let the horses stand around after they’ve had a good run.”
They ambled along in the dappled sunshine of the Landover home wood, Hadrian’s gratifying bout of temper cooling as the horses walked along.
“Avie doesn’t talk about it,” Fenwick said. “Her past is always there, in what she says, what she doesn’t say, when the neighbors talk about her and in their silences.”
Harold had called Avis retiring. “She’s ostracized?”
“Of course. She allows it, as do those worthless brothers of hers.”
Avie’s brother were not worthless. They had very likely left her in peace at the family seat at her own insistence. “She was the victim of a heinous crime. Why on earth would she be castigated for that?”
“She was engaged to Collins at the time,” Fenwick reminded him. “Some say Collins should not have been run out of the country simply for anticipating the vows. What could be more encouraging to a lusty young man than when a lady accepts his suit? She is regarded by some as a tease, a strumpet, a high-born lady who could not uphold the standards of conduct attendant to her birthright, and so forth.”
Regarded by some was bad. A single dedicated gossip could ruin a woman’s reputation, and “some” could ruin her life. “I had no idea.”
Hadrian Page 3
