A Country Wooing

by Joan Smith

  By eight, Mrs. Wickfield’s annoyance had escalated to a vague, unfocused anxiety. “Maybe one of the children is sick,” she mentioned.

  Anne’s tone became more waspish as the evening progressed. “Robin would have told us. More likely Alex is riding herd on the servants, preparing the house for Anglin’s visit,” she said, sneering.

  Mrs. Wickfield was unaccustomed to irony from her daughter and unwisely said, “Very likely that’s it.”

  “I hope he doesn’t have the gall to bring them here tomorrow,” Anne said, and punched a pillow out of shape on the sofa beside her.

  “My dear, he will bring them for a certainty. I’m glad you mentioned it. I must tell Cook to bake up some sweets. We must greet Robin’s fiancée with respect. I hope he doesn’t bring them for lunch. A tea we can manage with no trouble.”

  Anne hadn’t a thing to say against Robin’s fiancée, except that she was sister to Miss Anglin, preferred by Alex. She knew she could not treat the girl with friendliness, whatever about respect.

  At Penholme, both the brothers and all the rest of the family were indeed in a bustle of activity to impress Robin’s intended. There was much moving of furnishings and changing of linen and polishing of silver to remove the traces of decay. The Anglins arrived in state the next morning with four horses and two outriders. They came late in the morning, just before lunch, and after they had eaten, Robin undertook to amuse the ladies with a drive, while Albion entertained himself with an unguided tour of the house, where he busily reckoned up the worth of what he beheld. No pencil or paper was necessary for this procedure. His mind was like an abacus, keeping each figure in its proper column as he swiftly tallied up the value of paintings and furnishings and kept track of square footage of the Hall as he went along. He shook his head in wonder at a set of black rags hanging in a blue suite. Some family legend, very likely. If he heard a scream in the night or beheld a headless ghost parading the halls, he would know where it came from.

  Left to his own devices, Penholme decided to test his wounded shoulder on his bay marc. His real aim was to be by himself for some more solitary thinking, but as all his troubles were being concealed from both guests and family till the visit was over, he claimed it was only a ride for pleasure and exercise.

  Robin delivered the Anglin ladies to Rosedale, the first—the only—place that occurred to him, and sat down with all his usual familiarity to request a cup of tea. Mrs. Wickfield tried valiantly to conceal her daughter’s coolness by an excess of friendly solicitude for her guests’ preference for milk or lemon in their tea. She offered the macaroons and short cakes so often that even Maggie, a good eater, was replete.

  Anne was unhappy that Mrs. Anglin didn’t saucer her tea or drop a single aitch that could be condemned. The sisters, especially Miss Anglin, behaved with such propriety that not a single charge of vulgarity could be raised against them. The worst to be said, and it was mere caviling, was that Miss Maggie had freckles—even they were confined to the bridge of her pretty little nose.

  With a vast show of indifference, Anne finally brought herself to inquire of Robin, “Where are your brothers today?”

  “Willie and Bung have gone trout fishing,” he replied.

  “She means Alex,” Mrs. Wickfield explained bluntly.

  “Alex has decided it is time to try his mount.”

  “He hasn’t gone out on horseback with that arm!” Anne exclaimed.

  “Yes, but his bay’s a tame mount, and he promised to take it easy.”

  “You shouldn’t have let him go!”

  “Truth to tell, I thought he was only hacking down here,” Robin said. “I was sure we’d find him with you. Has he not been to see you since he got back?”

  “No, we haven’t seen Penholme for a few days,” Anne said coldly.

  Robin noted the demeaning “Penholme” and wondered what could be the cause of it. Alex had been acting odd ever since his return. Obviously he and Annie had had a falling-out over something or other.

  “If he ain’t here, he’s bound to be at the stream,” he told her. “That’s where he always goes when he wants to be alone.”

  “Fishing with the twins, you mean?”

  “No, not the lake, the stream—the little creek that runs by the spinney. He always goes there to sulk, and he’s been in a bad skin lately. I wish you would go and cheer him up.”

  “If he wants to be alone, then I shan’t disturb him,” Anne replied blandly, but it took all her fortitude to sit sipping tea after hearing this. She felt in her bones something was wrong. Something had happened in London.

  Robin sensed her mood and soon ushered the guests out the door. Mrs. Wickfield turned a sapient eye on her daughter. “You’d better change into your habit. You don’t want to get your second-best dress covered with horse hair and the stench of the stable.”

  Anne’s chin assumed a mulish angle. “I am not riding today, Mama.”

  “Go on, ninnyhammer! Something happened in London. You’d best get busy and discover what it is.”

  “What has obviously happened is that Rosalie has convinced him to marry Miss Anglin. Why else are they visiting Penholme? Why else is he ashamed to come to see me?”

  “The Anglins are there because Robin is marrying Maggie. I begin to wonder what has happened to your common sense, Annie. Now, get along with you, and don’t come home without discovering what’s ailing Alex, you hear!”

  “I’m not going to chase after him.”

  “He might be lying on the cold ground with his wound bleeding for all you know. Go on, before I have to go myself.”

  With the pretext of an errand of mercy, Anne went so fast she left her good blue muslin lying in a heap on the floor and forgot to change her shoes.

  When she found Penholme neither wounded nor bleeding but sitting calmly on a rock, staring into the stream, she felt foolish at having come pelting after him, the more so when he showed no pleasure at the interruption. In fact, he scowled quite openly, which threw her into a fit of indecision. Having come this far, she could hardly turn and leave without at least saying hello. She swallowed her pride and tried to make it look like a casual encounter.

  “Oh, hello, Alex. I was just exercising Lady.”

  “How did you know I was here?” he asked, undeceived.

  This cool question prevented her from dismounting. She remained aloft and stared down at him. “What makes you think I was looking for you? The day is so fine, I just came out for fresh air.”

  “I stand corrected. As you’ve accidentally stumbled onto me, why don’t you stay awhile?”

  Her impulse was to gallop away, but a closer inspection of his weary face softened her pique. There was clearly something very wrong. He offered a hand to help her dismount, but mindful of his shoulder, she clambered down by herself, wondering if a recrudescence of his old wound had him hipped.

  “You shouldn’t be riding so soon, should you? You mentioned a few weeks or a month....”

  “My arm’s all right.”

  She knew by then the trouble was more than physical.

  “I daresay you wonder that I haven’t been to call,” he said.

  “No, Robin has just left. We do not hope to compete with rich merchants,” she said, attempting an arch manner.

  No smile or playful frown was returned, but a gloomy, grim silence. After a longish pause he said, “I’ve been meaning to call on you all day.”

  “Then I shall tell Mama we must just be patient a little longer.” She walked to the rock and sat down, looking at the stream while waiting for an explanation of this fit of the dismals. Alex sat beside her, his fists rammed into the pockets of his trousers. He, too, stared into the running water.

  “I take it things didn’t go well in London,” she finally said.

  Alex turned his head and regarded her. His warm brown eyes held a new expression today, one she didn’t immediately recognize. She thought at first he looked infinitely sad, but as she looked, the expression changed, b
ecame angry. “No, not well,” he said curtly. “In fact, things couldn’t be worse. We’re finished. The London house is mortgaged—eight thousand on it.”

  “Oh, Alex! Surely not! Not on top of all the rest. That must come to ...” She tried to remember all the sums Charles had run through, but she got lost.

  “It comes to over fifty thousand he ran through, exclusive of his income,” Alex said, and mentioned the various sources. “Another ten thousand from Uncle Cyrus—that one was new to me. Of course, there’s a trifling five thousand more still in unpaid bills in London. Not to mention the little bit I have paid off in back salaries at home and the domestic bills in the village.”

  Anne sat dumbfounded at the list but no longer confused as to that unreadable face Alex wore. There was no way he could possibly cope with such a mountain of debt—all his properties gone or mortgaged and the income reduced. He hadn’t come to see her because he had to tell her this.

  To tell her, in fact, that he couldn’t marry her. He must marry Miss Anglin now, and obviously realized it himself. That was why the whole family was at Penholme. She sat silent, wearing an expression very much like his, though she didn’t realize it. Totally disheartened at first, infinitely sad, then becoming angry as she realized that Charles was responsible for this debacle. Laughing, generous, flirtatious, handsome, damnable Charles.

  Hot tears scalded her eyes. “I hate him,” she said through clenched teeth.

  Alex looked at her in surprise but not in doubt. “I’ve hated him for years,” he said simply. “I tried not to. He was my brother, and I really tried very hard not to hate him, but to see him act so irresponsible while he threw our family’s fortune to the winds, giving no heed to the children, no thought to his duties—to let Penholme and Sawburne go to rack and ruin. And to see him treat you so, Annie ... I thought at least he meant to do the right thing by you.”

  “He did the right thing! He didn’t marry me. I was saved that humiliation, at least. How could I ever have ... I was a young fool at the time.” She dabbed a tear from the corner of her eye angrily, in a jerking fashion.

  Alex reached out and patted her hand. “It’s too bad I ever left. I should have stayed. I might have managed to do something with the ten thousand Uncle Cyrus left. Maybe if I’d been here sooner to take things in hand, I might have saved something.”

  “Don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault. Oh, but I wish you hadn’t gone, too, Alex.”

  “I had to make my own way in the world. I had nothing but the few thousand Mama left me, and it wasn’t enough to buy a place. I wanted to become a colonel and come back and marry you. I had nothing to offer, Annie, when I finally began to suspect Charles didn’t mean to marry you.”

  She looked at him in astonishment. “But you never looked at me! You didn’t care for me at all.”

  “Oh, Duck!” He laughed ruefully. “How could I bear to look at you, pining for Charles, seeing your eyes follow him as though he were a demigod, knowing he had so much to offer—looks, money, title. I couldn’t stand it. I avoided you both as much as I could. Then when Charles began to speak of marrying an heiress—after one of my almighty harangues—I took the notion that if I became a hero—a sort of superior Wellington was what I had in mind—you might be impressed enough to have me. Or alternatively, on cloudy days, I thought I might fall in some vastly heroic death, with the corollary, of course, that you would come to appreciate me after I was gone. I daresay you never realized your role in the case was to don crepe and live a life of solitary regret.”

  “Oh, I wish ...” she said futilely.

  “When they brought me the news of Charles’s death in Spain, I was half delirious in Belem, but the first thought that ran through my fevered brain wasn’t that my brother was dead or that I was now Lord Penholme. It was that there was no possibility of your marrying Charles. You were free, and I’d come home and marry you. It’s all that kept me alive, Annie. It was a dreadful mistake on my part to have ever enlisted. I knew it as soon as I got there. I was no hero, but I was there, with no place else to go, so I stayed. When I got back, I thought it was the end of all my troubles. A little penny-pinching, cheese-paring, and we could get married. I soon realized you were in love with a ghost. Weren’t you?”

  “With a sham. I had no idea what he was really like.”

  “I almost wish we hadn’t come so close,” he said, then his voice broke. He looked away toward the stream with his jaw clenched. It was unfitting for an officer to have moist eyes.

  Such bravery was not required of a woman. Anne sniffled quite audibly into her handkerchief.

  “Don’t cry, Annie,” he said, which made the tears come faster. He put an arm around her shoulder, and her head drooped against his chest while she tried to dry her tears and compose herself. His arm tightened around her; she felt some pressure on her head from his fingers or lips. She thought that perhaps he had kissed the top of her head, and she looked up.

  “Alex, I have five thousand, if that’s any help ...”

  “Don’t, Duck,” he said unsteadily. “Prices are still going up. You’ll need it for buying tacks and thread. I can’t marry you. To know you would have had me—that will have to be enough.”

  “It’s not enough!” she objected. “You shouldn’t have given Robin Sawburne. If Charles was too selfish, you’re too generous.”

  “It wasn’t just idle generosity. I would have lost it anyway. Anglin will bail him out, and we’ll have a home in the family. Somewhere for the children to go if I have to leave.”

  “Leave? Alex, you’re not rejoining the army!” she gasped.

  “Lord, no! I didn’t mean that. I’d sooner live in hell. I’m thinking of setting up as a diplomat, as soon as I find out what it pays. I speak some Spanish and Portuguese now, though I’d prefer any other posting to Spain. Austria, maybe. I’ll be as bad a diplomat as I was a soldier, but at least I won’t be required to kill anyone.”

  Anne drew her bottom lip between her teeth and began imagining herself as a diplomatic hostess. “That might not be so bad,” she said, a hopeful question lighting her face.

  “It will be wretched! I’ll be away from you.”

  “Oh! Can—can they not be married?”

  “Only if they have the effrontery to ask a woman to marry them, without a sou to their names. I haven’t. You can do better for yourself than a maimed pauper, and an exile at that,” he said firmly. “Forget about me, Annie. It’s all over for us. We must both do what we can to set our lives to rights.”

  “Would you be able to save Penholme if you took the job?”

  “At the moment, it’s only a possibility. I haven’t begun to look into it yet. But even if I could hold on to it, I couldn’t look after the tenants. There are more people than just family to consider, darling. I fear for the health of my tenants, living in damp, drafty cottages, barely eking a living out of the land.”

  “Then you’ll be returning to London.”

  “I must. There are a dozen loose ends to tie up there.”

  “You’ll call on me when you get back this time?” she asked.

  “Yes, if you like.”

  “Even if the news is bad, Alex. Don’t leave me in suspense again.”

  “I’ll tell you, but really, Anne, the news isn’t likely to be good. Don’t raise your hopes.”

  The weak little shoot of hope that had been trying to sprout shriveled at this blast, and she looked at him disconsolately. “It would have been so nice. Alex, there is always Rosedale....”

  “Not always. Only while your mama is alive. No, Annie, I don’t want it to be like that. Penholme is my home and my family’s home. It has been for generations. I must save it, if at all possible.”

  “But what will you do?”

  A fierceness possessed him; it echoed in his voice when he answered. “Whatever I have to.” He looked deeply into her eyes—an angry look, it was. Then he removed his arm from around her shoulders and rose.

  He thought of t
he London house, well furnished. That lumber should bring a few thousand at auction. Sell the house as well—two thousand would be realized after the mortgage was paid. He also thought of Annie’s five thousand, hating the necessity of doing it, but it could be done. Exmore and the merchants were consigned a long wait for their money. He’d strip Penholme of all but the basic necessities of life. They’d live in an empty house, if necessary. Sell every stick of lumber, every inch of canvas, every piece of silver, every spare piece of horseflesh in the stable. He hadn’t come through three years of hell, miraculously surviving a wound that everyone thought fatal, finally found Annie loved him enough to go into exile with him, only to be defeated again by Charles. He’d marry her if they had to live in the dovecot.

  “Whatever I have to,” he repeated softly, fiercely, then turned away.

  “You’re leaving now?”

  “Yes, but I’ll be back,” he said on a determined note. “Good-bye, Duck.”

  He mounted and rode away. Anne remained sitting at the stream for a long while, remembering Alex’s words and the determined way he had uttered them. Whatever he had to do ... He was going to marry Miss Anglin, then, and she couldn’t even blame him. She threw a pebble into the stream and watched it sink. Of course, things sank when their weight was too much to be borne. Everything sank in the end—hopes, wishes, love.

  Chapter Thirteen

  There was a delightful piece of news awaiting Lord Penholme when he returned to the Hall. Robin had offered for Miss Maggie and had been accepted. Albion was impatiently pacing the front hall when Penholme arrived, and he whisked his host into the study to discuss settlements before that gentleman had time to wash his hands. Alex felt a stirring of apprehension at having to disclose the true state of affairs to the man. He would not have been the least surprised to have him call off when the whole morass of bills was divulged, but at least Robin was clear of the debts. He had only the Sawburne mortgage to worry about.