She leaned back against the doorjamb in a pose no proper lady had ever adopted in company, though it looked confident on her.
“You’re serious about this, and you’ll start in on me at luncheon?”
“If I am skilled in my conversation, my dear, you will not know my campaign has commenced.”
Miss Tanner shook her head and ducked out onto the terrace, while Thomas congratulated himself on his skill. His campaign had already begun, and the lady hadn’t even noticed.
* * *
Having dispatched Nick and paid the help, Loris trooped up the drive to the manor house and kept a wary eye on the sky. Rain would be welcome, but hail and strong winds could ruin the year’s ripening grain in the space of a twenty-minute squall.
She opened the front door to the house without knocking, and was surprised by Harry, the senior footman, in livery and at attention behind the door.
“Good day, Miss Loris. Shall I tell the baron you’re here?”
Bother the baron and his Town ways. “I am expected, Harry. Himself has invited me to join him at luncheon.”
Harry tugged down his jacket, which sported gold piping at the cuffs and collar.
“Allow me to announce you, Miss Loris. His lordship says we’re to have our company manners on for you.” Harry preceded Loris down the corridor and announced her to the self-same man she’d parted from little more than an hour earlier.
“Thank you, Harry.” The baron rose from his desk. “Please let the kitchen know Miss Tanner has joined me. We’ll take luncheon on the terrace in twenty minutes.”
Harry departed with a smart bow—since when had Harry Oglethorpe learned to bow?
“What has you smiling?” the baron asked as he came around the desk.
“Harry. He winked at me, the old wretch.” Though he’d looked years younger sashaying about in his new livery.
“Why do I know the same familiarity on my part would earn me a slapped face?” The baron stopped directly before her. “Miss Tanner.”
He bowed, a careless, elegant display of manners that inspired Loris to dip him a curtsy, though she felt like a complete ninnyhammer.
“Baron Sutcliffe. Are we to practice our manners now?” She offered him her hand to make the point, and he took it in his own, and actually kissed her knuckles.
Softly, gently, lingeringly.
Gracious days and heavenly choruses. Maybe lessons in manners weren’t such an awful idea.
Sutcliffe let go of her hand, and Loris snatched it away, as a horse did with its hoof when the farrier finished rasping the sole level.
“You don’t allow a fellow to actually kiss your hand, my dear. It isn’t the done thing.”
Loris didn’t bother replying—allowing hadn’t come into it—and his lordship’s lecture was only getting started.
“If the fellow is a suitor who wishes to impress you with his ardor,” he went on, “then perhaps you might overlook the encroachment, but a proper gentleman would merely bow over your hand or kiss the air above it.”
“Then why did you kiss my hand, and what should I do if another man is so forward?”
“You’d typically be wearing gloves, so the effect of the gesture would be lost, wouldn’t it?”
Loris wanted to hide her bare hands behind her back.
Sutcliffe offered his arm. “A lady,” he said, “even the very highest stickler, takes her gloves off at table. You must have a wardrobe suited for something other than riding about the countryside, however, and I must have a side-saddle made for you as well.”
Not if he deducted the cost of that saddle from Loris’s wages, or expected her to go without sleep to alter the only proper riding habit she owned. The bodice of that garment had grown a bit too snug many years ago.
In the spirit of good manners, Loris kept those protests to herself.
His lordship led her through the French doors to a table in the shade of the oak trees bordering the terrace. The cutlery was laid out in a confusing array of silverware, plates, glasses, and other paraphernalia.
“I will never keep this all straight,” Loris said, dropping Sutcliffe’s arm. “Food tastes the same whether eaten from the large fork or the small, or from the fingers. Can we not simply forget this whole idea, Baron?”
“We cannot,” he replied with a pleasantness Loris was learning to dread. “Do you find it repugnant even to take my arm, Miss Tanner?”
Loris tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow, when she wanted instead to hike her skirts and pelt for the stable.
“I find it ridiculous, my lord,” she said as they strolled to the table. “I have been walking unassisted for a quarter century. Why am I to hold your arm?”
“Let’s wander a bit,” he suggested, moving them down a graveled path into the deep shade. “Suppose we are two young people, each single, and each considering an interest in the other. How might we spend time together to ascertain whether such interest is worthwhile?”
Young people, as if five-and-twenty were old?
“What kind of interest?” Loris asked, finding his lordship’s sedate pace a trial. She had ledgers to balance, a broodmare to keep an eye on, cheeses to inspect in the cheese cave, an oat crop ripening faster in some fields than others.
“I refer, Miss Tanner, to the interest men and women do, from time to time, develop in each other.”
How gratifying. His lordship was becoming impatient, despite his languid pace. “You mean an amorous interest or an intimate interest, sir?”
“They are one and the same.”
“They most assuredly are not.”
“I beg your pardon?” His positively bored tone should have been a warning to Loris that she’d transgressed the narrow boundaries of what was and was not proper conversation. Alas for the baron’s delicate sensibilities, she had no more ability to ignore his “I beg your pardon,” than a breeding bull would ignore an interloper in his pasture.
“An interest rooted in the base urges and a romantic interest are not the same at all,” Loris said, her own patience fraying. “Lord Greymoor’s associates evidenced an interest in any female more than one-half or less than twice their age, unless his lordship was in the immediate vicinity to impose a bit of decorum. Their attentions held nothing of romance. They were the human equivalent of the Pettigrew stud, for whom an afternoon’s dallying is simply what happens between a nap at noon and oats at supper.”
If that. Pettigrew’s stallion at least indulged in the horsy equivalent of some cuddling after the festivities.
“Point taken,” the baron conceded. “But won’t you also agree, Miss Tanner, this topic is inappropriate in polite conversation?”
“Then why did you bring it up?”
The baron laughed, a hearty, happy sound that puzzled Loris.
“You are ridiculing me,” she said, stepping away, “and we are not ten minutes into this endeavor. You will understand why my enthusiasm is lacking.”
Sutcliffe’s smile faded to a warmth in his eyes that Loris hadn’t seen previously. He was a perilously handsome man even without that hint of approval in his regard.
“I apologize for my laughter, Miss Tanner, but you neatly turned the game on me. Congratulations.”
And that made anything better? “I have your congratulations, but I still have no explanations for why we must toddle around linked like this.” She used both hands to wing Sutcliffe’s arm away from his body.
A muscular arm. Quite muscular.
“Keep your hands on my arm like that.” He used that soft voice again, the one that slid over her senses like a honeysuckle breeze in the middle of a moonless night.
“Do not teach me to flirt, your lordship. I have no use for those skills and never will. Teach me which fork to use, how to make table conversation, and how one seats three viscounts at the same table, though I have never so much as seen three viscounts at once, and hope to die in that innocent state. Leave off the nonsense.”
“Is it really nonsense?”
Sutcliffe asked, turning them back toward the table on the terrace. “Have you met no one with whom you’ve wanted to take a moonlit stroll, or sit with to enjoy the evening breezes?”
Loris had met precisely one baron who made her think of moonlight and shared confidences, drat him to the nearest patch of nettles.
“I have a cat for those activities,” she said, dropping his arm. “Where shall I sit?”
More nonsense. His lordship seated her—as if she hadn’t been maneuvering herself into chairs for almost as long as she’d been walking—but surprised her by not immediately taking the chair to her left.
He bent low, his cheek near hers, his mouth directly beside her ear. “You regard this whole business as so much silliness. You are in error.”
Loris was in trouble.
Sutcliffe took his seat, unfolded his serviette on his lap and gave Loris a pointed look until she did likewise.
“Why isn’t this entire exercise silly?” Loris asked. “You waste your time and effort doing for me what I can easily do for myself. I wait about for you to stroll along, to hold a chair, to even choose a chair for me, when we could both be getting something productive done.”
“I speak German,” Sutcliffe said, pouring her a glass of lemonade from a crystal pitcher, “and French, and Spanish, fluently. Greek and Latin are givens. I am passably competent in Italian and Portuguese, and I have a smattering of Arabic, and several other languages. Why do you suppose I speak English now?”
And speak it beautifully? “So I comprehend you.” Loris comprehended his words. Comprehending him would take years.
“Just so. English is not a better language; it is not spoken by the most people; it is not particularly euphonious. I speak public school English because in these circumstances, that is the language in which I will be understood and taken seriously.”
The lemonade was chilled, an extravagance on such a hot day. “I hadn’t considered etiquette a language, but I suppose it is.”
“So will you stop arguing with me and pointing out how ludicrous it is for me to extend you courtesies?”
Loris liked crossing swords with the baron. “I lack the self-discipline to keep my tongue still over the truly ridiculous matters.”
“What do you find truly ridiculous?”
“Is that a polite topic?”
“Well done.”
His lordship hadn’t answered the question. “You really should smile more often, my lord. You have charm, though you hide it well.”
“Weapons in plain sight are easily disarmed,” he replied, his smile fading.
Loris was spared having to decipher that comment by the arrival of the food. Patiently, Sutcliffe coached and reminded and otherwise instructed regarding table manners and cutlery, making the whole business matter-of-fact and far less humiliating than Loris had feared it would be.
“These manners turn good food into tedium,” Loris said as the empty plates were removed, though the cold roast chicken had been delicious tedium. “We make an avoidable mess for the servants to clean up. Soap, water, time, fancy dishes—they all cost money.”
“True, but refined table manners are like vocabulary, Miss Tanner. Use the wrong word in a sentence, and you can offend or amuse your audience, or otherwise subvert your intended meaning. Pick up the wrong fork, and you give every other woman at the table a weapon against you.”
“I cannot call Mrs. Pettigrew out for a slur to my honor, and challenge her to forks at dawn, Baron. Besides, if you drill a land steward on her manners long enough, she will be bored cross-eyed.” Also overwhelmed. “May we agree the pedagogic portion of the meal is complete and discuss estate matters?”
Wherein Loris would be the professor and his lordship the student.
Sutcliffe traced his finger around the rim of his wine glass. He’d served a cool, crisp, fruity white wine that Loris had wanted to savor in solitude on her back porch.
“You are a difficult pupil, Miss Tanner.”
“Finally, a compliment. Thank you. Now, do you want to know what’s afoot in your stable?”
“I gather you have bad news.”
Had Sutcliffe not been on hand, the news would have been bad indeed. “Nick says the grooms are likely to walk with their pay, most of them at least. They are no great loss, but finding replacements will take time.”
“Nick knows this how?” Sutcliffe asked, twirling the empty wine glass by its stem.
“He listens,” Loris said, as the delicate glass spun in the baron’s fingers. “He’s thought to be not too bright, so he overhears things.”
“Does Nick seek to curry favor with you with this overhearing?” Sutcliffe’s question was chillingly casual.
“Nick isn’t in the habit of confiding in me, if that’s what you’re asking. I sent him into the village with Chesterton’s effects, and he wanted to know if he should cast about for more stable help while there.”
“Help that he would supervise?”
Oh, for pity’s sake. “I doubt Nicholas Haddonfield aspires to anything loftier than peace and quiet at the end of his day, a good night’s sleep, and the occasional pint at the Cock and Bull. Why are you so suspicious?”
“My nature, I suppose.” Sutcliffe left off toying with his wine glass, like a large, hungry tom cat stopped flicking its tail when the poor mouse peeked out from its hole. “You’ve said Nick has worked here for some time, and he’s certainly physically powerful. Why wouldn’t he seek other kinds of power as well?”
Loris helped herself to the last of the baron’s lemonade. “Do you enjoy the burden of being Baron Sutcliffe? Knowing someday you must curtail your freedom with a suitable bride, produce the heir, manage the retainers, that sort of thing?”
“What makes you think I’d shirk that duty?”
Surely, the time had come to resume a discussion of manners?
“Not shirk. You’re procrastinating, though,” Loris said, gently, for the baronial tail had resumed flicking at a great rate. “You have an inherited title, my lord, and with that title comes a patch of land. You comprehend the basics about managing an estate, but you know little of loving one. You don’t like to be told what to do, where to do it, or when, otherwise you would be on that patch of ground, and not going out of your way to familiarize yourself with this one.”
Sutcliffe rose and extended his hand to her. “You have odd notions about land and the people who own it.”
Loris stood, all too relieved to have the meal concluded. “I will take my leave of you, and I hope I have not given offense.”
“More than your insight, Miss Tanner, is necessary to offend such a one as I. May we discuss estate business further at a later time?”
“The discussion of estate business never concludes for long, your lordship.” And Sutcliffe hadn’t told Loris what to do about the stable. “Shall I await you tomorrow morning in the stable?”
“You shall.”
“Then we can spend some time at the home farm, and the following day is market day. If need be, we might find more stable help there. Perhaps you’d like to join me on that excursion as well?”
“I would. Until tomorrow, Miss Tanner, and thank you for sharing your company with me over luncheon.”
“Oh, very pretty, Baron.” Loris beamed at him in sheer relief. “My thanks for your company as well.”
She curtsied, glad to be able to make a dignified retreat. That last salvo, about enjoying her company, had been teasing on his part, or more lecturing, but her reply had been in earnest.
Loris enjoyed the baron’s company, even when he was being preachy and protective, and that would not do at all.
Chapter Five
“The fellows at the Cock and Bull say Sutcliffe is a big swell and dressed to the teeth in London finery,” Giles Pettigrew said. “He sounds like another incarnation of Greymoor.”
Who hadn’t been a bad sort, though in recent years, he’d been too busy frolicking on the Continent to notice that a woman had been attempting to stewa
rd Linden’s acres. Thank heavens that same woman knew better than to let a member of the aristocracy turn her head.
“Pass the salt, Giles,” Claudia Pettigrew drawled. “Mrs. Chipchase says Sutcliffe is here to stay.”
How Giles hated it when Mama adopted that rosy, smug tone of voice, and yet, she was entitled to her amusements. He passed the salt, after he’d spooned a bit onto his beef.
“How could a housekeeper know the mind of a baron only recently arrived?” Giles asked.
Mama considered her wine, a red that tended more to heartiness than delicacy. Alas, the cellars had shown the lack of a man’s discerning influence since Giles had come down from university last summer.
“Mrs. Chipchase is cousin to the miller’s wife,” Mama said, dragging the salt spoon about in the cellar, “and she knows half the small holders in the shire. The baron came across some boys swimming in a Linden pond, and told them he’d be residing on the estate for the foreseeable future. Don’t underestimate the talk of women, Giles. Ours is a pretty neighborhood, and country life appeals to many a titled man.”
Giles nearly snatched Mama’s wine away from her, for she had the dreamy, dangerous look she wore when she was scheming over a fellow. She stood that wretched stallion in part so the gentlemen of the shire had specific business to transact with her, regardless of the indecency of the situation.
Mama was pretty, having passed on to Giles blond hair, blue eyes, and fashionable height. She was also vain and did not fare well without the notice of gentlemen. Giles understood this, and so he interfered only a little in managing the stallion, a little dealing with the trades, a little in estate matters.
He’d apparently have to interfere with the wine order, too.
When he came into his funds, upon marriage or upon attaining the age of five-and-twenty, he’d interfere a very great deal wherever the hell he pleased.
“Sutcliffe hasn’t had the title long,” Mama said, “and the ladies with whom I correspond say he’s a fine, mature specimen with an interesting past. You will pay a call on him. Welcome him to the neighborhood, offer to acquaint him with the good families in the area.”
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