That was not good news.
“Don’t you care for trifle, Mr. Pettigrew?” Lord Fairly asked.
“Trifle’s a right treat,” Giles replied. “And a barn raising will see Linden’s equine stock safe and snug come winter. My own papa organized more than one, and as your new neighbors, Baron, we’d welcome the opportunity to offer assistance.”
Giles had no idea what the good folk of the shire would welcome, but a few kegs of ale would probably inspire the tenant farmers to donate a day of labor.
“I attended two of these up in Oxfordshire last year,” Belmont said. “My brother is something of an expert at building simple structures, an amateur architect. I have a few sets of plans and can help with the lumber estimates.”
“You’ll need nails,” Miss Tanner said, a spoonful of rich dessert poised before her mouth. “Glue, dowels, ropes, teams.”
“Food and drink,” the viscount added, and just like that, Giles’s gracious, brilliant and sincerely well-motivated suggestion was carried off by a table of experts, which hadn’t been at all what he’d intended.
His life wasn’t what he’d intended either.
“Miss Tanner,” Giles interjected over Belmont’s description of roofing options, “rebuilding the stable is surely talk for the men.”
That observation met with silence, perhaps embarrassed on the part of the other fellows, for they’d dived into the topic of stable construction without any thought for polite conversation.
Hardly the way to impress a woman who’d apparently been longing for the role of hostess.
Giles cleared his throat. “What I meant was, a more agreeable topic for feminine ears might be the upcoming assembly. I hope you will consider attending this one, and as my special guest.”
He offered her a gentle smile, an encouraging smile, because Loris Tanner was not a genteel lady exactly, but she’d make an adequate wife for a man intent on a quick wedding. Giles had studied on the matter, and offering for her, while generous on his part, was still his best option.
And a better option than she could aspire to, if she were honest,
“Afraid that won’t be possible,” Sutcliffe said, trailing his spoon through raspberries and cream. “Miss Tanner will attend with the viscount and me. She’s agreed to keep watch over us, lest we make a bad impression on the neighbors.”
Miss Tanner was absorbed with another spoonful of dessert, suggesting the baron’s pronouncement might be news to her.
Presuming man, but the titled ones were like that, and they did like good horseflesh.
“Then perhaps Miss Tanner will save me a dance?” Giles suggested.
“I’d be happy to,” she said, setting her dessert bowl aside. “When shall we hold this barn raising?”
She liked Giles’s idea of a barn raising, and she’d save him a dance. He took that for progress and rose from the table shortly thereafter. The baron escorted him to Linden’s front door, Belmont trailing with Miss Tanner on his arm, while the viscount disappeared to the library, where he professed to be intent on penning a letter to his wife.
Miss Tanner took her leave of Giles with a kiss to his cheek—a heartening novelty in their dealings thus far—and then a kiss and an embrace for Belmont, after which, she decamped for the library as well.
Perhaps women preferred grown men who blushed, though Claudia’s regard for the squire was paltry indeed.
“My thanks again, Pettigrew,” Sutcliffe said. “For the oats, for the suggestion of a barn raising, for simply coming by.”
“Least I can do,” Giles replied, tapping his hat onto his head. “Squire, shall we ride together as far as your lane?”
“Certainly,” Belmont said. “Sutcliffe, if you’re free for dinner tonight, perhaps we’ll talk more then?”
“I’ll look forward to it.”
Giles preceded the squire out onto the front porch, while Sutcliffe detained Belmont at the threshold.
“Belmont, do your artistic abilities extend to creating a likeness of Micah Tanner?”
Sutcliffe had posed his question quietly, but as Giles made a production of pulling on his gloves and pretending to ignore what he’d overheard, sunshine burst from behind the clouds otherwise enshrouding his day.
Micah Tanner had bedeviled many of Giles’s waking moments of late. If Sutcliffe wanted the man found, that was all to the good.
“I’ll bring you a few drawings this evening,” Belmont said, “and some plans for a simple, serviceable stable.”
The rain had eased off to a drizzle, but as Giles traipsed through the Linden gardens with Belmont at his side, he caught the first real glimmer of the disruption a stable fire could bring, irrespective of the devastation to property.
“I say, Belmont. Without a stable, and with the heavens having opened up, where exactly do you suppose the lads have stashed our horses?”
* * *
“You’ll not waste a waltz on the handsome Mr. Pettigrew,” Thomas growled when he caught up with Loris outside the library door. Fairly was on the other side of that door, and he had the hearing of a cat, so Thomas bent closer. “Pettigrew fancies you. Don’t deny it.”
Loris studied Thomas as if he’d spoken in Urdu, which he hadn’t attempted for several years.
“Have you suffered a blow to the head, sir? Giles and I have known each other for ten years, and he was extending me simple courtesy on a trying day.”
Pettigrew’s neighborly concern had seemed genuine when he’d been offering a load of oats.
And then he’d tendered a load of something else entirely. “I managed a brothel,” was what came out of Thomas’s mouth. “I know when a man is interested in a woman, and that boy was sniffing about your skirts. He watched you eat your trifle like he’d make a dessert of you.”
Any other woman would have been pleased. She would have simpered and twirled a curl around her finger, and prettily gloated to have made a conquest.
Loris patted Thomas’s chest. “You’re upset. We’re all upset. I’m ordering toddies in the library, you can light the fire, and then we’ll plan your barn raising. Nick will probably be down soon, and we must keep him occupied lest he go out in this rain and assure himself down to the last stable mouser that all the animals are in good repair.”
Thomas did not want to plan a barn raising. “I could hire crews easily enough, and then I’d not be fretting over whether the miscreant was among the neighbors so eagerly assisting with reconstruction of my stable.”
Loris kissed him on the mouth, a sneak attack that made focusing on her next words difficult.
“Let’s find Chesterton, shall we, Baron? Let’s interview the children, let’s hear what Matthew has to say this evening, when he’s had a chance to look over his notes and think the situation through.”
“You call him Matthew,” Thomas muttered, kissing her more thoroughly. Kissing Loris was good for him. Her touch both distracted him from his worries and restored his balance.
And she’d be sleeping right down the hall from him tonight.
“Most of the ladies call him Matthew,” Loris said, brushing Thomas’s hair back from his forehead. “He’s a shrewd man, an excellent steward to his acres, and a conscientious father, but he likes to pretend he’s the harmless widower, drifting toward middle-aged contentment.”
“Belmont isn’t remotely approaching middle age,” Thomas said, angling his head into Loris’s caresses. “And he’s not harmless. Knows all about fires and other felonies.”
And discontented widows, too.
“You’re worried,” Loris replied, leaning into Thomas, though she didn’t wrap her arms around him. Her shoulder had to be paining her, so Thomas’s embrace was careful.
“I’m furious,” Thomas replied. “If a man is offended by something I’ve said or done, then all he need do is air his grievance, and I can resolve it, or at least address the charges. A fire is…”
“Diabolical. We envision hell as an inferno, the worst possible fate. Thomas, I kn
ow.”
Loris had stared into that inferno and been ready to retrieve Thomas from it. All over again, his knees went weak, and his stomach churned at the thought of such selfless loyalty.
“You’ll stay here until we know who set that fire, Loris. I’ll not sleep unless I know you’re safe.”
She wanted to argue. Thomas could feel resistance vibrating through her, but hadn’t she realized how easily she’d managed a meal with company? How right the role of lady of the manor was for her?
“Let’s get through the next day,” she said, stepping back. “We’ve a barn raising to plan. Fortunately, you already have a store of lumber here at Linden because we were about to repair your dairy barn.”
“I’d forgotten that.” Thomas had forgotten his name, watching Loris discreetly signal the footman over lunch, listening to her gently steer conversation this way and that. Fairly had been charmed, Belmont impressed, Pettigrew besotted.
While Thomas had been enthralled. Loris had listened to all his maunderings about etiquette, paid attention to him, and wrung from his words whatever useful information they’d had.
She was his baroness, she simply didn’t know it yet.
“Toddies sound heavenly,” he said. “You’ll join us. The medicinal tot is in order, and Fairly will agree with me.”
Or Thomas would make him agree.
Loris stroked a hand over Thomas’s bum as she departed for the kitchen, and that too, made a part of his world come right.
“Get in here,” Fairly said, grabbing Thomas by the wrist and yanking him into the library. “You can’t stare after her like that, not in public.”
“Were you eavesdropping, Fairly?”
His lordship took a sniff of daisies clustered in a crystal bowl on the mantel. Daisies stank, thus the maneuver was purely dilatory.
“I might have overhead a few words,” Fairly said. “Fire is a very bad business, Thomas, and I know a woman bearing up when I see one. Your Loris holds herself responsible for the fire.”
“That makes two of us holding ourselves responsible,” Thomas said, lighting a spill from the lamp on the desk. “That fire was deliberately set, Fairly.”
The hearth had already been laid with kindling and small logs, for with the arrival of the storm, the temperature had dropped.
“You have an enemy,” Fairly said, lounging against one end of the mantel. “A deadly enemy.”
The tinder caught, and flames licked upward. Thomas threw the spill on the fire and replaced the screen.
Here again was what Belmont had called a backhanded miracle. “Not necessarily deadly. Not a soul was in the barn, and if Penny and Treasure were napping in their bed of straw, then from the hayloft, the premises would have seemed deserted. Loss of a building is a degree of harm worse than a sprung shoe or colicky animal, but it’s not loss of life.”
Fairly shoved away from the mantel. “Thomas, you’re splitting hairs. Setting a fire is but a short step from murder. Somebody is always on hand in a well-run stable, the work is endless, the animals valuable. What are you saying?”
Thomas threw himself onto the sofa, glad for Fairly’s presence, resentful of his pragmatism.
“I’m saying the situation might be more complicated than it first appears. Somebody is always supposed to be on hand in a well-run stable, but I’m short-handed. Very short-handed. Somebody who can sound the alarm, and get out the one or two animals who might be in stalls in the middle of the day—”
“In the heat of the day, most of the valuable stock will be out of the sun, in their stalls,” Fairly began in his most severe tones.
“I know that,” Thomas said, tossing a pillow onto the floor. “You know that, but somebody who’s only done a poor job of looking after horseflesh wouldn’t take that into account. Who would you blame, Fairly, for the loss of a valuable building on one of your estates? Who would you blame for a rash of colic, a sprung shoe, a shortage of competent help, and other trouble?”
Fairly came down beside Thomas. “One doesn’t like to place blame without evidence, but my properties are all in the hands of professional stewards. They aren’t merely rent agents. Those fellows are my eyes and ears. You’re suggesting the purpose of all this ill will is to discredit Miss Tanner.”
The smallest of the dry logs caught, and white smoke eddied up the chimney in a steady stream.
“I don’t want to believe Loris is the target,” Thomas replied, “but I haven’t been in the area long enough to develop enemies. She, by contrast, could be reaping the ill will her father’s bad behavior sowed, or the malevolence of the displaced Chesterton and his minions.”
Fairly slouched down and crossed his boots at the ankle—dusty boots, the toes white with ash.
“Why wait until now to begin this campaign against Miss Tanner?” he asked. “She’s been managing here for nearly two years, albeit her post was informal.”
Fairly also still smelled faintly of smoke, though he’d changed his clothing and doubtless washed since helping Thomas drag Nick to safety.
“Maybe somebody’s unhappy because Miss Tanner’s post is no longer informal? How do I find a man who disappeared two years ago, Fairly?”
Thomas’s question was greeted with a short silence as a log popped and sparks flew up, and then, “Christ in the manger.”
“Not Him,” Thomas said, though divine intervention had probably sent the rain onto the burning stable. “Loris’s father. She’s plagued by his disappearance, bedeviled by the idea he could be charged with rape if he’s spotted in the area. Tanner had some means, he had the requisite skills to brew this sort of trouble, he’s worked all over England, and he drank enough to go for long periods without recalling his actions.”
“What sort of father puts his own daughter at risk of disgrace, much less death?” Fairly asked.
“Tanner disgraced his daughter time and again. People lost to drink have no conscience,” Thomas replied. “My own sister, as dear and decent a girl as you’d ever meet, became—”
A soft tap on the door heralded Loris’s return, Harry at her side and bearing a tray.
“Toddies for you fellows. I’m having a pot of chocolate.”
Thomas mustered a smile, took the tray, dismissed Harry, and closed the door behind him.
“Well done, madam. Fairly is in want of fortification, only because I’ve not yet told him I sent a messenger before lunch with a summons for Lady Fairly.”
“You did what?” Fairly asked, bolting upright.
“Sent for your Letty,” Thomas said, passing his lordship a drink. “We must have a chaperone at Linden if Miss Tanner is to accept my hospitality beyond the most exigent circumstances, and after today’s developments, I couldn’t pry your lordship loose from the property without a trebuchet and a Highland regiment.”
Couldn’t pry Fairly loose from Thomas’s side, which was deuced inconvenient—also comforting.
“When will she—never mind,” Fairly said, setting his drink on the mantel and pacing away from the sofa. “You sent for my Letty. Well done, Thomas, even if we do have an arsonist loose in the shire. Letty knew you’d need friends about, else I would never have left my bride so soon after the nuptials. I’m babbling.”
Loris took the place Fairly had vacated. “You’re being a devoted spouse, but if we’re truly to organize a barn raising, maybe you wouldn’t mind finding pencil and paper in that desk? We’ve lists to make, and—”
Nicholas Haddonfield came sauntering into the library, looking freshly bathed and tidy. His hair was damp, and somebody had given it a significant trim, probably cutting off locks singed by falling cinders.
“Fairly has forbidden me to leave the premises for the next twenty-four hours,” Nick groused, “as if a little tap on the head ever slowed a Haddonfield down for long. Ah, somebody brought me a toddy,” he said, helping himself to Thomas’s portion. “I’m sure a toddy is good for head injuries. Why is Lord Fairly seated at the baronial desk like headmaster preparing to lectur
e his scholars?”
Nick took Thomas’s favorite reading chair, Thomas pilfered the occasional sip of Loris’s chocolate, and much argument ensued, about the benefits of a tin roof versus thatch, about how many stalls were absolutely necessary if the stable was to function through the winter—for more extensive construction could be undertaken next spring.
Thomas commented here and there, but in truth, Nick, Fairly, and Loris would see that his best interests were served in the decisions made. At some point, Loris’s hand had stolen into Thomas’s, and his unease acquired another dimension.
He’d protect Loris, from her own father if necessary. The best way to do that was to marry her, and he was more than willing to take that step.
But was Loris willing to become his baroness?
Chapter Sixteen
Letty might be at Linden as early as the next day, and Fairly could barely contain his relief. Her daily letters had become the tenuous skein connecting him to his own sanity, for Letty’s reports were all that made rustication in Sussex bearable.
That and watching Thomas Jennings, Baron Sutcliffe, fall arse over tea kettle in love with his pretty land steward.
“The baron didn’t say much about the construction of his new stable, though he at least cleaned his dinner plate,” Nicholas Haddonfield observed, sniffing at a stopper from Thomas’s brandy decanter. The glass was in the shape of a hawk, wings extended as if to attack. “A nightcap, my lord?”
There stood another intriguing aspect of this summer’s frolic. “No more for me, thank you,” Fairly said. “Aren’t you tired, Haddonfield?”
Nick held the decanter up to a lit sconce, the brandy catching the fire’s light and sending it dancing.
“I am unsettled,” he replied. “All I gleaned from dinner is that Belmont strongly suspects arson, can’t prove a thing, and has sketched a boot print that might incriminate somebody, or might be simply a sorry coincidence. Any stable boy looking to tryst with a dairy maid might entice her up the outside ladder to the hayloft.”
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