by Lynn Kerstan
“Choppings Downs?” That had seized his imagination.
She grinned broadly. “Really, Choppingsworth
Downs, but nobody calls it that anymore. And don’t you dare say a word.”
“Not I,” he said, returning her smile. “But it is rather an odd name.”
“We have one of the few wooded tracts in the area, with scattered copses and even a respectable forest on the boundaries. The early settlers cut down most of the trees to clear the land for planting and grazing, and the first baron was called Choppingsworth . because he did so much of it. The family name died out as ownership’ changed hands, but-the estate retained the title. Unfortunately, when my greatgrandfather took possession, a whole set of new jokes was unleashed. Lamb. Choppingsworth. Lamb chops. That kind of thing.”
The Earl laughed, unable to stop himself. “Sorry,” he said when he could speak. “I have a weakness for stale puns.”
Jillian eyed him curiously. He was very appealing when he allowed himself to enjoy something. “The one reason I can imagine for getting married is to change my name to Courtney or Winslow or Smith. Anything without an animal attached.”
“I wonder that you raise sheep,” he observed with a quirked brow, “considering the opening that provides for bad humorists.”
“Given a choice I wouldn’t let them on the grounds, but sheep are a natural for the grasslands. And even so, we never had them until Jock showed up. In fact, My Lord, I don’t actually raise sheep for profit, although we keep several flocks as a necessary byproduct of our real business. More or less, we breed and train dogs.”
Jaspers bowed himself unctuously into the room. “Dinnah,” he intoned, “is served.” Raking an insolent gaze over the Earl’s companion, the butler lifted his nose the extra inch that made his disapproval manifest. “Does Milady require a few minutes to change?”
Milady was seconds from planting him a facer when the Earl clamped her arm in his own. “Jaspers, you may inform the kitchen that we are on our way.”
“Lizard,” Jillian mumbled, and felt her arm clenched more firmly in a very strong, hard-muscled grip.
“He’s only a servant,” Mark reminded her as the butler strutted from the room. “Don’t let him rile you.”
“Don’t let him rule you,” she retorted.
“Nobody rules me,” the Earl said calmly. “And certainly not you, imp. Shall we go pleasantly, to enjoy the repast Marcel has prepared for us?”
Pleasantly to enjoy the repast. Good grief! And why was she surprised that he employed . . . and defended . . . that jackass of a butler? They were two of a kind, prigs and pompous prunes the both of them, each with a vocabulary that outdistanced his wits. If she had another putrid fish at hand, Mark Delacourt would sleep with it tonight.
The dining room was the most depressing place she’d ever seen. It was long and narrow, with dark wood panels along the walls on both sides and a table that could seat Parliament stretched out like a gigantic coffin. At the far end two places were set, with one brace of candles to light the spot. A footman and two maids, poised like stuffed carcasses, waited in starched livery by the dumbwaiter.
The Earl’s place was naturally at the head of the table, and another setting was arranged to his left. A subtle insult, she realized, as did he from the tightening of his arm when he saw it. An honored guest would sit on his right, but he made no objection and Jillian pretended not to notice. A rustic would have no comprehension of protocol. Freeing herself from his grasp, she bounced to her chair. “Lawks, what a set-up!” she piped. “You could feed an army here.”
The Earl settled himself with a grimace. He’d always hated this room. The other end of the long table was shrouded in darkness, as always, for his father never wasted a candle. He’d never thought to countermand the order. Now it seemed funereal, and especially so with Jillian here. If nothing else, she was a creature of light. The dining room should be aglow for her.
The footman stepped to the banquet and lifted a newly opened bottle of white Bordeaux from the silver bucket. “A shrimp bisque, with endive and mushrooms on the side for the first course, if it meets with your approval, Milord.”
The Earl nodded, sampling the wine while the maids approached with steaming soup in a Chinese porcelain tureen and the salad accompaniment on a platter decorated with intricately carved radishes and razor-sliced green peppers.
Jillian watched it all with awe. The servants moved like dancers, choreographed to a minuet of fish soup and fancy lettuce. With care, she selected a teaspoon and a meat fork from the formidable array of silverware in front of her and prepared to dive in.
“You may find,” the Earl said blandly, “that the larger spoon over the top of your plate will be more suitable for the bisque, and might I suggest that little fork to your left for the salad?”
Jillian could see him mentally noting classes in dining etiquette for her future and complied without a word. The shrimp bisque was delicious, more subtle in flavor than anything she could ever remember eating. So good, in fact, that she forgot to spoon it the wrong way or slurp when she took a mouthful. But she choked at the Earl’s next words.
“My apologies, Miss Lamb,” he said kindly. “I never meant this to be an exercise in table manners, nor to reprimand you for a lack of those refinements you cannot have learned in your previous unfortunate environment. It is bad manners on my part to choose this venue for education when I’d meant it for pleasure. Enjoy your dinner, my dear. I believe you were telling me that you . . . er . . . raise dogs?”
Previous unfortunate environment? Imagining a bowlful of bisque upturned over the Earl’s impeccable hair arrangement, Jillian was nonetheless disarmed by his apology. She knew it was sincere, if abysmally worded. Spearing a mushroom on the correct fork, she chewed thoughtfully. “Yes, we breed and train border collies. Shall I tell you about it, or are dogs not a proper subject for dinner conversation?”
“Ouch, brat. For a moment I thought you’d accepted my white flag.”
“I had,” she admitted, flushing hotly. “Jock trains the dogs. He doesn’t say much, but in his own way he runs the place, along with Mrs. Enger, the housekeeper, who also runs the place. I’m more an accountant and referee than anything else these days. Mrs. Enger .is a widow, sure she’ll never love again, and Jock is the crustiest bachelor you’d ever want to meet. They eye each other like two lovesick sheep when they think nobody is watching and fight like wet cats the rest of the time.”
“Which relates to dogs . . . ?”
Jillian couldn’t resist scraping her bowl for the last bit of soup. If there had been bread on the table, she’d have sopped up the drippings and enjoyed the Earl’s reaction. “Jock wandered by four years ago,” she said, wiping her lips briskly with a napkin. “He was invalided home from Portugal with a shattered left arm. One of his eyes was blinded, too, and the side of his face is badly scarred. It makes him look a bit malevolent, and he has a temper to go with it. Jock was a shepherd in the Highlands until he joined the army, but when he went home the farm he’d worked was deserted. Only the dogs were still there, catching rabbits for a living. He brought two of them south and was all the way to Kent with no offer of a job when I took him in. Pretty soon Rita—that’s the bitch—littered six pups. Jock did odd jobs, but he hated mucking out stalls and the like, so I had to buy sheep to keep him happy. When the pups were weaned he took them out and taught them with a patience I envy, and then he sold them to neighboring estates with large flocks and inefficient herders. So many of the young men have gone to fight that all the farms are suffering. After a while it became a business—raising, training, and selling the dogs. When other men began to wander by, invalided home and looking for work, Jock trained them, too. Educating dogs and shepherds has become a thriving business, although I prefer to keep the actual sheep at a minimum. Silly animals.”
Jillian glance
d up to see the Earl staring at her. “Well?” she said. “I talk too much, don’t I? Am I boring you or offending you with all this business of sheep and dogs?”
“Yes and no,” he replied as his soup bowl was replaced with a gold-rimmed plate. He accepted a slice of capon breast topped with dressing, waved away the gingered carrots, and encouraged an extra serving of new peas.
Jillian ignored what was put onto her own plate. She’d babbled like an idiot, in accord with her plan, but felt a contrary longing to impress him. If she could win a look of respect or a word of approval before he dispatched her home, she would have something good to remember of this ill-fated voyage to London. Mostly, she wondered why his opinion mattered at all.
The Earl scooped up a bite of dressing and studied its textures and colors. “You do in fact talk too much, Miss Lamb, but for some reason I enjoy it. So no, you are not boring me. Thus far I know you raise bees, brew mead and ale, train dogs and shepherds, and mediate conflicts among the staff. What else?”
“Cows, of course,” she said between bites of savory capon. Lord, that Marcel could cook, and for all her tiny size she loved good food. “Cows for milk and butter and cheese. We also have pigs, for bacon and pork and because they eat the buttermilk and whey. Where you have cows, you must have pigs.”
The Earl watched without pleasure as the footman refilled Jillian’s wine glass. Things were even worse than he’d expected, although he felt a grudging respect for her. No doubt there was a skill to all this business of cows and cheese and pigs, and he could scarcely hold her accountable for lack of refinement when such had been her life, but how was Margaret ever going to shape her up for the rigors of a Season in London? He’d painted a grim picture when first describing Jillian to his aunt, but nowhere near grim enough. Even her table manners were horrendous.
Well, perhaps not that bad, but unacceptable for any proper table.
Something odd, too, about those manners. In France he’d often dined with parvenues, and they invariably waited and watched before selecting a fork or spoon. If anything, they were too careful. With Jillian, it was the other way around. When she was chatting away on one of her monologues, her manners were flawless and she ate with dainty grace, although she obviously enjoyed her food. It was only when she stopped to think, or seemed to, that she selected the wrong implement and chewed noisily. Once again his suspicions were aroused, and then disarmed, when she took a hefty swallow of wine and popped a large radish, whole, into her mouth. He sighed.
“Pigs are underrated,” she was saying cheerfully as she crunched the radish. “I think they are the smartest animals we have, and that includes a good portion of my staff. For the rest, Choppings Downs runs pretty much as a center for enterprises managed by the tenants. Kentish farmers are the most bullheaded creatures alive, but I’ve managed to get them to coordinate their efforts. For example, Tom Arkon loves trees, so he has orchards of oranges and peaches and cherries. Mrs. Peabloom raises herbs and sometimes acts as midwife. Jeremiah Roostock has a herd of goats and tends strawberries. Some of the tenants cure sheepskin, some spin wool, some weave it, and others grow barley and wheat and corn. We have a blacksmith, two beekeepers, and a roof-thatcher. Since the war we’ve become self-sustaining, and for everything we produce, we’ve developed a business to utilize it or a market to sell it. There isn’t much money, but we all get by.”
“Perhaps,” the Earl said carefully, “with a professional bailiff in charge, the estate would make a profit.”
Jillian picked up her leg of capon and deliberately wrenched off an enormous mouthful. “Not likely,” she said, chewing vigorously. “A city-bred manager wouldn’t last a week with Jock and Mrs. Enger. You speak of what you do not know, My Lord. Give me lessons in London etiquette if you must, but don’t presume to instruct me in how to run a small farming estate.”
“Within a few days,” the Earl said calmly, “I shall judge for myself how well you’ve done.”
“Can you do that,” she protested, “with an open mind? For that matter, how can you possibly judge? What do you know of sheep and pigs and cows?”
“More than I did an hour ago, little one. And I shall arrive at Choppingsworth Downs fully aware of my ignorance and humbly prepared to learn. Peace?”
“I wish you wouldn’t do that.” She dropped the bone on her plate and it bounced onto the tablecloth.
The Earl deliberately wiped his fingers with his napkin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said blandly.
Ignoring the hint, Jillian rubbed her greasy hands on her skirt. “I’m talking,” she said nastily, “about the way you throw out something designed to provoke me and then turn up all sweet when I react to it.”
“Do I?” He smiled beatifically. “That was not my intention.”
“Then why do I want to throw a chicken leg at your smug face?” She fixed him with a pugnacious glare. “Hear this, My Lord. I want to go home. I belong there. And surely an earl has better things to do than play games with me.”
“This is not a game, Miss Lamb,” he said seriously. “I am concerned for your future.”
“Are you indeed?” Flinging her napkin onto the table, she jumped to her feet. “My future was right on course and my life was just fine until you tried to take it over. Please tell Marcel I loved his dessert, and forgive me for not remaining to enjoy it. Right now, I expect I am going to be violently ill!”
As a Grand Exit it wasn’t bad, the Earl decided as he lingered over his dessert and reflected on the inconsistencies in Jillian’s behavior. In Paris, he’d have been certain she was an enemy agent planted to trick him into betraying himself. That was patently ridiculous, and how lowering to be spooked by a tiny dab of a girl when Bonaparte himself had never roused the slightest apprehension. He smiled mirthlessly. The Lamb was a rustic innocent and Bonaparte was incalculably dangerous, but both could do with a lesson in table manners.
He finished his glass of port in solitude, a lone figure at the head of a long, dark table in a long, dark room with a long, dark evening ahead of him. He dared not leave the house. No telling what the Lamb would do if he gave her the opportunity, and he found himself hoping Foxworth had no plans of his own. Maybe their chess game could be resolved at last.
It occurred to him that Foxy would be interested in the things Jillian had set in motion on her farm. Retraining invalided soldiers was a damnably good idea, one the government ought to pursue on a larger scale. It was something to think about. But thinking of wounded soldiers reminded him of Robin, and he didn’t bring up the subject when he settled in front of the chessboard.
Foxy earned a hard-fought draw and was anxious to start another game, but Mark sent him away. Restless and unaccountably irritable, he read late into the night, and when he finally dozed off, his dreams rang with barking dogs and bleating sheep.
He was in a sour mood as he waited in the library the next morning for Jillian Lamb to present herself.
Chapter Twelve
ALL NIGHT, JILLIAN dreamed of dancing through London ballrooms in manure-caked boots. She awoke heavy-eyed and soaked for a long time in her bath, waiting to hear that the Earl had changed his mind after her performance at the dinner table. No such luck. Along with a breakfast tray, Polly brought word that she was to present herself in the library at eleven o’clock.
As she dressed, Jillian wondered what it would take to disillusion him. The man was a brick wall, too stubborn to back down now even if he wanted to. Maybe her appearance this morning would turn the trick. She could not have looked worse if she’d tried, with puffy eyes and a pink nose swollen from her cold. One glance and Lady Margaret was bound to ship her home, for the Baroness could not fail to have more sense than her obstinate nephew. A dumb sheep had more sense than the Earl of Coltrane.
The Earl, who’d been staring out the window, swung around when his ward appeared in the library doorway
and his eyebrows drew together in a fierce frown. Devil take it, that dress was scandalous! Ugly as sin, and all but glued to her body. Wrenching his gaze away, he gathered up the papers on his desk and carefully sorted them into neat piles. “Have you nothing else to wear?” he grumbled.
Jillian’s dimple flashed. “Not a thing, My Lord. This gown may never grace the pages of Ackermann’s Repository, but I assure you that puke-green twill is all the rage in Kent.”
“Miss Lamb!”
She stared at a spot just over his left shoulder. “What would you have me wear then? A horse blanket? Holland covers? You cannot wish the London fashionables to see me like this.”
“I certainly do not wish them to see you emerging from my house. We shall exit the back door and leave from the mews.” When the Earl held out his arm, Jillian ignored it and swept down the hall with her little bottom swaying provocatively. He watched for a moment, suddenly feeling hot, and pinned his gaze to the polished marble floor.
The enclosed vehicle was oppressive. With the drapes pulled there was nothing to look at, and Jillian fumbled with her reticule, stealing glances at the rigid Earl through her spiky lashes. He reminded her of a broom standing in a corner—straight, silent, as relaxed as wood and straw could ever be. His monastic calm grated on her nerves. “No last-minute instructions, Lord and Master?” she quizzed, setting herself to pick a fight. For some reason she was only comfortable when they were quarreling. “I expected a lecture at the very least.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” he replied amiably. “You would do exactly the opposite to spite me. I can only hope you will spare Margaret your frightful language and temper.”
“I’ll save them both for you,” she assured him between her teeth. “Will you be there the whole time?”
