A Lady of True Distinction

by Grace Burrowes

  And the lady was hiding behind a mundane, helpful task that prevented her conversation from progressing past superficial socializing. Did she do this at every assembly, and if so, why?

  “Staring is rude.” Valerian passed Thorne a cup of punch that savored of apples and brandy.

  “She’s pretty,” Thorne replied, taking a cautious sip of his drink. “And I’m not staring, I’m appreciating. Our publican has once again done the impossible and managed to turn a lowly libation into an incendiary brew.”

  “Which means all the young sprigs will be laid out on the green within an hour, leaving thee and me to keep the ladies happy.”

  Valerian looked harmless with his lacy cuffs, elegant coat, and charming smile. Thorne knew better.

  “You have that look,” Valerian murmured.

  “This is my I-took-a-bath look. You are simply accustomed to seeing me covered in dust, chaff, and horsehair.”

  “You look like you’re planning something. You wore the same expression when you decided to dam the stream to create a water meadow below the yearling pasture. The same look as when you decided to breed Tatiana to Mrs. Summerfield’s stud.”

  “Both projects turned out splendidly. What’s your point?”

  “Courting a woman who doesn’t care for you is not only very uphill work, Thorne, it embarrasses your siblings and is annoying to the lady.”

  Something, or somebody, annoyed Margaret Summerfield. Thorne’s money was on her brother-in-law.

  A large group had arrived, all gathered around the door. Thorne passed Valerian his drink. “Consume that at your peril.” He crossed the room, took the place beside Mrs. Summerfield, and reached for the next coat. “Mr. Mortenson, good evening. I see you brought the entire family.”

  Four young ladies and their mama smiled and blushed and passed over bonnets and coats. For the next few moments, general greetings meant Mrs. Summerfield could not shoo Thorne off, though as soon as the new arrivals ebbed, she made the attempt.

  “Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Dorning, but I can manage from here.”

  “Is that the Summerfield family motto? ‘I can manage from here.’ Dornings adhere to the same creed, for the most part.”

  “The Summerfield family motto is ‘No peace without justice.’ Hardly original, but pithy.”

  “You don’t have an herbalist,” Thorne said. “I asked Mrs. Weller at market on Thursday, and she revealed your little secret.”

  Mrs. Summerfield’s hands, which had been busy untangling the ribbons of a bonnet, went still, then resumed their task.

  “Mrs. Weller ought not to gossip about other people’s affairs.”

  “She said your gift with fragrances surpasses genius and approaches divine inspiration.” And at eighty-three years old, Hannah Weller was not given to exaggeration. “The salve you made for her rheumatism has given her ‘the hands of a sixty-year-old,’ to quote her.”

  “Arnica, comfrey, a few other herbs for scent. A brisk application of heat to the affected joints by virtue of friction on the skin. Most medicine operates on the mind rather than the body.”

  “However the medicine works, she sang your praises, while you try to hide your abilities. Is that modesty, Mrs. Summerfield, or something else?”

  She hung the bonnet on a peg and picked up another from the several on the table before her. “Perhaps I don’t want every old woman in the shire importuning me for results I cannot deliver.”

  Fair enough, and this was not courting talk. “All I want from you is a single waltz, but if this gathering runs true to form, we’ll be made to wait the entire night for it. May I fetch you a glass of punch?”

  “Please.”

  Thorne did not care for the tension she conveyed in even a single syllable. He took the bonnet from her and untied the knot in the ribbons.

  “All you need do, ma’am, is tell me to absent myself. I have two sisters and many brothers. I also had two parents very much concerned with ensuring I learned my manners. I am trying, in my bumbling way, to converse on some topic other than the weather with a woman whom I have long esteemed. If my company is unwelcome, you simply say so. I will not take offense, sulk, pout, or brood. I will, however, request that you honor the gift of your waltz.”

  Tonight she wore the scent of orange blossoms, a light, happy fragrance said to presage marital thoughts. Undertones of honey came through, along with a hint of freshly scythed meadows.

  “If you would fetch me half a glass of punch, Mr. Dorning, I would be grateful.”

  “Have I given offense?”

  She moved on to another bonnet. “I am much concerned with raising my nieces, and before that, I was in mourning. I have never been a handy conversationalist.”

  As a younger woman, she’d been as ready with platitudes and chitchat as the next lady, from what Thorne had observed. He brought her the drink—half a glass—as well as a plate of food from the buffet.

  Would she have told him if he had given offense? He hoped so.

  “Shall we sit?” he asked. “The late arrivals have slowed to a trickle, and they can hang up their own bonnets and caps.” The musicians, a pair of fiddlers and a concertina player, would take ample advantage of the buffet and the punchbowl before the dancing began.

  “The room is already growing warm,” Mrs. Summerfield said. “Let’s find some peace and quiet before the melee starts.”

  She led him outside to the church steps. Others had taken the same notion. A few people were ranged around the benches on the green. Some couples perched in the village’s shop doorways. The full moon was rising in the east—assemblies were always timed to take advantage of moonlight—and the night offered a hint of spring’s mildness.

  “Mr. Merryweather tarried in the forge late today,” Mrs. Summerfield said, wrinkling her nose as she settled onto the hard stones. “Mr. Havers has apparently cleaned out his loafing shed.”

  Thorne took a whiff of the evening air, catching only faint hints of the scents Mrs. Summerfield read like copperplate text. Merryweather was the blacksmith, and his labors put a subtle tang of sulfur and ash on the breeze. Havers worked a large tenant farm directly west of the village and kept a dozen milch cows.

  “Is your sense of smell like Oak and colors?” Thorne asked, coming down beside her. “We can’t take Oak anywhere that he isn’t peering at the sky, scanning the horizon, or studying mud puddles. He lives through his visual perceptions of life and can recite a description of commonplace surrounds that notes every detail and hue you forgot you saw.”

  “Something like that. I cannot ignore scents or flavors, but especially scents.”

  “You have a gift, then,” Thorne said. “Like a musician, artist, or master chef. Are your nieces similarly astute?”

  She held the plate out to him, and Thorne took a slice of bread that had been baked with the dough rolled up around some sort of cheese, tomato, and basil combination. He hadn’t noticed the basil when he’d chosen that snack. He couldn’t ignore it now.

  “You don’t know Greta and Adriana, Mr. Dorning.”

  “I know them to see them at market.” Though he seldom had, come to think of it.

  Mrs. Summerfield took a nibble of a cinnamon bun. “They can be difficult.”

  “My mother claimed that boys were awful, but girls were worse, and that was one of her more cheerful pronouncements on the topic of motherhood.”

  “She had the raising of nine children, Mr. Dorning.”

  “Are Greta and Adriana awful?”

  More of the cinnamon bun disappeared. Mrs. Summerfield tore off one bite at a time at a methodical pace. The din from the assembly rooms grew louder, and the moon rose higher.

  “Greta is a lady of particulars,” Mrs. Summerfield said. “She was named for a Danish great-aunt, and Charles likened her to an old woman, unwilling to be touched, unwilling to eat anything she dislikes, irrationally intolerant of certain fabrics, but able to recall the oddest details no matter how long ago they occurred. She
can also quote people verbatim at the most inopportune times.”

  “She seemed like a perfectly normal little girl to me, but perhaps she does take after her aunt in a few regards.”

  Mrs. Summerfield gave a slight shiver. She wasn’t wearing a cloak or shawl, which had made sense when escaping the close confines of the assembly rooms, but she was apparently chilly now. Thorne slipped off his coat and draped it around her shoulders.

  “Am I like a crotchety old woman, Mr. Dorning?”

  “Perhaps Greta shares your inability to ignore certain details. A hundred people are in those assembly rooms, getting ready to drink and stomp their evening away. Not a one of them went into that building thinking, ‘Merryweather worked late at his forge today.’ You, however, could not avoid that conclusion. Nobody likes rough wool against the skin, but perhaps Greta can’t ignore it. Maybe what most people regard as a food they don’t enjoy is for her a gustatory torment she’ll be tasting long after she’s gone to bed. Like you, she cannot help the gifts she’s been given.”

  Mrs. Summerfield set the plate aside, though the food wasn’t half gone. “You think she’s like me? I’m only her aunt, Mr. Dorning.”

  Thorne at first worried that his observation had been yet another conversational blunder, but no. Mrs. Summerfield looked as if he’d passed her a bouquet bearing every beautiful scent in the shire. Pleased, uncertain, shy.

  “I inherited my height from an uncle,” he said. “All the Dorning men are tall, but I’m the living image of Uncle Thomlin, who was also the tallest of his brothers. Oak’s artistic talent came from an aunt. Why shouldn’t Greta get some of her unique abilities from you?”

  “Because I am not related to the twins by blood, Mr. Dorning.”

  True enough. The girls were not Summerfields by name, but rather, the offspring of a deceased Summerfield sister and her spouse.

  “One can influence children by virtue of how they’re nurtured. Oak’s talent was fostered because Aunt Ida took an interest in him. If Greta and Adriana notice that you have a keen sense of smell, they will become more perceptive about the scents they encounter too.”

  “You have a point.” A point that clearly pleased her.

  A violin began to warm up with ascending scales, and the couples on the green drifted toward the assembly room doors, but Thorne wasn’t nearly ready to abandon the only topic that had made Margaret Summerfield smile.

  “Tell me more about your nieces,” he said. “They appear to be great good friends, for all their differences.”

  “They are,” Mrs. Summerfield said, picking up the plate. “I worry about that, about them becoming enemies. They have spats and skirmishes and are again thick as thieves fifteen minutes later. I have no siblings, so this is all quite terrifying to me, but the governess is one of eleven and says we’re muddling on exactly as we ought.”

  Thorne let her chatter about her nieces, who sounded like a pair of hoydens in training to him, though all the while he was also aware of the question he needed to ask when the moment was right.

  Mrs. Summerfield had told him in very certain terms that she could not part with any recipes, then she’d sent him a recipe for a concoction of lavender water, one of the most common, humble, useful scents in the herbal. From one perspective, that was no gift at all—every housekeeper likely had half a dozen such recipes—but for Thorne, it was reason to be encouraged.

  Margaret Summerfield had sent him a recipe, and that was both a gesture of trust and a foundation upon which he could build.

  Chapter Four

  Even as Charles’s illness had progressed, he’d been mannerly, but he’d never lent Margaret his coat on a brisk spring evening. The pleasure of that gesture went beyond the mere comfort of warding off a chill.

  When Mr. Dorning had surrendered his coat to her, he’d surrendered a piece of his privacy as well. He was an astute man—more’s the pity—and he would know exactly what a garment would tell a woman with her sensitivities about its owner.

  His wardrobe was likely lined with cedar and hung with lavender sachets, a bracing, masculine combination. He’d probably polished his own boots prior to the assembly, for the hint of boot black was stronger than if the boots had merely sat outside the wardrobe while their owner dressed.

  Mr. Dorning apparently eschewed the use of heavy starch, because that, too, left only a faint trace on the scent of his coat. His shaving soap was intriguing, having elements of both roses and spices, perhaps a hint of nutmeg, but hard to pinpoint among all the scents wafting around the village green.

  Margaret could have spent the entire evening sniffing his coat, the collar, the cuffs, the pockets, and even the armpits, though God forbid Bancroft got wind of such behavior. Instead, she passed Mr. Dorning his coat before they returned to the assembly room.

  “My thanks,” she said. “I’ll find you when the waltz comes around.”

  He bowed, and she affixed her assembly smile to her face—a little gracious, a little gay, but not too much of either. She was a widow and had to navigate between social hedges. Charles had made her promise that she’d remarry, but Charles had also declined to leave her clear title to Summerton or sole guardianship of the girls. Both of those decisions complicated the topic of remarriage.

  “There you are.” Valerian Dorning was speaking to his brother, who was still at Margaret’s side. “I was forced to consume your glass of punch, Hawthorne. You are in my debt.”

  Margaret had no siblings, no relatives at all, and thus undercurrents between brothers baffled her, and yet, she sensed unspoken communication between Valerian and Hawthorne. Valerian was staring at Hawthorne’s chest, for example. What did that mean?

  “Mrs. Summerfield,” Hawthorne said, doing up his coat buttons, “Valerian is apparently without a partner for the first set. Perhaps you’d take pity on a poor feckless lad and stand up with him?” The poor feckless lad was the best dancer in the shire, according to every chaperone or mama to remark on the matter.

  “I would be delighted to.”

  Valerian offered his arm as Hawthorne finished buttoning his coat, and insight dawned: Valerian, the family dandy, had noticed his brother’s coat was unbuttoned. The night air was much cooler than the assembly room, meaning a man would have no reason to unbutton his coat in the out of doors.

  Oh. Oh, how interesting. Hawthorne Dorning had transgressed strict propriety for Margaret’s comfort—which was quite gentlemanly of him—and he didn’t care who knew about that or what conclusions they drew.

  Which could be a problem.

  As a smiling Valerian bowed and Margaret curtseyed, her pleasure refused to fade. Charles had been endlessly gallant. He could have had many failings instead of a very few, and Margaret would always treasure his gallantry.

  “May I say,” Valerian murmured as they joined hands and raised their arms, “you look positively radiant this evening, Mrs. Summerfield?”

  “You may say nearly anything, Mr. Dorning. I am not constrained to believe you.”

  The figure had them turning to their corners, bowing and promenading, then they faced each other and linked hands again.

  “Thorne looks like a sturdy, sensible fellow,” Valerian said. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking he’s just another charming bachelor.”

  Valerian was the charming bachelor, but to Margaret, his smiles were too well timed, the look in his eyes too My, you are a fascinating creature! He was the fascinating creature, and he knew it.

  “Do you imply that Hawthorne is not charming, or that he’s not a bachelor, Mr. Dorning?”

  Logic turned his smile lopsided, into more of a grin. “He’s both, but he’s also a man of tender sentiments and great loyalty. You mistake him for a widow’s plaything at peril to his happiness.”

  One characteristic Margaret had learned about family was that family meddled. Witness Bancroft’s behavior. He was the only other relative the girls had. He hovered, implied, and generally made a nuisance of himself, though Margaret sometime
s wondered if he could have told Greta from Adriana were Margaret to dress them the same—and they were far from identical in appearance.

  Though she never did put them in matching attire. They were twins, not dolls.

  When next Margaret was chasséing at Mr. Dorning’s side, she kept her voice down. “Are you a pot to call kettles black, Mr. Dorning?”

  He missed a step. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Miss Fenner is well acquainted with the governesses, companions, and spinsters in the neighborhood, among whom you have a certain reputation. Perhaps you’d best concern yourself with your own behavior, rather than interfering with your brother’s socializing.”

  When the figure called for the couples to step close, Mr. Dorning smiled down at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and yet, he spoke through clenched teeth.

  “Thorne took off his blasted coat. Next, he would have been feeding you with his fingers in front of half the biddies in the village. I would not want to see either of you become the brunt of talk.”

  Feeding me with his fingers? Charles had never done that either. “Your concern is appreciated, Mr. Dorning, also misplaced. In the years since Mr. Summerfield’s death, I have comported myself more than properly. A little picnic on the church terrace hardly imperils my reputation.”

  The dance steps moved Margaret down the line and Valerian up the line, though in a few more figures, she would face him again.

  Were Bancroft not leaving for Town, Margaret might have been a little more circumspect, but truly, how much more circumspect could she be? Hawthorne Dorning was a gentleman and a neighbor. That he’d share a few snacks with her at the assembly or pay an occasional call was hardly remarkable.

  Except… both were remarkable, and that Margaret looked forward to waltzing with him was more remarkable still.

  Thorne did not consider himself devious, though a man raised with eight siblings had to learn a bit of strategy. Asking for Margaret Summerfield’s waltz was a case in point. Any dance with her would have been an opportunity for conversation, some casual touching, possibly even flirtation. The waltz, however, was the final dance of the evening and the only one that allowed a couple an opportunity for a true discussion.