A Lady of True Distinction

by Grace Burrowes

  “HUSH,” Greta bellowed, the music box pressed to her ear.

  Adriana smiled at Thorne hugely. “I forgot that part. Aunt Margaret, Mr. Dorning can sing.”

  Margaret was smiling at Thorne too, which made the foolishness of nursery rhymes in the garden worth the indignity. But was her smile a yes-I-will-marry-you smile, or a you-do-me-a-great-honor smile? The answer mattered more than Thorne was comfortable admitting.

  “Mrs. Summerfield.” He bowed over the lady’s hand. “Miss Fenner. Good day to you both.”

  The governess, a petite creature with a pointed chin and fine green eyes, dipped a hasty curtsey. “I fear Greta will sleep with that music box under her pillow.”

  “A music box can meet a worse fate,” Margaret said. “Mr. Dorning, it’s a pretty day for a walk. Fenny, we’ll leave you with the angel chorus. Best of luck.”

  The women exchanged a look, partly humorous, partly long-suffering. Career soldiers probably knew that look, as did yeomen trying to wrestle a livelihood from tired ground. Best of luck—you’ll need it.

  “Let’s enjoy your bluebells,” Thorne said. “They have yet to reach their peak, but the blooms are gathering momentum.” Margaret took his arm, and they wandered onto the path that led from the garden. Thorne let the silence stretch and tried to exude the patient confidence of a man worth marrying.

  “Mr. Hartley has called on Fenny twice now,” Margaret said. “He’s spying for Bancroft, and Fenny knows it.”

  “Is Hartley spying, or pretending to spy the better to shield his masculine pride?”

  “Perhaps both. Are you ready for shearing?”

  Margaret Summerfield would be very good at any betting card game. “I am ready for shearing to be over,” Thorne said. “Every year, I tell myself that I need not wield the clippers myself, but height gives me an advantage with the more surly beasts, and I cannot abide idleness.”

  “And every year, you end up with an aching back, sore arms and shoulders, a few nicks and bruises, and a great weariness that doesn’t abate in time for haying. Do you apply comfrey salve?”

  “I’m usually too tired after a day of shearing to apply anything but soap and water. You’ve had some of your deadfall cut up.”

  The woods had the open feel of an ancient stand, which allowed sunlight to reach the forest floor and paths to meander beneath shady boughs. In another two weeks, the canopy would reach its full glory, and the flowers would fade.

  “I sent a load of wood to Hannah Weller,” Margaret said. “She was my aunt’s dearest friend and a great source of comfort to me before I married Charles. I’ve known her forever.”

  Thorne had not made the time to call on Mrs. Weller after their one encounter on market day. He’d been too busy getting ready for shearing and composing swainly speeches.

  “If you’re wearing a fragrance today,” he said, “I can’t detect it.”

  Margaret held out her bare hand. “Try near my wrist.”

  The forest had a scent—woodsy, of course, damp, green—and the path was downwind from the bluebells, which gave the air a light fragrance.

  “Roses,” Thorne said, holding Margaret’s wrist beneath his nose. “And something else, something that leans toward raspberries?”

  She sniffed her wrist. “Perhaps it does at that. This is my everyday soap, and I don’t want it to have too strong a scent, because then it clashes with any fragrance I apply. The rose fades faster than a lavender or citrus scent would, and that can be an asset when one wants to be clean but not too aromatic. I am babbling.”

  “Don’t be nervous, Margaret. I have little to offer, I know that, but I offer in good faith and genuinely want your happiness. If marriage to me doesn’t suit you, then I will wish you well and take myself back to the shearing shed.”

  That recitation hadn’t been among the swainly speeches Thorne had rehearsed, but perhaps it should have been. He’d been wishing Margaret well for years—her, then her and Charles, then her, Charles, and the girls.

  “My situation is complicated,” she said, taking Thorne by the hand and drawing him down a different path than the one that led to the bluebells. “I believe you and I would suit wonderfully.”

  There was a but coming. Well, hell and damnation. “As do I.”

  “We are both practical people, not given to drama, happy to be useful. We are neither of us greedy or vain, and we’re both loyal to those we love. My values and yours are compatible.”

  “You’ve given this considerable thought.” Reason to be encouraged, perhaps?

  “You are involved in an effort to make your family’s botanical resources profitable, and that project matters to you greatly. I am similarly committed to raising my nieces.”

  From the direction of the garden, the first verse of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star had sounded several times, as had some yelling of an indeterminate nature. This was what marriage to Margaret would be like, domestic realities side by side with beauty and companionship.

  Thorne’s version of wedded bliss, in other words. “Your nieces appear to thrive in your care.”

  Margaret escorted him to a bench along the trail, a plain plank seat that had a view of the back gardens through the trees. The bluebells bloomed farther along the trail, the breeze dispersing their scent.

  “Adriana would thrive anywhere she found a reasonable amount of kindness and common sense,” Margaret said, patting the place beside her on the bench. “She is impossible not to love. Greta is a more complicated little person.”

  Greta, to be honest, was a somewhat odd little person. Thorne liked her, based on their limited acquaintance, because her oddness was of the honest, earnest variety, perhaps like his own.

  “My brother Valerian is the complicated one in our family,” Thorne said, sitting hip to hip with the lady. “He has hidden depths and has made appearing shallow and harmless his life’s work. One crosses him at one’s peril, though.”

  “Precisely the case with Greta. She can appear unperturbed by gale-force winds, but if her porridge hasn’t been sweetened with honey, the nursery becomes the scene of pitched battle for the rest of the morning.”

  Margaret was directing the conversation toward some conclusion that related to Thorne’s marriage proposal, but he could not for the life of him divine her strategy.

  He twined his fingers with hers. “Would you like children of your own, Margaret?” She’d dodged the question the last time he’d posed it.

  “I have forbidden myself to think in those terms. My loyalty now must be to my nieces. Charles’s will provided that I be their custodian here at Summerton, though Bancroft is named a co-guardian, as you know. Charles had a better opinion of Bancroft than Bancroft deserves, but then, Charles had a generous and forgiving nature.”

  Margaret already had children, in other words. Nieces, not daughters, but children just the same. “Do you worry that becoming my wife would mean you’d have less to give to your nieces?” It would never have occurred to Thorne—or to his siblings—that marrying Margaret would mean he had less to give to Dorning Hall or any of its ventures.

  “Something like that,” she said. “Right now, the children are happy here. Any change in my circumstances, even a change for the better, and I give Bancroft a weapon to use against me. Marrying you would be a selfish choice on my part. I harbored a tendresse for you in my youth, you know.”

  She was refusing Thorne’s suit, and yet, he was pleased with her admission. “I was likewise preoccupied with you. The other girls were loud, fluttery, and silly. You were mysterious and quiet. They idled in the market square. You took up a sturdy trug and struck off across the fields.”

  And I followed you. Thorne’s dignity required him to keep that to himself—for now. Young Margaret had occasionally gone wading on hot summer days, and the sight of her ankles and calves had been the stuff of fevered adolescent dreams.

  “I saw you swimming once, you know,” she said. “In the mill pond at dusk. The other boys had gone home, and you
stayed there, naked as Adonis, floating on your back as the stars came out.”

  “Margaret Summerfield, I’m shocked.” Thorne was also—and this had not been on his agenda either—falling in love. Not merely smitten with the quiet, wandering girl, but overtaken by a slow, sweet rise of affection and tenderness for the sensible, calm woman at his side.

  What an inconvenient time to succumb to the yearnings of the heart. Elements of youthful longing colored his feelings, but so, too, did a desire to share the rest of his years with the woman Margaret had become.

  “Hawthorne, if marrying me meant you had to turn your back on your family, could you do it?”

  His first reaction was in the negative—no man should turn his back on family—but like the lady, the question was complicated. “My family could find another steward for Dorning Hall, Margaret.”

  “That’s not the point, though, is it? You and I would suit, I do have some experience with botanical scents, and our land marches. The union would be practical and would allow you to assist your brothers while taking on a wife and family. But if you had to choose, the Dorning family and its priorities or me and the girls, would you marry me?”

  Thorne’s brothers would tell him to marry and be happy, but his brothers, even Grey, had no idea exactly what went into stewarding Dorning Hall.

  “I could not forsake my family,” Thorne said, “but if you and I married, then you, Greta, and Adriana would become my family as well, and my brothers and sisters would not turn their backs on us either. Grey is an earl. Willow married an earl’s daughter. Jacaranda married a nabob who came into a minor title, and his brother is also an earl. Marry me, and our children—and your nieces—can be presented at court, if you wish. I had not considered my connections to be of any moment to you.”

  Though, of course, they would and should be. Thorne wanted Margaret’s recipes and her knowledge of fragrances and tisanes. If she hadn’t had that expertise, he’d likely not have set out to court her, no matter how fetching her ankles. He would have sweated himself to exhaustion in the shearing shed, on the haystacks, and at harvest, wishing Margaret well and being a damned fool from afar.

  “I had not considered your connections either,” she said slowly. “I’m not a snob.”

  Thorne heard the unspoken words likely forming in her mind: But Bancroft Summerfield is a snob. A very great snob indeed, considering the man was nothing more than a country squire with more land than he could manage profitably.

  Margaret, by contrast, was a countrywoman. She had some means, both inherited from her family and as a function of her marriage, but presentation at court would not have crossed her mind as more than a girlish dream.

  For her nieces, she could aim higher—if she married Thorne. He’d been raised with the certainty that some fine day, he’d make his bow at a royal levee, and he could not have escaped that fate by any honorable means.

  “We would suit, Margaret, and if you fear that I’d let Bancroft take the children without a fight, lay your fears to rest. When you marry me, your battles become mine, and your children become mine too.”

  Her regard was serious to the point of solemnity, as if Thorne had recited a vow that surpassed even the weightiness of the nuptial promises, but what did marriage mean, if not a pooling of resources and loyalties?

  “Bancroft is determined and wily,” Margaret said. “I have underestimated him in the past, to my sorrow. I had no idea Charles would involve him in the girls’ situation, but the will is clear. If I were to marry you, Bancroft would be a constant threat to our happiness and our home. I need you to know that, because were the decision based on only my own wants, then I’d not have hesitated—”

  Thorne wanted to hear whatever fears and misgivings Margaret had to share, but her no—she’d been intent on delivering him a no—had shifted to an if I were to marry you. That was worth kissing about.

  Also worth taking the lady in his arms. Margaret acceded to the overture, draping herself across his lap and twining her arms around his neck. Thorne had meant to offer a happy pleasure, but Margaret was intent on more substantial fare.

  She apparently liked kissing, or liked kissing him, and Thorne liked her boldness. She tasted him, traced his lips with her tongue, sank her fingers into his hair, and generally chased all thoughts of family feuds, worldly connections, and pretty speeches from his head.

  She was a widow. She knew exactly where this sort of kiss could lead, and Thorne was overjoyed to be led there.

  “Margaret, has anybody ever made love to you on a bench in a shady forest?”

  She gazed up at him. “Has anybody made love to you on a bench in a shady forest?”

  “Not until today. Are we to be married, then?”

  Blast him for an idiot, because she sat up, scooted off his lap to place beside him, and straightened her skirts.

  “Hawthorne, there are aspects of the situation I’m not sure how or whether to convey. They prevent me from answering easily.”

  Perhaps she could not have children? Maybe that was what drove her interest in herbs and flowers. Thorne was about to present himself as the most trustworthy confidant ever to hang on a lady’s every word when a long shriek split the air.

  “That’s Greta,” Margaret said, bolting off the bench. “That’s Greta, and that is the start of an imperial tantrum.” Margaret sprinted off down the path, and Thorne loped after her.

  “Despite your failure to warn us of your visit, Valerian,” Grey said, “you are of course welcome for as long as you’d like to stay. I am, however, at a loss to know how kicking your heels here in London will further the project you profess to support.”

  For Grey, that casual inquiry amounted to a tongue-lashing. The trip to London had taken Valerian longer than it should have as a result of bad roads, a broken coach wheel, and an unwillingness to expend funds sufficient to secure a place on a post-chaise. Valerian had arrived the previous evening to find the earl and countess out at a formal dinner hosted by Mr. Tresham and his lady.

  Company that Bancroft Summerfield would not have been admitted to, thank heavens.

  “How is kicking your lordly heels in London supporting that project?” Valerian retorted. The familiar painting of Durdle Door now hung here in the family parlor, an airy, cheerful space compared to the town house’s estate office. Other changes were more subtle.

  The Dorning London residence smelled better, less of muddy boots and dusty corners, more of cinnamon, baking bread, and sunshine. The servants moved about quickly, rather than idling to chat with one another on the stairs. The flowers on the sideboard were fresh, not drooping or scattering petals onto the carpet.

  Grey was married. Valerian had been present at the ceremony, but domestic details made the vows real in a way a formal ceremony had not.

  “The mercantile project is not mine to undertake,” Grey said, settling into a chair upholstered in lavender velvet. “I thought I made that clear. You lot at Dorning Hall may have the use of any crop, herb, acre, or resource the Hall possesses, but making the venture profitable is in your hands.”

  Valerian would die for any one of his brothers, if they didn’t drive him to Bedlam first.

  “We have no capital,” he began, pacing the width of the carpet and back again. “We have no labor, because Dorning Hall requires us to literally put our hands to the plow, shovel, shears, hoe, and reins, as ungentlemanly as those exertions might be. We have no management expertise, because as the ornamental fellows we’ve been raised to be, concocting perfumes and tisanes lies outside the limits of our education. In addition to land that is largely going to waste growing the various experiments and oddities Papa collected, you gave us nothing more than a good idea, Grey, and an impossible schedule. Good ideas, even brilliant ideas, are thick on the ground, as are impossible schedules.”

  Grey was in good looks, though he’d always been a handsome devil. He was rested, he was no longer gaunt, his gaze had lost the perpetual anxiety of a man with too many dependent
s and not enough cash.

  That was all to the good, but the rest and rejoicing of marriage had also, apparently, rejuvenated Grey’s stores of pigheadedness.

  “The schedule, as you term it, is apparently meaningless,” Grey said, pulling an embroidered satin pillow from behind his back and tossing it to the sofa. “You were to be shipping products to market by Yuletide. That was months ago, and I’ve yet to see a single sachet sent this way.”

  “Nor will you see any in the immediate future,” Valerian countered. He fell silent while a footman wheeled in a tea tray. Not a footman Valerian recognized, but then, Grey’s countess had brought some household staff to the union, and Valerian was now a visitor in a dwelling he’d always thought of as a Dorning family home.

  “Thank you, Thiel,” Grey said to the footman. “I will pour out for my brother.”

  A year ago, Valerian would have rung for the damned tea if he’d wanted any and poured out for himself. The change—Grey shifting from head of the family to host—was necessary, good, and infuriating. Perhaps this was why Ash and Sycamore dwelled elsewhere, why Willow remained in the country with his wife and his hounds.

  “I’ve had breakfast,” Valerian said. “No tea for me.”

  “Then you’ll miss a treat,” Grey said, lifting the lid of the teapot and sniffing at the rising steam. “Gunpowder with jasmine flowers. Beatitude favors it.”

  “Would she favor a perfume with that scent? Would she like your shaving soap to remind her of that fragrance?”

  Grey replaced the lid. “Perhaps. She says it’s both soothing and pretty.”

  “How does one capture a scent, Grey? How does it get from the flowers and the teapot into a lotion, say?”

  Grey took the tea tray and shifted to the reading chair by the window. He set the tray on the side table and settled back, crossing his boots at the ankle. He moved more freely now, no longer the walking temple to manners and deportment he’d been before his marriage—another change for the good.

  “How should I know? I’m an earl, not an apothecary.”