“While you toiled away with some droning tutor, you poor thing.” She took the steps up into the gazebo, and it occurred to Bancroft that perhaps—possibly? maybe?—the lady was inviting him to steal a kiss.
He hadn’t so far. He’d come close yesterday in the conservatory, but then Greta had emerged from behind a potted fern, and Miss Pepper had gone into raptures about the child’s lovely quiet manner.
“This is the perfect place for a doll’s tea party,” Miss Pepper said, twirling with her parasol propped on her shoulder. “I wonder if that was perhaps the very purpose for which the folly was built. I must have the girls down here this afternoon, dolls and all. I’m sure the nursery staff would appreciate a break from their duties.”
She settled onto one of the cushioned benches that ringed the interior. “Sit with me, Bancroft. Tell me more of your childhood.” She patted the cushions and closed her parasol.
He came down immediately beside her. “My childhood was unremarkable and happy. Because Charles was off at school, I drew closer to the land itself. I followed Papa and his steward everywhere, got to know the tenants as if they were extended family, and longed for the day when I could support my brother in his management of this fine property.”
Bancroft’s childhood had been a misery. Never as important as Charles or as dear as their sister, he’d been relegated to the company of somnolent tutors. The local boys had taunted him for his status, and as he’d matured, the local girls had flirted with him in hopes of earning his coin.
Ignorant yokels, the lot of them. Whopstraws whose greatest delight was wandering the square on market day, cramming meat pies into their maws. A far cry from the gentlemen in Town with whom Bancroft had whiled away many a friendly hand of cards.
“How lovely it must be,” Miss Pepper said, “to find the purpose in life for which you were born. Summerfield is that for you, isn’t it?”
Bancroft took her hand. “If I say no, you will know me for a dissembler. If I say yes, then I’m admitting to a very humble ambition—to simply tend my acres, to see my tenants and neighbors prosper along with me, to manage a happy household. In fact, I aspire to more.”
The moment held potential for gestures beyond a stolen kiss. The warm breeze, the golden sunshine, the scents of flowers and cut grass combined to create a perfect romantic opportunity. Miss Pepper seemed to grasp his intent, because she closed her fingers around his, her gaze solemn.
“What more could a man ask for, Bancroft, than a life of contentment, husbanding his acres and enjoying the friendly society of his neighbors?”
Bancroft leaned closer, and still Miss Pepper held his gaze. “Summerfield is lovely, but it’s an enormous dwelling for one man.”
“Ah, but you have your nieces now to add joy to your days. I can see, though, that their aunt has been allowed to dampen their high spirits. You were right to take them under your wing, Bancroft. They will soon blossom in your care, and their laughter will add to your joy.”
Not if he could help it. He’d already sent inquiries to his solicitors about boarding schools that didn’t charge much, or pride themselves on turning out overly educated females. Even a brief sojourn to the capital left a man with expenses and debts of honor to pay, and coddling a pair of nieces was not in Bancroft’s budget.
“The years the girls have spent with Margaret have doubtless taken a toll. But won’t you tell me about your aspirations? Surely a young lady as sensible, pretty, and wise as you are has a few dreams as yet unrealized?” He stroked her hand, and though they were wearing gloves, she had to feel the caress.
“I do like children.”
A promising admission, though one Bancroft would never share. He took pride in his boys, but they were a pair of noisy, rambunctious lads.
“And?”
“You clearly care for children, too, or you wouldn’t be so conscientious toward your nieces. Surely you are taking such good care of Summerfield with an eye toward the future?”
The hope that Bancroft had been harboring since he’d laid eyes on Miss Pepper unfurled into a solid sense that she was determined to winkle a proposal from him. The minx, the dear, charming, well-dowered, utterly obvious minx.
Bancroft was debating the wisdom of sliding to one knee when a shout from the terrace intruded.
“Captain! Captain, come! You naughty dog! For shame. Come now!”
“Oh, that’s Adriana and her doggy,” Miss Pepper said, withdrawing her hand from Bancroft’s. “I do wonder that you lack a country squire’s regiment of panting canines, Bancroft. I so enjoy the companionship of a noble hound. Let’s greet the children, shall we?”
She was off down the steps, waving to the girls, whom Bancroft did not want to greet. Not in the slightest, and his sentiments toward the dog exceeded the bounds of all profanity. He nonetheless slapped on his most gracious smile, caught up with Miss Pepper, and took her by the arm.
Margaret had steeled herself to tell Hawthorne the truth—about the girls, about the whole mess that had resulted in her marriage to Charles—but Hawthorne had fallen asleep before she’d driven the gig to the foot of Summerton’s drive. He’d fallen asleep in the bathtub as well, though weeks of haying lay before him. Had no one ever explained to her husband that a steady pace had much to recommend it over tearing forth into every task?
Margaret turned the gig onto the lane that would lead to the Summerfield gateposts. “I will have a word with your lordly brother if he ever crosses my path.”
“We both will. He’s preoccupied lately, but if I wait for him to stop fawning over his countess, we will all be elderly.”
“Did the comfrey salve help your sunburn?” The scent had accompanied them all the way from Summerton.
“It did. Thank you. What are my orders for this visit?”
Margaret could not read Hawthorne’s mood. If he resented this obligation, he hid it well. He’d said he missed the children, and she believed him. She certainly missed them, and through two long days of haying, she’d also missed Hawthorne.
“My orders for myself,” Margaret said, slowing the horse to a walk, “are not to cry. I am to be cheerful and calm. Pleased to see the children, of course, but not… not upset.” Upset didn’t begin to describe the stew of frustration, grief, rage, and worry she’d been enduring since reading Bancroft’s note.
“Cheerful and calm.” Hawthorne took the reins from her, as if he knew she needed her handkerchief now. “That sounds like me at the start of haying. Also me at the start of lambing, foaling, shearing, planting, harvest, hedging, calving, penning…”
“It’s hard, isn’t it?” Margaret said, dabbing at her eyes with her linen. “Always being cheerful and calm.”
Hawthorne switched the reins to one hand and wrapped an arm around her waist. “You miss them terribly.”
He hadn’t answered her question, probably because the answer was obvious.
“Of course I miss them, but more significantly, I worry for them. Bancroft knows nothing about caring for children, this Miss Pepper person knows even less, and the girls can be difficult. I’m glad you left Captain with them.”
“If they have to walk the dog, then they get outside several times a day. You want to kidnap the children, don’t you?”
Even in the midst of what felt like an honest, private conversation, Hawthorne’s air was slightly distant. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I would like to kidnap them. Damned Bancroft knew exactly what he was doing, snatching the children as haying began, and I let him get away with it.”
“We let him get away with it.”
Hawthorne glanced over at her, then urged the horse back to the trot. “Is there a reason we let him get away with stealing the girls?”
A carefully neutral question. Margaret could answer with only half of the truth. “He ambushed us. The law isn’t against him, and if he’s to marry Miss Pepper, the children should get to know her.”
“They can get to know her after she’s assumed the bu
rden of being Mrs. Bancroft Summerfield, assuming she’s that lacking in sense.” Hawthorne turned the gig onto the Summerfield drive. “Are you looking forward to this visit or dreading it?”
“Both. What if they love it here, Hawthorne? Bancroft can be charming.” Was Margaret’s worst fear that the children would be consigned to some miserable school in the cold and distant north, or that they’d be taken in by Bancroft’s pretense of doting?
“Give them more credit than that, Margaret. They know who loves them and who puts on a show for his own gain.”
“You asked for your orders regarding this visit.” Margaret turned her face against Hawthorne’s shoulder and took a good, deep sniff of him. Lavender, comfrey, a hint of lanolin, meadow grasses… all good things and all him. “Keep doing what you’re doing. Reminding me of the truth, reminding me what matters. Haying matters, too, Hawthorne, I know that. I just… I needed to be here.”
“Haying matters,” he said, steering the horse into the circular drive before the Summerfield façade, “but being your husband matters more. I’m sorry you had to remind me of that, and I will try to do better in the future. I’d do it, you know.”
His apology was so sincere and so welcome, and it left Margaret feeling equal parts reassured and guilty. “You’d do what?”
“Kidnap them. In fact, I might enjoy that. Is your calm, cheerful smile in good repair?”
“Good enough.”
He brought the horse to a halt before the front door. “As is mine. Mrs. Dorning, let the visit begin.”
A bath, a nap in the gig, and a chance to think in peace had done much to restore Hawthorne’s equilibrium. Perhaps he had been in the sun too long, or perhaps being married took getting used to. Regardless of those factors, now that Margaret had taken him in hand—and applied salve to his blisters and sunburn, forced him to eat a decent meal, and valeted him into clean clothes—he could focus on the problem that was Bancroft Summerfield.
The man couldn’t manage property worth a drover’s fart. Fields more than ready for the scythe were still standing, while a shorter crop closer to the house was being harvested. A flock of sheep near the manor house had yet to be shorn, leaving the animals miserable in the heat. Fences had been painted on one side—the side facing the drive—which only made the boards warp more quickly.
Hawthorne handed his wife down from the gig and stole a kiss to her cheek. “If Bancroft was half as good at managing an estate as he is at managing appearances, Summerfield would be awash in coin.”
“Every time I come here, I am a little sadder at what I see,” Margaret replied. “If it’s not livery going dingy at the cuffs, it’s ruts in the drive or windows overdue for glazing. Charles would despair of the place now.”
From a distance, Summerfield looked like a grand old stately home. Three stories of gray limestone—Chilmark, from the looks of it—held pride of place atop a slight rise. An alley of lime trees flanked the drive, and pastures extended on either side of the trees. Windows on the first and second floors were trimmed in white, while the third floor looked to be taken up with attics. The front terrace was elevated above the drive and ran the length of the façade, with urns of red salvia set at regular intervals.
“Do you miss having such a grand home?” Hawthorne asked, rapping on the front door.
“Charles and I lived mostly at Summerton—fewer stairs. I don’t miss this place, and I can’t see that it’s a better location for raising children than Summerton is.”
“I hear Captain,” Hawthorne said when the housekeeper had escorted them to the family parlor. “If Captain is in the garden, then the children will be there too. Mrs. Dorning and I will join the children out of doors.”
“Mr. Summerfield is in the garden as well,” the housekeeper said, “as is Miss Pepper. Mr. Pepper is above stairs at his letters, but we’ll let him know that company has arrived.”
The housekeeper withdrew on a curtsey.
“Calm and cheerful,” Margaret said, looking tense and determined.
“I have a suggestion,” Hawthorne said, drawing her into his arms.
“Suggest away, particularly if it involves kidnapping small children.”
Hawthorne kissed her brow. “Let’s divide and conquer.”
Margaret peered up at him. “Whatever do you mean?”
In Margaret’s opinion, the children were coping, to use Fenny’s words. Adriana hopped on one foot for the length of the garden. Greta hadn’t said more than two words. When Hawthorne had passed her his watch, she’d pressed it to her ear as if its ticking held the secrets to eternal happiness.
The dog stuck close to Greta, as did Ambers, while Fenny chased after Adriana. Margaret longed to take Adriana by one hand and Greta by the other and bolt for the gig, though Hawthorne had advised against it.
“I am so pleased to meet you, Mrs. Dorning,” Miss Emily Pepper said as Adriana came hopping up the walkway on a return circuit. “My, that child has impressive stamina.”
“The girls are accustomed to spending some of every day out of doors when the weather’s fine,” Margaret replied. “Sunshine is good for their spirits, and if they can have an hour to do as they please—within limits, of course—they settle more effectively to their studies.”
Miss Pepper closed her parasol and passed it to Adriana as she hopped by. “You can shade your sister while your auntie and I have a chat in the gazebo.”
Adriana looked at the parasol, then at Margaret.
“A fine notion,” Margaret said, when she’d rather be exploring the gardens with the girls than making small talk with Miss Pepper. “What do you say to Miss Pepper?”
“Thank you, Miss Pepper!” Adriana brandished the parasol and skipped off toward Greta’s bench. “Miss Pepper gave me a lance! We can joust like knights of old, Greta, and Captain can be our noble steed!”
“I used to have an imagination like that,” Miss Pepper said. “Perhaps children without many siblings develop the knack of inventing adventures to make up for a lack of playmates.”
The young lady’s scent was not the overly sweet rose water or neroli many women her age wore. Those fragrances had all the subtlety of harbor cannon, booming over all other contenders by sheer force of impact.
Her choice started off lemony and blended down into warm spices, like a good, rainy-day tisane well suited to a touch of honey. Margaret liked the scent, though she didn’t particularly want to like the woman.
“I was an only child,” Margaret said, “and joined the household of elderly relatives at a young age. I was allowed to wander over most of the shire, often by myself. That sufficed to occupy my imagination.”
They’d reached the gazebo, a structure Charles’s father had built so his boys could play buccaneers and knights and whatever else caught their fancy on fine days. Charles had found those memories painful as his illness had progressed.
“You’d rather spend this time with your nieces, wouldn’t you?” Miss Pepper asked.
This young lady could become the mother figure in Greta and Adriana’s lives. Margaret did not want to offend her, but neither did she see any point in dissembling.
“I miss them terribly. I’m trying not to convey to them that they should be missing me just as much, but a part of me…” A part of Margaret had been weeping for days. “Promise me something, Miss Pepper.”
Miss Pepper took a seat on the gazebo steps, a perch that meant they could keep the children in sight. Margaret took the place beside her.
“I don’t make promises lightly, Mrs. Dorning.”
“Nor do I ask for them lightly, but where the children are concerned, I have no pride. If you join Bancroft’s household, please take care of my nieces. Care for them. They are wonderful children, and life has not been easy for them. They lost their parents, then their Uncle Charles. Bancroft would take them from Summerton now, and while I’m sure you are all that is worthy, they are little girls, and they will need time to adjust to yet another change.”
Adriana took Greta by one hand and brandished the parasol with the other. Captain loped along with them as they charged across the garden, Adriana bellowing, “A moi, mes knights! A moi!”
“Chevaliers!” Margaret hollered. “Mes chevaliers!”
Adriana took up the cry, Captain barked, and Miss Pepper’s expression remained hard to read.
“You are not a dried-up old besom who forces the children to memorize Scripture by the hour, are you?” she asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Bancroft paints himself as rescuing the girls from a drafty garret where they are condemned to drudgery by their widowed auntie’s eccentric notions.”
“The same Bancroft who has yet to visit the nursery this week?”
Miss Pepper’s smile was slight. “The same Bancroft who they all but hide from when I insist he notice them. I do like children, Mrs. Dorning, and Bancroft can offer them the status of a wealthy landowner’s household. He has servants, London connections, and vast acreage, while from what I understand, you are essentially married to a steward who has no property of his own, and you dwell on a glorified farm.”
Greta took a turn wielding the parasol, though she used it more like a rapier than a lance.
“Did Bancroft neglect to tell you that my farm has several tenancies paying good rent and that my Hawthorne is the son of an earl? He manages many more acres than Bancroft does, and I believe you might be acquainted with his brother Valerian.”
Miss Pepper’s composure slipped. “Valerian Dorning? I assumed there was a connection, but at some remove. Like all the Joneses in Wales might be related, or all the Trengrouses in Cornwall.”
“Hawthorne and Valerian are brothers. All the siblings have botanical names, and unlike Summerfield, the Dorning estate has been well managed.”
“But stewardship is not comparable to owning Summerfield. What do you have to offer the girls that Bancroft can’t offer them?”
A Lady of True Distinction Page 27
