Miss Dashing, page 9
Phillip had already had enough of playing lordling. This morning of honest work had proved that, if nothing else.
“If I leave, Mrs. Riley will take up her scythe, won’t she?”
“She’ll take it up tomorrow if she doesn’t take it up today. She’s good with a blade. Steady and even. Not like the lads who try to storm through a field.”
But to wield that blade this late into pregnancy had to take a toll on a woman’s back. “I’ll return tomorrow morning,” Phillip said. “I’d take it as a favor if you’d keep her sharpening blades for the first few passes after nooning.”
“Aye, and we’ll send her back to the spring to give the horses a drink and refill the waterpot. Mavie can handle the reins as competently as she does the scythe and the lads. A proper Hampshire lass, that one. If I were ten years younger…” Travers’s gaze landed on something behind Phillip. “Here now, look sharp. We’ve company from the manor house.”
Those men without their shirts were putting them on, and the ladies had risen from blankets spread in the shade.
Phillip turned to see Gavin DeWitt at the reins of a dog cart, Hecate Brompton seated beside him.
“I see we’re late,” Hecate said. “And I’d hoped last night’s leftover tarts wouldn’t go to waste. Mr. Travers, good day.”
She looked so pretty perched beside DeWitt on the bench, a straw hat tied in a fetching lopsided bow beneath her chin. She had seen Phillip—he was sure of that—and recognized him and was for some reason avoiding—
Where the hell is my shirt? The thought erupted in his mind like flames exploding from a rotten hayrick.
Mavis Riley flapped a voluminous quantity of white linen several times, then folded it neatly over her arm and brought it to Phillip at the slowest walk she’d evidenced for the entire morning.
“Your shirt, Mr. Vincent.”
DeWitt had stepped down from the gig and was assisting Hecate to alight while Phillip shrugged into his shirt. The buttons were beyond him. Coherent speech was behind him, while DeWitt was grinning hugely.
“You brought tarts, Miss Brompton?” Henry Wortham asked. “I do fancy a tart.” One of the other young men chuckled at Henry’s word choice, and Henry’s ears turned red.
“So do I,” Mavis Riley said, “and I’m sure Miss Brompton brought along a few sandwiches and possibly a cake or two. Ladies, if you’d bestir yourselves?”
The next few minutes were absorbed with serving a second luncheon and gave Phillip time to do up some buttons and get his waistcoat on.
“If you don that jacket in this heat,” Mavis Riley muttered as she passed him a piece of lemon cake, “I’ll know you’re dicked in the nob. And don’t think to put on the neckcloth either.”
“But a gentleman doesn’t appear before a lady in his underpinnings.” Much less naked from the waist up, God help him.
“A gentleman should not be too quick to deprive a lady of a chance to appreciate God’s handiwork. Bring her a glass of cider before that other strutting nitwit can think to do it.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Phillip took the glass Mavis shoved into his hand, thanked heaven for proper Hampshire lasses, and made his way to the back of the gig, where Hecate was handing the last tray of tarts to one of the women.
“You’ve been hiding all morning here in the hayfield,” she said. “Is that for me?”
Phillip passed over the glass. “Go slowly. Might have a kick.” He waited for a lecture on proper attire, on gentlemanly pastimes, on fraternizing with the locals… He’d truly erred and deserved a dressing down for indulging in a morning of hard work.
“Travers says you inspired his crew to get twice as much done in half a day.”
That was the initial flattery intended to soften a series of blows. A scold would follow, and Phillip would bear up like the gentleman he longed to be when Hecate Brompton was on hand.
“Mrs. Riley is nearing her time,” he said. “She was prepared to do the same work as young Henry there, but probably for half the coin Henry will earn. She’ll have my wages instead.”
Hecate’s gaze went to Mavis, who rested one hand on the small of her back and the other on Henry’s arm. Henry seemed to stand a little taller with Mavis beside him.
“Kind of you,” Hecate said. “You’ve eaten?”
Had he? Phillip fumbled for words because he’d only that moment noticed that Hecate Brompton had a pale sprinkling of freckles across her cheeks. Faint and few, but present all the same.
“A meat pie,” he said. “I’m sure I had a meat pie.”
Hecate sent him a quizzical look. “Will you bide here for the rest of the day?”
“Will you tell me that’s not done? That a gentleman would never? That I’m a hopeless philistine because I’d rather scythe hay than gossip away a fine summer morning?” If so, perhaps he could be finished with this house party, but that prospect didn’t hold as much relief as it ought to. Not when Hecate would be disappointed in him.
“I will tell you,” Hecate replied, “that Great-Uncle Nunn’s estate management has been driving me to bad language for years and that your insights would be much appreciated.” She took a sip of her cider, then passed him the drink. “I will also tell you that a gentleman does not offer a lady—or anybody else—falsehoods.”
Phillip was too hot and thirsty to refuse a drink, and the cider was ambrosial. “I avoid dishonesty generally, except in the interests of kindness.”
“You told me a very great bouncer, my lord.” She batted gently at his hair, then took back the drink. “You claimed your shoulder is defective, that you are deformed. I have firsthand evidence, the evidence of my own eyes, to refute your statement. Your manly figure has no flaws whatsoever. I will expect you at three of the clock to join me and Mr. DeWitt on a tour of the gallery and public rooms.”
She flounced off on a whiff of roses and joined the ladies munching lemon cake on their blankets in the shade.
“You’ll be wanting this,” Gavin DeWitt said, thrusting Phillip’s coat at him.
How much of that exchange had DeWitt overheard, and did Phillip care in the slightest? Upon consideration, no, he did not.
“You have crumbs on your cravat, De-Nitwit, and I do not want my jacket. In this heat, wearing a jacket makes no sense, and you should probably get rid of yours.”
DeWitt brushed at the lace frothing beneath his chin. “Whyever would I commit such an unpardonable breach of manners?”
“Because we have work to do, and we aren’t expected in the gallery until three of the clock. Travers!” Phillip called. “We’ll need another scythe.”
Phillip peeled out of his waistcoat and rolled up his sleeves, then picked up his blade and started on a song. He was the first one back to work, though Henry joined him in less than two minutes.
Hecate checked her appearance in the mirror one more time and noted that her annual summer crop of freckles was threatening to emerge, drat the luck.
On the heels of that thought came another: Lord Phillip would not care one whit about a few freckles. He would, by contrast, regard nightly facial scrubs with a raw potato, avoiding the out of doors, and wearing veils in the hottest weather as so much ridiculousness.
“No potato scrubs,” Hecate informed her reflection. “Not this year.”
She made her way to the gallery and found her quarry in earnest contemplation of a portrait of the present Lord Nunn as a young man.
“Miss Brompton, greetings.” Lord Phillip bowed politely. “He wasn’t always such a prig, was he?”
“My mother could make him laugh.” The artist had captured a hint of humor in Nunn’s blue eyes. He’d been lean, blond, and aristocratically splendid in the lavish finery of an earlier time. The younger Lord Nunn posed with one hand fisted on his hip, the other resting on the head of an adoring hound. A lady’s portrait was hinted at in the background.
“This is the late countess,” Hecate said, moving on to the next painting, which had been hung such that Lord and Lady Nunn seemed to perpetually gaze toward each other. “A love match, according to my mother, but no sons survived long enough to carry on the line.”
“Hence Charles’s good fortune. He’s a rackety fribble, isn’t he?”
Lord Phillip had bathed. His hair was neatly queued back, and his attire was free of dust, chaff, and even wrinkles. He was also no longer sporting a grin, airing a fine baritone, or wielding a scythe while half naked beneath the summer sun.
More’s the pity.
The muscles of his back, chest, and arms would make the Apollo Belvedere moan with envy. Mavis Riley, a grieving widow who’d been devoted to her husband, had followed Lord Phillip’s progress with a wistful hint of smile. Henry Wortham, the blacksmith’s oldest son, was taller and brawnier, but not as mesmerizing to watch at his work.
“What became of your mother?” Lord Phillip asked, studying the late countess’s rings.
“A wasting disease, and yet, she was a happy woman most of the time.”
“Was she a happy wife?”
A voice in Hecate’s head told her to chide Lord Phillip for such a forward question, but they were not at some duchess’s ridotto, where a dozen ears would overhear. Then too, nobody ever mentioned Mama.
“She tried to be a happy wife. Papa is not warmhearted by nature, though he can be very charming when he wants something. He and Uncle Nunn are opposite sides of an ill-humored coin. Uncle Nunn is bereaved and without children, so his discontent with life is understandable. Papa married Mama for her money and lost interest when she, too, was unable to produce sons.”
“Is that why she took up with your true father?” Lord Phillip asked, moving on to the first Baron Nunnville.
Ancestors organized by date marched along the inside wall, and Hecate had seen them all hundreds of times. Men, mostly, with a nod to the occasional viscountess or countess. The baronesses hadn’t signified.
“Where is Mr. DeWitt, my lord?”
“I bring you his regrets. He felt the need for some activity after being shut up in the coach all day yesterday. He took my place on the haying crew and asks that you reserve another day for his tour.”
“Let’s sit, then, shall we? You had a busy morning.”
“And if the weather is obliging, I will indulge myself similarly tomorrow and the day after, until Travers waves me off. Nunnsuch is going ragged around the edges.”
He was understating the matter. Uncle Nunn’s steward had likely served an apprenticeship to Noah upon the landing of the ark and had long since given up on arguing with the earl. Mr. Jamison was a Bristol man by birth and spent as much time as possible with his family on the coast.
“One suspected the estate was in need of a steadying hand,” Hecate said, “but that hand cannot be mine. I have hopes that Mrs. Roberts might sidle into a more active role—she is nobody’s fool—but she’s doubtless reluctant to take on Edna, Charles, and the rest of them.”
“Then tell her to take on the hedgerows,” Phillip said. “They’ve spread, as hedgerows will do, and up to a point, that’s a fine thing for the birds and bunnies, but as the branches cast more and more shade, the adjoining arable land becomes less productive. The rain can’t reach the soil as easily, and what does fall is snatched up by the thicker vegetation of the hedgerows.
“The tallest of the oaks should come down,” he went on, “and something shorter planted, if Nunn must have his shady bridle paths. And as to that, the hogs can tidy up many an acorn and save the woodsman the bother of thinning saplings.”
“Hogs?”
“Pigs, swine. They can’t have a steady diet of acorns, and one doesn’t feed acorns to the young stock, but the larger specimens can and should be permitted their autumn pannage through the hedges and forests. Spares the cows and horses from snacking on a treat they ought not to have.”
Hecate did not want to discuss pigs or pannage, whatever that was. She wasn’t all that keen on introducing Lord Phillip to the ancestors either, truth be known. She unlatched a set of French doors and stepped out onto the balcony that ran the width of the gallery.
“Pretty view,” Phillip said, joining her. “One can say that for Nunn’s lackadaisical husbandry. His overgrown woods and park make a pleasing vista. I am comforted by big, healthy trees. If the land can grow such as that, then my sheep and corn are likely well situated too.”
“Your insights are appreciated, but I do not want to discuss the earl’s trees at the moment.”
“Do you want to lecture me?” The wretch sounded hopeful.
The breeze teased his dark locks, and the afternoon sun garnished it with dancing highlights. Hecate had touched that silky hair on the pretext of whisking the chaff from it, and no handy glass of punch had been available to blame for her forwardness.
Nor could she blame the punch for her current thoughts. She shaded her eyes against the sunshine and pretended to study the arched bridge in the distance.
“I want to kiss you.”
Lord Phillip led her to a bench that faced out over the rolling treetops. To the left, the garden stretched in tidy parterres, but this wing of the house did not face the busier view. The park, the home wood, the stone bridge, the roof of the distant stable-cum-carriage house stretched beneath them.
“Is this urge to sample my charms distasteful to you, Miss Brompton?”
“Distasteful? Why would…?”
He gestured for Hecate to take a seat, but did not offer his hand and did not take the place beside her.
She looked up at him—he was quite tall—and tried to fathom his thoughts. “I tried frolicking,” she said. “Years ago. When I’d made my bargain with Papa and realized that perpetual spinsterhood could be dull. Frolicking can be dull, too, a lowering discovery.” Why won’t you sit beside me?
“Mindless, you mean? Shallow and trivial? For some, that is part of its charm. A passing pleasure without weight or worry.”
“For you?” She patted the place beside her, and he appeared to ignore the invitation.
“For me, a bit complicated. In Crosspatch Corners, I was known as Mr. Phillip Heyward, a shy, somewhat backward, bookish, squire-ish sort of fellow. I was good at foaling, lambing, and calving and up to date on the latest pamphlets, but too retiring to attend the local assemblies. Some of the older folk knew my specific antecedents, or guessed them accurately, but I was generally believed to be some nob’s by-blow.”
“Did you believe that of yourself?”
“I knew the truth. My nanny, my mother—who visited me occasionally—and the household staff made certain I knew my own patrimony. Explaining the details to a young lady upon whom I had matrimonial designs would have been awkward, and yet, a fellow gets… lonely.”
She believed he meant that. Meant that he had been lonely for closeness and affection, for a cuddle and a romp, not merely for the romp itself.
“Spinsters get lonely, too, or some of us do. Why won’t you sit beside me, Phillip?”
“Because if I sit beside you, I will take your hand. If I take your hand, I will want to stroke your fingers and kiss your palm and catch a whiff of the particular spot on your wrist where you casually dab a drop of scent when you are dressing for the day. If such liberties are permitted, I will want to kiss your mouth, Hecate Brompton, and then I will want to do more than kiss you.”
He might have been discoursing on his preferred method of crop rotation as he stood at the railing, gaze on puffy summer clouds drifting across a blue sky.
Hecate rose and took his hand. “I have seen men unclothed, though my family would never believe me capable of such a lapse of propriety. If one is discreet, one can bend many rules. They were simply men without clothing, and pleased to be so. This morning…”
He brought her fingers to his lips. “Yes?”
“You were so joyous. You exuded such vitality and exuberance. To wield that scythe, to join in the songs, to sweat and toil and labor for a worthy goal… I was captivated by your jubilation. Exhilarated vicariously.” She rested her head against his shoulder, as if the recitation had exhausted her as much as haying could exhaust a fit, grown man.
“I heard the dog cart clattering up from behind me,” Phillip said, squeezing her fingers, “and I expected the vicar had come to bless the blades, or something equally innocuous. I turned, and there you were, but not as I’d seen you in London. You wore a straw hat with a ribbon that perfectly matches your eyes, and the bow was crooked, and the ends of the ribbons trailed so fetchingly. You eschewed your usual proper, mincing steps and marched about, skirts swinging, and that was fetching too. You have freckles. I noticed that you have freckles, and I adore your freckles. Somebody should kiss those freckles, and that somebody, I pray God, should be me.”
His arms came around her gently, and Hecate stood for a moment, reveling in a wonder that felt as mutual as any kiss. More mutual for being unlooked for and unhoped for.
“My mother was trying to conceive a son,” Hecate said. “She told me that, but she said instead she got the best possible gift in me, and in my father’s love. He was a sea captain, handsome, generous, kind, and he knew exactly what she was about and loved her anyway. I’ve never met him, but I want you to know my provenance.”
“Then your provenance is a loving, honest union, and nobody should ask for more than that.” He kissed her forehead again, a request for assurances, and Hecate kissed his cheek. Her arms slipped around his waist, and she rested against him as the urge to cry and the need to laugh waltzed in her heart.
Phillip stroked her hair and her shoulders. His thumb brushed lazy circles over her nape, and Hecate felt like a cat who’d found a warm patch of sunlight in deepest midwinter. She held very still, every particle attuned to Phillip’s touch. She breathed with him. She memorized the scent of him this close—lavender, a hint of starch, and meadow grass.
The rhythm of his heart matched the slow, graceful sweep of the curved blade that had so enthralled Hecate earlier, and when Phillip cupped her cheek and brushed his lips against hers, she fell into his kisses as gently as scythed grass came to rest upon the earth.
“If I leave, Mrs. Riley will take up her scythe, won’t she?”
“She’ll take it up tomorrow if she doesn’t take it up today. She’s good with a blade. Steady and even. Not like the lads who try to storm through a field.”
But to wield that blade this late into pregnancy had to take a toll on a woman’s back. “I’ll return tomorrow morning,” Phillip said. “I’d take it as a favor if you’d keep her sharpening blades for the first few passes after nooning.”
“Aye, and we’ll send her back to the spring to give the horses a drink and refill the waterpot. Mavie can handle the reins as competently as she does the scythe and the lads. A proper Hampshire lass, that one. If I were ten years younger…” Travers’s gaze landed on something behind Phillip. “Here now, look sharp. We’ve company from the manor house.”
Those men without their shirts were putting them on, and the ladies had risen from blankets spread in the shade.
Phillip turned to see Gavin DeWitt at the reins of a dog cart, Hecate Brompton seated beside him.
“I see we’re late,” Hecate said. “And I’d hoped last night’s leftover tarts wouldn’t go to waste. Mr. Travers, good day.”
She looked so pretty perched beside DeWitt on the bench, a straw hat tied in a fetching lopsided bow beneath her chin. She had seen Phillip—he was sure of that—and recognized him and was for some reason avoiding—
Where the hell is my shirt? The thought erupted in his mind like flames exploding from a rotten hayrick.
Mavis Riley flapped a voluminous quantity of white linen several times, then folded it neatly over her arm and brought it to Phillip at the slowest walk she’d evidenced for the entire morning.
“Your shirt, Mr. Vincent.”
DeWitt had stepped down from the gig and was assisting Hecate to alight while Phillip shrugged into his shirt. The buttons were beyond him. Coherent speech was behind him, while DeWitt was grinning hugely.
“You brought tarts, Miss Brompton?” Henry Wortham asked. “I do fancy a tart.” One of the other young men chuckled at Henry’s word choice, and Henry’s ears turned red.
“So do I,” Mavis Riley said, “and I’m sure Miss Brompton brought along a few sandwiches and possibly a cake or two. Ladies, if you’d bestir yourselves?”
The next few minutes were absorbed with serving a second luncheon and gave Phillip time to do up some buttons and get his waistcoat on.
“If you don that jacket in this heat,” Mavis Riley muttered as she passed him a piece of lemon cake, “I’ll know you’re dicked in the nob. And don’t think to put on the neckcloth either.”
“But a gentleman doesn’t appear before a lady in his underpinnings.” Much less naked from the waist up, God help him.
“A gentleman should not be too quick to deprive a lady of a chance to appreciate God’s handiwork. Bring her a glass of cider before that other strutting nitwit can think to do it.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Phillip took the glass Mavis shoved into his hand, thanked heaven for proper Hampshire lasses, and made his way to the back of the gig, where Hecate was handing the last tray of tarts to one of the women.
“You’ve been hiding all morning here in the hayfield,” she said. “Is that for me?”
Phillip passed over the glass. “Go slowly. Might have a kick.” He waited for a lecture on proper attire, on gentlemanly pastimes, on fraternizing with the locals… He’d truly erred and deserved a dressing down for indulging in a morning of hard work.
“Travers says you inspired his crew to get twice as much done in half a day.”
That was the initial flattery intended to soften a series of blows. A scold would follow, and Phillip would bear up like the gentleman he longed to be when Hecate Brompton was on hand.
“Mrs. Riley is nearing her time,” he said. “She was prepared to do the same work as young Henry there, but probably for half the coin Henry will earn. She’ll have my wages instead.”
Hecate’s gaze went to Mavis, who rested one hand on the small of her back and the other on Henry’s arm. Henry seemed to stand a little taller with Mavis beside him.
“Kind of you,” Hecate said. “You’ve eaten?”
Had he? Phillip fumbled for words because he’d only that moment noticed that Hecate Brompton had a pale sprinkling of freckles across her cheeks. Faint and few, but present all the same.
“A meat pie,” he said. “I’m sure I had a meat pie.”
Hecate sent him a quizzical look. “Will you bide here for the rest of the day?”
“Will you tell me that’s not done? That a gentleman would never? That I’m a hopeless philistine because I’d rather scythe hay than gossip away a fine summer morning?” If so, perhaps he could be finished with this house party, but that prospect didn’t hold as much relief as it ought to. Not when Hecate would be disappointed in him.
“I will tell you,” Hecate replied, “that Great-Uncle Nunn’s estate management has been driving me to bad language for years and that your insights would be much appreciated.” She took a sip of her cider, then passed him the drink. “I will also tell you that a gentleman does not offer a lady—or anybody else—falsehoods.”
Phillip was too hot and thirsty to refuse a drink, and the cider was ambrosial. “I avoid dishonesty generally, except in the interests of kindness.”
“You told me a very great bouncer, my lord.” She batted gently at his hair, then took back the drink. “You claimed your shoulder is defective, that you are deformed. I have firsthand evidence, the evidence of my own eyes, to refute your statement. Your manly figure has no flaws whatsoever. I will expect you at three of the clock to join me and Mr. DeWitt on a tour of the gallery and public rooms.”
She flounced off on a whiff of roses and joined the ladies munching lemon cake on their blankets in the shade.
“You’ll be wanting this,” Gavin DeWitt said, thrusting Phillip’s coat at him.
How much of that exchange had DeWitt overheard, and did Phillip care in the slightest? Upon consideration, no, he did not.
“You have crumbs on your cravat, De-Nitwit, and I do not want my jacket. In this heat, wearing a jacket makes no sense, and you should probably get rid of yours.”
DeWitt brushed at the lace frothing beneath his chin. “Whyever would I commit such an unpardonable breach of manners?”
“Because we have work to do, and we aren’t expected in the gallery until three of the clock. Travers!” Phillip called. “We’ll need another scythe.”
Phillip peeled out of his waistcoat and rolled up his sleeves, then picked up his blade and started on a song. He was the first one back to work, though Henry joined him in less than two minutes.
Hecate checked her appearance in the mirror one more time and noted that her annual summer crop of freckles was threatening to emerge, drat the luck.
On the heels of that thought came another: Lord Phillip would not care one whit about a few freckles. He would, by contrast, regard nightly facial scrubs with a raw potato, avoiding the out of doors, and wearing veils in the hottest weather as so much ridiculousness.
“No potato scrubs,” Hecate informed her reflection. “Not this year.”
She made her way to the gallery and found her quarry in earnest contemplation of a portrait of the present Lord Nunn as a young man.
“Miss Brompton, greetings.” Lord Phillip bowed politely. “He wasn’t always such a prig, was he?”
“My mother could make him laugh.” The artist had captured a hint of humor in Nunn’s blue eyes. He’d been lean, blond, and aristocratically splendid in the lavish finery of an earlier time. The younger Lord Nunn posed with one hand fisted on his hip, the other resting on the head of an adoring hound. A lady’s portrait was hinted at in the background.
“This is the late countess,” Hecate said, moving on to the next painting, which had been hung such that Lord and Lady Nunn seemed to perpetually gaze toward each other. “A love match, according to my mother, but no sons survived long enough to carry on the line.”
“Hence Charles’s good fortune. He’s a rackety fribble, isn’t he?”
Lord Phillip had bathed. His hair was neatly queued back, and his attire was free of dust, chaff, and even wrinkles. He was also no longer sporting a grin, airing a fine baritone, or wielding a scythe while half naked beneath the summer sun.
More’s the pity.
The muscles of his back, chest, and arms would make the Apollo Belvedere moan with envy. Mavis Riley, a grieving widow who’d been devoted to her husband, had followed Lord Phillip’s progress with a wistful hint of smile. Henry Wortham, the blacksmith’s oldest son, was taller and brawnier, but not as mesmerizing to watch at his work.
“What became of your mother?” Lord Phillip asked, studying the late countess’s rings.
“A wasting disease, and yet, she was a happy woman most of the time.”
“Was she a happy wife?”
A voice in Hecate’s head told her to chide Lord Phillip for such a forward question, but they were not at some duchess’s ridotto, where a dozen ears would overhear. Then too, nobody ever mentioned Mama.
“She tried to be a happy wife. Papa is not warmhearted by nature, though he can be very charming when he wants something. He and Uncle Nunn are opposite sides of an ill-humored coin. Uncle Nunn is bereaved and without children, so his discontent with life is understandable. Papa married Mama for her money and lost interest when she, too, was unable to produce sons.”
“Is that why she took up with your true father?” Lord Phillip asked, moving on to the first Baron Nunnville.
Ancestors organized by date marched along the inside wall, and Hecate had seen them all hundreds of times. Men, mostly, with a nod to the occasional viscountess or countess. The baronesses hadn’t signified.
“Where is Mr. DeWitt, my lord?”
“I bring you his regrets. He felt the need for some activity after being shut up in the coach all day yesterday. He took my place on the haying crew and asks that you reserve another day for his tour.”
“Let’s sit, then, shall we? You had a busy morning.”
“And if the weather is obliging, I will indulge myself similarly tomorrow and the day after, until Travers waves me off. Nunnsuch is going ragged around the edges.”
He was understating the matter. Uncle Nunn’s steward had likely served an apprenticeship to Noah upon the landing of the ark and had long since given up on arguing with the earl. Mr. Jamison was a Bristol man by birth and spent as much time as possible with his family on the coast.
“One suspected the estate was in need of a steadying hand,” Hecate said, “but that hand cannot be mine. I have hopes that Mrs. Roberts might sidle into a more active role—she is nobody’s fool—but she’s doubtless reluctant to take on Edna, Charles, and the rest of them.”
“Then tell her to take on the hedgerows,” Phillip said. “They’ve spread, as hedgerows will do, and up to a point, that’s a fine thing for the birds and bunnies, but as the branches cast more and more shade, the adjoining arable land becomes less productive. The rain can’t reach the soil as easily, and what does fall is snatched up by the thicker vegetation of the hedgerows.
“The tallest of the oaks should come down,” he went on, “and something shorter planted, if Nunn must have his shady bridle paths. And as to that, the hogs can tidy up many an acorn and save the woodsman the bother of thinning saplings.”
“Hogs?”
“Pigs, swine. They can’t have a steady diet of acorns, and one doesn’t feed acorns to the young stock, but the larger specimens can and should be permitted their autumn pannage through the hedges and forests. Spares the cows and horses from snacking on a treat they ought not to have.”
Hecate did not want to discuss pigs or pannage, whatever that was. She wasn’t all that keen on introducing Lord Phillip to the ancestors either, truth be known. She unlatched a set of French doors and stepped out onto the balcony that ran the width of the gallery.
“Pretty view,” Phillip said, joining her. “One can say that for Nunn’s lackadaisical husbandry. His overgrown woods and park make a pleasing vista. I am comforted by big, healthy trees. If the land can grow such as that, then my sheep and corn are likely well situated too.”
“Your insights are appreciated, but I do not want to discuss the earl’s trees at the moment.”
“Do you want to lecture me?” The wretch sounded hopeful.
The breeze teased his dark locks, and the afternoon sun garnished it with dancing highlights. Hecate had touched that silky hair on the pretext of whisking the chaff from it, and no handy glass of punch had been available to blame for her forwardness.
Nor could she blame the punch for her current thoughts. She shaded her eyes against the sunshine and pretended to study the arched bridge in the distance.
“I want to kiss you.”
Lord Phillip led her to a bench that faced out over the rolling treetops. To the left, the garden stretched in tidy parterres, but this wing of the house did not face the busier view. The park, the home wood, the stone bridge, the roof of the distant stable-cum-carriage house stretched beneath them.
“Is this urge to sample my charms distasteful to you, Miss Brompton?”
“Distasteful? Why would…?”
He gestured for Hecate to take a seat, but did not offer his hand and did not take the place beside her.
She looked up at him—he was quite tall—and tried to fathom his thoughts. “I tried frolicking,” she said. “Years ago. When I’d made my bargain with Papa and realized that perpetual spinsterhood could be dull. Frolicking can be dull, too, a lowering discovery.” Why won’t you sit beside me?
“Mindless, you mean? Shallow and trivial? For some, that is part of its charm. A passing pleasure without weight or worry.”
“For you?” She patted the place beside her, and he appeared to ignore the invitation.
“For me, a bit complicated. In Crosspatch Corners, I was known as Mr. Phillip Heyward, a shy, somewhat backward, bookish, squire-ish sort of fellow. I was good at foaling, lambing, and calving and up to date on the latest pamphlets, but too retiring to attend the local assemblies. Some of the older folk knew my specific antecedents, or guessed them accurately, but I was generally believed to be some nob’s by-blow.”
“Did you believe that of yourself?”
“I knew the truth. My nanny, my mother—who visited me occasionally—and the household staff made certain I knew my own patrimony. Explaining the details to a young lady upon whom I had matrimonial designs would have been awkward, and yet, a fellow gets… lonely.”
She believed he meant that. Meant that he had been lonely for closeness and affection, for a cuddle and a romp, not merely for the romp itself.
“Spinsters get lonely, too, or some of us do. Why won’t you sit beside me, Phillip?”
“Because if I sit beside you, I will take your hand. If I take your hand, I will want to stroke your fingers and kiss your palm and catch a whiff of the particular spot on your wrist where you casually dab a drop of scent when you are dressing for the day. If such liberties are permitted, I will want to kiss your mouth, Hecate Brompton, and then I will want to do more than kiss you.”
He might have been discoursing on his preferred method of crop rotation as he stood at the railing, gaze on puffy summer clouds drifting across a blue sky.
Hecate rose and took his hand. “I have seen men unclothed, though my family would never believe me capable of such a lapse of propriety. If one is discreet, one can bend many rules. They were simply men without clothing, and pleased to be so. This morning…”
He brought her fingers to his lips. “Yes?”
“You were so joyous. You exuded such vitality and exuberance. To wield that scythe, to join in the songs, to sweat and toil and labor for a worthy goal… I was captivated by your jubilation. Exhilarated vicariously.” She rested her head against his shoulder, as if the recitation had exhausted her as much as haying could exhaust a fit, grown man.
“I heard the dog cart clattering up from behind me,” Phillip said, squeezing her fingers, “and I expected the vicar had come to bless the blades, or something equally innocuous. I turned, and there you were, but not as I’d seen you in London. You wore a straw hat with a ribbon that perfectly matches your eyes, and the bow was crooked, and the ends of the ribbons trailed so fetchingly. You eschewed your usual proper, mincing steps and marched about, skirts swinging, and that was fetching too. You have freckles. I noticed that you have freckles, and I adore your freckles. Somebody should kiss those freckles, and that somebody, I pray God, should be me.”
His arms came around her gently, and Hecate stood for a moment, reveling in a wonder that felt as mutual as any kiss. More mutual for being unlooked for and unhoped for.
“My mother was trying to conceive a son,” Hecate said. “She told me that, but she said instead she got the best possible gift in me, and in my father’s love. He was a sea captain, handsome, generous, kind, and he knew exactly what she was about and loved her anyway. I’ve never met him, but I want you to know my provenance.”
“Then your provenance is a loving, honest union, and nobody should ask for more than that.” He kissed her forehead again, a request for assurances, and Hecate kissed his cheek. Her arms slipped around his waist, and she rested against him as the urge to cry and the need to laugh waltzed in her heart.
Phillip stroked her hair and her shoulders. His thumb brushed lazy circles over her nape, and Hecate felt like a cat who’d found a warm patch of sunlight in deepest midwinter. She held very still, every particle attuned to Phillip’s touch. She breathed with him. She memorized the scent of him this close—lavender, a hint of starch, and meadow grass.
The rhythm of his heart matched the slow, graceful sweep of the curved blade that had so enthralled Hecate earlier, and when Phillip cupped her cheek and brushed his lips against hers, she fell into his kisses as gently as scythed grass came to rest upon the earth.
