Page 49 of The Lady's Companion
Mrs. Skerlong, bless her, did not wink or blink or make any remark to tease. She pushed a mugful of tea in front of Susan. “Oh, my dear, ’tis the lambing. Since he will not pension off Ben Rich, and the Welsh lad is but a child, he must be there, too.” She smiled at Susan over the rim of her own mug and took a cautious sip. “In the Cotswolds, no farmer’s time is his own until March is over.” She leaned closer across the table, looking around as though to make sure that Cora was not within earshot. “We women have a joke in the Cotswolds: ‘No virtuous farm wife has December babies,’” she said, and laughed at Susan’s blank stare. “My dear, it’s the rare farmer that gets between his sheets or his wife’s legs during March. He belongs to the lambs.”
Susan gulped the scalding tea and coughed. “Oh!” she exclaimed as she reached for the water pot and took a healthy swallow. “You must think me such a dunce.”
Mrs. Skerlong only smiled. “I am thinking you are learning our ways here. But then comes April, and January babies, if there’s time between plowing and plastering fields for fertilizer, and sowing and dipping and shearing, come June.” She shook herhead. “It’s a wonder farmers ever plow their own fields, lass.”
And this is the life he chooses, Susan thought after Mrs. Skerlong patted her shoulders and took up her customary spot by the stove. It is all work, and rhythm of the seasons, and it could be that I feel its pull, too. But right now, I wish I knew what to do about Lady Bushnell.
They finishedEmmathat first afternoon, and then her time was devoted to the letters, putting them in order back to the days in India and on to the final entries as the army moved in triumph over the Pyrenees toward France. She began to copy the letters in a large hand, showing each to the widow until the woman nodded and said. “I can read these. Oh, pray continue.”
She was no closer to a solution as the end of the week approached. The vicar, all blushes and fumbling for words, had paid a visit, and she had spent some time closeted with him in the sitting room, seeking his advice. He had none to offer beyond what she feared. “Miss Hampton, I do not see that you or the bailiff have any recourse but to tell young Lady Bushnell how the wind blows here.” He almost took her hand, but shied off at the last minute. “She needs the care of relatives.”
He was right, of course. She knew it, and surely the bailiff knew it. After an evening of reading to Lady Bushnell, she administered her medicine, stayed to make sure that she took it all, saw her tucked in bed, and went to her own room. She almost went downstairs again, because she knew that all she would do would be to stare at the calendar and cross off another day without an idea. It was worry at its fruitless worst, and she hated it.
She opened the door and stepped back in fright. Someone sat in one of the chairs before the fire. She looked closer. It was the bailiff, and he was asleep, his head nodding forward; he even snored a little. She smiled to herself and closed the door quickly so the light from the hall would not disturb him. Taking off hershoes, she tiptoed across the floor, took up a throw from the foot of her bed and draped it lightly over him as he slept.
She could not go to bed with the bailiff there, so she put a few more coals on the fire, then quietly eased herself into the other chair. With a quick glance at the man, she rested her stockinged feet on the grate and relaxed in the chair, feeling a strange relief at nothing more than his company. He smelled of wool and sweat, and she wondered when he had shaved last. If I had charge of you, she thought as she leaned back and made herself comfortable, at least you would change your linen every day and take time to wash.
She slept in peace and comfort, waking up only when the bailiff covered her with the throw. She jerked awake, then settled quickly as he rested his hand on her arm. She looked at his arm and tried not to gasp, but it escaped her anyway.
“Your arm! And the other one!” she said in dismay, seeing even in the dim firelight the chap, fissures, and cracks running all the way to his elbows. He had pushed up his sleeves, obviously to keep the rough fabric from brushing against what must be painful.
“It comes with lambing,” he said, “and washing my arms over and over in cold water and wind. The cure is lanolin, which I will apply after I am in my own bed and not touching anything.” He grinned at her expression. “Of course, if I turn over too fast, I slide right out of bed. Don’t stare like that! They’ll be better in a month or so when the lambs are hopping around in the pasture.”
She settled lower in the chair and stared into the fire again. “Did you come to tell me that you have no solution, either?”
He was a long time answering. “I come to tell you that 1 wrote to young Lady Bushnell and requested an audience Friday morning in London.” He sighed heavily. “And I wrote Dr. Pym. My underbailiff and his new bride have returned, and I can leave him in charge while I take the mail coach.”
“Then I am coming, too,” she said.
‘To resign?”
She glared at him, hot words on her lips, but she could not deliver them because the bailiff looked so tired. “Certainly not, David,” she said softly. “Perhaps if she sees that the two of us could take care of her mother-in-law, she would be content to let well enough alone. Mrs. Skerlong says that young Lady Bushnell is about to remarry. Surely she does not need the added distraction of a frail mother-in-law.”
The bailiff nodded. “I’d like your company. Two may be better than one in this matter.” He smiled at her. “Actually, that was why I came here—to ask you just that. And here I was, snoring away and smelling up your room.”
“Never mind,” she said, sleepy now, relieved to be in the bailiff’s presence, and not overly troubled by the odor of hard work. “Yes. Let us go to London and attempt this.”
“Good then. I will take the news to Lady Bushnell first thing in the morning, and tell her what we have to do and why. I think she will bear it well enough, if she knows that we are doing our best to keep her here. Then we can catch the midmorning mail coach.”
Susan shook her head. “The first thing you will do is wash, and then visit Lady Bushnell.”
“Am I pretty rank?” he said and grinned at her.
“You are disgusting,” she assured him. “If this is how a whole army of you smelled in Spain, I wonder that you even needed muskets to mow down the enemy.”
“They smelled worse, plus garlic,” he said as he rose and went to the door. “Good night, Susan dear. Pack a bag and be ready to go to London in the morning. I do not know that we will succeed, but it won’t be said that we didn’t try.”
Chapter Fifteen
Not until Susan sat herself on the mail coach and rested her traveling boots on the straw underfoot did she really believe that they were actually on their way to plead Lady Bushnell’s cause. The bailiff sat close beside her, wedged in so tight that he had to turn a little sideways and put his arm around her to steady himself.
She couldn’t notice any discomfort on his face, but she was almost too shy to look at him. It was one thing to enjoy his presence from a chair by the fire, and quite another to have him so close that his breath was warm on her neck. They were like whelks in a basket.
Come now, Susan, what is your objection? she asked herself as the coach picked up speed. You know that you care for him, even though it is not the wisest thing you ever did, and hopefully will soon pass. You know how hungry you were for the sight of him during the past few days, and here he is now, practically sitting on you.
She looked at the bailiff then, and discovered that he was watching her, too, his gaze steady and quite calm. His eyes are so brown, she thought, and I did not notice that many freckles before. I wonder if he burns in the summer. She suddenly wanted to kiss him as he had kissed her that one time on the way across the stable yard, and decide for herself if that was merely beginner’s luck on her part.
And that is my objection to this situation, she thought, permitting honesty to shoulder out artifice, as it did more and more these days. I want to kiss him and do much more that I’ve never done, and there are all these dratted passengers who refuse to go away and let me get at my ruin. She permittedherself a little sigh. As my descent into vulgarity does not yet include exhibitions, I will change my thoughts and hope that this irritating warmth will recede and let me breathe.
