Page 18 of Miss Determined
Trevor waited until he and his escort had gained the corridor before speaking. “Might you show me the view from the library before we part?”
“Of course.” Amaryllis was still impersonating a polite, blank canvas, though in her very reserve, she conveyed frustration. “This way.”
“They aren’t awful, you know. Your family.”
“No, but they are desperate,” she said quietly. “I tell myself it doesn’t show, but then you stop by for a cup of tea, and we are nearly ridiculous. The sad thing is, we have pots of money, but we don’t actually have it.”
“The solicitors do?”
“Something like that. We have it, but mostly Gavin has it, and he’s not around to approve expenditures, so the solicitors are acting inanticipation of litigation. I hate that phrase. It means they pretend some judge is looking over their shoulder, as if Gavin would sue them for letting me buy a pair of new boots, and every penny spent must meet the approval of that imaginary judge.”
Amaryllis glowered at one of those paler patches on the wall of the corridor. “Mama’s solution is for me to marry a man of substance—in the DeWitt dialect, that means from a landed, titled family, and better still if he is the titleholder—and he will sort out the solicitors while his mother and aunties help find splendid matches for my sisters. I shouldn’t be telling you any of this.”
As it happens, I have a title. The wrong title, though. When and how to convey that detail required careful thought. Amaryllis wasn’t opposed to the peerage as a whole, but she had reasons for disdaining a certain marquessate, or thought she did.
She opened a door to a room full of light. Three sets of east-facing windows ran nearly floor to ceiling. Whitewashed fieldstone fireplaces bookended the room. Comfortable assortments of chairs were grouped around both hearths.
A wonderful place for reading, though lamentably few books were in evidence.
“We can’t sell anything,” Amaryllis said, “so the books are leased out. I am trying to put the manners on Roland in part so I can lease him out. Mind you, we will never see the books again, and I would send Roland on his way with a ninety-nine-year lease, but that’s not selling, so Grandmama says the solicitors can’t complain.”
They would, though, did they learn of those leasing schemes.
“Is this the oldest part of the house?” The fireplaces suggested as much. No marble facing, no fancy pilasters, though the mantels were carved oak.
“How can you tell?”
“This is the central room, around which the rest of the house was likely built. The windows in the middle were probably a front door at one time, and you’d find the fittings for pot swings on both hearths if you looked hard enough. This is your famous landscape?”
He peered at a competent likeness of the Hall on its pleasant rise. The painting had been situated away from the hearths, which meant it would need less cleaning.
“I did that when I was eighteen. Papa had died, and we weren’t allowed to go anywhere or do anything, so I painted. Mama has sold—leased—some of my better efforts. I hate that you know this about us and that you are probably noticing even more than you’ve admitted.”
Trevor hated that a good, decent family, and that Amaryllis in particular, had been reduced to subterfuges and weak tea. His own prevarications seemed all the more dishonorable by comparison.
“Iamindirectly connected to the Dorset Dornings. I consider two or three of them friends, in fact, and I am far from destitute.”
Amaryllis ran a finger down the far mantel and rubbed the dust away with her thumb. “If you’d been destitute, Mama would have turned you away before you took your first sip of tea. We have enough funds for the present, but Mama is spooked. The past year has been difficult. The solicitors have dug in their heels at Gavin’s continued absence, and I did not find success in London.”
Amaryllis had found disillusionment—more disillusionment.
“May I propose a small collaboration in the name of thwarting the solicitors?” Trevor pretended to examine the view, window by window. He was relieved to see that the glazing was recent here, and these windows would not leak or let in drafts any time soon.
“Gentlemen proposing collaborations inspire me to caution, Mr. Dorning.”
What would she think of a marquess telling lies? “Lease Roland to me for the duration of my stay here. I’ll leave Jacques with you in Roland’s place. Jacques is content in harness or under saddle. You could put Caroline on him, and he’d be the soul of patience with her.”
“Why lend me your horse?”
Whywas not ano. “Because Roland’s besetting sin is a lack of confidence. He needs to hack out over hill and dale, around the market square, and back again day after day. He also needs to learn that his misguided attempts to control the direction of an outing will be consistently thwarted. I can do that. Jacques, on the other hand, will be expected to get me safely back to London, and he can use the rest he’ll enjoy here at Twidboro Hall.”
Amaryllis looked around the room, a library without books, but also without stains on the walls or rugs—yet.
“If you can settle Roland’s nerves, he’ll be more valuable.”
“Gelding him would likely settle his nerves once and for all, but he’s blazingly fast, and that’s without anybody attempting to truly condition him. He might have value as a stud.”
Something in that recitation, as ungenteel as it was, provoked Amaryllis into a subdued smile. “How long will you be at the Arms?”
