Page 21 of Miss Determined
Mama shoved her workbasket behind a wing chair. “Riding out with Mr. Dorning put you in a bad humor, my girl, though he seemed taken with you. Should we ask the solicitors to investigate his prospects?”
Lissa knew how Roland felt when the compulsion to throw a tantrum bore down on him. “Mama, I’ve known Mr. Dorning less than twenty-four hours.”
“I stood up with your father exactly three times before we began to form a closer acquaintance.Gather ye rosebuds while ye may…”
“Mr. Dorning is no rosebud. Please do not ask the solicitors to meddle, and don’t you meddle. Mr. Dorning isn’t looking for a wife, and he might well end up buying property nearby.”
“Maybe he should be looking for a wife. Did you ever think of that?”
Well, yes. Somewhere between Miller’s Lament and the majestic splendor of the napping oak, Lissa had thought that very thing. Also while trotting along the Twid, and while admiring Mr. Dorning’s patience and skill with Roland.
“We should be searching harder for Gavin.”
Mama’s smile faded. “We’ll leave for Town at the end of the month, Lissa. If we take Diana and Caroline with us, Mr. Dorning can sublease Twidboro for a few months. In any case, you shall remove to London, where you will exert yourself to charm the younger sons and fortune hunters into proposing marriage.”
“Doomed,” Lissa said, heading for the door. “We are doomed if our situation turns on my ability to charm anybody. Please listen to me, Mama, and don’t wait lunch for me.”
“Where are you off to now?”
“To call on Mr. Heyward. I will ask him if Lord Tavistock is raising his rent as well, and we can condole each other on our impending homelessness.”
Not even in the friendly and informal surrounds of Crosspatch Corners would Trevor presume to call on the vicar at mealtime, so he took his nooning in the inn’s common while reading yesterday’s London newspapers.
A certain young lord, Marquess of T, was rumored to have returned from his Continental wanderings in search of a wife. The matchmakers were in alt, while the fortune hunters despaired.
“The news is seldom cheering, is it?” Miss Tansy Pevinger was the innkeeper’s oldest daughter. She was pretty in a sturdy, tidy way. Her blond hair was neatly gathered beneath her cap, her apron damp around the hems but clean. “Hard times and getting harder, to hear that lot tell it.”
“The London press delights in publicizing misery,” Trevor replied. “I was looking for properties for sale or lease out this direction, and the paper is no help at all.”
Miss Pevinger gathered his empty dishes onto a wooden tray. “We’re not like Kent and Surrey, where all the fashionable folk like to bide in winter and summer. Berkshire is still a real shire, with real neighbors. The squires look after their tenants, and the tenants do a good job by the land. Closer to Windsor and Reading, we get the racing stables, but most of them have been here for generations as well.”
She treasured her r’s—harrrd times and getting harrder—but other than that, her diction would have passed muster in Mayfair.
“That is precisely why I’d rather bide here in Berkshire,” Trevor said. “I’m keen to perfect the art of making beer. Do you know of any properties for rent?” At some point in the past two days, the inquiry had become half serious. Maybe more than half?
She finished collecting the dishes and set the tray on the next table. “Squire Holmes rents out his shooting lodge, but that’s not what you mean. You mean a proper manor.”
“With some land. I don’t need a lot of acres, but they must be arable if I’m to experiment with hops, barley, and wheat.” A place to tinker with his ideas perhaps, as French vintners tinkered with everything from which terrace best grew which grape varieties, to the angle at which wine bottles should be stored.
“I don’t know that you’ll find anything to interest you near Crosspatch.” Miss Pevinger took a damp rag to the table.
“What of Lark’s Nest and Twidboro Hall? My London solicitor claims those are rental properties.”
Miss Pevinger began scrubbing hard enough to make the stout table jiggle. “Then your solicitors are right dolts, Mr. Dorning. Both of those properties belong to the Marquess of Tavistock, and a worse landlord you never did meet. The repairs don’t get done, but the rents are always collected the very day they are due. Mr. Heyward looks after his place like he owns it—Mr. Heyward mostly goes his own way anyhow—but the DeWitts can’t be so bold, can they?”
“I suppose not.” Diana’s brash attempts at sophistication did not qualify as boldness.
“Mr. DeWitt was barely cold in his grave, and what does Lord Tavistock do? Raises the rent by nearly half. Word is his rubbishing lordship is up to his old tricks, and with Mr. Gavin gone off God knows where and the ladies having barely a spare penny between ’em.”
The table, clean to begin with, should have sported a mirror shine. “The DeWitts are good folk,” Tansy went on. “Miss Amaryllis had a hard time of it in London because she doesn’t know how to put on airs, and there’s her ma, determined to wed the poor woman to some viscount’s rackety spare. I’d rather slop the hogs and change the bed linens here at the Arms any day than trade places with Miss DeWitt, but you mustn’t tell Ma I said so. I’m too forward by half.”
She was dauntingly honest, a young woman secure in her place in the world. That honesty was denied Amaryllis DeWitt.
“You really don’t think much of Lord Tavistock, do you?” She’d said as much, but Trevor apparently needed to add insult to invective.
“I’ve never met the man, Mr. Dorning, and I hope to die in that fortunate state. Most people are decent enough at heart,” she said, lobbing her rag onto the tray with casual precision. “That one… Why treat people as he does? Off to the Continent for a jolly romp in Paris, they say. Gone for years at a time. If he can afford to kick his handsome heels in Paris, he can afford to do right by the DeWitts.”
Trevor’s beef stew began to sit uneasily in his belly. “Tavistock sounds like a terrible person.” Like every caricature of the greedy, irresponsible aristocrat who thought only of coin and self-indulgence. Like the previous Lord Tavistock.
