Page 7 of Miss Determined
“Most who have a choice prefer Kent or Surrey,” Miss DeWitt said, smoothing a hand down Jacques’s crest. “We’re not as fashionable out this direction.”
“A point in Berkshire’s favor. Then too, there’s the excellent company to be found here.”
She favored him with an impish smile, circled the horse in a tidy pirouette, and trotted off into the sunset.
“Bring Jacques to the Arms yourself,” Trevor called after her. “I could use some local knowledge before I begin my search.”
She gave no sign that she’d heard him, which reassured Trevor that her pride, her dignity, and her feminine grace had recovered from the slightest of mishaps.
Trevor took his time on the walk into Crosspatch Corners, enjoying the chill in the air that came with evening’s approach. The countryside slumbered under winter’s lingering, frosty hand, but in a few weeks, the palette in the landscape would shift from browns to greens. The sky would yield up its pewter moods for cheerful blue and white. The livestock would start shedding in earnest, and birdsong would build into a morning and evening symphony.
“While I,” Trevor muttered to no one in particular, “will be stuck in London, prancing about like a dancing bear for the delectation of the matchmakers and heiresses.”
Unless, of course, he could sell some real estate, or otherwise devise a plan for rectifying his want of temporary revenue.
He was shortly ambling along a typical English high street, half-timbered homes and shops surrounding an open grassy square. The requisite fountain stood beneath what might have been a medieval pilgrim’s cross. A pot of tulips had yet to bloom beneath the cross, but that day loomed close at hand. On the far side of the market green, the Arms rose to three stories, its stable yard off to the side and devoid of traffic.
The post would barrel through after dark, when other vehicles were less likely to be on the road. The locals, by contrast, would have headed home before the light faded. That much was the same in France, though—a grudging admission—the French post hadn’t a patch on the Royal Mail.
Trevor was lounging in the common of the Arms, demolishing his second helping of trifle when the real reason for his invitation to Miss DeWitt occurred to him: She’d have got on splendidly in France.
Yes, she was a DeWitt, and thus probably associated with, if not a member of, the DeWitts who held the tenancy at Twidboro Hall. Trevor had noted that fact as soon as she’d introduced herself.
He’d noted other facts as well.
Napoleon’s march on Moscow—part of one campaign in hostilities that had gone on for twenty years—had cost France an estimated half a million men before the remnants of the Grand Armée had staggered home. The great majority of those casualties had fallen to disease, starvation, and cold rather than any human enemy.
Several times that number of men were estimated to have died or suffered injury fighting Napoleon’s other battles. Wellington had answered to Parliament and the public for every British life lost. Napoleon, by contrast, had operated without such constraints and had supplied his army in part by plundering the wealth of France’s citizenry.
France would be a ruin but for the indomitable resolve of its womenfolk. The ladies, of sad necessity, now ran the villages and farms. They managed the markets and even some of the larger towns. A few successful vineyards had navigated the war years entirely in female hands, and even the largest charities relied almost exclusively on female supervision.
Miss DeWitt, attempting to school an unruly colt, ridingen cavalier, and perfectly content to see herself home in gathering darkness, would have fit in easily among the French ladies of Trevor’s acquaintance.
If she did bring Jacques to the Arms, he’d make an opportunity to tell her that.
Young Purvis, who hadn’t felt young since he’d first set his bony arse on a clerk’s stool as a boy some twenty years past, rapped politely on Old Purvis’s door. Young Purvis had lately begun thinking of himself in the first person as Young.
Young hasn’t had his nooning yet, again.
Young will soon piss in his breeches if he can’t find a moment to step around to the damned jakes.
Young is ready to catch forty winks sitting in the damned jakes, but there’s likely already a clerk occupying the same spot in pursuit of the same goal.
Young’s given names were Giles John, which were Old Purvis’s given names, and so on back through Purvis antiquity. Old Purvis claimed the use of Giles, leaving Young Purvis the dubious comfort of going by John. Should Young Purvis be so fortunate as to procreate—though a man ought to leave his business premises to undertake such activity and remain awake for at least some of the proceedings—his son was foreordained to be yet another Giles John Purvis, Young and then Old in his time.
One of the clerks yawned hugely, scrubbed his eyes, and returned to whatever document he was copying. The boy might well have been on that stool since the previous evening.
Papa was getting worse, despite an exchequer that would be the envy of many a peer. Aunt Adelia said approaching senility might be part of the explanation. That Papa could grow worse was a feat of miserliness and ambition that Young Purvis would marvel at just as soon as he’d slept for a week straight.
He rapped lightly on Papa’s office door. A low rumbling sound that might have been contented snoring ceased.
“Come in!” Papa called. “And state your business!”
Young Purvis had learned to effect brisk energy in Papa’s presence. He closed the door smartly behind him and stood at attention before Papa’s desk. A token document sat on the blotter, several pages of a draft marriage settlement that had served as evidence of industry for at least the last two years. Papa kept it in the top right desk drawer with his tin of peppermints.
A trimmed quill pen lay atop the papers, but Papa had forgotten to uncap the ink bottle, which sat on the silver standish. Close examination revealed a light coat of dust on that ink bottle, though the standish itself gleamed.
That dusty ink bottle was a small act of rebellion, probably perpetrated by Jones, whose jobs included tidying Papa’s office.
