Page 48 of His Spirited Lady
“You don’t say.” Drake infused a cartload of sarcasm into those three syllables. “That doesn’t relieve him of escorting you.”
It did if she’d told him she was staying in. “I’m fine.” Amelia knelt at the edge of grain bed and gathered a handful of wheat. It was fuzzy against her fingers and smelled of fields after a summer rain. In the lantern light, the kernel was a soft green. “This is ready to kiln.”
“Oh good.” Drake trudged up the final stairs.
Amelia understood his grumpiness. Sweeping grain was dusty, heavy work even in the sunshine. Doing it at night, after a long day, was almost enough to make her cry. “I’ll be glad when this party is over.”
“You’ll get no argument from me.” Next to her, Drake’s face was in half shadow, the lamplight mapping the thin line of lips and the tenseness in his jaw. She thought there were shadows under his eyes. She wasn’t the only one who’d been working all day.
Not to mention, he’d stuck himself in Thetford to keep her business on track for the duration of the party. “I can do this so you can go rest.”
Drake lifted a broom in one hand, a lantern in the other, and walked down the narrow scaffolding like it was level ground. “How was dinner?”
Richard had cried off early because Simon had requested his uncle’s presence for bedtime stories. It was easy to imagine the seven-year-old saying it just that way. But it had left her to deal with Ethan Raymond’s growing churlishness, and Fiona Allen’s annoying gaiety. Even her cousin Belinda seemed weary of her.
Who would have guessed that the savior of the evening would be Margaret Gerard at the piano forte? She played with exquisite skill, but she sang even better. Even Jasper had been impressed as he sipped his ever-present drink. Charles Grayson had sat spellbound for most of the evening. He might still be in the drawing room, alone in the dark.
Drat. She had nearly forgotten. “Jasper would like a case of Richard’s wine to take back with him, as would Charles Grayson.” Amelia used her boot to flip open the lid to a chute built into the loft’s railing.
“I had the children label extra bottles. We can deliver the cases tomorrow.” Drake pushed the grain toward her in powerful swipes.
“Thank you.” Amelia shoveled the wheat kernels down the chute, where it whispered its way into the kiln pot waiting below. “They aren’t missing school?”
“Of course not.” Drake stripped from his coat and rolled up his sleeves. “How long do you and Richard expect to get away with this cock-eyed scheme?”
“Long enough.” Her shirt stuck to her back. It just needed to long enough for Ethan not to offer and Father to change his mind, which she hoped would be before her feelings were more twisted. The point of her plan was that she’d pretend to be broken-hearted, not that she actually was. “And it’s not cock-eyed. We are in business, and me staying unmarried is related to that business. My parents need to stop their matchmaking.”
“They worry over you,” Drake said. “It’s what parents do.”
“It’s what daughters do as well.” Amelia’s back twinged. Perhaps she should have stopped her day at archery. Though malting was one of her favorite things in the distilling process. Wet grain slipped through her fingers like heavy silk, and dry grain like sand. Up here in the loft, the routine push and pull was calming when her thoughts were a muddle.
Which was all the time lately, because trying to be two people was exhausting. It’s what had led her to the lending circle in the first place. She’d thought that having money for salaries and supplies would ease her workload and her mind. It had been naive. Once she wasn’t burdened with the tedium of bottling and bookkeeping, her imagination had sprung to life. There were few things she could smell, or taste, without thinking of it in whiskey. But that taste, ultimately, came down to the grain.
Which is why she was shoveling wheat into a kiln in the middle of the night.
Drake’s muttered curse drifted on the too-warm, nut-scented air, and Amelia’s conscience spasmed as much as her back. It wasn’t just herself she was putting through this. “Thank you for being here. I’m sure you’ve given up something in London.”
“Helping you isn’t a chore.” His smile flashed. “Well,thisis. But the rest of it isn’t. I enjoy being in the village, and most of the day I’m at loose ends. In London, I’d be doing little but keeping the boys out of trouble.”
Boys?It was the first time he’d ever mentioned a detail about his life. “What boys?”Had he been married?Washe married?“Do you have children?”
His silence added weight to the air. It grew heavier with every swish of the broom. “Brothers,” he finally murmured.
As an only child in a large house, Amelia had spent most of her childhood wishing for siblings. If she’d had them, if one had been a brother, if he had doted on her, perhaps she wouldn’t be in such a quandary. “How many of them? How old are they? What of—”
Drake heaved a sigh. “There are too many of them and they aren’t old enough to see sense most days. And don’t change the subject.” He leaned on his broom. “How do you see this scheme of yours ending? What do you want from it?”
That had been one of his first questions to her when they’d formed the straw relationship that fed her unladylike ambition.Thathad sprung to life when she’d seen her father’s smile after tasting Eamon Brewer’s first good batch of white whiskey.
The question had also led to Drake’s primary lesson.Always begin with the end in mind.
“He’ll cry off and go back to Quebec, and I’ll stay here as a broken-hearted spinster.”
“That will never work,” he said. “No matter how much your parents may like Richard and understand your grief, they will want to see you matched. And thetonwill never leave you be. You’re too pretty and your dowry is too tempting.”
“Perhaps he can do it after he sails then. He wouldn’t be the first man to sail for a new country and change his mind. Oliver—”
“That wasn’t what happened with Oliver. And I wouldn’t put it past him to sail for Quebec and drag Richard back by his hair.”
