Page 2 of A Delicate Deception
“I beg your pardon?” he asked stiffly, unsure as to what he dare not do.
“Don’t you tip your hat to me. Not on my own property. Don’t even think about it. Not even once.”
Was hat tipping a lewd gesture now? He was sufficiently unacquainted with the great and good of the land not to be sure it wasn’t. He would have to ask Lex, presuming the man weren’t lying dead in a ditch somewhere. “This isn’t your property,” he said instead. That much he knew to a certainty. He could see the boundaries of this part of the country as clearly as if his map were spread out before him.
He thought he saw her flush under the brim of her hat. “Technically, it belongs to an absentee landlord”—she pronounced this as the vilest epithet—“as does most of this part of the countryside, but I hired Crossbrook Cottage for a full three years. I have all rights to the land from this lane to the canal.”
So, this was the tenant of Crossbrook Cottage. His own tenant, he supposed. The Pelham land steward had mentioned such a circumstance. “No, you don’t,” he said. “This is a cattle path. There’s a right of way along this lane as far as—”
“I’ve never seen a cow on this path nor any sign a cow has ever been here,” she protested, her chin in the air. “Nor a sheep, nor any person other than you. Besides, you aren’t a cow. How can you claim a right to a cattle path?”
He shrugged. He had reached the end of his knowledge of both rights of way and of cattle. “Couldn’t tell you,” he said.
“And who are you to lecture strangers on cattle paths, anyway? Obsolete and probably fictitious cattle paths, I may add.”
Sydney opened his mouth to speak the truth but he couldn’t do it, couldn’t say that he owned this land without reckoning with what that meant. A shadow of grief lurked at the edges of his vision on even the brightest days here, and he found that he was too weary to fight it all the time; sometimes he had to pretend it wasn’t there, following him about. “I’m a land surveyor,” he said, and maybe that wasn’t such a bad lie, because it had been true once upon a time.
From the hillock where Sydney stood, the countryside looked much the same as ever. The place seemed to have gotten on swimmingly even with an absentee landlord, or as swimmingly as it ever had, which was probably not saying much. He badly wanted to return to the railway, where he could turn his attention to the future and rid himself of the moldering past. There, he could keep his mind busy and free of old ghosts.
He turned and faced the woman again. Oh, she was definitely scowling now. He sighed. Sydney didn’t actually enjoy making people cross with him, but it seemed to be something he achieved with effortless grace.
“Excuse me,” he said in his best attempt at cordiality, which probably fell several degrees short of whatever this fine lady was accustomed to. Too bad for her. “I apologize for disturbing you.” That, he thought, was quite a magnanimous concession, considering that it was she who had interrupted him, not the other way around. “Good day.” He stepped past her, staying well clear of the dog, and made his way to the village.
Chapter Two
It had been nearly a week, and still there was no sign of Lex.
After the fire, Sydney had written no fewer than half a dozen letters to Lex, all of which had been answered in an unfamiliar hand, none of which contained more than a bland sentence or two: his lordship sends his condolences, his lordship is recovering from his injuries, his lordship returned to London and has no plans to return to the North. Mortified that it had taken him six such letters to grasp that his correspondence was unwanted, Sydney had given up writing altogether. After all, they had only known one another for a year—a year during which they had become brothers-in-law, lovers, and then—Sydney had thought—friends. If Lex considered Sydney a reminder of the inferno and catastrophe with which that year had ended, Sydney could hardly blame him.
So when two weeks ago, Sydney had received a letter from Lex’s secretary, indicating that the Duke of Hereford required Sydney’s presence at Pelham Hall, post haste, Sydney had been puzzled. He had thought it odd that Lex would summon him to what was, technically at least, Sydney’s own house, and a ruin to boot. But Lex had always been peculiar and imperious, and had likely grown even more so since inheriting the title, so Sydney hadn’t dwelt on it overmuch. When he arrived at Pelham Hall and found it empty, he thought Lex had perhaps been delayed, but nearly a week had passed and there was still no sign of his old friend. He asked in the village and no message had been left for him. Had something dreadful happened to Lex? Had he simply forgotten that he had sent for Sydney? Sydney did not know which prospect bothered him more.
He had a week before he had to get back to Manchester, so he took a room at the village’s tiny inn and spent his days roaming the countryside, which was troublingly unchanged from two years earlier. He remembered every path, every lane, every stream and boundary line which he and Andrew had surveyed and mapped with their own tools, walked with their own feet. He could almost conjure up the image of the first map they had drafted, see wherePelham Hallwas written in Andrew’s bold scrawl, before they had known the toll that place and its inhabitants would take on their lives.
A week, and then he would return to the city, to a world of building and creation and progress. The prospect of returning to a life of usefulness, of solving problems that most people didn’t even realize existed, made him wish he hadn’t paid Lex’s summons any mind. But he and Lex had been something like family once, and he owed the man this much. Then he could leave the charred ruins of this manor house, and with it he could bid a final and relieved farewell to a part of his life he wished had never happened.
He avoided the scowling woman’s property line. He had no wish to trouble women with his presence, and the countryside held an almost infinite number of paths he could choose instead of the one that traced the property line between Pelham Hall and Crossbrook Cottage. He knew that if he followed the brook for about an hour, he’d come across a circle of standing stones, so he packed a flask of ale, bought a loaf of bread from the baker, and set off. It was still early, but the day was already hot, so by the time he reached the stones, he had stripped to his shirtsleeves and tucked his hat under his arm.
The first thing he saw was the dog, asleep at her mistress’s feet. If it hadn’t been for the presence of the dog—unmistakable with those gangly legs and peculiar black-and-white markings, like a child’s clumsy sketch of a shepherd’s dog—he might have convinced himself that this was not the woman with the border dispute, but some other person. The woman herself was seated on the grass, her back resting against one of the standing stones. She had a book open in her lap, and bare feet stretched before her. Her ease contrasted so sharply with the straight spine and upturned nose of their previous encounter that he felt almost ashamed to see her so lax and unguarded. This was Susannah at her bath, but instead of seeing her in a state of undress, he had a sense of seeing her without armor.
For a moment Sydney considered retreating. Perhaps he could slip away and she’d never know he had been there. But if she did happen to look up and see his retreating form, she might think he had followed her and was lying in wait. So there was nothing for it but to keep walking towards her.
“I do beg your pardon,” he said by way of greeting once he was close enough to be heard. Too late he realized he ought to have donned his coat and hat.
“Oh!” She looked up with a start, but then immediately recovered herself, transforming into the woman he had previously encountered. She jumped to her feet and snapped her fingers for the dog, who promptly positioned herself between Sydney and the woman.
He raised his hands, palms out, and took a step backward. “I didn’t mean to intrude upon you. I only—” He stopped, acutely aware that telling her he did not mean to attack her would be the opposite of reassuring. “I’ll be on my way now,” he said, taking another step backward.
She was still looking up at him with an unreadable expression when the dog sprang at him, its teeth sinking into his calf. Sydney remained utterly still, partly because he was stunned, and partly to avoid further provoking the dog.
“Nan! Heel, you bad dog,” the woman said. “Heel right this minute.” The dog gave a confused whimper and slunk off behind the woman’s skirts, darting betrayed looks over her shoulder at her mistress.
“She did her job,” Sydney said, striving to sound normal despite the pain shooting up his leg. He looked down to assess the damage. His calf had been protected by the sturdy leather of his boot, but he suspected he was bleeding anyway. “Don’t scold her.” He fully resented whatever antiquated feudal instinct led him to want to reassure this woman.
“I’ll scold her as much as I please, thank you,” the woman said with acid sharpness. “She’s not supposed to attack every man she dislikes. She’s not supposed to attack anyone. She probably thought you were a goose out to steal her sandwiches. She’s not even my dog.”
Sydney did not try to make sense of any of this, but instead pulled his boot off and dumped the contents of his flask on the bite, wincing. Then he unwrapped his neck cloth and tied it around the small wound before replacing the boot. “There,” he said. “I’ll be off.” He started to tip his hat and then remembered she objected to that gesture. He stuck his hands in his pockets instead.
“You will not,” the woman said in a tone Sydney generally heard from foremen commanding their workers. “You’ll sit down until you’re certain your leg isn’t too badly off. Then you’ll give me the address of your bootmaker so I can arrange for a new pair to be sent to you.”
