Page 44 of A Delicate Deception
That was too much. She was not letting him part from her like this. “You aren’t bothering me,” she said. “I care what happens to you.” Well, wasn’t that about as tepid a declaration as a woman could produce from the bottom of her heart. “I care about you,” she tried again, and no, that wasn’t much better. It didn’t help that Sydney was staring at her as if she were speaking in tongues.
“I care about you too,” he said. “That, if you’ll forgive me, is the problem.”
“You have a funny understanding of what constitutes a problem.”
He let out a choked laugh and kissed the corner of her mouth.
“Write to me,” she said, and hastened up the stairs into the house.
Sydney found Leontine thoroughly caked in filth, and only vivid memories of her father having been similarly muddy stopped him from grabbing her out of the mud puddle and delivering her directly to the tender mercies of the bathtub.
“I’m going to be away for a fortnight,” he said.
“Uncle and mademoiselle will take care of me,” she said, not looking up from her twigs.
“What are you making?” he asked, thinking she’d tell him about fairy houses or mud pies.
“A road,” she said. “For shipments of cheese.” She indicated a leaf that was laden with acorns.
“Very sensible,” he said solemnly. “Why must the cheese be delivered across the mud puddle?” he asked, crouching down to her level.
She cast him a pitying glance. “So thelutins—the...” She broke off, plainly searching for an English word. “The creatures who live in the woods? Little magic people?” Her tone was serious, as if she spoke of trestles and railway gauges.
“Fairies, or maybe brownies,” Sydney supplied with equal gravity.
“So the brownies or fairies can get the cheese quickly. They do not care to wait for the cheese to go around the bog.”
“Entirely practical,” he said. “Your papa would have caused the bog to be dredged and a canal to be built.”
“Çac’eststupide,”she said. “Then the boxes have to be hauled from cart to boat and back again. People will steal the cheese, then, and say it fell overboard.”
“Precisely how much of my conversations with your uncle Lex have you overheard this summer?” Sydney asked.
“Enough,” she said with a shrug.
He leaned closer, entirely aware that the hem of his coat was going to get muddy, but he wanted a closer view of what she was doing. “Are you building a bridge across the bog?”
“Not a bridge. A road, like I said.” She gestured at the twigs that lay across the surface of the puddle. Then she placed the leaf—already laden with its acorn cargo—on top. “See, it does not sink. It floats.”
Sydney stared at her. “You are very much like your papa, you know. He had the cleverest ideas. Did you know that a man once built a road like that across a bog, just like you’re doing now? He was blind, like your uncle. Anyway, he made the road out of rush rafts, all tied together. It was strong enough to support horses and carriages, because the weight of anything that traveled across it tightened all the rafts together.”
“Naturellement,like ocean ships can hold horses and great cannons,” she said pityingly, as if she were now going to have to explain the most rudimentary principles of flotation.
“Chat Moss,” Sydney said. “No need to go around it. No need to risk lives trying to lay pylons in the bottomless muck. The road floats right on top, and disturbs nothing at all.” He got to his feet. “Leontine, my love, you are a genius.”
He needed to get to Manchester, and he needed to do it right away. He repeated to himself: no need to bypass the bog, no need to plow through it, just float lightly over the top of it. It was elegant and practical and probably half the cost of circumventing the bog. He’d be awarded this contract and then he’d be near enough to Amelia to at least make things work in the short term—stolen days and rushed meetings.
Except that was just circumventing the problem, and it was as short-sighted and inefficient as circumventing the bog. A better solution wouldn’t treat his friendship with Amelia as a problem, but as a part of the landscape.
After kissing Leontine’s head, he rose to his feet.
“You have to take Fancy with you,” she said, pointing at the terrier who had appeared at Lex’s side. “Or she will be so sad.”
“Fancy?” Oh, Francine. And sure enough the dog did look like she would pine away if he didn’t bring her. She was doing something reprehensibly manipulative with her eyes, and her ears didn’t even bear thinking about. “Fine,” he said. There was no use fighting. He scooped the dog up and made his way to the inn.
Chapter Eighteen
1 September, 1824
