stopped, eyebrow quizzing.
‘Know that whenever she brings that dog of Mr Giles’s along the woodland path you always seem to be there, checking nests or just plain hanging about!’
‘It’s the only way I can see her,’ Tom coloured. ‘She’s like a dandelion seed, is Alice Hawthorn. You think you’ve got her, then puff, she’s away. But I didn’t know there’d been talk, for there’s nothing to tell,’ he shrugged.
‘Didn’t hear it from gossip – not exactly,’ Reuben chuckled. Hadn’t he seen the pair of them; seen them often? It hadn’t been all that difficult. A gamekeeper learns quickly to move like the shadow of a passing cloud; learns to drift in and out of sunlight dapples and to tread carefully and soft-like, so that neither beasts nor poachers know he’s there, watching or waiting or following. ‘Fond of the lass are you, Tom?’
‘That I am, though I’ve held my tongue. Wouldn’t do to tell her. I’ve a feeling she’s a lass that might be easily frightened off.’
‘So you haven’t even kissed her?’
‘That I have not!’ The head jerked up and blue eyes blazed, staring into Reuben’s paler ones, growing dim with age. Though it was more fool him, Tom silently admitted, for Alice’s mouth was made for kissing, her tiny waist for cuddling, and that pretty, pert nose made him want her all the more when she tilted it, all hoity-toity.
‘Then best you get a move on, or you’ll be beaten to it.’ By the son of Rowangarth’s head gardener for one, who was serving out his time at Pendenys Place, or by the young red-haired coachman for another. ‘Well, if you’ve got decent and gentlemanly intentions towards her, that is,’ he added solemnly, him being related to Alice in a roundabout way and therefore responsible for her because of it.
‘You think I don’t know it? But I can’t seem to make any headway. She’s a fey one.’
‘So are all lasses. They play you along like a fish on a line till they’re ready to pull you in. Unless,’ said Reuben, placing a log on the fire, ‘you show her you mean business.’
‘And how am I to do that? She tells me nothing; doesn’t even talk about her family nor where she comes from; no, nor even if she has a young man back home. Won’t give me a straight answer.’
‘Nor will she, Tom. She has no family – save for me and my niece Bella. It was Bella took on the rearing of Alice when she was nobbut a bairn – and did it with bad grace, an’ all. Many’s the time that woman nearly packed the lass off to the workhouse. Well, stood to reason, didn’t it; another mouth to feed on nothing but charity. Had her for seven years and begrudged every mouthful the bairn ate. Mean, my niece is.’
‘Poor little Alice,’ Tom said softly. ‘To lose her folk, and her so young …’
‘Younger than you think. Only a babe of two when her mam died, so her father left her with his mother and went off to be a soldier, the barmpot, and got himself killed at Ladysmith. And the old granny didn’t last long after that, neither, so Alice was farmed out again.’
‘An orphan at three,’ Tom frowned. ‘She’s never known a childhood.’ Not like his own. Not a growing-up secure in the care of parents and a brother and two sisters to fight and squabble with and stand solid against the rest of the world with. ‘Never known anything, really, but charity.’
‘Aye, and charity that’s given grudging is a cold thing, and as soon as the lass was old enough she came here, into service. The only good thing that woman did for Alice was getting me to speak for her to Miss Clitherow, or she might have ended up with the wrong Suttons; might have gone to that martinet over at Pendenys Place. And heaven help any lass that ends up there – especially one that’s bonny to look at. The Place Suttons have no breeding, see? Brass, yes; background, no. Not the right background, any road.’ Like all servants who were fortunate enough to end up with a family of quality, Reuben was a snob, and looked down on the Suttons at the Place.
‘Now the Suttons here at Rowangarth – the Garth Suttons – have breeding. Goes back hundreds of years. Pedigree. That’s what counts.’ Reuben knew all about pedigree, from gun dogs upwards. ‘So be sure to give Pendenys as wide a berth as you can, lad, for even their head keeper is crooked as they come and feathering his nest.’
‘But she’s all right now?’ Tom didn’t care about the Pendenys Suttons. All he wanted was to talk about Alice Hawthorn who had scarcely been out of his thoughts since the afternoon he met her. ‘Alice seems happy enough at Rowangarth.’
‘Oh my word, yes. A different young lady, these days. And done well for herself. Her mother was a dressmaker, so I’m told, and Alice seems to have inherited her skills. She’s sewing-maid, now, and answers to nobody but Miss Clitherow – and Lady Helen, of course. And her’s going to London, maiding Miss Julia.’ To London, and her not eighteen till June. All that way away when most folk never strayed beyond the Riding, let alone set foot outside of Yorkshire. ‘Ah, well,’ he consulted his pocket-watch, checking it with the ponderously ticking mantel-clock, ‘if you’ve finished your sup of tea we’d best get on with the rounds. You take the woodland and I’ll see to the rearing field.’
‘Right, Mr Pickering.’ Tom jumped instantly to his feet, giving the older man his full title, which was only polite once in a while. ‘There’s still a few nests not hatched out yet.’
Nests? Reuben chuckled, eyeing the fast disappearing back, when Alice and that Morgan dog should be walking the woodland? Always did, wet or dry, before servants’ tea. And to be hoped when the lad met her he talked about summat more interesting than dogs and the weather, or he’d lose her, sure as eggs was eggs, he would. And Reuben didn’t want that to happen, for he’d found a lot of good in young Dwerryhouse and he was more than fond of the lass who took the edge off his loneliness and was ever willing to sew on a patch, or a button or two, for an old widower. To have her settled with Tom would please him greatly.
‘Sure as eggs is eggs,’ he muttered, pulling on his hat.
Helen, Lady Sutton, sighed deeply and gazed at the lavender dinner dress draped carefully over the bed; at the matching satin shoes, the white silk stockings and the garters laid beside them. She did not want to wear those clothes, for when she had bathed and had her hair pinned and finished the time-consuming ritual of dressing, she would be going to dinner at Pendenys Place and she did not like Pendenys, nor anything about it, nor care overmuch for anyone who lived there – except Edward, that was.
‘Why the frown, Mother?’ Julia Sutton slammed shut the door behind her. ‘I told you not to wear the lavender, didn’t I? You’re out of mourning now and lavender and mauve and purple are mourning colours and you shouldn’t –’
‘Julia! When will you learn to knock on a bedroom door and please, don’t ever tell your mother anything! And what do you expect me to wear, newly out of black? Red, should it be, like a music hall soubrette?’
‘Blue would have been lovely. Pa always liked you in blue.’
‘Your papa is no longer here,’ she whispered, her voice sharp-edged with remembered grief.
‘No, darling. Sorry.’ Julia brushed the pale cheek with gentle lips. ‘And the lavender is perfectly acceptable, come to think of it, for a visit to Pendenys. Shall you wear your pearls?’
‘I think not.’ She didn’t want to wear the pearl choker tonight; not her husband’s wedding gift. ‘Just the ear-drops, and flowers. They’re in the pantry now, keeping fresh.’
Flowers. She would be wearing Pa’s flowers, Julia frowned; she should have known it. Her mother had carried orchids as a bride, and thereafter Pa had ordered the cream-coloured beauties to be grown in the orchid house at Rowangarth. No one was to pick them without milady’s permission, and no one was ever to wear them but her ladyship. A dashing declaration of love it had been, for though their marriage was arranged, they had loved deeply, too. And she, Julia Sutton, would marry for love or not at all. One day she would find the right