GIDEON
He watched her exit the front door and meet up with Mrs. Strom, Lavinia settled on her hip. He walked toward the window and watched as she made her way to the waiting carriage, which rocked gently as the horses shifted in their traces before pulling slowly out of the estate and disappearing around the bend of the drive.
“She is quite magnificent, if I may be so blunt, Your Grace,” said Heathcliff, appearing at his shoulder with the perfectly timed silence that good butlers made an art of.
He looked after the carriage long after it had gone. This was the third time she had gone into the village with Mrs. Strom since their arrival the previous week. And according to Mrs. Strom, she was very popular indeed.
“Is it true that she was invited to the tea circle after church?” he asked.
“Indeed, Your Grace. She was. Most unusual for a Duchess — and rather more unusual still that she accepted.”
There was the faintest suggestion of judgement in his tone, but Gideon let it slide. Heathcliff was of the old guard — he had served his father and grandfather before him, and he would find Helena’s ways curious at the very least. Gideon, however, was impressed. So much so that he was determined to follow her example. The Duchess of Blackthorne could not be the only one who was popular with the people.
“Have my horse saddled, please. I intend to ride into the village.”
“Of course, Your Grace,” Heathcliff said.
A few minutes later Gideon made his way to the stable, mounted, and rode toward Haslington. As he went, he passed several farmers working the fields on either side of the lane. Each one lifted his hat and nodded a greeting — a good morning, a pleasant day, a blessed life. He gathered that he was already more warmly regarded than his cousin had been, though there was still a wariness in the way people looked at him, a slight reservation behind the friendliness, as one might regard a new horse that had not yet been properly assessed. He did not blame them for it. He was new, and they did not yet know what to expect of him.
In Haslington, he tied his horse to a hitching post near the market square and walked out into the village. It was a pleasant place — wide oak trees providing dappled shade along the lane, a row of modest shops, and even a new tea house that had notbeen there on his last visit. The church stood at the center of it all, beside the market square where the weekly market was currently in full swing. Farmers’ carts were drawn up in a row, their owners calling out the merits of whatever they had to sell. The smell of bread and something roasting somewhere drifted across the square. A pair of dogs investigated a dropped cabbage with tremendous seriousness.
He was about to head toward where he could see his carriage drawn up outside the public house when a voice spoke at his shoulder.
“Your Grace?”
He turned. The vicar was walking toward him. He was a young man, perhaps thirty, with dark hair and a bright, open smile. Gideon had met him at his cousin Howard’s funeral, where the man had been generously complimentary about the deceased without once mentioning that Howard’s death had been brought on by sheer stupidity, or that he had not been the most stellar person in life. For that discretion, Gideon had always been grateful.
“Vicar — how are you on this fine day?”
“Very well, Your Grace, though surprised to see you in the village. I had thought you would be rather occupied up at the estate.”
“I am,” Gideon said, “but I decided to see how the town fares.”
“Ah. Much better, I think, for your tenure as Duke. Your cousin was of course a dedicated patron in his own way, but there is considerable hope for a warmer connection with the current holder of the title. Your wife has done a great deal to establish that in a very short time.”
Had she now. He was surprised — they had not discussed anything of that nature — though it was like Helena to be mindful of those less fortunate, given she had not been so very long out of difficult circumstances herself.
“I can concur with my wife in that regard,” he said. “Pray, do you know where I might find her?”
The vicar nodded toward the public house. “I believe she is in there.”
“In the public house?”
The vicar smiled. “There is no cause for alarm. We have been using it as a meeting space for the past several months. Every Tuesday, anyone with a grievance comes to attempt to resolve it before a panel of village elders. I attend to issue a final judgement should one be required.” He sighed. “It has been required most Tuesdays. I was just on my way there myself. Would you care to walk together?”
Gideon fell into step beside him, genuinely curious. A tribunal of locals — an informal court of sorts. It made a great deal of sense, in practice. And that Helena had attached herself to it already surprised him less the more he thought about it. In Londonshe had shied away from grand gatherings and the press of society, but here — where nobody had heard the rumours, where nobody cared about her parentage or the circumstances of their marriage — she was simply herself. And herself, it turned out, was very well suited to exactly this sort of thing.
They entered The Crane — the public house, a low-beamed, comfortable establishment that smelled of sawdust and woodsmoke — and were immediately enveloped in warmth and noise. There had to be at least seventy people packed inside. At the front, a long table had been set up with three men behind it. Gideon recognized one of them — Mr. Fisher, the local surgeon, a steady, sensible-looking man. Beside him sat a serious-faced fellow with a grocer’s apron, and on his other side a large man with dark hair and an impressive beard.
“That is Mr. Flannery, the greengrocer,” the vicar said quietly, “and Mr. Gold, the apothecary.”
Before them, two shorter tables had been arranged, each occupied by two men in the rougher clothing of farm workers, their hands and faces weathered dark by outdoor work.
“They were my oxen,” the taller called, his fist banging on the table in front of him. “They were on my side of the field.”
“But the cows were mine,” the other — a ruddy man with reddish hair — fired back. “And therefore the calves are mine also.”
“How should they be yours? Without my oxen there would be no calves. They are mine, and I demand them.”
