Page 18 of A Convenient Fiction

“He’s not a day over sixty,” Laura said. “But I take your meaning.”

John Yardley had worked for the Hayes family for as long as Laura could remember. He was butler, footman, and manservant. Capable enough for most things, but not as able to perform his physical duties as once he had.

“It’s the rheumatism, Miss Laura,” he’d confided to her only last week. “It does give me a twinge on occasion.”

Laura leaned back in her chair, regarding her brother with a thoughtful frown. “There’s no use dithering about it any longer. We must simply hire another footman. Someone younger and stronger who can be more of a help to you.”

“How do you propose we pay him?”

“Let me worry about that.”

Teddy gathered his sketches into a pile, shuffling them straight before thrusting them into a drawer and slamming it closed. “I wish you would confide in me.”

“I do confide in you.”

He snorted. “You don’t.”

“Would it set your mind at ease to know every miserable detail?”

Teddy bent his head, his mouth pressed tight. “Our circumstances are miserable, then.”

“I have it all in hand.”

“Do you?”

“As near as can be.” She reached to smooth a lock of Teddy’s hair from his brow. “You need only concern yourself with getting well.”

Teddy drew back from her touch. “You’ll speak with Weatherwax tomorrow?”

Laura’s hand fell to her lap. “I will.”

“And if he—”

“He won’t. He can’t. The law is on our side.”

“The law is an ass,” Teddy muttered. “That’s what Shakespeare says.”

“I daresay he’s right,” Laura replied. “But it’s all we have at present.”

Alex didn’t drink to excess. Didn’t do anything to excess, really. When one had only one’s wits to rely on, one couldn’t afford to have one’s senses addled. Fortunately, Squire Talbot wasn’t the sort of gentleman to press food and drink on his guests.

Indeed, as dinner progressed in the cavernous dining room at Edgington Park, the squire seemed to cede the whole of his duties as host to his daughter.

It led Alex to wonder whether Miss Hayes might not have been exaggerating when she’d told him that the squire fiercely guarded Miss Talbot’s reputation. As one course led to the next, Alex began to get the impression that Squire Talbot wasn’t in the habit of doing anything fiercely. He was, it seemed, little more than a country farmer. A man more interested in the workings of his estate than in his daughter’s matrimonial prospects.

“You must come back tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “I’ll take you round the home farm. We have the finest pigs in Surrey.”

“Really, Papa,” Miss Talbot protested. “Mr. Archer isn’t interested in pigs, of all things.”

“But I am,” Alex replied. “Keenly interested. I should be grateful for a tour.”

Squire Talbot looked down the table at George. “And you, Wright?”

George held out his wineglass for a footman to refill it. It was his fourth refill thus far, and he was starting to show the effects of it. His cheeks were ruddy, his manner less formal. “Can’t say I’ve ever been interested in farming. I prefer city life to a country village. Far more civilized, to my mind.”

“Rubbish,” the squire said. “There’s nothing more civilized than orderly crops, healthy livestock, and modern machinery. Prosperous farms like Edgington Park are the backbone of England. Your father understands that well enough. He’s often complimented my methods of—”

“I beg you, Papa,” Miss Talbot interrupted. “No more talk of farming. Not when our guests have only lately returned from the continent. I’d far rather hear about Paris than pigs.”