Page 17 of Waiting for Love

Since moving from the Danforths’ a fortnight prior, he’d developed a routine. He would rise, wash, dress, then retire to the sitting room to drink coffee while waiting for Miss Jamison to bring Hannah in for breakfast—breakfast that someone from kitchen had fetched up along with a bucket of piping hot water, another of the perquisites of living in the Taverston home.

Early on, he’d made the mistake of standing by the window while he planned his day. The first sunny morning, Olivia appeared. And now, every morning when the skies were not actively dripping, he made sure to take his coffee by the window. Were another man to do something so surreptitious and unnerving, Benjamin would treat him to a horsewhipping. Yet he’d formed the habit and could not stop.

She intrigued him. He’d discovered that while the dowager had been grieving her husband, Olivia had taken up the duty of care for the tenants: looking in on the ill, bringing food to the struggling, visiting the lonely. From the affectionate way they all spoke of her, he knew they recognized her goodness of heart. Evidently, she was not the same charmingly silly creature he remembered. And yet, she was. She had the same smile. The same laugh. And, no doubt, the same fierce, absurd desire to compete with her brothers.

This morning, she was wearing her brown riding habit. He favored the blue, but the brown was nice also. He couldn’t have helped noticing how both flattered her, even though she was lanky, and his preference had always skewed toward the voluptuous.

Who was she visiting today? She was carrying an enormous basket. Her long, slender arms must be stronger than they appeared. He envisioned equally strong, long, slender legs. The deuce. He should not be spying. It put all the wrong thoughts in his head.

She disappeared over the ridge, and Benjamin turned away. This must stop. In a few months, she would be gone to London and that would be that. But he could not spend the next few months watching her from windows.

He moved to the table. He had just chosen a sweet bun when Hannah charged into the room, hair half-combed, followed by a huffing Miss Jamison.

“Cake!” Hannah demanded.

“I am sorry, sir,” Miss Jamison said, corralling her. “She is being difficult this morning.”

“I would be too if I knew cake was awaiting me.” Benjamin held out his arms and Hannah ran to him.

A little guiltily, he ignored Miss Jamison’s frown. He wasn’t making her job easier. He had chosen the woman for her grandmotherly appearance and list of references as long as his arm. She was stuffy, but he thought that would be a good balance for his tendency to be indulgent. He shouldn’t keep overriding her discipline, but he did.

He lifted Hannah onto his lap, and she grabbed his breakfast with both hands.

“Tea, Miss Jamison?” he said, gesturing for her to sit across from him, knowing she would not.

“Thank you, sir, but I will go fill Hannah’s bath.”

He chuckled, surveying the damage the sticky coating had already caused. “She’ll need one. I may too.”

A faint crinkle appeared alongside the nanny’s eyes before she nodded and turned. She didn’t entirely disapprove of him.

He shared the bun with Hannah, poured the tiniest bit of tea into a saucer, sugared it well, and gave it to her to slurp. She babbled something he could not quite make out. He agreed with her, and she babbled some more. As the weather promised fine, he suspected Miss Jamison’s plans for the day would include another visit to the garden alongside the west wall. Being winter, everything was trimmed back and ugly, but it gave Hannah room to run about. And dig. The gardener was completely won over and had even gifted her with a trowel. When the weather turned nasty, Benjamin would have to find someplace within the house where she might roam. Perhaps the conservatory. Or the music room. They were generally empty.

But this was exactly what he had wished to avoid. Hannah was not a child of the house. She would not belong in the nursery with Jasper’s children or whatever young Taverstons came to visit. Nor should she run about with any of the servants’ children, wee ones who were taught from an early age to keep out of the way of the lords and ladies until they were old enough to perform tasks of their own. Benjamin hated that she would grow up on an estate where she would occupy some lonely in-between sphere, belonging neither with the masters nor with the servants. That was where he was. That lonely space.

Idiot. He was in an enviable position and moping over it was unbecoming.

For now, his daughter was sated and an absolute mess, so he scooped her up to deliver her to Miss Jamison, who had the washtub, soap, and towels at the ready. Rather than witness the battle ahead, he said, “I’ll be working in the house today.”

“Yes, Mr. Carroll.”

He hurried out. He always told the nanny where he intended to be. Thankfully, she had never had cause to bother him, but he wanted her to know that she could. He would return at teatime. Hannah’s supper. Afterward, with the little mite put to bed, he would work in his office and let Miss Jamison have a few hours to herself.

Benjamin trotted down the south stairs and over to the main part of the house. The place was an architectural disaster with a maze of corridors that did not connect with one another on all levels so one was always going up and down stairs, and four wings—north, south, east, and west—that corresponded poorly to the actual points of a compass and were not even at right angles to each other. Jasper, Crispin, and eventually even Reg mocked the “old pile.” But Benjamin loved every crooked stone.

His destination was Jasper’s study. Jasper had made an effort to sort out his dying father’s unattended-to business, as well as the work that the aging Bradwell had let slip. Reg had tackled the account books. Benjamin had learned this when he first put foot back in England and found a box of tidy ledgers awaiting him. He’d had no difficulty picking up the accounting where Reg had left off. The man was meticulous. His hand was so neat, Benjamin would almost call it feminine.

But the accounting was the least of it, as the mass of paper stuffed in Jasper’s cabinets proved. A few files were labeled “seen to” and the papers in them were scribbled with notes attesting to what Jasper had done. In addition to estate matters, there were folders containing personal correspondence that Benjamin did not touch. There were also a few boxes of material dealing with Jasper’s political interests: pamphlets, newspaper clippings, texts of speeches, notes, and letters. Benjamin thought this likely fascinating, but not within his purview, so he set those aside.

Jasper had told him to open anything that looked urgent. The only thing he’d opened was a letter from the Marquess of Ebersom. He didn’t recognize the name, but a marquess might well expect a response in a timely manner. The man sent regrets. He would not be able to come for a visit over Twelfth Night. They would have to discuss their collaboration when they both returned to London. Working on a bill over the holidays? Jasper? He stuck the letter in with the personal correspondence, though it might belong in the political file.

And that left the pile that Jasper had left specifically for Benjamin to “please look into.”

There were some things that needn’t take more than ten or twenty minutes if he didn’t first have to hunt down whos, whats, and wheres. There were also daylong and weeklong projects that needed to be checked upon, or started, or cancelled. God, Jasper. He couldn’t imagine the poor fellow’s pain, discovering the disarray of his father’s affairs.

Benjamin plodded his way through the pile on days when he did not have set chores on the property or in the village. Today’s first task was a simple one. A bill from a London jeweler. Past due. Benjamin tucked away his annoyance. No gentleman paid his bills on time, yet they all wondered why their accounts were always in a tangle.

The next…the deuce. Benjamin glanced at Jasper’s calendar, then flipped over the page. It was November, not October. And halfway through that.