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“Oh,” Alicia muttered.
The walk was silent after that. Laurence could not imagine how it was that what he said could cast such a pall over the afternoon, but it was undeniable that he had done so. The beauty of their surroundings now lost on him, his emotions waxed and waned between anger at his sister for making him the target of ridicule and frustration with Alicia for asking in the first place. Eventually, his spirits settled on a solid course of anger at himself for saying such foolishness as though it were some great truth.
Damn fool,he chastised himself.She must think you such a boor, so full of yourself with pride that you look down on everywhere and everyone else! And all for a humble country house that will likely be as impressive to her as a garden shed.
As they walked along and the gulf of silence grew wider and ever more impassable, so too did Laurence feel himself growing increasingly anxious.I’m not cut out for this,he said to himself, now fully in a dark mood.Callous as she may be at times, thank God for Mary-Anne—she knows how to deal with people like Alicia.
“Here we are, Gillingham Manor—so to speak,” chirped Mary-Anne.
“Oh!” cried Alicia, stopping in place to take a look as Laurence did the same.
It didn’t seem to matter how near he stayed to home, nor many hundreds of times it happened; every time Laurence rounded the last bend of the dirt road and his family home came into view, he could not help but break into a smile. Whether the aged eaves were capped with snow or the ancient elm trees were an explosion of red and orange, whether the Gillingham dogs were chasing a new litter of puppies through the spring flowers, or napping lazily in the summer heat, as they were today—any time of year, the sight always made him feel as happy and content as anything ever could.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noted a strange look come across Alicia’s face as she stopped and regarded the view before them. She glanced at the muddy-brown gables, the peaked roof over the second story of the structure, the tall, narrow windows that ran along the main hall. Each fixture of the house was a source of countless treasured memories for Laurence—yet now, instead of relishing these recollections, he found himself waiting anxiously to see this London gentlewoman’s response.
“Oh! Why it’s lovely!” she exclaimed. Her words were kind, but Laurence still felt ill at ease and caught himself holding his breath as they walked down the path toward the house.
By the time they reached the front door he felt ready to run off into the woods and abandon the whole enterprise. Instead, taking a small gasp of air, he did the most polite alternative he could think of.
“Mary-Anne,” said Laurence with a small clearing of his throat, “why don’t you go on and take our guests to the house? You can show them around while Margaret prepares supper.”
“And just what is the lord of the manor so busy with that he can’t see to his guests himself?” quipped Mary-Anne with a hand rested archly on her hip.
Smiling, Laurence patted the horse on the side. “I thought it best to take care of Victoria after the scare she’s had.”
Alicia looked at him, uncomprehending. “Victoria? Is that…one of your staff?”
Clearing his throat, Laurence answered, “Your horse? I thought that was what your Mister Place called her, though I may have misheard.”
“Oh, I…yes, I suppose so?” Alicia said with an embarrassed-sounding laugh.
Mary-Anne swooped between them then, once again clamping onto Alicia’s arm and beginning to walk her toward the house, Jenny trailing behind the two and tittering. “Come along, now, I’ll show you to the room where you’ll be staying. You won’t want to be around when my brother starts talking to the horses anyway, I’m sure…”
The girl doesn’t know the name of her own family’s horses?Laurence thought, shaking his head. He patted the handsome mare’s neck as they walked to the barn together.Either she’s even richer than she lets on—rich enough to have too many horses to keep track of—or else she leaves such matters to others to worry about.
As soon as he thought this he chastised himself for the ridiculousness of the idea.Damn fool, of course, an English gentlewoman doesn’t take care of her own horses. Still, it seemed a sad state of affairs for poor Victoria. The beast had had the scare of her life out on the road, surely, and to get so little consideration from her owner struck Laurence as downright tragic.
As Dennis and all the Gillingham hired hands looked to be still out in the fields, Laurence saw he was the only person in the large, creaky barn when he swung open the doors. But he was far from alone there, as was immediately apparent from the cacophony that filled the stuffy air when the sunlight flooded in.
“Afternoon, ladies!” Laurence called back in return. “Agatha, Bernadette, good to see you’re in higher spirits than this morning,” he greeted the two large milk cows in their stall as he led Victoria to the horse stalls.
He carried on these friendly salutations to each animal they passed, calling each by name and inquiring after their health, until he finally brought the exhausted horse to an empty stall.
“Rhea, Robinson,” Laurence said to his mare and foal respectively, gesturing to the horse he had brought in with him. “This is Victoria. I’m sure you’ll make her feel right at home.” The horses’ friendly whinnies told him Victoria would have nothing to worry about.
It was an easy thing to get Victoria settled into her lodgings. After the day she had had, the mare took very well to her bucket of oats and warm, dry stall.
“You’re a good girl, Victoria. Miss Alicia is luckier than she knows to have as fine a lady as you pulling her carriage,” he said in a fond voice.
Then Laurence gave a heavy sigh, realizing his presence would be expected in the house soon. He needed to let Margaret know about the extra people staying for supper, and see if Dennis had gone home to take care of his mother yet, or if he was still available to fetch some water and other comforts for Alicia and Jenny. As always, there was so much to be done in the Gillingham household—and today was even more demanding than usual, with this interruption to their routine.
Attractive though she was, the thought of playing host to this glamorous woman from London felt impossibly wearing to him.
“There is something I mislike about your mistress, girl, excuse me for saying so,” Laurence said in a soft voice, brushing a bit of road dirt from Victoria’s side. “Stuffy. Cold, maybe. No head for the real world outside her ballroom, I suspect.”
But he could not deny that, however true he felt this judgment to be, something inside him was enchanted by Alicia. Certainly, there was her physical beauty, obvious even in the somewhat disarrayed state she was in today. Her smile was brilliant, all the more because of its rarity, and the shape of her body clearly drove Laurence to distraction.
More than that, though, she was just so unlike any woman he had ever known—a bit cold, certainly, and full of all the pomp and artifice of city life that Laurence had always mistrusted. Yet all that seemed so much less important than something he saw peeking out from within her.
