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“When will I learn?” she asked the dewy morning air. “When will I feel as if I’m who and where I’m supposed to be?”
Something twitched at the edge of her vision, another hare perhaps. Foxes could thrive near moorland as did game birds, but this movement felt…less benign.
Althea rose and stuffed her trowel into the bucket of uprooted flowers. “Is somebody there?”
She was on her own land, and a scream would bring help, but if she screamed over a nesting grouse she’d feel quite the fool.
The mist swirled on an unseen current of air and revealed the outline of a man, bareheaded, his greatcoat brushing the tops of field boots. He stood a good twelve yards away, so utterly still Althea might have missed him, but for the darkness of his attire against the pale fog.
“Good morning.” Althea was ready to hike her skirts and run, but nothing about the fellow was menacing—nor did he seem friendly.
He turned and strode off, the mist swallowing him up before he’d gone six strides.
Had it been Rothhaven? The height hadn’t seemed quite impressive enough, the walk not as decisive as Rothhaven’s, but then, she’d not seen His Grace previously in pre-dawn half-light. Perhaps the vicar had gone for a constitutional to help compose one of his lofty, articulate sermons and hadn’t wanted small talk to interrupt his train of thought.
Though the man had taken the path that led to Rothhaven Hall, the opposite direction from the vicarage.
Althea collected her flowers and made her way back to her own garden, no longer quite as charitably disposed toward solitude at such an early hour.
The encounter had been odd. Very odd indeed.
Chapter Five
The night air had failed to slap any sense whatsoever into Nathaniel. Instead he’d wandered home by way of the lanes, in deference to his boots and also because he’d been reluctant to return to Rothhaven Hall.
The manor had sat like a black hulk against the moonlit sky, the sight melancholy rather than menacing. Without a single lamp glowing in a window, Nathaniel’s home had looked more like a prison than the haven it was meant to be. Sleep had been elusive after that unhelpful thought had taken root, and Nathaniel had tormented himself with second thoughts.
The wisdom of the well-punched pillow suggested he ought not to have kissed Lady Althea’s hand. Perhaps he should have kissed her cheek, or perhaps he should have let himself out through the French doors and bolted across her garden hotfoot.
Or—in for a penny, in for a pound—he might have kissed the lady herself and got a proper dressing down for that presumption.
Robbie joined him in the breakfast parlor, his hair a bit windblown, the toes of his boots damp.
“Have you been in the garden already?” Nathaniel asked.
“Good morning, and yes, I have been in the garden. Spring and autumn are the busiest times for a gardener, and I smell rain in the air.”
Robbie liked rain, liked the dreariness and the steady patter. Rain meant people were less likely to be abroad, to his way of thinking, and that was a good thing.
“I’ve been seized by a notion,” Nathaniel said, dabbing marmalade onto his toast. “We could connect the orchard walls to the walls of our existing garden and double the garden space we have to work with.”
This scheme had occurred to him in the small hours of the night, as he’d ruminated on the way Lady Althea’s lawn blended into her back garden. Not much maintenance required, and the scheme set off Lynley Vale nicely and made sneaking up on the place by day impossible.
Not that Nathaniel would be sneaking up on Lynley Vale ever again.
“Can you afford the labor this time of year?” Robbie asked, taking the place to Nathaniel’s right. “I know your home farm is busy now too.”
As were the tenancies, the brewery, the dairy, the kitchen gardens, the stables…The weight of a sleepless night abruptly doubled.
“If we order the stone now, we’ll have it on the property when the labor is available.” Rothhaven Hall almost never hired additional workers, not unless an employee was pensioned off and could personally vouch for the discretion of his or her replacement.
“To run walls all the way to the orchard will take a lot of stone,” Robbie said, tucking into his eggs. “You’d have to raise the walls around the orchard by another three feet at least as well.”
To ensure privacy. Always, always to ensure privacy. “We can take it in stages. First add on to our existing garden, then complete the work on the orchard as time allows.”
“Have you a mason among your employees?”
This pleasant, unremarkable conversation was familiar terrain on a battleground Nathaniel had been fighting over for years. He used plural pronouns to discuss projects such as this—we,us,our—and Robbie returned fire with the ammunition of the second person singular—you,your,yours.
