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“So you’d see them ruined?” Elf asked. “Master Robbie sent back to a madhouse, His Grace in the dock? A pack of vultures would likely take over running the Hall, and that would kill the duchess, that would. Kill me too.”
“His Grace has seen his mama well set up. She’d manage.” The duchess rarely even sent a letter to the Hall anymore.
The conversation usually wandered on to a discussion of changes that might help the situation at the Hall. Another trip into York for His Grace. Maybe a pretty maid or two hired from the village. Sensible women, not too young but not too plain either. Ladies who could lift a man’s spirits, so to speak, and whose loyalty would be to the Hall. Even hiring a true cook might have had some positive effect, not that the present kitchen tyrant showed signs of retiring or that hiring anybody would sit well with the duke.
But Treegum truly was tired, too tired to revisit pointless talk yet again. “I’m off to bed,” he said, pushing to his feet. “Don’t stay up too late.”
Master Robbie liked to roam the Hall at night, and the staff did him the courtesy of allowing him solitude for his rambles. That was the least they could do for a man who’d spent years unable to venture forth from his own home.
“Sweet dreams,” Elf said.
Treegum didn’t bother replying. Nobody at the Hall had had sweet dreams since Master Robbie had come off his horse all those years ago. Perhaps they’d never have sweet dreams again.
When the seasons shifted, Althea’s sleeping patterns shifted as well. The full moon also had the power to disturb her rest, as did thoughts of a certain duke.
“More daffodils,” she informed Septimus as she laced up her old boots. “One bucket at a time and a few years from now, we might even have enough to cut some bouquets for the house.”
She’d avoided the river for the past few mornings, but she hadn’t been able to avoid recollections of the time spent with Rothhaven.
“Is he angry?” she asked the cat, who was busy sniffing the bedcovers. “And if so, why? Or is he frustrated?”
Some unhappy emotion drove Rothhaven, but what could a duke have to be unhappy about? He owned sizable acreage, he was respected if not beloved by the local populace, he lived life on his own eccentric terms, and he never had to trouble himself about the good opinion of the Lady Phoebes of the world.
“He should be a more cheerful fellow,” Althea said, pinning her braid into a haphazard bun.
But then, she herself was sister to a duke, lavishly well provided for, in blooming good health, and far from content.
“Perhaps Rothhaven longs for a family too,” she suggested to her reflection. She really ought to redo her braid, but the morning damp would only make a mess of her hair anyway. “Besides, nobody will see me.”
She declined to leave through the library and instead went out the front door, pausing only to retrieve Rothhaven’s walking stick from the porter’s nook. If she ran into any more strange men lurking by the river, she’d have a weapon other than her bucket and trowel.
And if carrying an item personal to Rothhaven afforded her a sense of emotional fortitude too, well, that hardly mattered. She still hadn’t sent off her acceptance to Lady Phoebe. Rothhaven had said to wait, so wait she would.
Even if waiting was driving her nearly daft.
The grass was wet with a heavy dewfall, and when Althea crossed paths with the hare, his progress through the bracken was visibly marked in damp paw prints. Close to the river, the mist again thickened, and the yellow of the daffodils took on a muted, watercolor quality.
So pretty. So peaceful, with only the occasional leap of a fish or plop of a frog to break the dawn stillness.
Althea bent to her task, digging up the plants that had already bloomed. Such a patch of flowers, stretching for yards along the bank, had to be quite venerable, but who had started it? Had some gardener of old dumped a wheelbarrow full of thinnings here, only to find the discarded stock did better in the wild than when confined to a garden?
Had the lady of the manor asked for a planting to beautify her riverbank?
Between one thought and the next, the back of Althea’s neck prickled. Rather than bolt to her feet, she merely sat back, and there he was again, several yards off, her man of the mist. His stillness was uncanny, the stillness of an ancient tree or perfectly calm lake. Deep, fixed, focused.
“Good morning.” Althea spoke calmly but not too cheerfully, for she did not want to appear nervous.
And she wasn’t, oddly. Rothhaven’s walking stick lay at her side, a stout length of serious oak. Her common sense told her that if this man was intent on doing her harm, he would have sneaked up behind her while she mused about knights of old and prodigal daffodils.
“I’m so glad spring has arrived,” she said, putting a final specimen into her bucket. “More than the cold, I find the bleakness of winter oppressive here in Yorkshire. What of you, sir? Have you a favorite season?”Have you a name?
He bore a resemblance to Rothhaven, in his posture more than anything else. His collar was turned up against the morning chill and the brim of his top hat obscured his eyes, but his height, broad shoulders, and leanness had something of Rothhaven about them.
A cousin, perhaps. Many families gave management of the home farm or the post of land steward to relatives. Witness, Quinn doled out estates for his siblings to manage.
“I love the spring flowers,” Althea went on. “By this time of year, I’m so hungry for natural beauty, I could—”
The man took a step back. This was different from Althea’s last encounter with him, when he’d simply turned and walked away, disappearing into the mist.
