your friend of his wayward notions.”
“Oh, please don’t. He’s having great fun at my expense, and the summer is likely to try his patience if he bides with me for any length of time.”
“You can’t think to live at the manor.” Ellen frowned as she spoke. She didn’t want him so nearby, or rather, she did, and it was a stupid, foolish idea.
“We’ll put up in the carriage house. It’s clean and serviceable. There’s a small stove upstairs for tea and warmth, and the quarters are well ventilated.”
“And the roof is still functioning,” Ellen added. They were passing through the woods on one of the more worn bridle paths. Nobody maintained the paths, but game used them, and Ellen did.
And nasty little boys did, as well.
She walked more quickly, all too aware that in these woods the man beside her had kissed her, only once, but endlessly, until she was a standing puddle of desire and anticipation. With nothing more than his mouth on hers, he’d stripped her of dignity, self-restraint, and common sense, probably without a backward thought when he’d gone on his way.
“Are we in a hurry?” her escort inquired.
“I would not want to leave Mr.…” Ellen searched frantically for his name. Good lord, she’d just been introduced to the man.
“The Honorable Darius Lindsey,” Mr. Windham supplied as they walked along. “His papa is the Earl of Wilton, with the primary estate over in Hampshire.”
“I see.”
Mr. Windham must have heard the cooling in her tone at the mention of a title, because as he and Mr. Lindsey sipped cold cider on Ellen’s back porch, he quizzed her on the tenants, the neighbors, the availability of various services in the area, and the likelihood of finding competent laborers in the immediate future, keeping well away from any remotely social topic.
“You’ll have to wait until the hay is in,” Ellen said as the shadows lengthened across her yard. “There’s help to be had for coin. Tomorrow is market day, so you can start getting the word out among the locals, and they’ll spread it quickly enough. How are you fixed for provisions?”
“For provisions?” Mr. Lindsey echoed. “We rode out from Town with saddlebags bulging, but that’s about it.”
“I can keep you in butter, milk, cheese, and eggs. Mable presented me with a little heifer calf not a month past. I was giving the extra to Bathsheba, since she’s nursing eight piglets, but she can make shift without cream and eggs every day. I’ve also been working on a smoke-cured ham but not making much progress.”
“You were feeding your sow cream and eggs?”
“Eight piglets, Mr. Lindsey, would take a lot out of any lady. It was either that or much of it would go to waste.”
“We’ll be happy to enjoy your surplus,” Mr. Windham cut in, “but you have to let us compensate you somehow.”
“I will not take coin for being neighborly.”
“I didn’t mean to offend, merely to suggest when the opportunity presents itself, I would like to be neighborly, as well. I’m sure there’s some effort a pair of strong-backed fellows might turn themselves to that would be useful to you, Mrs. FitzEngle.”
His voice was a melody of good breeding and better intentions, an aural embodiment of kindness and politesse. Just to hear him speaking left Ellen a little dazed, a little… wanting.
“We’ll see,” she said briskly. “For now, enjoy your cider. Moonrise will be early this evening, and if you’re staying in town for now, you’ll want to get back to The Tired Rooster before the darts start flying.”
“Tame gentlemen such as ourselves will need to be up early tomorrow,” Mr. Windham said, rising. “We’ll be on our way, but thank you for the cider and the hospitality.”
“Until tomorrow, then.” Ellen rose, as well, pretending to ignore the hand Mr. Windham extended toward her.
“Tomorrow?” Mr. Lindsey frowned. “Here I was hoping to malinger at the Rooster for a couple weeks waiting for building materials to come in from London, or darkest Peru.”
“Lazy sot.” Mr. Windham smiled at his friend. “I think the lady meant she’d be in town for market day, and we might be fortunate enough to see her then.”
“Until tomorrow.” Mr. Lindsey bowed over her hand and went to collect the horses, leaving Ellen standing in the gathering darkness with Valentine Windham.
“I am glad to have renewed our acquaintance,” Mr. Windham said, his gaze traveling around the colorful borders of her yard. “Your flowers make an impression.”
“I am glad to see you again, as well.” Ellen used the most cordially unremarkable tones she could muster. “One is always pleased to know one’s gardening efforts are memorable.”
“Until tomorrow.” Mr. Windham took her hand and bowed over it, but he also kissed her knuckles—a soft, fleeting contact of his mouth on the back of her hand, accompanied by a slight squeeze of his fingers around hers. And then he was swinging up on a big chestnut, saluting with his crop, and cantering off into the darkness, Mr. Lindsey at his side.
Ellen sat, her left hand closed over the knuckles of her right, and tried to think whether it was a good thing her flowers had left an impression on Mr. Windham.
It was a bad thing, she decided, for Mr. Windham was a scamp, and a scamp as a neighbor was trouble enough, particularly when she liked him, and his every touch and glance had her insides in a compete muddle. And while he might recall her flowers, she recalled quite clearly their one, very thorough and far beyond neighborly kiss.
“You are going to trifle with the widow,” Darius predicted as the horses ambled through the moonlight toward Little Weldon. The night was pleasant, the worst heat of the day fading to a soft, summery warmth made fragrant by mown hay and wild flowers.
“She is a widow,” Val said, “but I don’t think she’s that kind of widow.”
“What kind of widow would that be?”
Val ignored the question, more intent on a sweet recollection. “I was out here last spring on an errand for David Worthington, supposedly looking at rural properties that might be for sale. I accompanied Vicar Banks on a courtesy call to what I thought was an elderly widow who’d missed the previous week’s services. I saw a floppy straw hat, an untidy cinnamon-colored braid, and bare feet before I saw anything else of her. I concluded she was an old dear becoming vague, as they say.”
“Vague does not apply to Mrs. FitzEngle. Just the opposite.”
“Not vague,” Val agreed, He’d kissed the woman before taking his leave of her on that long-ago afternoon, an impulse—a sweet, stolen moment with a woman whose every feature left a man with a sense of warmth. She had warm brown eyes, a warm sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and hair a warm shade exactly midway between auburn and blond—cinnamon came to mind rather than chestnut. “She isn’t dreamy or given to flights but there is something…”
“Yes?”
“Unconventional,” Val said, though that term wasn’t quite right either. Her hands on his body would be warm too, though how he knew this, he could not say. “Ellen could be considered eccentric, but I prefer to think of her as… unique.”
Darius said nothing, finding it sufficiently
Val peered over the soffit as several slate tiles slid down from the roof on the newly constructed slide and bumped safely against the cloth padding the bottom of the chute.
“It works,” he said, grinning over at Darius, the only other occupant of the house’s roof.
“Of course it works.” Darius sat back on his heels, using his forearm to wipe the sweat from his brow. “I designed it. I don’t recall you ordering another entire wagonload of goods from town.”
