“The government isn’t stable, for one thing.” He let go of her hand to soak the handkerchief yet again. “Americans are terminally wary of kings and despots, elected or otherwise, and so they are miserly with their own government, haggling over every tax and tithe, clutching every little power tightly away from their own leaders. Then too, British enterprises are not regarded fondly in the current American climate, and finally, there is the issue of slavery.”
That he would discuss his foreign travels with her was oddly flattering. Maybe she liked him two pennies’ worth. “So no tobacco farming.”
“No tobacco, but I did bring back a number of medicinal plants, some trees, and a few wildflowers to see if they might be grown profitably here.”
“Enterprising of you,” Sara murmured, watching as he unwrapped her hand again.
“It doesn’t look as angry,” he decided. “I’d still feel better if you put something on it.”
Sara took back her hand. “Then I will, when I get to the kitchen. I see Maudie turned down your sheets. The warmer for your sheets is by the hearth, and your wash water is in that ewer.”
He smiled at her, making it even more imperative that Sara get herself down to the kitchen. “And my eyes grow heavier by the second. Good night, Mrs. Hunt, and my thanks for a pleasant welcome to Three Springs.”
“Good night, Mr. Haddonfield, sleep well.”
Beckman watched the formidable Mrs. Hunt take her leave, watched the graceful way she reached up to appropriate the candle on his mantel. Did she realize she’d lost her cap in the scuffle with the cat?
Her hair was a glorious, vibrant red, though she’d caught it back in a severe bun. The sight of that hair had evoked a sense of deja vu, the peculiar and unfounded certainty that he’d seen Sara Hunt somewhere else, her hair uncovered and the grace of her hands in evidence.
Which made no sense. She put him in mind of nothing so much as home, bearing about her person the scents of lavender, lemon oil, laundry starch, and other domestic fragrances. Then too, she had hands that were both feminine and competent, not the hands of a debutante but the hands of a grown woman.
“That was the last of the wine.” Sara let her head rest against the back of the armchair nearest the fire in her tiny sitting room. To call the space where she, Allie, and Polly dwelled an apartment was generous. They had three very small rooms and a sleeping alcove for Allie, though they’d shared far worse on the Continent and been grateful for it.
“She’s asleep,” Polly reported, peeking behind the curtain that provided Allie’s bed a bit of privacy. “I’m surprised you were able to save a bottle so long—it was from Lady Warne’s basket at Christmas, wasn’t it?”
“It was, so unless we’re willing to raid the strong spirits, we’re officially an abstaining household hereafter. The occasional chocolate mousse will do much to console us, though. Whatever possessed you?”
“Winter megrims.” Polly took the other rocking chair, settling in with a sigh that was too weighty for such a young woman.
Part of that sigh, Sara well knew, was because the strain of megrim plaguing Polly had to do with Mr. Gabriel North, who would come home very late to find his favorite treat awaiting him.
Polly set the chair to rocking with a slow, rhythmic creak on the pitch of about… high G. “We need some sweetness in this life, you know? How straitened are we?”
Sara gave the same answer she’d been giving for months. “Desperately, though with the first of the month, we’ll have another quarter’s funds, and that’s just next week.”
“If Lady Warne remembers. Why don’t you tell Mr. Haddonfield there is no money and there hasn’t been enough for the entire time we’ve worked here?”
That Polly assumed Sara would decide what to say to whom rankled, but they knew no other way to go on.
“Lady Warne is elderly. One doesn’t want to offend her, and in all likelihood, she’s grown a bit forgetful. I will impart to Mr. Haddonfield what information is necessary, Polly, but not before it’s necessary. He’s a man, son of an earl, wealthy, and if we just humor him long enough, he’ll likely go whistling on his way as soon as the Season starts up in earnest.”
This was sound reasoning, except it had little basis so far in fact or observation.
“He’d better do more than just make work for us,” Polly threatened darkly. “The household finances are tight, but I think the situation with the estate proper has grown unsalvageable, Sara. Gabriel won’t say, but how does he expect to manage planting with only one team, and the one too old to truly do much?”
“That is Gabriel’s puzzle to solve, and he hasn’t failed Three Springs yet. We each tend to our own concerns, and we do that best on a good night’s sleep.”
Unfortunately for Sara, a good night’s sleep was a necessity she frequently did without. Usually, it was the finances keeping her awake as she figured out ways to squeeze a spare farthing out of each penny or debated how to be more direct with Lady Warne.
Though lately, Sara’s dreams were haunted by the future, by the prospect of more years, more decades even, sneezed away beneath ugly caps in a dusty old house. On the worst nights, she fretted that Tremaine St. Michael would find them, and she’d be denied even those dusty decades and the peace to be had as they drifted by.
“Sara said there were matters you wanted to discuss with me, and after dinner I have every intention of seeking my bed posthaste.” Gabriel North closed the laundry room door behind him, and yet a cold draft managed to eddy through the room as Beck stood wrapped in a towel beside the tub.
“I said that.” Beck frowned, trying to recall what he’d been going on about. The day had been long, cold, and depressing, much of it spent in North’s dark, growling, grousing, but never quite complaining company.
Every roof on every shed, barn, and outbuilding wanted repair. Every ditch and drain needed to be cleaned and unclogged. Every acre was in want of marling; every fence was sagging. The stone walls were nearly frost- heaved into mere piles of rock; the hedges were grown so high they didn’t merely enclose the fields, they obscured them from view entirely.
The place was teetering on the edge of ruin, if not sliding down into the abyss. Beckman did not allow any metaphors to spring from that observation whatsoever.
North tossed him a bath sheet which was threadbare and scratchy but clean. “I’m listening.”
“I wanted to discuss with you the possibility that we can render the twins productive members of the household. Either that”—Beck turned the towel on his damp hair—“or they’re available for employment more suited to their temperaments.”
“You want to cut them loose?” North drained the bathing tub then fastened it back in place. He was nearly as tall as Beck and dark where Beck was fair, but there was something about the look of Mr. Gabriel North that stirred Beck’s memory. His features were harsh the way a man of the land came to look harsh—sun-browned, wind- scoured, crinkled at the corners, tried by biblical plagues and endless fatigue of the body and spirit.
And yet, women would find him attractive. As many foreign lands as Beck had traveled, women in all of them would have found Gabriel North attractive.
“I want to get Timothy and Tobias’s lazy feet out from under Miss Polly and Mrs. Hunt’s table,” Beck said, shrugging into a shirt. “They take more than they give, by all accounts. If you see it otherwise, I’m willing to listen.”
“They eat like a plague of locusts,” North replied, swirling a large, blunt finger in the water in the warming tub. “And while they are not openly insolent with me, I seldom ask them for the time of day. They regard themselves as house servants and resent mightily that there’s no butler, no male hierarchy placing them above the womenfolk because I refuse to trespass on what would be a house steward’s domain. Sara occasionally inspires them to attempt some task, but they are adept at sabotage and have not enough honor to see that the women deserve their help.”
“They’re gone,” Beck said, yanking his breeches up. “If they can’t see how hard the women work, much less
