'I believe he recalled an urgent appointment,' Trev said. 'With a halibut.'
'Indeed, I hope he found nothing to offend him about the Antlers.'
'It was nothing of the sort, I assure you, Mr. Rankin.' Callie sat up in her chair. 'The gingerbread smells delicious; I hope we might taste it soon. And have you had a reply from the cook in Bromyard?'
'I have, milady. I was about to tell you when the officer gentleman arrived. She is at liberty to start on Saturday, and sent a recommendation from her employer. But two other families wish to take her on, and she advises that she cannot accept a post for less than thirteen shillings the week.'
'Thirteen shillings!' quavered Mrs. Farr. 'For a cook-woman?'
'Oh-she is in great demand, then?' Callie asked.
'I fear so, milady. I understand that the only reason she was willing to entertain my inquiry is because she would prefer to live within a day's drive of her family in Gloucester, and the other offers are farther afield.'
'But why is she leaving her employer?'
'She's been these past ten years with a lady who now intends to make her home with a married daughter, due to her declining health.'
Callie looked at Trev. 'Thirteen shillings is a shocking swindle.'
'No doubt she scents my desperation,' he said. 'My want of a convincing blancmange has carried all the way to Bromyard.'
'I suppose if she's been with a lady in declining health, she must be accustomed to producing meals to tempt a delicate appetite,' Callie said.
'The letter describes her just so, milady,' said Mr. Rankin. 'I'll fetch it for you.' He bowed and went out.
'I think we might be wise to leap at this,' Callie murmured. 'Thirteen shillings or not.'
'I'm wholly in your hands,' Trev said. 'She may gouge me to her heart's content if you think she can provide what my mother requires.'
She gave a decisive nod. 'Very true. There's no use in trying to haggle her down. We haven't the luxury for that. Mr. Rankin-' As the innkeeper returned, she took the letter and perused it brief ly. 'I believe we must request her to come as soon as she may. If you'll bring me a pen and paper, I'll write out an offer.'
'Make it fifteen shillings,' Trev said.
'Fifteen?' Mrs. Farr groaned. 'I hope my old cook doesn't hear of this, or I shall have no peace.'
'I understand you, Mrs. Farr, I do!' Callie peered into the inkpot that the innkeeper provided. 'But truly, it's a crisis. You may tell Cook that the duke is French and has no sense, and it's only to be expected that he'd be choused.'
'Make it eighteen shillings,' Trev said grandly. 'Make it a guinea!'
'A guinea!' Mrs. Farr emitted a scandalized cry and took a deep draught of her smelling salts.
'You see?' Callie said, dipping her pen. 'A complete f lat. Fourteen is our firm offer.'
He winked at her. She gave him a bright glance and then bent to her task.
Callie parted from Trevelyan and Mrs. Farr outside the door of the Antlers. Trev had offered to escort her on any further errands she might have, but she declined, cravenly unable to endure more inquisitive looks and interested greetings. She walked down the street, hardly knowing where she was going. She was by no means accustomed to so much disorder in her feelings. For some years now-for nine of them, to be exact-she had found her pleasures in the quiet rhythm of seasons and animals. They had their certain habits and small adventures. They did not propose to come and see if she would climb down from her window at midnight, or jilt her and then request to call on her with a burning look. They might make her laugh with delight or weep with loss, but they never made a compliment to her complexion.
She had, of course, imagined a thousand times how she would accept the groveling change of heart from each of her suitors, starting with Trev. He was to have written her passionate, brooding letters and declared that his life was forfeit if she would not have him. That was after he had become unthinkably wealthy and recovered Monceaux, and declared on his knees that her fortune meant nothing to him and never had. He would take her penniless from the side of the road and threaten to shoot himself, or sail to Madagascar and become a pirate-which was just the sort of thing Trev would do-if she refused his love. After suitably ardent persuasion, she would reluctantly give up her plan to dedicate her life to good works and tapioca jelly, and accept his suit. Afterward they would become pirates together, and she would wear a great many pearls and rubies and skewer British officers.
Major Sturgeon, on the other hand, was to have behaved with considerably more circumspection, no doubt because her imagination had matured a few degrees by the time she grew out of her teens. He would have seen her across the room at a London ball, having pined in silence for many years. But now, at the sight of her, he could no longer contain his feelings. He would write her a sonnet and send it anonymously. It would be full of remorse and regret, and he would stand in the rain outside her house and stare for hours at the door. She thought perhaps he would finally find a way to come into her path and beg to call on her, only in a rather more tender and miserable tone of voice than he had used in the Antlers' parlor, rather than sounding as if he would like to call her out.
In perfect honesty, she would have been quite content to leave these reveries safely in her head and omit any actual experience of them. Instead of Trev, it was Major Sturgeon who seemed to be assuming the role of brooding corsair, which was disconcerting in the extreme. She had no inkling of why he could possibly wish to call upon her. Their betrothal had been broken off through the medium of a letter, with no specific reason given but that he felt himself unworthy of her hand. Since he had shortly thereafter felt himself worthy to become engaged to another woman, she drew the obvious conclusion that she had not satisfied his requirements in a wife. Her father had been of a mind to forcibly alter Major Sturgeon's decision on the matter but submitted when Callie begged him not to do so. She had no desire, she told her papa, to marry any gentleman who did not wish to marry her.
It had all been very unpleasant and mortifying from start to finish. She recalled very little about Major Sturgeon himself, as she had only met him when he was on brief leave from Paris, and once again after Waterloo, and hardly spoken to him during the few times they were in company. He was quite a hand some man, very firm of jaw and military in his bearing, always in uniform when she had seen him. That was why she had recognized him after so long. Very few active officers in full dress crossed her path-none, to be precise-and she quite clearly remembered the imposing stiffness of his braids and shoulder epaulets. But there was a certain swashbuckling air about him now, in all his scarlet and gold, a resolute sweep in the way he removed his cloak. The intense manner in which he looked at her was unnerving.
To make things yet more unsettling, the instant antagonism between the two gentlemen had been palpable, and magnified by Trev's careless insolence. She had heard of duels being fought for less insult than he had offered to Major Sturgeon. It was one thing to tease about skewering and pistols, but the idea appalled her in reality.
However, she could not deny that it had been grati fying to have Trev stand by her. Very gratifying. In truth, the whole encounter had made her daydreams seem quite pale in comparison.
She found herself at the only corner in Shelford, gazing blindly at a new poster plastered over the old ones on the greengrocer's wall. It displayed the image of a bullbaiting, showing a colossal spotted animal in combat with two huge dogs. The advertisement was for a butcher shop in Bromyard and made great news of that old wives' tale that meat from a baited bull was the more tender.
Callie scowled. Colonel Davenport would be using Hubert for breeding, not baiting, but his resemblance to the imaginary bull made her shiver. This type of ancient nonsense caused poor creatures to be tortured for hours, when they ought to be dispatched with a single well-placed blow. Her father had taught her to patronize men who knew their trade. They did not allow the animals to suffer through lack of skill or carelessness. But this sort of cruelty was maddeningly common, made worse because it pleased the fairgoers and sporting crowd.
She reached up and ripped the bill down, tearing it into pieces. Shelford's grocer owned the butcher shop too and would no doubt thank her for obliterating an advertisement for one of his competitors from the wall of his own property. She thought of buying some stale bread for Hubert, remembered that he wasn't there, and blew her nose into her handkerchief, trying not to burst into tears in the center of Shelford's village green.
'Married at Blackburn, Henry Osbaldeson, aged 95, to Rachel Pemberton, spinster, aged 71.' Trev read by candlelight from an ancient copy of La Belle Assemblee. 'Do you suppose she's given him an heir yet?'
'And twins by this time,' his mother said faintly. She sat propped up on pillows, cradling a tisane without drinking from the cup. 'I'm sure that journal may have ten years.'
Trev f lipped to the front page. 'Eight.' He raised his wineglass. 'To the health of Mrs. O! Let us hope she's still spending his money to this day.'
She smiled and plucked at the coverlet with her long fingers. 'Myself, mon tresor-I hope you will not delay so long as Mr. O to take a wife.'
Trev realized he had wandered onto dangerous ground. 'I vow I won't wait a day past eighty.'
She gave a sigh. It turned to a cough, and he reached for her medicine glass, but she shook her head. 'No, I don't wish to… sleep.' The color was very high in her cheeks, so that she looked younger, almost a girl in the candlelight. 'Trevelyan,' she said. 'Tell me, have you ever considered to… propose to Lady Callista Taillefaire?'
'Certainly. I've offered myself to her several times,' he said casually. 'But alas!'
'Alas?' His mother tilted her chin. 'Do not tell me she refused you.'
'Not everyone appreciates my virtues as you do.'
She pursed her lips. 'I dare say that Lady Callie… I believe she… has some appreciation.'
'Do you? I'm f lattered. Her father was of another opinion, however.'
She frowned a little, a pretty sulk, like a thwarted child.
He turned a page. 'Mr. Thomas Haynes, of Oundle, will soon publish a treatise on the improved culture of the strawberry, raspberry, and gooseberry,' he announced. 'This can't possibly animate us so much, however, as the news that the Rev. James Piumptre has made considerable progress in printing his English Drama Purified, and it will appear in the early spring.'
She put on a smile, only half attending. Trev feigned a concentrated attention to the journal, watching her fold the edge of the coverlet over and over with her fingers.
'It was before, then?' She looked up searchingly at him. 'You asked her before you went away?'
He turned the magazine in his hands and rolled it into a cylinder. 'Don't let us speak of this, Maman. Lady Callista has no desire to wed me, I assure you.'
'But with Monceaux, the circumstances have so much… changed.'
'Exactly. She would not wish to move to France, and leave her sister, and go away from all she knows.'
'I think she might be willing.'
