Amanda Scott (29 page)

“But that is all the more reason that Andrew should not talk to her,” Anne protested.

“Poppycock. Where do you suppose the males in this country learn what they need to know to procreate. Just imagine what would happen if a woman had to depend on her instinct rather than her husband’s prior knowledge when she first approached the marriage bed. My goodness me, Anne, think of your own ignorance and imagine that scene compounded by Michael’s knowledge being as small as your own. My dear, it don’t bear thinking of!”

Anne, remembering the experience not only of her wedding night but of the one she had just spent with him, barely stopped herself from agreeing heartily with the older woman’s sentiments. Forcing her thoughts relentlessly back to the young duke, and noting with relief that the minister had intervened in time to prevent his speaking to the dubious widow, she said, “Are you saying that Andrew ought to acquire such experience from the likes of Mrs. Flowers, ma’am? Surely, he is much too young.”

“Fourteen, ain’t he?”

“Yes, you know he is.”

“Quite old enough, in my opinion, to speak to her.”

Anne was shocked. “You can’t mean that! He’s only a boy.”

“Mrs. Flowers will no doubt treat him like a man, however, and therein will lie her attraction, particularly when Michael persists in treating him so strictly. I am not saying she will take him to her bed, you know, only that she will behave to him as if he were grown up, and without toad-eating him. Only look at the boy now, trying to keep his attention on what Mr. Dailey is saying to him, whilst his gaze keeps drifting to her.”

“But what can she be doing here? I am certain she did not attend the Communion service.”

“No, Wilfred says she never does, on account of sinning the way she does and not wanting to take Communion on account of it. She attends morning or evening prayer instead, he said. Wilfred did say she serves as a sacristan now and again,” Lady Hermione added with a knowing smile. “Even the most starched up pillar of rectitude could not refuse such an offer, you know—not with Mary Magdalene right there in the Bible, and all—and Wilfred said Mrs. Flowers occasionally puts flowers on the altar, as well. No doubt it is one of those duties that has brought her here now.”

Whatever had brought her, Anne noted that when Mr. Dailey directed Andrew’s attention to someone else and Mrs. Flowers approached the parson, her conversation with him was as amiable as Michael’s parting words with Sir Jacob had seemed to be. Sir Jacob and his wife had gone home, and it was not long before Michael said it was time for the Priory group to leave as well.

He was preoccupied, and if after the warm interlude the previous evening, Anne had hoped to increase her understanding of the man she had married, she soon discovered her error. He spent that afternoon and night, and the following two days with whatever business it was that kept him so frequently occupied, and she scarcely saw his face. Though he visited her bedchamber Monday night, his stay was brief, more like those preceding their fortnight apart than the one that ended it. He apologized for his lack of ardor, but even the apology was perfunctory, as if his thoughts were already on something of greater importance.

On Tuesday, at dinner, he announced his intention of spending the next few days in Castleton.

Lord Ashby said, “Trouble at one of the mines, is there?”

“That is what I mean to discover, if I can. I’ve had a letter from Alsop, our steward there, complaining that yet another shaft has flooded, and demanding money for a new sough.”

“What’s a sough?” Andrew asked curiously.

Lord Ashby said, “Just a drain, boy, as you ought to know, since you own as many lead mines as you do, not to mention the two tin ones you’ve got down in Cornwall. By Jove, you ought to go along with Michael now and again just to see what a mine looks like. Fascinating places they are. Castleton is the Snake Mine. Isn’t that right, Michael?”

“Yes, sir, but don’t encourage Andrew to ask to accompany me this trip. I’ll have no time for his questions. What with a new crushing wheel and new bellows at Bradford last month, and a new haulage road at Castleton begun in March—not to mention breakage everywhere, the mines are costing more than they bring in. I do not need to explain why that state of affairs can’t be allowed to continue—particularly when tenants here at home are demanding help with improvements on their farms, and our own farm requires money be put into it, if any good is to be got out of it.”

“Well, the first thing I should do if I were running those mines,” Lord Ashby said flatly, “would be to invent a means to get more of the lead out of the second wash than what they’re getting now. You see, my dear,” he said, turning to Anne, “the crude ore, after they first break it up, is washed on a sieve over a large vat. They skim off the lighter waste material and throw it on a hillock, and the lead ore is sent to the coe—that’s the ore house—to await measuring. But the material passing through the sieve also contains lead particles. They wash it again in long troughs over a flowing stream of water—buddling, that’s called—to try to regain more of the ore, but dashed inefficient is what that is. I’d soon find a better way.”

“You sound as if you know a great deal about it,” Anne said.

“Oh, aye, I suppose I do. Whimseys, gin-engines, kibbles, and skips provide no particular mystery to anyone with an interest in modern technology, you know.”

“Well, they are mysteries to me,” Michael said, “but I can’t see that knowing more about them would help when I’ve got experts in Alsop and his ilk, and the immediate object is to discover why we are encountering so many problems. Lead mining in general is highly profitable, so this series of mishaps at the St. Ledgers mines is a cursed nuisance. No sooner does one begin to run as it should than something occurs at another. It must be stopped. Their income must become more reliable, and quickly.”

Anne wanted to ask why there was such urgency. She had heard him speak often of the need to practice economy, but living in the midst of such splendor made it difficult to understand his concern. However, when Lord Ashby turned the subject and did not question Michael, she did not like to do so herself, particularly with Andrew in the room. It occurred to her that perhaps Lord Ashby already knew the answer, but to ask him something she did not feel confident to ask Michael also seemed wrong.

When Michael left the next morning before she went down to breakfast, she was not as sorry to find him gone as she might have been, for overnight she had realized that his absence would make it easier for her to speak to Andrew about his acquaintance with Mrs. Flowers without Michael’s learning anything about it.

He had ordered Mr. Pratt to keep the boy hard at his studies and out of mischief, but in the short time since their public day, Andrew had formed a habit of disappearing, much like his sister’s. When he showed himself, sometimes hours later, he would offer but a vague explanation of where he had been, lifting his chin and looking defiantly at anyone who demanded details of his absence, then suffering in stoic hauteur whatever punishment was meted out to him.

Anne suspected that he was slipping into the village to meet friends, for, thanks to a letter received from her youngest brother, Stephen, she knew that the half-term break at Eton had begun. Moreover, she had encountered Andrew on the river path after one such disappearance and when she asked when he had been, he had simply said, “Oh, out and about,” much the way Stephen might have done. But if Andrew was going into the village, she knew she must speak to him, lest he encounter Mrs. Flowers there and attempt to extend their acquaintance.

The very day Michael left, Lady Hermione confirmed both fears, telling her when they drove out that afternoon to pay calls that she had seen Andrew in the village.

“Coming away from that large house at the end of the main road yesterday, just as bold as brass. I oughtn’t to be telling tales out of school, of course, but I’d as lief you knew of it before Michael finds out, just in the event that you are right in your prediction of how he will react to that connection.”

“The large house? You say that so meaningfully, ma’am, but I do not know whose—Oh, good gracious,” she exclaimed when the truth struck her, “you don’t mean Mrs. Flowers’s house, do you?”

“Well, it was used to be Sir Morton Foxgrow’s house when I was young, but he died before I’d been in Ireland five years, and I recall Wilfred saying Sir Jacob had purchased it. He never lived in it, of course. Hired it out to folks who wanted it, for it backs onto the river, you see, and provides quite a pleasant view, or would if it weren’t for that boat tied up at the curve just beyond it. But when Wilfred said Jake had set his bit of trifle up in style, I just assumed that was the house. And it was that one I saw Andrew strolling away from, looking more puffed up in his own esteem than even what’s usual for him.”

Anne’s heart sank. Lady Hermione might believe in an established masculine conspiracy to train youths in the art of seduction, but Anne was as sure as she could be—despite the fact that Michael remained in many ways as much a mystery to her as the St. Ledgers mines were to him—that her husband would react with fury to the news that Andrew was visiting Mrs. Flowers.

Before that happened she intended to explain to Andrew just why he must not encourage the connection. However, just as when she had discovered she could not speak candidly to Mrs. Flowers, she soon discovered a similar difficulty with Andrew.

Knowing Mr. Pratt would keep him occupied until dinner (if indeed Andrew had not disappeared again), she spent the hour after returning to the house and before she had to change her dress for dinner, in replying to numerous letters that had accumulated while she had busied herself with preparations for their public day. She replied first, with enthusiasm, to Lady Harlow’s letter informing her that her ladyship had very likely found just the person to instruct Sylvia, if Anne did not mind waiting until the end of the term when the young woman would leave her present position.

There were letters from her family, as well. Besides the brief one in Stephen’s schoolboy scrawl, informing her of the advent of his half-term and his wish that he had been free for her wedding, there was an even briefer note from her mother, asking if Anne recalled what had become of the plan they had drawn up for a new knot garden on the south lawn.

Her sister Beth in Sussex was expecting her fourth child, and Catherine’s letter from London overflowed with social pleasures, for now that the Season was drawing to a close, it seemed that everyone wanted it to end in grand style. Lady Crane wrote with delight of a crowded Drawing Room at St. James’s and described in detail her gown for the Duchess of Gordon’s ball. She had also, uncharacteristically, filled nearly half a page with her opinion of some recently submitted designs for the new Houses of Parliament, but when she added that her husband was a member of the committee that would decide which plan was to be selected, Anne was better able to understand her enthusiasm.

Once she had replied to these letters, it was time to change her dress for dinner. Only Andrew and Lord Ashby joined her at the table, but since she did not want to include Lord Ashby in her discussion with the boy, she waited to waylay Andrew after the meal, inviting him to accompany her to the sitting room near her bedchamber. “I have something of a private nature to discuss with you,” she said.

“Very well.” His expression did not encourage her to believe he welcomed the interview. Nor did he deign to speak to her again until they had made their way to the family wing and the room at the end of the gallery. “Well, what is it?” he asked curtly, looking down his nose at her after she had shut the door.

“Won’t you sit down?”

“No, no, I cannot stay long. Pratt’s set me any number of bothersome tasks to do this evening.”

Repressing the urge to point out that Mr. Pratt’s orders had not kept him tied to the schoolroom before when he had not wished to stay there, she said calmly, “I hope you do not mean to go into the village again while your uncle is away, Andrew.”

“I do not know how my intended activities can concern you, madam,” he said, his tone carefully controlled.

“Well, I don’t suppose they do,” she admitted. “I am not your guardian, after all, but I am concerned about your well-being, just as anyone who cares about you must be.”

“There is nothing about which you need be concerned.”

Noting the increasing edge of annoyance in his tone, Anne realized that in approaching the matter in the way she would have used with her younger brother, she had made a mistake. Andrew was not Stephen, not by a long chalk. Stephen would have appreciated any intervention that spared him an unpleasant interview with his papa. Andrew did not appreciate intervention from anyone for any reason whatsoever.

She tried again, keeping her tone calm and reasonable. “Andrew, I do not wish to interfere in your rightful business, I assure you, but I think perhaps you do not understand the gravity of your present activities, or their likely consequences.”

“And what activities are those, madam?”

“Your visits to Mrs. Flowers,” she said flatly.

He lifted an eyebrow, and his gaze became more supercilious than ever. “If you do not wish to interfere in my business, madam, then you should not do so. If—and I do say
if—I
should choose to visit anyone in the village, that is certainly my business and none of yours.”

“But you don’t understand, Andrew.”

“Then explain it to me, Anne.”

She realized that despite the fact that she had long since given him permission to call her by her first name, it was the first time he had done so, and she had an instant and adverse reaction to it. Not only was his tone boyishly insolent but she had a sudden vision of the man he would become if he were allowed to continue along the route he had been traveling. Nonetheless, she held her tongue, knowing that to issue the rebuke dancing so impatiently there, would be a greater mistake than any she had yet made with him. In any case, she did not know what to tell him to call her if she refused him permission to call her Anne.