At Your Pleasure (18 page)

She wrapped her arms around her waist, disliking her own thoughts. Her father and brother did not court James Stuart for vainglorious reasons. Yes, Father had been treated wretchedly by George of Hanover’s new friends; yes, he deserved justice for it. But his support of the true king served a nobler purpose than vengeance. Did it not?

“You may speak to him yourself, if you like.”

She glanced up. “To—your steward, do you mean?”

He nodded.

She bit her lip. David had left Hodderby in her care on the tacit understanding that she would steer the course he had set for her. But he had been gone so long now . . .

And he had been wrong to leave.

When his people needed him, it was not to France he should have gone. Even in service of James Stuart’s cause, he might have taken direction from afar.

He had chosen to go to France when he should have remained here.

“Yes,” she said. “Do send for your steward. I should like very much to speak with him.”

And when David returned—if it even occurred to him to quarrel over this, with so many greater concerns awaiting him—she would explain her reasoning then.

“You will like him,” Adrian said. “He’s a man of great learning—educated at St. Andrews, in fact.”

She smiled, reluctantly flattered by this vision of her as a woman who could appreciate scholarship. “Will he listen to a woman?”

“I cannot imagine otherwise. But you will make him listen, if he hesitates.”

The reply struck a strange, sweet pain through her. How nonchalantly this man assumed that she would be able to command others’ respect.

No—that she
deserved
such respect.

“Yes,” she said slowly, “I will.”

She remembered now why she had fallen in love with him.

She wished she did not.

They came into sight of the rude wooden hut that housed the beehives. A grin broke over Adrian’s face. For a moment, he looked much younger—the picture of the boy she had loved. Her heart gave another painful twist. “How remarkable,” he said. “You’ve whitewashed the beehouse.”

She nodded. “Yes. And I painted the hives yellow. I had the idea that bees are drawn to brightness—in their homes as well as in flowers.”

“And has it proved successful?”

“Considerably.”

“Ingenious,” he murmured.

She restrained, with some amusement, an immodest impulse to agree with him. David had teased her for painting the hives, thinking it a beautification project.
Next you’ll be wanting to paper them in velvet print.
But it had been marvelously effective in multiplying swarms.

“We’ve kept your design for the hives, though,” she said. “Before I thought of painting them, I did experiment with wheat straw and bramble, but I found the swarms much diminished by it.”

Mr. Harrison, the bee-master, had spotted their approach and came out to meet them. Nora had sent a boy ahead with a jug of small beer and clean lengths of knitted netting, which now waited in a small basket outside the door. Harrison picked up the jug as they neared.

“Morning, m’lady,” he said, tugging his white forelock and adding a scowl to inflect it. He had seemed ancient even during her childhood, and in early years, when she’d still been permitted to play with the tenants’ children, she had led daring expeditions here, one amongst a group of grubby-faced tykes creeping toward the beehouse as toward the cave of a monster. Out Mr. Harrison had come, shaking his stick and growling, and they had shrieked and run away, frantic with delicious terror.

Sometimes the memory was enough to make her wondrous that he did not still shake his stick at her approach. Next to that, his scowl was nothing.

The sight of the earl, however, prompted a different welcome from him. He recognized Adrian of old; snapped straight and then performed a proper bow that made her jaw drop.

“My lord,” he said roughly. “At your service. And a right pleasure to see you, if I may say so.”

“And you as well,” said Adrian, smiling. “I hear you have kept in use the hives we designed.”

Harrison’s liver-spotted cheeks reddened. “Och, that was her ladyship’s doing. But aye, there be no better yet I know.” He handed them each a cup of small beer. “To the dregs, now.”

“This is a superstition, you know.” Adrian sounded amused. “Beer does not keep the bees from stinging.”

“But it’s a pleasant one, surely,” Nora replied.

“Surely,” he echoed, winking at her.

Her smile slipped. She turned away as she drank her own draft. This same man had shown a much harder face to her recently. Which was true, which false? She had proposed to him that they be enemies. Instead, he had decided on friendship. Why?

There was no need to divine his motives, she told herself. The rapid beating of her heart was what she must divine—and trammel.
Rivenham,
she told herself.
He is Rivenham to me, not Adrian.

She gave her cup back to Harrison, who in exchange handed her a length of netting. Rivenham tied his mask with the ease of long practice: he had made a study of insects during his years in France, as a student of a great scientist, and in congress with that man, he had invented the hive construction he had proposed to David and Harrison on his first visit to Hodderby.

Having managed the apiaries at Towe’s estate, Nora was no less practiced at the donning of such masks. But the slippery fabric resisted her fingers this morning. She wondered at herself, at how fragile and ridiculous she had
become, that a man’s smile might discompose her sufficiently to reduce her to an infant’s fumblings.

Warm fingers closed over her own. “Let me,” Rivenham said.

His knuckles brushed her bare nape. The touch of his fingers was light, barely noticeable, but she felt it in the way her muscles seemed to unravel. A warm pleasure hummed over her skin. Such delicate, careful handling: who would imagine a large man capable of it? Very gently he disentangled a stray wisp of her hair that interfered with the knot.

Was it her imagination, or did he pass that strand through his fingers before releasing it?

She set her jaw. This pitching of her stomach was a purely alchemical reaction: his presence triggered some incalescence within her, a heat that made her stupid. It was no more her fault than it was his. She must not think on it.

When he stepped away, she tried for briskness. “Very well, Mr. Harrison; show us the news.”

Harrison led them into the gloomy interior, where the air grew sharp and musty from the mulch of cow dung, lime, and ashes mounded at the base of the hives to keep them warm. The boxes sat stacked three by three, each stack an arm’s length apart, octagonal in shape, connected inside but open to the air only through a single aperture at the bottom. In their hindmost side, each stack boasted shutters that concealed a better view to the interior.

Harrison unlatched one of these, whispering, “They’re lessening slower than to be expected, milady, but I’ve little hope of a new swarm so late in the year.”

She nodded. It being September, the cold would soon inhibit the bees. “August was good in respect to honey,” she told Rivenham. The wax now packed and stored would prove sufficient for a half year’s stock of candles and ink, with a little left over for medicinal balms and the waterproofing of fabrics to be worn in the rainy months.

Still, as she bent to peer through the little window, it delighted her to see sizable combs on each level. One could never have too much wax. She stepped back to allow Rivenham a view.

“A fortuitous strain,” he murmured. “One doesn’t often see so many new combs at this season.”

Harrison looked uneasily toward her, silently asking if he was allowed to reply. She gave a small nod.

“Aye, but I expect we’ll have but one more harvest,” Harrison said. “The backmost hive be ready, and I intend to take it today. But I don’t hope for aught else with it turning so cold of the morning. They’re to build their stores for winter now.”

Rivenham nodded. “Yet the number of drones remains considerable.”

Harrison’s brow furrowed. “Aye,” he said cautiously. “Aye, there’s a point. Perhaps two more, then, do you say?”

Nora walked to the next hive as the two men conversed in low tones behind her. Rivenham’s indistinct words caused Harrison to choke down a laugh. She fought the impulse to turn back, to ask to share in the joke. But the effort left her uneasy and edgy.

One did not expect the Earl of Rivenham to trade jokes with servants. But she was not surprised to discover
otherwise. The boy she had loved had been able to talk to anyone. He had shared smiles with cobblers, and drawn novel thoughts from scullery maids. Mean personages who blushed and stammered in her presence had relaxed in his.

The trick, he had explained to her once, came of having been forced into strange lands while very young.
We Catholics must look to foreigners for our learning,
he’d said with a rueful smile.
By the time I was ten, I was studying abroad. Once one learns to make excuses for bad behavior in other tongues, speaking one’s own language is no challenge, no matter the subject
.

But it was more than that, of course. She had realized it even as a girl. He had a peculiar ability to remain . . .
himself
. . . no matter his audience. Sometimes he was guarded; often he made no effort to promote himself. But he never altered his basic nature to please anyone—and perhaps people sensed this in him, and found him easy to trust because of it.

She dared a look at him, his tall, lean form silhouetted in the doorway, inclining slightly to listen to the bee-master.

Bittersweet longing nearly choked her.

The boy she’d loved was not gone. He stood eight paces away, in the body of a man she must fear.

Her romanticism frightened her. She could not afford to indulge such fancies. He did not alter his nature to suit the circumstances? What nonsense! He had altered his faith, had he not?

Besides—had he been a woman, he would never have
enjoyed the privilege of being true to himself. A woman’s duty lay in being true to others.

As she watched, curmudgeonly Harrison clapped a hand to his mouth to smother another laugh that would have disturbed the swarms. Rivenham gestured with his chin to invite the other man outside, so they might continue their talk at unrestrained volume.

Out they went. In the solitude, her bitterness faded, leaving her strangely flat.

There was no use in longing for what she could not have. She would never be a man. Never travel the world. Never speak freely, with laughter, to those not her equal.

She would never have him.

Or a child.

She took a long breath, then bent to examine the bees. They crawled busily over the combs, and the sight of their intent industry made her feel calmer, more settled in herself.

The nearest comb looked ready for harvesting. Thick yellowish wax capped almost every cell. Harrison had said he meant to take it today, but what better time than now? It being mid-morning, most of the bees were slumberous.

Slowly, keeping her movement smooth and steady, she inserted her hand into the hive.

One step inside the beehouse, Adrian put out a hand to halt the bee-master, who was hard on his heels.

Nora stood five paces away, the entirety of her left arm covered in bees. Her expression was blank with terror.

Harrison started to speak. “Quiet,” Adrian said in a low voice. Noise would incite the bees. Smoke was what he needed. He looked around, taking care to keep his movements leisurely despite the urgency driving him. There must be kindling hereabouts—

“Are you well?”

The calmness of Nora’s voice struck him like a slap. As he wheeled back, his reply froze in his mouth. What he had taken for the paralysis of panic was, in fact, perfect tranquillity. Her lifting face showed him her slight smile, growing now as she studied him.

“I would not have thought you affrighted of bees,” she said.

The world seemed to shift for him then—a slight adjustment that brought her, at last, into perfect clarity. In her hand, hitherto concealed by the industry of bees, she held a frame of honeycomb.

“I am not afraid of them,” he said slowly. “But I confess I usually employ smoke to daze them before I take their honey.”

Behind him, the bee-master loosed a gusty sigh. “Done it again, has she?”

“Does she do it often?” Adrian asked, never removing his eyes from her.

Her smile deepened even as the beekeeper replied, “She’s an interfering woman. I’ll have another cup of beer.”

His footsteps retreated.

“Smoke is one useful technique,” she said. “But the bees are not selfish. So long as you treat them respectfully,
they will gladly share their bounty.” Gentle irony entered her voice. “Are you sure you’re not fearful, Lord Rivenham? You clutch the door frame like a man grasping a beam in a storm.”

Registering his white-knuckled grip, Adrian dropped his hands. The impulse to laugh came over him; he swallowed it for fear of upsetting the hive.
You are extraordinary,
he did not say. If few people in London had realized it, that only reflected their inadequate perception.

“I assure you it’s all right,” she said. “I will protect you.”

The dimness of the beehouse caused her hair to blend with the shadows, but the slight tilt of her head and the sly curve of her mouth translated clearly to him. She was utterly at her ease, and taking the opportunity, with a hundred bees swarming her flesh, to tease him.

The smile that turned his lips then felt as foreign as the wonder prickling his skin. He knew her, but this sense of discovery suggested there was yet more to learn, things he could not even guess at.

“Your self-possession,” he said, “could be quite terrifying.”

“And yet, only now you begin to seem calm.” The barest hint of laughter infected her words. “I would call that perversity, sir.”

“And what would you call your own show?”

She ducked her head, hiding her expression, and he felt the loss of it with an absurd sharpness, outsized to the moment but identical to the feeling that had speared through him when he had spotted her in the hall this morning.