Trenton Lord of Loss (Lonely Lords) (3 page)

A smile threatened at the corners of his mouth. “I have no favorite Bible passage, and I’m fresh out of recipes for tisanes.” 

“I like the verse about the lilies of the field, about neither toiling nor spinning, but still meriting the Almighty’s notice,” Ellie said, making herself step back. She liked Lord Amherst, liked that he wasn’t too self-conscious to stand near her, and that he didn’t spout platitudes. “Because that passage mentions lilies of the field, the scent of which now makes me ill, I’ll have to search out a new one.” 

“You haven’t told me your favorite flower.” Amherst followed her onto the veranda, and Ellie silently conceded the point: Flowers were alive, Bible verses were not. Two different sources of comfort, one dear to her, one expected by her neighbors. 

All of her neighbors, save one.

“Lily of the valley,” she decided. “For its scent. Roses, for sheer delicacy of appearance. Lilacs, for the confirmation they bring of spring, though they lack the stamina for bouquets. We’’re given so many worthy flowers, it’s hard to choose. Shall we be seated?” 

He handed her into a chair at a wrought iron grouping at one end of the veranda, then took a seat beside her. Not across from her, but beside. How was it she’d had such a pleasant sort of neighbor all these years and had never become acquainted with him? 

“Would you be willing to look over my gardens?” he asked, the chair scraping back as he arranged long legs before him. “I’ve allowed Crossbridge to suffer some neglect in recent months. I’m focused on the crops, the buildings, that sort of thing, but the estate once had lovely grounds.” 

“Surely you have a head gardener, my lord?” But she wanted to do this. She wanted to make something pretty grow for her quiet, insightful neighbor and maybe make the acquaintance of his wife, if her ladyship were out from Town.

Friends being in shorter supply than she’d realized. When had she become so isolated—and why? 

She also wanted to get off her own property and could slip over to Amherst’s gardens without anybody knowing she’d been truant from her grieving post. 

Anybody but Dane. Ellie wanted to aim her face at the sky and stick her tongue out. 

“Crossbridge has staff,” Lord Amherst said. “They have much to do simply holding back the march of time. The home wood encroaches on the pastures, for example, and my gardeners are busy clearing the fence rows, cleaning up several years of frost heave, and trimming the hedges. My flowers have been orphaned.” 

On the third finger of Ellie’s left hand, a fat, shiny diamond caught a beam of summer sun. She took her rings off when she gardened. 

“Dane left a daughter.” Heat flooded up Ellie’s neck, and she wondered if pregnancy also unhinged the jaw and the common sense. Amherst was a neighbor, true, and he’d likely know about Andy if he bothered to attend services, but he was a stranger.

A handkerchief appeared in her peripheral vision, snow white, monogrammed in purple, and edged with gold—also laden with his lovely scent. Ellie would not have suspected her slightly rumpled, out-of-fashion, overly lean neighbor of hidden regal tendencies, but his instincts were excellent. 

“Perishing Halifax.” She snatched the handkerchief and brought it to her eyes, though she hadn’t cried for days. “Forgive me.” 

“You are not the one who left a daughter,” Amherst replied evenly. “Perhaps the forgiveness is needed elsewhere.” He didn’t pat her hand, didn’t move any closer, didn’t murmur nonsense about time healing and God’s infernal will. He lounged at his ease two feet away and let her have her tears. 

“Andy is eight.” Ellie blotted her eyes again. “Coriander. She’s young enough to miss her papa sorely. Dane was decent to her.” 

Amherst still said nothing as Ellie defended Dane’s memory. Dane
had
been decent to Andy, once Ellie had staged the first and only row of their married life and insisted the child be raised at Deerhaven.

“People will tell you the grief eases, Lady Rammel, and in some ways, it does. Life tugs you forward, and you add good memories to the store of losses. The losses don’t cease hurting, though, not altogether.” 

Ellie stopped dabbing at her eyes. “Perhaps you’d better keep a Bible verse or two in your pocket, my lord. Your honesty is particularly bracing.”

Also curiously welcome. 

He inclined his head, not smiling. “My apologies. Grief is an old shoe that fits each foot differently, and I shouldn’t prognosticate for others. Keep the handkerchief.”

“My thanks.” Ellie took a surreptitious sniff of his heavenly scent and signaled the footman tactfully waiting a distance away with the tray. “What shall you have, Lord Amherst? Cold tea, hot tea, sangaree, hock, or lemonade. Alas, no tisanes.” 

“Good company can be a tisane. I’ll enjoy some lemonade.” He didn’t smile with his mouth so much as he did with dark eyes that crinkled at the corners. Dane would have liked Amherst, which was something of a comfort. 

Ellie garnished his glass of lemonade with mint and lavender, which seemed to make it ever so much more palatable. When she’d poured for herself—
now
, lemonade appealed—she held up her glass in a toast. 

“To consolation.” 

He politely raised his glass a few inches and sipped, his expression considering. 

“You’ve a rebel in your kitchen. I’ve come across the mint with lemonade before, but not the lavender.” 

Ellie sampled her drink, finding it exactly to her taste, rather like Lord Amherst’s brand of condolence call. “My own recipe. Not everybody likes it. Andy says I’m daft.” 

“An outspoken young lady. One wonders where she might have acquired such a trait.” 

“Are you teasing me?” 

“On page forty-two of the manual, you will find that teasing is required.” Amherst’s tone was grave. “Right after ladylike sniffles and before a recitation of platitudes.” 

“Useless platitudes.” Ellie couldn’t help but smile, because teasing was indeed a consolation. “Were you sincere in requesting my help with your gardens, or was that a recommendation from the manual as well?” 

He held the wet sprig of mint under his lordly nose, and Ellie realized he might tease her, but he wasn’t a man given to simple banter. Dane had bantered easily and merrily. She’d found it charming—at first. 

“The request was sincere. I’m short of staff, and the gardens are, of necessity, a low priority. I would not want to intrude on a time of grief, but I can use the help. Beyond a certain point, even the most well-designed garden can’t be rescued, and my plots are approaching chaos.”

The best-planned marriages could reach the same state of untenable disrepair all too easily. Ellie liked that his lordship would admit he needed help, though it threw into high relief that Dane had
not
needed her, except to produce an heir. In his lifetime, that priority had been untended to.

“Chaos sounds intriguing,” Ellie said. “Weather permitting, expect me on hand tomorrow. What time suits?” 

“It’s cooler in the morning.” Amherst removed the lavender sprig from his drink and placed it on the tray, when Dane would have either pitched it into the pansies or consumed his drink, garnish and all. “We’ll tour the grounds, and you can give me your first impression. I’m usually off on my rounds by eight.” 

“That will suit.” 

Nothing in his tone suggested he was merely being polite by making this request, but Ellie still had a sense her neighbor was somehow dodging. She signaled the footman again. This time, he brought over a tray bearing a cold collation of meat, cheese, condiments, and sliced bread. “I thought you might enjoy some sustenance, my lord. May I fix you a sandwich?” 

Amherst set his drink down and picked up the lavender. “I’ll pass, but you should eat, my lady.” 

“You truly don’t mind?” She did momentary battle with a craving for a bite of cheese—a sharp cheddar with dill would be splendid. “I’m famished, if you must know, but then, I lack the petite dimensions of a proper English beauty and probably always will.” Swimming and fishing always put a sharpish edge on her appetite, even as they soothed her nerves.

An odd smile crossed Amherst’s features. Even gaunt and dispensing sympathy, he was attractive, particularly when he smiled. Then too, there was his scent, his subtle humor, his gentlemanly manners. If all that weren’t enough to endear him as a neighbor, he was also…kind. 

Amherst twiddled the lavender, the scent rising on the breeze, while Ellie prattled on about flowers and consumed a real sandwich—not some stingy gesture with watercress and a pinchpenny dab of butter. All the while, as he made appropriate replies and sipped his drink. Ellie sensed that he drew pleasure simply from watching her eat. 

Dane might have winked at her and joked about getting her a larger mount.

Eating for two was less guilt-inducing than eating for one. When Ellie rose to see her guest out, though, she stood too quickly and had to seize his arm while the sounds of the summer day faded behind an ominous roaring. 

“Steady on, my lady.” 

He was stronger than he looked, bracing her against his body until the dizziness faded and Ellie’s head was filled once again with the lovely scent of his person. 

“Take your time,” he murmured, making no move to step back. “Shall I call for a maid?” 

“I’m fine.” She’d been far from
fine
for at least two months, and possibly for much longer than that. “Though perhaps when you’ve gone, I might have a lie down.” 

He peered at her, and Ellie became aware—more aware—that he was quite tall, taller even than Dane, who’d been proud to top six feet. And wasn’t that like a man, to be proud of something he’d had nothing to do with, no control over whatsoever? 

“Let me see you into the house. Those naps can be a trap.” 

“I beg your pardon?” Ellie let him slowly promenade her down the veranda, his arm snugly around her waist, her hand in his. They were barehanded, because they’d been eating. His firm grip on her hand and waist reassured her more than she’d like to admit. 

“The sleeping,” Amherst went on. “Drifting from day to day is easy, and then you don’t sleep at night, and the waking nightmares are as bad as the ones you’d have were you slumbering. Then you’re so useless the next day, you’re taking another nap and up all night yet again.” 

Ellie digested that and continued their measured progress toward the house. 

“You’ve lost someone dear,” she concluded, detecting a slight hesitation in his gait. 

He withdrew the sprig of lavender from his pocket, but at some point, he’d fashioned it into a circle the diameter of a lady’s finger. He presented the little garnish to her with a courtly flourish.

“Haven’t we all lost somebody dear?”

* * *

“Trenton is doing better.”

Darius Lindsey’s hostess was one woman he didn’t dare lie to. The dowager Lady Warne was a connection formed when Leah Lindsey—Darius and Trent’s sister—had married Nicholas Haddonfield, Earl of Bellefonte. When Nick had joined the family, he’d brought his eight siblings and his grandmother along. With few exceptions they boasted commanding height, lightning intelligence, and a zest for living that made them individually and collectively overwhelming on first impression. 

Lady Warne held out a plate of ginger biscuits, and Darius took two. She kept the plate before him, and he took two more. 

“Define ‘doing better,’ my boy.” 

“He sleeps for more than an hour at a time, really sleeps,” Darius began, searching for compromises between truth and fraternal loyalty. “He’s stopped drinking, except for a glass or two of wine with dinner. He rides again. He’s writing to family and not shut up at Crossbridge the way he was in Town.” 

Lady Warne ran an elegant finger around the rim of her glass. “For some of us, the best medicine is the land, the beasts, the out of doors. Not very aristocratic, but there it is, and quite English. Can you stay with him?” 

No, Darius could not stay with his brother, and not only because Darius had promised to spend the summer in Oxfordshire helping Valentine Windham reclaim an estate from ruin.

“Hovering won’t serve. Trent might have needed somebody to haul up short on his reins, but he’s on his own now. Many a man has vowed to swear off gin, or gambling, or carousing, and two weeks later he’s at it worse than ever. Trenton has a long way to go, physically, if nothing else.”

Lady Warne’s finger paused. “Amherst’s health is poor?” 

“He’s a ghost.” Darius could think of no more accurate word. “Five years ago, I would have put Trent up against any dragoon in the king’s army. He could ride, shoot, handle a sword, or quote Shakespeare with the best of them. By comparison, he’s feeble now. If the Crossbridge steward hadn’t run off with the housekeeper, Trent might still be drifting around the town house, skinny as a wraith and twice as pale.”

Run off, and taken a good sum of household money with them, so lax had Trent’s supervision become. 

“Five years ago, your brother hadn’t capitulated to your father’s choice regarding the succession.” 

Lady Warne had the elderly ability to ignore tender sentiments, and she was right: Paula—or her fat settlements—had been the Earl of Wilton’s choice, and Trent, ever dutiful, had graciously recited the appropriate vows. 

“Trent has been through a rough patch, but he’s stubborn, when he has a reason to be.”