A Country Wooing (8 page)

This done, he stood back to watch. “They should be in the schoolroom today, but I had to let them try out their ponies. As far as that goes, that governess.... Where did she come from, anyway?”

“Sussex, I believe.”

“Literalist! I meant what is her background. I stepped into her schoolroom yesterday and heard a few paragraphs of a gothic novel. She’s not at all well spoken. I don’t relish telling her she must leave, but the girls need a better teacher than that.’’

“I don’t know what her background is, but she is engaged to the local schoolteacher. Perhaps if you intrude yourself into the schoolroom with gentle hints of geography and grammar, she’ll see fit to marry him in a hurry.”

“How long has she been here?”

“Since shortly after you left.”

“That’s what I thought,” he said. His manner of saying it told her what was in his mind. Charles’s work, hiring an unsuitable employee because she was young and pretty.

A groom, and there was an excess of them with the diminished stable, was called to oversee the girls’ lesson, and Anne and Alex entered the house.

They met Mrs. Tannie just coming from conference with cook. She ordered tea and went with them to the gold saloon. “How much do you owe the builder?” she asked bluntly.

“Fifty for the dovecot, two hundred and fifty for the stables. That was Coulter, the builder, with me just now,” he explained to Anne.

“Between that and the servants’ wages and Dr. Palmsey, it will eat up what you got at Eastleigh yesterday,” Mrs. Tannie said.

“A pity. I had hoped to buy tiles from that blunt and pay off the merchants. We’re so steeped in debt I’m reluctant to go into a shop. I wonder what else I can sell.” His eyes wandered around the walls, hung with valuable paintings.

“Not the pictures, surely!” Anne exclaimed, alarmed to imagine things had come to such a pass.

“No, I’ll go through the welter of things in Charlie’s jewelry case. It’s big as a shoebox, full of tiepins and rings and watch fobs. Good stuff—he had an eye for pretty gewgaws.”

“Charles always dressed fine as a peacock,” Mrs. Tannie said, but fondly.

Alex ignored the compliment. “We haven’t done anything about our party, Anne. Have you decided what we should have first? The garden party, perhaps, while the weather is fine.”

“It’s a poor time to have a party, with money owing everywhere,” Mrs. Tannie objected. “That stove in the kitchen is ready to topple over in a heap.”

“You must know by now how things are done here,” Alex said airily. “We do everything on tick.”

“A garden party won’t cost much, Aunt Tannie,” Anne pointed out. She was looking forward to that party. “Let’s make a list.”

Tannie finished her tea and left them. “I’m surprised Aunt Tannie didn’t urge the party on us. She seems a bit stiff this morning,” Alex said.

“Yes...”

“You sound as if you know something. What is it?”

“None of my business, really.”

“Make it your business.”

“Very well. It’s not only your servants whose wages are in arrears. Charles told her he would give her a hundred a year when she came here. She was your papa’s pensioner, but when she became housekeeper and substitute mother for the children as well, Charles promised her a wage. She tells me he never paid a sou.”

“Good lord, why didn’t she tell me? You mean all these years—never paid anything at all?”

“She bought what she required on credit.”

“That comes to—something like five hundred pounds I owe her. Where am I to raise all this money?” He ran his fingers through his short hair worriedly. “I know how the government feels. I owe the whole world back wages.”

“What about your rents, your income?”

“The rents are down more than a third, but I’ll see what I can wring out of the bank.”

“Alex, the income used to be ten thousand! Surely you can’t be in financial trouble,
real
trouble, I mean.”

“Not desperate trouble. A temporary shortage only. Penholme is mortgaged to the roof. Papa already had twenty thousand on it, and Charlie upped it another twenty. It’s only worth fifty altogether. I don’t know how he talked anyone into letting him have such a sum.”

“Why would he need that much money?”

“Charles liked the best. I’ve often heard him say so. ‘The best’ doesn’t come cheap. A pity he didn’t carry that philosophy over to hiring a governess. Or getting the best rate on the mortgage, for that matter. He paid ten percent for the second mortgage.”

Anne sat, dumbfounded. “But if the rents are down and the mortgage up so high, it—it doesn’t leave much....” She did some rapid arithmetic and soon realized that Alex had less than half what she had supposed was needed to operate Penholme and all the other nonprofitable properties.

“Don’t worry. I’ll come around. Now about this party.”

She felt faint. “Why don’t you wait a little, Alex? Business before pleasure.”

“I’ve waited a long time for this pleasure. A simple garden party doesn’t seem too much to ask.” The vehemence of his tone surprised her. She thought it even surprised him, and embarrassed him, for he soon pulled in his horns. “Perhaps you’re right. I have to go to London, and Robin is itching to get to Sawburne.”

“Are you quite sure you can afford to give him Sawburne?”

“It’s not mine; it’s his, morally his. I’d like to give it to him soon. Like the rest of us, Robin has only one life to live. Mother insisted on buying Sawburne—for me, the second son. Rob’s the second son now. I have no right to deprive him of it. I’m right about Sawburne, and you’re right about the party. We can’t afford it. Sensible Annie, what would we do without you?” His smile was warm, despite the unhappy topic.

“Sink into a morass of parties and balls,” she said.

“And debt. But it isn’t hopeless, you know. I’ll come around soon. We must be patient a little longer.” He looked at her with an impatient expression—intent, questioning.

Anne felt as surely as she was sitting in his gold saloon that he was talking about marriage. It was a perfectly presumptuous thing to read into his innocent words, but when he reached out and patted her hand, she knew it was that and nothing else that he meant. His fingers ran over the opal ring she wore. She always wore it now. When he smiled softly, she knew exactly what was in his mind: I hope you will have a lovelier one, one day, to wear on the other finger. The atmosphere was so heavy she sought to lighten it.

“Thinking of taking my gift back and pawning it?” she asked.

“Not even close. Will you stay to lunch?”

“I don’t want to leave Mama alone. I’ll be going now.”

He accompanied her to the stable. As he helped her onto Lady’s back, he looked along all the empty stalls in the useless addition Charles had built and scowled.

“I’m driving over to Sawburne with Robin tomorrow,” he said before she left. “We’ll get an early start and be back by afternoon. I’ll call around three or four, if that’s all right.”

“I’ll give Mama the order and tell her to be home, with tea ready.”

“It’s
you
I’m coming to see, Duck,” he said with an intimate, meaningful smile.

Anne’s spirits soared as she cantered home through the flower-dappled meadow. She knew her mother wanted this match with Alex, and as a sort of daydream, she had often considered it. It would be a marvelous social coup, and of course extremely convenient. In these considerings, the only objection had been Alex himself. Cold, aloof Alex. How had she misread him so completely? Had she been so blinded by the dashing, reckless Charles that she’d never bothered to look—or had he changed?

From the moment he had bumped into her in the doorway of Rosedale and grabbed her in his arms to be welcomed home, he had seemed to view her as a lover. Almost as though he had come home and come to Rosedale with no other view than marrying her.

Chapter Seven

Anne’s head was bent over her sewing as she sat in the saloon the next afternoon, awaiting the arrival of Alex and Robin. She hadn’t paid much heed to fashion in the year and a half since Charles’s death, but with Alex home, there would be a few small do’s, and such gowns as she possessed were under revision for possible updating. The yellow silk on her lap was being enlivened with white lace and green ribbons. She wasn’t sure whether it was an improvement or the opposite, but at least it was a change.

Her mind flew to that rapidly thinning bolt of creamy crepe in Mumbleton’s drapery shop. She mentally balanced her dwindling allowance against absolutely necessary new gloves, a birthday present for Mama, a proper repair to her blue patent slippers (for the tacks piercing her toe rendered them nearly unwearable), and the white crepe. She had been deeply distressed to learn the crepe cost three guineas a yard.

A daring straight gown was what she had in mind, and the pattern called for three yards. She had never paid such a sum as nine guineas for material in her life; it was a monstrous extravagance. With a little rearranging and careful cutting and omission of the shawl, two yards would do it. A little frown puckered her brow as she considered this important matter. Intent on the solution, she was unaware of company. Alex and Robin had stabled the curricle and come in the back door.

“If you hate sewing as much as that Roman frown indicates, why do you do it?” Robin asked.

She looked up to see two handsome young men smiling at her. Both were decked out in fawn trousers and Hessians—city clothes, instead of their customary buckskins and top boots. Robin was undeniably the more handsome, but it was at Alex that she looked longer. A spontaneous smile of surprise lit her face.

“Because I hate appearing in public in antiquated outfits even more. This dear antique!” She held it up for their inspection. “You will recognize it, Robin, and possibly even you, Alex, have seen it before, for it’s more than three years old.” Robin came and took up the chair closest to her.

“You wore it to the last assembly before I left,” Alex said promptly. “I didn’t think it did you justice.”

“You are kind. Charles was more outspoken. He told me it made me look bran-faced, and my complexion, you know, was always considered my redeeming feature.” She noticed the little shadow of annoyance pass over Alex’s face and regretted that unnecessary reference to Charles. “We have aged and mellowed together, this gown and I. We are now both approaching a sere and yellow condition that makes it suit me much better.’’

“Don’t you think it time to retire the gown?” Alex asked. He looked rather pointedly at Robin, who ignored him. Rather than taking a chair farther away, Alex moved the gown and sat on the sofa by Anne.

She was perfectly aware of the small incident and felt a sense of gratification. “It has seen good and faithful service, but like Mrs. Dobbin, till a gift replaces it, it must go on doing duty. And that is
not
a hint for a new gown, Lord Penholme!”

“I didn’t mistake it for one. Even if it were, it would be a hint that must go unheeded. Rob and I are just back from Sawburne and have decided to declare ourselves bankrupt.”

This startling intelligence was accompanied by a rueful smile that bespoke hyperbole. “You, too?” Anne asked, shaking her head in commiseration. “What we all ought to do is set up a shop of some sort. Mama claims it is the avaricious merchants who are making all the money these days. I believe she’s right. The gown I covet would require a fortune. Three guineas a yard, they are charging for crepe nowadays. One would think it were gold or silver. Well, how bad is it at Sawburne?”

“Very bad,” Alex answered soberly. “In much the same state as Penholme. Mortgaged to the hilt, and the farms badly run-down. At least the merchants aren’t getting up a rebellion against us.”

“Charles never lived there, so no bills have been run up,” Robin explained. “A few thousand should put me on my feet.”

“Is that all? Shake the pennies out of your piggy bank,” Anne suggested.

“I did that a year ago to buy Babe a birthday present. There ain’t any pennies in it, nor anywhere else either. We must be the
poorest
rich people in Hampshire.”

“You may well be,” Anne sympathized, “but Mama and I claim the title of the poorest
poor
people.”

“At least you have a trade. You can set up a cobbler’s shop,” Robin said.

“I’m too inept. My toe is pierced like a pincushion from the shoddy job I did on my own slippers. I’m after Mama to marry the butcher, but she favors the draper, I believe. There, my thread is gone, and where will I ever find three pennies to buy a new spool?” She set aside the gown with a sigh of relief and asked Cook to bring tea and call her mother down from the cheese room.

“Water will do, if you’re short of tea,” Alex suggested. Though he made a joke of it, there was an underlying sadness as he looked around the saloon. It wore the tired appearance not of neglect but of lack of money.

“No, no. We disregard our sad state and go on living like queens,” Anne assured him. “Bread and tea every morning, a soup bone for lunch. And if there is no moon at night, we send the backhouse boy up to Penholme in the dark to steal eggs for next day’s tea. You poor rich never miss them, I daresay.”

“How did everybody get so poor all of a sudden?” Robin asked. He set his chin in his hands and frowned.

“You haven’t been listening to me,” Anne chided. “It is the merchants’ fault. Old Anglin is rich as Croesus. He has two daughters, Robin. If you had your wits about you, you’d go into town and roll your eyes at one of them.”

“The younger ain’t half bad,” Robin said with a quizzing smile.

“What’s her dot?” Alex asked.

“Why, for a minor lord who will one day possibly own a heavily mortgaged and dilapidated farm, I expect he’d hand over a million or so,” Anne said.

“No, for that price he’d expect me to take the elder antidote off his hands,” Robin said, laughing.

Alex looked from one to the other as they joked. “It’s gratifying to see such high spirits in these troubled times.”

“It’s breeding that accounts for it,” Robin said.

“We laugh in the face of adversity and pretend to enjoy wearing threadbare clothes,” Anne told him. “Anyone with a new bonnet each season is considered a parvenu. Mind you, there aren’t many such low types hereabouts. There’s scarcely a jacket in the village with any nap left on it.”