The Husband Season (21 page)

‘It cannot be helped, Sophie. It means we will be a day or two later reaching Hadlea, that’s all.’ He evidently did remember. Hearing him say her name gave her a warm glow of pleasure. What a fool she was to be uplifted by such a little thing.

Chapter Eleven

C
ooped up in the farmhouse with nothing to do and everyone itching to be gone did not help frayed nerves. Sophie looked after Bessie and did her best to help Mrs Brown. Joe used the time to check over every inch of the coach: the wheels and axles, though he knew they were sound, replacing leather that was even partially worn and cleaning it inside and out. By the time he had finished it looked as good as new. He groomed the horses until their coats were gleaming and combed and plaited their manes and tails, tying them with ribbons.

‘Good enough for the showground,’ Adam told him. ‘Well done.’

Adam himself was at a loose end. He went round the fields with the farmer. ‘It’s going to be a poor winter,’ Mr Brown muttered, looking at the wet, blackened wheat crop. ‘I’ll have to plough that in.’

‘You harvested the barley and oats before the storm?’

‘Aye, but they were only a few acres. They had a poor start on account o’ the cold weather in spring, but June and July made up for it and in the end I got it in early, but it don’ make up for the loss of the wheat. It were all but ready. I was goin’ into town to hire some extra help this next week.’ He sighed. ‘I don’ know what we’re a-goin’ to do. We’ll have to rely on the livestock. Thank God, tha’s healthy.’

Adam made a mental note to make sure the man was more than adequately paid for their board and lodging when they left.

* * *

On the third day, now without his eyepatch, he rode into Newmarket on Swift to obtain more provisions for Mrs Brown, to mail a letter to Mark explaining the situation and to find out if there were any strangers in the town. That turned out to be a vain exercise; the place was full of strangers come for the racing and he had no idea what the man looked like. Of course he and Alfred might have imagined the galloping horse, or it could have been a local man in a hurry to be home out of the rain.

He went back to the farm to find Sophie in the barn talking to Joe and Alfred. She was smiling. ‘Bessie has recovered,’ she told him. ‘We are ready to go on.’

‘Are you sure?’ he asked, studying her. After three days of caring for her maid, she was looking tired, but she had washed her hair and put on a fresh gingham dress taken from her trunk. ‘Your maid may have recovered, but what about you?’

‘I am perfectly well. You must be anxious to be on your way, and I am sure Mrs Brown will be glad to see us gone. I fear we have been a sore trial to her.’

‘Then we will leave tomorrow morning. Alfred, you ride on ahead and arrange for fresh horses. We will meet you at Downham Market. Give Swift a drink and her oats now and let her rest.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Sophie, can you be ready?’

‘Easily.’

They walked up to the farmhouse together. ‘It has been a strange few days,’ she said. ‘I have learned something of what it is to be a farmer’s wife. I knew it was a hard life, but I never realised before just how hard. It has made me so much more sympathetic to those not so fortunate as I am.’

‘I am sure you have always been sympathetic,’ he murmured. ‘Mark has told me how helpful you are with his orphans.’

‘They have had a dreadful life and I like to do what I can to help make their lives a little easier. I find it rewarding.’ She looked up at him. His eye still bore a faint bruise. ‘I believe that is how you feel towards your workers. I read the report of your speech in the newspaper.’

‘Yes, but it is not enough, Sophie. I failed to do any good.’

Calling each other by their given names seemed perfectly natural now. He had become more at ease with her. His up-and-down moods, teasing one minute, scolding the next, seemed to have vanished and they conversed like old friends, like cousins, she supposed. It wasn’t what she wanted exactly, because she was as much in love with him as ever, but it would have to do. ‘You have done me a lot of good,’ she murmured.

He looked sharply at her, one eyebrow raised. She laughed. ‘You have made me grow up, Adam.’

‘You would have done that without my help.’

‘Perhaps, but not so quickly and not with so much pleasure.’

‘Oh, Sophie,’ he said. ‘Don’t ever change, will you?’

She had no answer to that and they went into the farmhouse to tell Mr and Mrs Brown they were leaving the next morning.

* * *

Goodbyes said and with Mr Brown clutching more sovereigns than he had ever seen together before, they climbed in the carriage and were on their way. The floods had receded and though they had left mud on the roads and there was still water in the potholes, the weather was fine and they made good time. Alfred Farley had made sure there were fresh horses waiting for them at each stop and they reached Downham Market in the early afternoon, where they stopped for a meal while the last set of horses were harnessed.

‘We should be in Hadlea before dark,’ Adam told Sophie as they resumed their journey. Farley was once again riding behind them on Swift. Bessie, still sniffling a little, was sitting on the opposite seat with her feet up, wrapped in a blanket. Mrs Brown had given her another dose of her remedy to make her more comfortable for the journey and she was dozing. ‘I will take you home first and then go on to Broadacres. No doubt you will be glad to be reunited with your parents.’

‘Yes,’ she said, but she had mixed feelings about the end of the journey. Of course she wanted to be home and see Mama and Papa again, but it would also mean saying goodbye to Adam. In the past few days they had been thrown together in more intimacy than would have been allowed under normal circumstances. She had become used to having him close, seeing him every day and all day, getting to know every nuance of his character, laughing with him, arguing with him, eating with him, doing everything but sleep together. It had served to reinforce her abiding love for him and she wished it could go on forever. She longed for him to become more intimate, but he seemed content with the way things were.

Aunt Emmeline had said she needed to make a push, but how to do it, she did not know. If she tried to flirt, he flirted back, but somehow left her feeling belittled. If she quizzed him, he answered politely or avoided answering by changing the subject. Once or twice she had caught him looking at her with an expression she could not fathom, as if she were a problem. And before the day was out, they would part.

‘How long do you think you will stay at Broadacres?’ she asked, clutching at straws.

‘A few days.’

‘And then it will be back to Saddleworth?’

‘Yes.’

‘No doubt you, too, will be glad to be home.’

‘Yes. I have been too long away.’

‘Is there someone waiting there for you?’

He looked at her sharply, wondering what had prompted the question. ‘A great many people,’ he said. ‘Staff, workers...’

‘No, I meant a lady.’

‘Oh, I see, still fishing on behalf of your friend.’

‘No, I am not. I am persuaded that is a lost cause. I just wondered who the mare was meant for. You said she was for a lady.’

He laughed. ‘She is. Mark asked me to buy her for Jane. It is to be a surprise birthday gift from him.’

‘Jane?’ she queried in surprise.

‘Yes, your sister. You know her best. Do you think she will like her present?’

It was Jane’s birthday on the fifteenth of July and she had all but forgotten it. ‘She will love the mare,’ she said. ‘It is just like Mark to think of something like that. He is always surprising her with gifts. Jane might even let me ride her now and again and then I will think of you.’

‘Will you?’ he murmured.

‘Of course. How could I forget you after...after what we have been through together?’

‘It has been rather unforgettable,’ he said with a smile.

‘Tell me about Saddleworth,’ she said. ‘Then I can picture you there when you are gone.’

‘Saddleworth is situated in a long valley between Yorkshire and Lancashire, and is made up of four small hamlets: Quick Mere, Lord’s Mere, Shaw Mere and Friar Mere. It is famous for its woollen cloth, much of it superfine.’

‘Ah, that is why you wear such well-made coats—the wool is woven in your mill.’

‘Yes, and grown on my land. Friar Mere was once an estate belonging to the Black Friars, but it is part of my estate now. We grow a few crops but it is mostly sheep.’

‘And the house?’

‘Blackfriars sits on the hill above the valley. It was once the home of the friars. Anne started to refurbish it, but the alterations were not finished before she died, so it is half very old and draughty and half an elegant modern home.’

‘You didn’t go on with the work?’

‘No. I saw no reason to. Besides, I was kept very busy with the estate and the mill.’ He paused. ‘If I can persuade Mark and Jane to come on a visit, they could bring you, too, and you would see it for yourself.’

‘I should like that,’ she murmured.

The countryside they were passing through was flatter than it had been, the land was criss-crossed with dykes and there were water mills everywhere. They were not cantering now because Adam had not planned to change the horses again and it was a longer-than-usual stage. They were moving at a leisurely trot, a pace that suited Sophie if only because it gave her a little longer to sit close to Adam, to feel his thigh close to hers, his arm touching hers, his warmth spreading all down that side of her, knowing it would be the last time.

And there was Hadlea, the village where she had been born and brought up, with its main street lined with cottages. There was the Fox and Hounds, standing on its corner, there the church, and there, after a few minutes more, the gates of Greystone Manor. ‘Home,’ Adam said as the carriage drew to a stop outside the front door.

Joe hardly had time to jump down, open the carriage door and let down the step before Lady Cavenhurst came out to meet them. Sophie tumbled out and into her arms.

* * *

As Adam completed the last three miles of the long journey in the coach, he was conscious of an emptiness inside him, a feeling that something were missing, something he had lost that was valuable and had to be searched for. It was almost like an ache, but he was reluctant to put a name to it.

Sir Edward and Lady Cavenhurst had welcomed him, offered him supper and thanked him over and over again for bringing their daughter safely back to them. Hearing from Mark about Teddy’s disappearance and that he had been the one to find out what had happened to him, he was thoroughly quizzed. ‘It is to be hoped the voyage will do him good,’ Sir Edward had said at the end of the tale. ‘The tougher the better.’

Adam had silently agreed and said he ought not to keep the tired horses waiting about and Mark and Jane would be looking out for him, so he would take his leave. Swift was left in the Manor stables until Jane’s birthday in two days’ time; the mare was to be a surprise and she needed a long rest and some careful grooming after her long journey, which Sophie undertook to do. Now here he was with Alfred Farley once more beside him, feeling flat and empty and wishing he could go back to Sophie.

She had wormed her way into his head and his heart and, try as he might, he could not banish her. He had made a solemn vow never to let another woman into his life and he had certainly meant it, so what was he doing lusting after a female ten years his junior? Lust? He could satisfy that anywhere. This was nothing so vulgar as lust.

The carriage turned into the long drive to Broadacres and he was met with the sight of a stately home to rival any he had seen. It was not overlarge, but its proportions were exactly right and its windows were ablaze with light to welcome him. Farley jumped down and lifted the heavy knocker on the front door.

* * *

Sophie rejoiced to be home. She chatted away to her parents about all she had heard and seen and done in the capital, being very careful not to shock them with her escapades. She explored the house and the grounds, exclaiming with delight as if she had been away years. She looked after Swift as carefully as if the mare had been a child, but nothing could assuage the ache in her heart. Her mother noticed it.

‘Sophie, dearest,’ she said, the next afternoon when they were alone in the drawing room. Lady Cavenhurst had been doing some embroidery but set it aside. ‘Is anything wrong?’

Sophie, who had been looking out of the window at the front drive wishing he would come, turned towards her mother to answer. ‘No, Mama, what could be wrong?’

‘I do not know, but I sense something is. Did you meet someone in London, a young gentleman perhaps, that you are not telling us about?’

‘No, Mama. The only men I met were Sir Reginald, Mr Fanshawe and fat Lord Gorange, none of whom I was pleased to see. They hung round and spoiled everything.’

‘Oh. What about Viscount Kimberley?’

‘What about him?’

‘Have you developed a
tendre
for him? From what I gather you were in his company frequently in London, and then to have spent nearly a week together...’

‘Viscount Kimberley is a widower, Mama, and he has vowed never to marry again. He loved his wife so much, you see...’

‘That does not answer my question.’

‘Yes, it does.’

The sound of wheels on gravel alerted them to visitors and Sophie’s heart leaped. A minute later he was there with Mark and Jane and little Harry and everyone was greeting everyone. Jane hugged her, Mark kissed her cheek and Adam bowed stiffly, called her Miss Cavenhurst and asked her how she did.

‘I am well, thank you, my lord,’ she answered, matching his formality with her own by bending her knee and bowing her head. ‘How are you?’

‘I am well,’ he said.

Lady Cavenhurst ordered tea and cakes, sent a servant to find Sir Edward and bade them all be seated. They distributed themselves on sofas and chairs. Sophie took Harry onto her lap and cuddled him.

‘We have been showing Adam round the estate,’ Jane said. ‘He was interested in the Hadlea Home, so we have been to Witherington, too. The extensions are coming on well and we will be able to admit more children very soon. We decided to call here before we went home. Adam was anxious to find out if Sophie had any ill effects from her journey and, of course, I was longing to hear all her news.’