Page 45 of A Gathering Storm

“That basket looks as though it could feed the five thousand,” Nick said, eyeing the hefty muslin-wrapped packages and cork-stoppered pot bottles that filled it. “And we’ve only just had luncheon. We’ll certainly reach Truro before I’m peckish again.”

Ward bit his lip, seeming oddly embarrassed. “Pipp has a tendency to overprovision—he’s convinced I don’t eat enough. I’ve tried telling him not to bother with baskets for such short journeys, but he gets ever so offended, so now I just let him do it and give the basket to the coachman.”

The carriage lurched then, and they were off, though slow to start with as the coachman navigated the narrow path that led from Ward’s front door to the road proper.

“How long exactly has Mr. Pipp worked for you?” Nick asked. He couldn’t imagine any of Godfrey’s servants ever being so familiar with him as it seemed Mr. Pipp was with Ward, at least in private.Nickwouldn’t be so familiar with Godfrey and he was related to the man by blood.

Ward tapped his finger on his chin. “It’s been a long while. Since I was twelve at least. He was a footman in my parents’ house and my mother selected him as my personal servant.”

“Your personal servant? You mean, your valet?”

Ward smiled. “Not quite. It was when I was convalescing. Mother wanted someone to see to my needs. Lift me in and out of bed and push me around in this ridiculous bath chair she’d obtained for me. She was quite determined that I should get up each day and take the air, you see. Even if it took me all morning to wash and dress.” He gave one of his raspy laughs. “It drove me wild, but she was probably right.”

“So Mr. Pipp was your nurse?”

“In a manner of speaking. As I grew stronger—and older—he seemed to naturally fall into the role of valet. And when I left home to attend Cambridge, it was convenient for him to join me as my general manservant. We’d become used to one another by then—it was obvious that he would be the head of my household when I came to set one up.”

“You must know each other very well,” Nick observed.

“We do. I trust Pipp absolutely. He knows me inside out.”

“Even that you . . .?” Nick trailed off, raising a querying brow.

“Even about my preference for men? Oh, yes. It was Pipp who found Alfie for me—without my asking him to do so, I might add.” He gave a loud bark of laughter. “That was a mortifying conversation, I can tell you!”

Nick pondered that revelation for a moment before asking, “Is he like us, then?”

Ward shook his head. “No. I gather there was a lady who disappointed him when he was quite young, but he tells me his taste runs to ‘the motherly sort’ these days. I understand he and Mrs. Waddell have had some sort of mutually beneficial arrangement for the last few years.” He shuddered as if at the thought, making Nick grin.

The coach slowed, and Nick glanced out the window. They were at the bottom of the path now. The coachman executed a tight swing onto the main road—making the basket of food and drink slide across the carriage floor, till Nick stopped it with his foot—and then they were straightening again and the coachman was snapping his whip and urging the team of four into a smart trot. They were off, and Nick was conscious of a pang of excitement at the thought. He ruthlessly suppressed it, though, forcing himself to concentrate instead on pushing the basket back into place on the other side of the carriage and wedging it more securely with one of the travelling blankets.

When he straightened, he returned determinedly to their previous topic of conversation. “It’s strange to me that you and Mr. Pipp are so tight with one another. Old Godfrey isn’t like that with his servants. He doesn’t even look at them. He treats them like they’re part of the furniture. Says things in front of them as though they don’t have ears.”

Ward frowned at that. At last he said, “Does he talk toyou?”

“Yes, but I’m not a—” Nick began, then stopped. He felt suddenly queasy to his stomach. The words had come unprompted, before he’d really thought about the question. Only now did he realise how betraying they were, revealing that in his secret heart, Nick believed himself to be something more than a servant to his grandfather.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Nick risked a glance at Ward—the man’s gaze on him was painfully, unbearably sympathetic, and Nick looked swiftly away, turning his head to stare unseeingly out the carriage window at the hedgerows.

After a long pause, face burning with humiliation, he said quietly, “What I mean is, hehasto talk to me. I’m his steward—there are always matters of business to discuss.”

“Yes, of course,” Ward said politely. “I can see that.”

They fell into an awkward silence.

At length, Ward drew a sheaf of journals out from the single drawer in the travelling desk and began sorting through them. Selecting one, he put the others away and began to read, his brow furrowed with concentration. After another minute, he produced a pencil from his inside pocket and began jotting down notes in the margins. The pencil was a plain steel propeller one, quite short, and when he wasn’t he using it, he stuck it behind his ear. Nick thought it made him look like a shopkeeper, and that made him smile. The thought of Ward measuring out sugar and tea leaves and lengths of fabric for sharp-eyed housewives was an amusing one.

Ward was too absorbed to notice Nick’s attention on him, and a couple of hours passed thus, in companionable silence. Nick didn’t mind the silence a bit. He was a man who enjoyed his own company very well. He didn’t need constant chatter—indeed, sometimes he craved silence more than anything. On days like that, if he could, he would set off from Rosehip Cottage with Snow at his heels and some bread and cheese in his pocket and just walk the whole day, not so much as a word passing his lips. Whenever he felt out of sorts, that would fix him, having the living earth beneath his feet and the wind on his face.

His mother had been the same. Sometimes she needed to be outdoors. She even used to eat her breakfast outside, hunkering down on the front stoop of the cottage, even though there was a perfectly good kitchen table inside. When Nick was a boy, he’d thought it was because she missed the travelling life, but it wasn’t the moving around she longed for. Ma didn’t mind being in one place—it was living on the land she missed. Sitting round a campfire at night with the heat on her face and the cold at her back. Sleeping under the wide sky.

She’d been so very alive, his mother. Even when she was thin and ravaged by disease, life had shone fiercely in her. Right up to the morning Nick had walked into her chamber and found her body. He’d stood there, at the foot of the bed, staring at her shell, wondering where she’d gone. Where her spark had disappeared to. Strange that she looked exactly the same in every particular, and yet the thing that made her Darklis Hearn was gone. He’d felt—known—her absence as soon as he’d walked in the room. Had known, with complete certainty, that she’d passed in the night and was no longer with him. That her small body was as empty as a house that no one lived in anymore.

When they reached their destination, it was almost six o’clock. Ward looked up from his reading, seeming surprised.

“Are we here already?” he asked, and Nick couldn’t help but laugh. The man had been so absorbed in his reading he had no idea how much time had passed.