Page 5 of Submitting to the Widow
“I’ve decided to retire to my lodgings to consider your, um, offer.”
“You cannot give me an answer now?” Jane struggled mightily to contort her voice and demeanor into one of submissiveness which she’d often observed in English ladies. Judging by the outraged look in Stephen’s eyes, she’d not only failed, but seemed to have annoyed him further with the effort. “Would you like me to put our agreement in writing?”
“No…God, no.” He ran his fingers so violently through his hair that the strands literally stood on end, giving him the look of some horned satyr from the pages of mythology who’d just crashed through her conservatory’s small jungle.
He pointed a forbidding finger in her direction. “No—. Emphatically, no. Put nothing to paper. Please—give me some time to think, and I’ll return in the morning with an answer.”
Jane sighed and walked to the bell rope hanging between two rows of towering conservatory windows. The alacrity with which Raj appeared confirmed her suspicion that her factotum had been eavesdropping from the environs of the library, not the lower-level kitchen to which she’d sent the annoying servant.
* * *
A light patterof rain rattled against the windows of Stephen’s carriage and added to the general gloom weighing down his psyche. The trip back to his rooms at the Combe Down Inn was so short, he rapped on the roof and instructed his coachmen to round the village a few times before stopping at the inn.
He needed time to gather his thoughts now that his senses weren’t reeling from Lady Jane’s dizzying combination of spicy scents. Her spices of choice, clove and cinnamon, now that he’d spent time in close proximity to the maddening woman, seemed to be overlaid with something like a lilting hint of bergamot.
The citrus and heavy floral scents emanating from her jungle-like bower made rational thought a near impossibility. And the steamy heat. After riding in a cold carriage for hours after his last stop at a coaching inn earlier that morning, the heat in her conservatory had been so seductive, he now felt a childish sense of deprivation. He was alone in a frigid carriage with nothing more than his pride, a wet overcoat, and freshly polished boots to keep him company.
When he finally ducked his head to enter the door of the tavern attached to the inn, the aroma of good beefsteak and roast potatoes mixed with wood smoke from the large hearth taking up most of the back wall. The reliable look and feel of the tavern made him question whether or not he might have imagined Lady Trevellyn’s exotic conservatory. His valet sat warm and snug, sipping at a mug of hot mulled wine.
Murray stood immediately and helped him out of his heavy wet outer cloak before limping over to the drying rack in front of the fireplace and slinging the coat across the top dowel to dry.
His valet waved an arm in the direction of the bar maid. When she scurried over, Stephen ordered the shepherd’s pie and a pint of ale.
After she left, Murray leaned close. “You look like one of your clients is about to swing at Old Bailey. What in God’s name happened at Trevellyn Hall? Did you get the pages?”
Stephen took a long swallow of the ale, slammed his tankard back onto the table and leaned back into the recesses of the high wooden bench. “The widow is not what she seems.”
3
Jane carefully walked through her glass-vaulted dominion, murmuring sweetness and encouragement to her green and colorful confidantes. She occasionally paused to nip a fading bloom, or to water a droop-leafed plant.
She stopped before a climbing fig tree and watched a dried, curling leaf drift with melancholy finality to the warm tiled floor beneath her bare feet. Even though she knew this was a once-every-other-year dramatic performance this particular tree liked to put on, it always made her heart stutter a bit. She hovered over the pampered plants in her conservatory like a mother, and even though she knew this to be a quirk of this particular variety of fig tree, she still felt a sting of rejection every time the shedding of leaves began.
“Raj, I know you’re following me, so you can stop being so quiet.” She turned and gave her factotum a fond smile. “Why do you insist on continuing this charade of being a household servant?”
“Your mother would have expected this service from me. It’s the least I can do.”
“I’m a grown woman, more than capable of taking care of myself.” Jane leaned over a bed of geraniums and clipped an armful of gold, lavender, and dark red blooms for her desk table in the library. She filled the basket and handed it to Raj. “If you want to make yourself useful…”
“I’d rather we had a discussion about this…this cricket player.”
“He’s more than just a cricket player, as you well know.”
At the lifted chin and challenging look in Raj’s eyes, Jane added, “He’s a well-respected London barrister, for heaven’s sakes.”
Raj sniffed. “He’s an Englishman.”
“If you’d read his journal pages, you’d think twice before dismissing him as ‘an Englishman.’”
* * *
Stephen strodealong a village path and made short work of clambering over a style separating landowners’ fields. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a long walk in the country to clear his head.
When he’d suggested a brisk walk to his valet, Murray had given him “the look,” the same look he gave his employer when picking up soiled, discarded neckcloths, the look Murray inevitably gave when Stephen headed over to Albany for an evening of celebratory drinking with Leo and his reprobate former schoolmates. Over the years they’d had plenty to celebrate, like when CB’s unexpected inheritance had made him one of the wealthiest men in London. And when they’d nothing to celebrate, they’d made up something.
Springtime in the English countryside was a feast for the senses. A deep inhale brought the scent of freshly turned earth along with the more subtle aromas of wildflowers: tall magenta corncockle blooms peeked around the side of a tree, dabs of tiny yellow flowerets glowed amongst dense greenery along a nearby stream, and white and pink stands of foxglove already swarmed with bees.
He could still savor the taste of lavender the publican’s wife had imbued into the freshly baked breads she’d served with their breakfasts that morning. A village rooster gave a half-hearted crow that made him chuckle. City dwellers believed the myth that roosters crowed only at sunrise. The blasted beasties crowed at all hours of the day and night, something he’d nearly forgotten since his days as a child at Oak Bank in Kent with his parents.