Page 30 of The Wordsworth Key (Regency Secrets #3)

From his worried expression, Jacob guessed that his brother thought that he might’ve made a faux pas expanding the invitation. ‘Do you know each other, Furness?’ asked Arthur.

‘Langhorne’s father works for me– he’s a good man. Have you thought any more about my offer to find you a parish?’ Furness asked Langhorne.

‘Your lordship is very generous.’ He had the pained look of one who really would prefer not to give a straight answer in front of witnesses. Cooper was already smirking.

‘Are you bound for the Church?’ the captain asked. ‘That is a surprise.’

‘It is but one of many possibilities I’m exploring.’

‘Well, the opening won’t wait for ever. Tick tock,’ said Lord Furness, a hint of steel in his tone.

Lady Alice smiled sympathetically at the young man. ‘Father, may we not defer such discussions and enjoy our holiday? I for one am eager to see this Roman fort you spoke of.’

‘Jacob,’ said Arthur, seizing his chance, ‘you are familiar with the history of the place, I believe. You shall ride with Lady Alice and satisfy her curiosity.’

On his signal, the party mounted and moved out.

Jacob obeyed the order, knowing to refuse would be bad manners.

He glanced behind and saw that Dora was between Knotte and Moss.

She’d be happy there as it would give her the opportunity to ask them both questions and discover if Moss was looking at any one person of the party more than another.

‘Lady Alice, how delightful to see you again so soon,’ he said, nudging his horse alongside her. Her father and Arthur had taken the lead, but he and Lady Alice were given the second rank in the riding party as befitted their status.

‘And you, Dr Sandys. What have you to tell me about this fort?’

‘Most of what you need to know will best be explained by seeing its setting. No Roman would choose to perch on the top of a windy, wet mountainside without a very good reason.’

‘That reason being?’

‘Strategic. It commands the valley which linked the coastal base at Ravenglass with the fort at Ambleside. I imagine the men who were posted to Hardknott likely annoyed their commanding officer and were given the most miserable duties. We believe it was built by Emperor Hadrian.’ Jacob could hear Dora in his head mocking him for that statement. ‘I mean, by his men, under his orders.’

‘The one famous for the wall?’

‘Indeed.’

‘Then we are riding in an emperor’s footsteps?’

‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but he likely only made a short visit to England, ordered the wall to be built to deal with the Pictish problem, then hurried off to shore up the rest of his sprawling empire. Roman emperors never had an easy task keeping their supporters together.’

‘Then I will content myself imagining the legionaries marching along this same route.’

‘That I can attest to be true.’

They turned into Little Langdale, a U-shaped valley, liberally sprinkled with bracken the colour of cinnamon sprouting from green turf.

A silver ribbon of water unfurled along the bottom of the vale.

The slopes were broken with crags, little cliffs that littered scree onto the grass lapping beneath.

‘What a sublime place,’ said Lady Alice. A strand of her magnificent red hair broke loose and flapped across her face. She caught it with her gloved forefinger and tucked it behind a delicate ear. ‘It reminds us that nature can never be tamed. I believe you paint, sir?’

‘Very poorly.’

‘That’s not what I heard.’

‘I would be delighted to be considered a decent landscape artist, but I fear my skills lend themselves rather to portraiture.’

‘I would have considered that the more difficult of the two. The painter can interpret this view as he likes, add a framing tree in the manner recommended by Gilpin and scatter some artistic peasantry, a shepherd maybe with a suspiciously clean flock; whereas in portraiture everyone familiar with the subject will instinctively know if you’ve caught the person’s likeness or not. ’

‘That may be true, but I’m never satisfied with my landscapes. I try to capture the essence of what I’m seeing but it always feels inert on the canvas.’

‘You’d like to paint with river water and flecks of sky?’

‘If I could wrestle them from their places to fix them in place, then yes.’

‘But they would never stay– or if they did, they’d not be themselves. That is their essence.’

‘Ah, I see you are chastising me for wanting to attain the impossible. You remind me that while human subjects might stay in place for a few moments so I can catch them in an expression that brings them alive to the viewer, nature never will oblige. I would need a moving picture to do so.’

‘Or a style that suggests movement, like Mr Turner’s.’

‘You like art?’

‘I do, though I could no more paint a landscape than compose a symphony. You need Evelina for that. She’s very good– did you know that?’

‘I did.’ Though he realised he had neglected to ask his sister to play her works to him for over a year now. What a great brother he was. ‘What about you?’

‘My interest is botanical drawing, which is very precise, movement discouraged.’ She then proceeded to talk intelligently about the flowers growing in crevices of the stone walls or on the verge of the river.

Her talk moved to seashells, which she also enjoyed painting, and the shell grotto that she and her sisters were making in their garden.

Jacob would’ve enjoyed her conversation even more if Arthur hadn’t kept on shooting him triumphant looks like a hunting dog expecting praise for having retrieved the downed partridge.

Damn his brother for being right: Lady Alice was a very eligible match and a friend to his sisters.

She didn’t have a shady past as a forger of the very things he most prized in his collection, something that still stood between him and Dora.

A life with Lady Alice would be more than bearable if he wasn’t already spoken for.

He looked back to Dora. She wasn’t watching him.

Was that a deliberate not watching that meant she was acutely aware of what was playing out between Lady Alice and him, or did she not care?

He would almost have preferred to see a flash of jealousy to reassure him that his own attachment to her was returned with similar force.

He was a fool. There was no other explanation for these idiotic thoughts.

‘I would enjoy seeing your illustrations sometime,’ he said politely once Lady Alice finished telling him about her latest collection of specimens from the coast near her home.

‘And I would enjoy showing them to you,’ she said with unmistakeable warmth.

Blast, she’d taken his comment as flirting, and he hadn’t meant to send her that signal of his interest. He couldn’t take it back now.

‘Excellent. Then I must do so when we’ve finished our task here.’

‘Task?’

‘Miss Fitz-Pennington and I are investigating a theft.’ It was best not to mention murder to a young lady. Society didn’t approve of that sort of thing.

‘Indeed? Together?’ She glanced back at Dora who chose that moment to meet their gaze. Dora smiled questioningly. Jacob shook his head a fraction, suggesting she keep away. ‘I thought you were a doctor?’

‘I was– indeed, I still am, but I have turned to diagnosing, how should I put it, puzzles that need solving. Miss Fitz-Pennington has joined me in this endeavour.’

‘I did wonder about her when we were introduced. Who is she? Who are her people?’

‘Miss Fitz-Pennington is the daughter of a Liverpool gentleman but, unfortunately, she is illegitimate. She trained for the stage and that has given her a formidable memory as well as many skills that make her the ideal partner in our investigations.’

‘How intriguing. She sounds a most interesting young lady. How is she allowed to do such a thing? Does her family not prevent her?’

‘It’s a little more complicated than that.’

‘I must speak to her.’ With that, Lady Alice turned her horse to the side and waited for Dora to approach. ‘You ride on, Dr Sandys. We ladies need to talk.’