Her Convenient Husband's Return. Eleanor Webster

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       Chapter Two

       Eighteen months later

      Beth strode towards the stable. As always, she counted her steps, tapping the path with her cane. She lifted her face to the sky, enjoying the warmth of the sun’s rays and the soft whisper of breeze. She enjoyed spring. She liked the smell of grass and earth. She liked the rustle of fresh leaves, so different from the dry, crisp wintery crack of bare branches. She liked that giddy, happy sense of renewal.

      Even better, she welcomed the ease of movement which came with drier weather. Country life at Allington was dreadfully dull.

      Worse than dull, it was lonely. Her beloved sister-in-law was dead. Jamie seldom conversed. Edmund had left. Ren never came. Her maid chattered of ribbons.

      For a fleeting second, she remembered childhood winters: walks with Ren, afternoons by the fire’s crackling heat in a room rich with the aroma of cinnamon toast. Sometimes Edmund would read while Ren painted and Jamie pored over a botanical thesis.

      Beth pushed the past away, recognising her brother’s footsteps on the rutted path. She lifted her hand in greeting.

      ‘Field’s ready for planting,’ Jamie said without preamble, satisfaction lacing his tones.

      ‘You are trying new crops this year?’

      ‘New variety of beans. They will be hardier.’

      ‘In Edmund’s fields as well as our own?’

      Jamie grunted assent. ‘As I doubt your husband plans to do so.’

      ‘He’s in London,’ she said flatly. ‘Besides, Edmund left a manager in charge.’

      Edmund, or rather Lord Graham, was Ren’s brother. Her husband’s brother...husband. Even after eighteen months her mind stumbled over the word—it wasn’t surprising since she had likely conversed more with the village blacksmith, a man of guttural grunts and limited vocabulary, than her spouse.

      ‘I am also trying a new variety of peas,’ Jamie said.

      She nodded. ‘By the way, do we have any surplus supplies? I went to the Duke’s estate yesterday. The people are starving so I asked Arnold to take grain.’

      She heard Jamie’s quick intake of breath. ‘You should not go there.’

      ‘Arnold was with me. Besides, the Duke is away. He hasn’t visited me since I turned down his proposal.’

      ‘One good thing about your marriage. But he has been at his estate on occasion. I also saw him on our own grounds once. Said his hound had strayed.’

      Beth felt a shiver of apprehension. Dampness prickled her palms and her lungs felt tight as if unable to properly inhale the air. She pushed the feeling away. ‘The important thing is to get his people food.’

      ‘It is that bad?’

      ‘Yes.’ Beth’s fingers tightened on her cane. Her jaw clenched at the thought of yesterday’s visit. She remembered a mother’s desperate effort to soothe her hungry child. She’d held his hands and felt the thin boniness of his tiny fingers pressed into her palm like twigs devoid of flesh. ‘The Duke’s treatment of his tenants has worsened. I worry that it is a form of punishment.’

      ‘Punishment?’

      ‘Yes, for avoiding marriage to him.’

      ‘The tenants were hardly responsible and I see no evidence for such an assumption.’

      Beth nodded. Jamie’s world was so wonderfully black and white. ‘Sometimes human nature defies science.’

      She felt his confusion and could imagine his skin creasing into a pucker between his eyes.

      ‘I’ll send some root vegetables as well,’ he said. ‘Are you going there now?’

      ‘No, but Arnold will later.’

      ‘We will send what we can,’ Jaime said, in his steady way.

      That was Jamie all over. Steady, scientific, kind but without sentiment.

      In contrast, Ren had married her in a wild, crazy, heroic gesture, disappearing after their wedding into the capital’s giddy whirl of brandy and women.

      She tried to ignore that quick, predictable flicker of pain and anger. Obviously, she had not expected anything close to a regular marriage, but to be so abandoned and ignored was painful to her. For some ludicrous reason, as she had stood beside him in the still air of the tiny church, she’d imagined that they might become friends again.

      Instead, they had ridden back to Graham Hall in an uncomfortable silence broken СКАЧАТЬ