Seven

Patience Goodenough, a gentle Quaker lady whose husband raised all manner of fowl, had cursed like a drover when delivering her firstborn.

Daryl Bletching had cried and begged Nita to try to save his hand when Dr. Horton had sent the surgeon to fetch a saw.

Old Mr. Clackengeld claimed he saw the devil when drunk and swore Nita to secrecy, lest the parson catch wind of such wickedness.

Winnifred Hess believed the angel of death had sat upon her chest counting her chicken pox.

The ill and the injured inflicted their confidences on Nita. She wanted Tremaine St. Michael’s confidences, even as she was puzzled that he’d offer them from atop his horse. Worse, she wanted to share her confidences with him, which might explain her remark about Horrible Horton.

“The physician looks like Father Christmas out of his seasonal robes,” Mr. St. Michael said. “He hates you?”

“Not quite,” Nita replied, adjusting a scarf that bore the scent of the faraway Highlands. “I’m not worthy of his hatred. I merit his condescension, his amusement even. Shall we go inside?”

Dr. Horton gossiped, and if he saw Nita escorted by a strange fellow without benefit of a groom or sibling, he would surely mention it over a consultation with the vicar regarding vicar’s gout.

“I’m famished,” Mr. St. Michael said. “Even so, I’d rather not let the horses stand for half the day.”

While Nita was loath to linger in the village at all if Dr. Horton was about. “We’ll be quick.”

Mr. St. Michael tucked her hand onto his arm, even to travel the short distance to the posting inn’s door.

“You don’t want to pay a call on the vicar, my lady? I’d assumed you had charitable tasks to assign him.”

The vicar likely hated Nita most of all. He frequently preached that God alone—abetted by Dr. Horton—should determine who succumbed to illness and who thrived. The pious among the flock were to meekly endure ill health as a sign of God’s disfavor, and pray for God’s mercy.

“Perhaps we’ll call on Vicar another day,” Nita said.

Mr. St. Michael’s pace suggested he was a stranger to hurry, or maybe the cold didn’t affect him, their progress across the street was that leisurely. He studied the shop fronts, the bleak village square, the ravens huddled in the barren oak, the ruts frozen into the street.

While Nita’s heart sank.

“Lady Nita!” Dr. Horton called, clambering off his gray. “Why, it is you, but I don’t believe I know this gentleman. A female of your delicate constitution ought not to be out in such weather, if you’ll take the word of an old physician. How does your family go on, my lady, and will you introduce me to your friend?”

Dr. Horton was friendly, Edward had been gracious, and Nita was abruptly exhausted.

“Mr. St. Michael, may I make known to you Dr. Horton, our local physician and a family friend. Dr. Horton, Mr. Tremaine St. Michael, a guest of the earl’s and connection through my brother Beckman.”

Nita had lied, for Dr. Horton was no friend to her family. Even Nicholas had little use for a physician who gossiped. Dr. Horton did look like Father Christmas, though, all combed white beard, friendly blue eyes, and prosperous country gentleman’s attire.

“Dr. Horton.” Mr. St. Michael bowed, though he outranked Horton. “Lady Nita and I were making a quick stop for sustenance.”

“Then you must join me,” Dr. Horton said. “Winter ale fortifies the blood, I always say. Do I detect a bit of the North in your accent, sir?”

Nita let the small talk wash around her, content to be ignored as her joy in the day ebbed. Perhaps she should throw rocks at the oaks on the green or find some saplings to tear down.

The inn’s kitchen was serving cottage pie and winter ale along with a dish of cinnamon biscuits, though Nita had little appetite. Dr. Horton chattered on about the approaching assembly being a dare to the gods of weather, though it did a man a power of good to see all the local ladies attired in their finest.

“You’re not eating much, Lady Nita,” Mr. St. Michael remarked.

Dr. Horton patted her hand, and because they were at table, nobody wore gloves.

“Lady Nita has refined sensibilities,” Dr. Horton said. “Beef and potatoes do not appeal to a sophisticated palate. I heard that you assisted the Chalmers woman in childbed, my dear. Was that wise?”

Dr. Horton did this, bustled along in conversation, a merry old fellow of great good cheer, then, without warning, he attacked—with even greater good cheer.

“Childbed is not something any woman should face alone,” Nita said, “and the birth went well.”

The doctor tucked a bite of potato dripping with gravy into his mouth.

“The birth went well last time too, I’m told,” Dr. Horton said, chewing energetically, “and look how that turned out. What’s she up to now? Five? Six? Six more mouths for the parish to feed sooner or later. Best not abet such folly. Bellefonte would agree with me, as would, I’m sure, the late earl.”

Papa would never have agreed with this pontifical, judgmental buffoon. Mama had been barely civil to Horton. Nita set her lady’s pint down carefully, while beneath the table Mr. St. Michael seized her free hand in a warm grasp.

“You will pardon my lack of fortitude,” Mr. St. Michael said, squeezing Nita’s fingers gently, “but a bachelor does not find talk of childbirth at all conducive to good digestion. You ride a handsome gelding, Dr. Horton. Did you purchase him locally?”

Nita shook her hand free of her escort’s and rose. Mr. St. Michael rose as well, while Dr. Horton shoveled in another bite of potatoes.

“If you gentlemen will excuse me,” Nita said, “I’ll be back in a moment.”

Dr. Horton waved his fork in dismissal, while Mr. St. Michael remained on his feet until Nita had quit the premises. She strode directly across the street, kicked a hole in the ice of the horse trough, and plunged the hand Dr. Horton had patted into the frigid water.

* * *

“Nita has taken Mr. St. Michael to call on Edward,” Kirsten announced, tossing herself onto Susannah’s bed. “All this fresh air must be in aid of something.”

Susannah set aside Macbeth and drew her afghan around her shoulders, for Kirsten on a tear was impossible to deflect. Then too, reading by the window was a chilly proposition.

“If Mr. St. Michael affords Nita an opportunity to socialize with the healthy rather than the ill and the indigent, surely that’s a good thing?” Susannah suggested.

Nita’s sisters had certainly had little success broadening Nita’s social life.

“Why didn’t she take you?” Kirsten asked, kicking off her house mules and scooting back against the headboard. “Why not take me, Leah, anybody else?”

Susannah knew why not, so did Kirsten. “Because Nita will look in on Addy Chalmers, which doesn’t matter.”

Nita’s visit probably mattered a great deal to Addy and her new baby.

“Why does she do this, Suze?” Kirsten asked, rearranging Susannah’s pillows. “Why does Nita stick her nose into the cottage of every ailing tenant? She’s worse than Mama ever was.”

Susannah was fifteen months older than Kirsten, which meant she’d had fifteen months more to observe their mother and to ask the same question.

“Mama’s people were not wealthy when she was younger,” Susannah said. “Her Christian duty weighed on her, and she had a knack for dealing with illness and injury, though in these modern times, we’re supposed to leave all that to the medical fellows. Are you jealous that Nita has attached the interest of a potential suitor?”

Kirsten smoothed a hand over the quilt Susannah had pieced together with their mother’s help. Mama really hadn’t been much for countess-ing when she could instead be a mother or a neighbor.

“Nicholas says Mr. St. Michael is very shrewd,” Kirsten replied, “and he trades in far more than sheep. He has connections all over the Continent and is, in truth, a French comte.” Kirsten hugged a pink brocade pillow to her chest, looking deceptively girlish. “I think Mr. St. Michael is handsome, if you don’t mind his accent. He puts me in mind of a wolf, all sleek and quiet, but mind you don’t turn your back on him or he’ll gobble up your best biddy.”

Nita probably didn’t even hear that accent, though it did wonderful things for Mr. Burns’s verse. Made Mr. St. Michael’s Shakespeare rather interesting too.

“What are you thinking, Kirsten Haddonfield?” And where was Della, who, for all her tender years, was an excellent strategist?

“I overheard Nicholas and Mr. St. Michael discussing those dratted sheep,” Kirsten said, setting the pillow aside. “Mr. St. Michael wants them, but Edward wants them too.”

While Susannah wanted Edward. Not very ladylike of her, but a woman had to marry somebody. Edward did not shout and create noise wherever he went. He did not bring up difficult topics with family when guests were at the table. His command of Shakespeare was limited, but his recitation of it competent.

Edward had made a home for his brother’s widow and child, and—most significant of all—he lived not two miles from Susannah’s family. Susannah could recite the list of Edward’s virtues in her sleep, for she repeated them to herself nightly.

“I’m not surprised both men are interested in the merino sheep,” Susannah said. “Papa did not leave the earldom plump in the pocket, and Nicholas must sell assets where he can.”

Susannah emerged from her afghan to poke at the fire in the grate. The footmen would come around with fresh coal soon—Nita had put them on a schedule several winters ago—but Kirsten had left the door open a few inches, and an eddy of cold air slithered across the carpets.

“You are more valuable than a herd of bleating sheep,” Kirsten said. “Edward wants the sheep to be included in your dowry. All of them, every ewe, ram, tup, and lamb.”

Susannah closed the door and took up a chair near the fire.

“Sheep are hard on the land,” Susannah said. While Kirsten was hard on her siblings, but she meant well.

“Stonebridge isn’t the best patch of ground in the shire to start with,” Kirsten observed, which anybody riding past its somewhat ramshackle home farm might conclude. “I’d think Edward’s land better suited to cattle, cabbages, or potatoes. Potatoes grow anywhere.”

Papa had never expected to inherit an earldom, nor Mama to become a countess. They had been gentry at heart, and Susannah was her parents’ daughter.

She had ideas for Stonebridge, ideas she’d discussed casually with George and Nicholas. Stonebridge was close enough to London that vegetable crops could be profitable, laying hens were always in demand, and even certain breeds of dog could be raised as pets for aristocratic families.

“Suze, you have that distracted look,” Kirsten said, tossing the pink pillow gently across the room to land in Susannah’s lap. “Are you composing a sonnet to your sheep farmer before he’s even acquired a herd?”

“Edward would not like to be called a sheep farmer.” Nor was he Susannah’s, not yet, which was a problem. Would he like to be called her husband?

Kirsten folded her hands behind her head, looking much like Nicholas or George at their leisure.

“Edward would like to be called Baronet,” Kirsten said, “though he hasn’t acquired that title yet either.”

Kirsten’s judgment of her fellow man was severe, but her loyalty to family unwavering. If Susannah married Edward, she need not abandon Kirsten entirely to spinsterhood, nor George to perpetual bachelorhood.

“I know you don’t particularly care for Edward,” Susannah said. Nita cared for him even less, though Susannah wasn’t certain why. Edward wasn’t awful. “He’s not as loud as our brothers, not as outspoken or direct. I like that about him. His company is restful and he sings well.”

Kirsten sat up, one lithe, restless, feline movement. “You are too sweet, Suze. Edward rides out with his hounds but doesn’t see to his own acres. George says the pond near the Bletchings’ farm is silting up, and it’s the only water on the west side of Edward’s property. How will he irrigate if he doesn’t dredge that pond?”

Dredging the pond went on Susannah’s list of improvements her dowry would make possible at Stonebridge. Even Papa had muttered about only a bad farmer neglecting to manage his water, and the Stonebridge home farm was on the west side of the property.

“You don’t care about a silted up pond, Kirsten. This is England and we’ve water aplenty. What is it you came here to say?”

To bother Susannah about, because Kirsten lived to bother and agitate, which was her way of showing familial concern.

Kirsten shoved off the bed, leaving the quilt wrinkled.

“It’s cold in here,” she said, joining Susannah by the fire. “Suze, have you noticed that Stonebridge is always cold?”

Yes, Susannah had. That was on her list too, because any household that included a small child needed a modicum of warmth throughout. Elsie Nash was Digby’s mother, and she ought to see to something as simple as keeping the boy warm. Elsie had been married to a military man, though, and probably took economies seriously.

“Kirsten, you are an astute woman. Winter is upon us, winter is cold.”

When Kirsten was stomping about, casting dark looks at all and sundry, arguing radical Whig politics simply to bait Nicholas, then a certain element of Haddonfield family functioning was as it should be.

When Kirsten’s gaze became pitying, Susannah worried.

“Do you love Edward, Suze?” Kirsten asked, oddly serious. “Do you even know Edward well enough to say if you love him, or have you fallen for a few sonnets and melting glances? We’re not that old, and Nita certainly seems to manage well enough without a man.”

Nita was dying of loneliness, and many women considered twenty too old to be single.

Susannah rose and faced the fire so she did not have to meet Kirsten’s gaze.

“I esteem Edward greatly,” Susannah recited, for this too was part of her nightly fretting. “I’ve known him all my life, and I see his strengths as well as those areas where the right wife would be a help to him and his family. While I appreciate your concern, I do not share it.”

Any other sister, any normal sister, would have flounced out of the room, nose in the air. Kirsten patted Susannah’s shoulder.

“I love it when you’re fierce. One forgets you can be fierce. Nothing for it, then. If you want Edward Nash, then we must see that you have him. That leaves us with a puzzle regarding Nita and Mr. St. Michael though, doesn’t it? Both men want all those sheep, and Nicholas seems to be telling them they need to marry one of his sisters to get them.”

This amused Kirsten, and Susannah manufactured a smile as well—one of her few confirmed skills.

And yet, as Kirsten blathered on about plots and schemes and conjectures regarding the upcoming assembly, Susannah became increasingly discontent.

For she was vexed that Edward would attempt to negotiate settlements before securing her explicit consent to a properly tendered offer of marriage.

Exceedingly vexed.

* * *

Why would a competent physician, established in his profession and cordial with his neighbors, hate Nita Haddonfield? For Dr. Horton’s gaze on Nita’s retreating figure had been far from friendly.

Tremaine took a contemplative sip of rich winter ale while the good, if hateful, doctor put away a prodigious quantity of cottage pie. Horton kept an eye on the cinnamon biscuits as well, as if they might skip off to another table when he wasn’t looking.

When Tremaine had been a boy in the hills of western Aberdeenshire, nothing could have shaken his focus from a plate of meat and vegetables topped with mashed potatoes. Now, investigating the doctor’s antipathy toward Lady Nita eclipsed any interest Tremaine had in the fare.

“That Lady Nita,” Horton said. “She’s not long for this earth, mark me, Mr. St. Michael. Women haven’t the constitution for medicine. They take ill, they blunder, they disregard the learned truths of modern science. Shall we order another ale?”

Such delicate creatures, women, and yet the endless, thankless, wearying burden of nursing invariably fell to the females of the household, particularly in England, where a physician’s calling was plied mostly in the parlor and between the pages of Latin tomes.

“Is Lady Nita frail?” Tremaine asked. Her brother had likened her constitution to that of a donkey, and thank the Almighty that was so.

“She’s skinny,” Horton said, the term an insult. “Don’t have to be a physician to see she needs more meat on her bones. Bellefonte should take her in hand, but the old earl was indulgent of his womenfolk. Never a good idea to allow the females a loose rein.”

Nita might have stepped around to the jakes, but Tremaine suspected her departure had had other motivations.

“Is Lady Nita medically competent?” Tremaine knew she was, Tremaine’s sheep knew she was, Addy Chalmers’s youngest child knew it best of all.

What Nita Haddonfield lacked was a sense of her own value.

“She reads books,” Horton said, scraping his remaining potatoes into a heap. “I’ll give her that, and she was her mother’s right hand. I don’t begrudge women the company of their own kind at a lying-in, provided a physician is on hand to oversee matters. Lady Nita would have it otherwise.”

In other words, Nita provided poorer families an alternative to paying for Horton’s services at birthings.

“Then you would have attended Addy Chalmers had she asked for you?” Tremaine asked.

A forkful of carrot hovered before the doctor’s mouth. “Mr. St. Michael, you will think me devoid of Christian charity when I say I would have made no haste whatsoever to attend that birth had the Chalmers woman had the temerity to engage my services. She cannot provide for her young and refuses to abide by the rules of decent society. To bring another child into that household is to perpetuate a problem that has no happy solution. Lady Nita insists on prolonging the misery of all concerned.”

Her ladyship prolonged the children’s lives too. “Many would agree with you,” Tremaine said, finishing his ale. Perhaps even the Earl of Bellefonte agreed with the physician.

Addy Chalmers’s children were not the results of immaculate conceptions, though. If Addy and the children were to be condemned out of hand, the fathers ought to bear some shame as well.

The carrots met the same fate as the rest of the doctor’s cottage pie.

“You’d best be on your way, Mr. St. Michael. Lady Nita has no doubt been accosted by old Clackengeld, who complains of bilious digestion when what he needs is a good purge and a bleeding or three. He’s usually lurking at the livery and knows better than to trouble me with his ailments.”

Tremaine dropped a few coins on the table, snatched a cinnamon biscuit before the doctor could inhale them all, and picked up the scarf Lady Nita had left draped over the back of her chair.

“I’ll heed your suggestion,” Tremaine said, “and be about my business. A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Dr. Horton.”

Horton saluted with his pint, and as Tremaine departed from the common, the physician was helping himself to the food remaining on Lady Nita’s plate.

Tremaine spotted her ladyship with the horses, across the street from the inn. She looked chilly, and she’d managed to get one side of her hem wet.

“You have a habit of leaving necessary items of apparel where they’ll do you no good,” Tremaine said, wrapping the scarf about Lady Nita’s ears and neck. “Did Horton upset your digestion?”

Her ladyship’s expression was serene, as smooth as the inn’s windows, which reflected the gray winter sky and gave away nothing of the roaring hearths and bustling custom within.

Insight struck, like the cold gust of wind that sent a dusting of snow swirling across the square: the more composed Lady Nita appeared, the greater her upset.

“Dr. Horton is much respected,” she said. “Shall we go?”

“You don’t respect him,” Tremaine replied, tugging on Atlas’s girth, then taking it up one hole. “I don’t particularly like him.”

Lady Nita relaxed fractionally at Tremaine’s observation.

“He’s old-fashioned to a fault,” she said, “and refuses to consider any medical advance that didn’t originate in England, preferably with some colleague he studied beside when German George was on the throne.”

Tremaine had traveled enough on the Continent to understand Nita’s frustration. English medicine was considered backward by Continental physicians, and yet men like Horton toiled away in every shire in the realm, doing the best they could with a science that was far from exact.

“Up you go, my lady. What’s in the sacks?” For two sacks were tied over Altas’s withers.

“I went around to the kitchen and bought a few things for the Chalmerses.” Lady Nita stepped into Tremaine’s hands and was up on her horse without Tremaine having to exert himself.

Her ladyship wasn’t skinny—Tremaine had reason to know this—but she was fit, and she didn’t lace herself too tightly to draw breath.

He rather liked that about her, though he did not look forward to this call upon the wretched of the parish.

Tremaine swung into a cold saddle and let the shock reverberate through his system for a moment. To combat that unpleasantness, he summoned the memory of Lady Nita’s soft warmth pressed against him in her nightclothes.

“Is Horton capable?” Tremaine asked as the horses shuffled away from the square.

“In some matters,” Lady Nita conceded. “He insists on bleeding a woman when she’s expecting, though if you talk to women who’ve carried a number of times or to midwives, they’ll tell you they don’t favor it. Many physicians on the Continent refuse to bleed a pregnant woman, saying it weakens her when she’s most in need of her strength. The diet Horton prescribes for an expectant mother wouldn’t sustain a rambunctious child.”

In this, Lady Nita’s sentiments echoed Grandpapa’s, who’d favored hearty fare for children and expectant mothers, contrary to prevailing English medical wisdom.

About which Tremaine did not particularly care.

Though Lady Nita had spared a thought for Tremaine’s sheep, about whom he did care, for healthy sheep were profitable sheep.

Tremaine also cared about the Chalmers family—inconvenient though the sentiment was—as evidenced by his relief that a plume of smoke rose from the chimney, and the wood piled on the porch remained abundant.

“I can stay with the horses,” Tremaine said when he’d assisted Lady Nita to dismount. Her hem, formerly damp, was now frozen stiff, and yet Tremaine could not recall a puddle into which she might have stepped.

“Nonsense. The horses will stand obediently enough,” Lady Nita said, handing Tremaine the sacks she’d brought from the inn. “The children will want to see you.”

Tremaine did not want to see them. “We ought not to stay for long, lest your brother worry.”

Lady Nita turned toward the cottage, shoulders square. “Nicholas has greater concerns than whether I tarry for five minutes on my way home from a social call.”

Like whether to consign his sister Susannah to a lifetime in a household where women fell down steps. On that rankling notion, Tremaine followed Lady Nita up the rickety porch stairs and wondered what fool had implied he’d be willing to accompany her ladyship on this outing.

Lady Nita rapped on the door and waited, while Tremaine stood behind her, holding sacks of provisions and pondering the doctor’s philosophy. Was it kinder to let this family starve or freeze today? Kinder to see the children into the poorhouse, where their lives would shortly end?

Addy Chalmers opened the door, the baby at her shoulder swaddled in a clean shawl, a tiny knitted cap on the infant’s head.

“Lady Nita, Mr. St. Michael, welcome.” Addy looked tired but sober, and the cottage was as neat as such a space could be, also not too cold, though Tremaine kept his coat on.

Nothing short of the Second Coming would relieve the place of the stench of boiled cabbage.

“Addy, children, hello,” Lady Nita said, sounding genuinely glad to see them. “I think the baby has grown already.”

The ladies were off, rhapsodizing about the infant, disappearing into the sleeping alcove while Tremaine was left to investigate the sacks.

“I can hold your horse again,” said the girl…Mary? “Or ride him for you.”

“Thank you, but I must decline that kind offer,” Tremaine replied. “Lady Nita and I can stay only a moment. I do believe there’s cottage pie in this sack, still warm, and bread and butter, along with cold milk and a few butter biscuits. What shall we do with it?”

“Eat it,” said the youngest boy, whose nose ran ever so copiously.

Tremaine passed Mary a handkerchief. “Please see to your brother. Why don’t we start with bread and butter, and save the cottage pie for your supper?”

Keen disappointment registered on four little faces, replaced by eager anticipation when Tremaine cut thick hunks of warm bread and slathered each one with butter.

And still, the ladies remained talking softly behind the curtain.

“Who can show me some letters?” Tremaine asked, because no toys were in evidence, and the only book looked to be a Book of Common Prayer perched on the mantel.

“We haven’t paper,” Mary said. “I can write my name, though. On paper. We have a pencil. Mama knows where it is.”

Tremaine fell back on strategies he’d learned around the shepherds’ campfires.

“Paper is an extravagance—a luxury,” he said. “We need only our minds and a fire in the hearth.”

He took a seat, cross-legged, on a floor even colder than his saddle had been and was soon ringed with children. While they watched, he spread a layer of ash over the hearthstones and used a stick of kindling to draw a large letter M in the ashes.

“Look familiar?” he asked the girl.

“M, for Mary!” she said, her expression suggesting Tremaine had put the entire French language into her keeping. “Do another!”

They had worked nearly through the alphabet—A is for apple, B is for butter, C is for cockles—when the ladies rejoined them. Nita’s expression was quietly pleased, the baby was drowsing on the mother’s shoulder, and Addy looked…in need of a long nap.

As new mothers should look.

“I hadn’t thought to use the ashes,” Addy said. “We certainly have enough of those, and the boys want to learn their letters.” She kissed the baby’s cheek, expression puzzled. “Thank you. For the food as well.”

“You are welcome,” Tremaine said, coming to his feet and resisting the urge to dust off his backside. “I’d never realized one can learn the alphabet by visiting an imaginary pantry. Lady Nita, shall we be on our way?”

The youngest boy was again in need of the handkerchief, while Tremaine needed to be anywhere else. He’d wanted Lady Nita’s company for the trip to Stonebridge, but he hadn’t anticipated that she’d tarry long here at the cottage.

“It is time we were leaving,” she said, readjusting the scarf around her neck. She paused, her gaze on the little fellow docilely tolerating his sister’s ministrations with the handkerchief.

The child had weak lungs. Evan was his name. He’d outgrown his trousers a year ago, and the coat he wore like a night robe was fastened with twine.

Lady Nita’s eyes held a question, about little boys and scarves, about kindness and the poorhouse. Tremaine nodded slightly, and her ladyship wrapped a beautiful blue lamb’s wool scarf about the neck of a wretched boy.

“I’ll want to hear letters should I visit again,” Tremaine said very sternly, though he’d paid his last voluntary call on this household. “And I’ll expect that baby to have doubled in size.”

He bolted for the door with as much dignity as he could muster—precious little—and Lady Nita caught him by the hand before they were down the porch steps.

“Mr. St. Michael.” She drew him closer, until her arms were around Tremaine’s middle, and his had somehow found their way around her too. “You are so very dear.”

The words melted an old anxiety in Tremaine. He could tolerate being dear, to Lady Nita anyway, better than he could tolerate the stench of cabbage, dirt, and despair. He rested his chin on her crown, fortifying himself for trotting about in the cold without benefit of his favorite scarf.

“You looked after my sheep,” he said.

“You looked after mine, sir. Teaching the children their letters that way was brilliant. Those are bright children. They’ll be reading their Book of Common Prayer by Beltane.”

Ironic that the only book in that house should be from the Church. Tremaine stepped back, because a chilly ride yet awaited them.

“The mother can read?”

“Addy had a genteel upbringing. Some local fellow got her in trouble, her family turned their backs on her, and the rest is a cautionary tale. I’ve told her about vinegar and sponges, but they don’t work for everybody.”

Lady Nita pulled on her gloves, as if such a topic were unremarkable for the proper daughter of a peer. Would Horton have bothered to tell a soiled dove about vinegar and sponges? Did he even know? Had Lady Nita’s mother been the one to pass along knowledge decent women weren’t supposed to have?

And was Tremaine the only soul in Christendom affronted that Lady Nita should be burdened with these concerns?

“Do you ever think the Chalmers family would be better off in the poorhouse?” Tremaine asked.

Lady Nita fairly bounced down the steps, the visit having apparently restored her energy as cottage pie and ale could not.

“Tell me, Mr. St. Michael, would the merino sheep be better off with Edward Nash? Would you leave your tups in his care?”

Tremaine boosted Lady Nita into the saddle for the fourth time that day and did not dignify her question with a reply, for a gentleman did not argue with a lady. Lady Nita looked after this family and after others. She did not question the responsibility or attempt to shirk it, even when she ought to.

Who looked after her? Somebody clearly needed to, lest illness or nervous exhaustion carry her off. If Tremaine offered to take up that post, would she make a habit of tucking herself close to him and finding him very dear?