“That wasn’t one of the rules.”

“And neither was it good sportsmanship to try to cozen a judge.” Alice gave him her best The-Governess-Is-Not-Happy glare. “The other team is guilty of the same, so I will not assess a penalty.”

“I will take my leave.” Ethan executed an elaborate bow. “If you see my opponent, tell him I’m at the stables, corrupting his seconds.”

“Out!”

Eleven

Horses needed the occasional drink, especially in warmer weather. At least the coachy looked apologetic when he insisted Hart Collins pause on his journey between house parties.

Boring, staid, excruciatingly proper house parties held by those whose social aspirations meant a title—any title at all—would find welcome in their midst.

“Very well.” Hart Collins stood beside the coach and surveyed the unprepossessing village green. “But if I sicken from drinking the dog piss that passes for ale in such surrounds, be it on your head, John Coachman.”

“Aye, milord.”

The coachy would have a nip too, of course. The man drove better drunk than sober, something Collins did not hold against him—a drunk being less inclined to carp about timely payment of his wages.

The inn was, like its setting, tidy, clean, and completely unremarkable. A bucolic Tudor exponent of English respectability such as Collins occasionally pretended he missed when dealing with the infernal heat and insubordinate servants in Italy.

And sometimes, the barmaids in such establishments were not averse to earning a few extra coins. Then too, the horses would move along more smartly if they were given a chance to blow, after all. One shouldn’t neglect one’s cattle.

“A proper squire would come in occasionally for a pint.”

The speaker was hunched over the dark, polished wood of the bar, and his tone suggested this was not the first drink with which he fueled his discontent.

“Hush, ye, Thatcher. We don’t all of us need to cast our business to the wind. Mr. Grey pays his tithes and minds his own.” The rebuke came from a plump matron sitting in the snug with the unsmiling specimen who must have been her yeoman spouse.

“He can well afford to pay his tithes,” Thatcher retorted, straightening. “Man’s a bloody nabob, and watches every coin.”

Yokels would ever complain about the gentry, the gentry would complain about the nobs, and the titles would complain about the Crown. Merry Old England was predictable, at least.

Collins stepped up to the bar. “A pint of your best, and some decent fare.”

“There’s ham and cheese, and bread just out of the oven,” the bartender said while pulling a pale pint. He wasn’t an old man, but he had the self-contained quality of most in his station.

“Ethan Grey’s cheese,” Thatcher spat. “You purchase your goods from a man who’s too high and mighty to patronize the only inn in the neighborhood.”

Ethan Grey?

“That’s enough from you, Thatcher,” the conscience in the corner piped up. “Most would be spending their free time with family, not biting the hand that feeds them.” She sent a significant glance at Collins, a clear reminder that foreigners—those from outside the parish—were not to be parties to local grievances.

“This Ethan Grey,” Collins said, sliding his drink down the bar and taking a position next to Thatcher. “He’s one of the landholders hereabouts?”

“Owns one of the prettiest properties in the shire,” Thatcher replied. “Imports his sheep and cattle, keeps a prime stable, but spoils his wee brats rotten and thinks he’s too good for the rest of us—and him nothing but some lord’s bastard, or so they say.”

Sometimes, just when it seemed those fickle bitches known as the Fates turned their backs on a man, they were in fact leaving in his hands the means to solve all his problems.

Ethan Grey had children—small children. “Is this Ethan Grey tall, blond, and blue-eyed? Serious as a parson?”

“More serious than Vicar Fleming,” Thatcher groused. “A hard man and hardheaded. Hard on the help what gives him an honest day’s work.”

From the scent of Thatcher and the dirt on his boots and clothes, the man was a hostler of some sort. In pursuit of self-interest, Collins was willing to have truck with even such a one as this.

“And you say he’s wealthy and dotes on his children? Come, Mr. Thatcher. Perhaps you’d like to share in the plebeian offerings that pass for sustenance at this establishment.”

Thatcher looked momentarily wary, until the bartender put a plate of sliced ham, cheese, and brown bread on the bar.

“I’m a mite peckish,” Thatcher allowed.

Collins picked up the plate with one hand and his drink with the other—a surprisingly mellow summer ale. “Come along. I have a few questions for you.”

As they made their way to a corner table as far as possible from the bar and the snug, Collins’s mind began to spin possibilities. Across the room, the bartender scrubbed out a mug with a dingy white rag and said nothing.

* * *

When Nick returned to the kitchen, he brought paper, pencils, and a gum eraser, and sat at the worktable. Alice peered over his shoulder as he sketched, startled at the whimsy of the structure on the page.

“You could really build that?”

“Of course.” Nick didn’t look up. “It would take some doing. On a raised structure like this, we might have to paint the boards before we build, which means being able to see how the whole fits together from the raw lumber.”

“These are like your bird houses, but bigger.”

“And one must plan safe entry and exits, because little boys don’t generally fly. Bring your tea over here, Alice. I’m about to interrogate you.”

“So interrogate,” Alice challenged him as she took the bench opposite him at the table. “Be warned I’m not the tattling kind.”

“It’s only tattling if somebody has misbehaved. Are you happy here?”

Not the question she’d anticipated. “Happier than I thought I’d be. Overwhelmed too.”

“Overwhelmed?” Nick frowned at his sketch. “I’m not sure I can credit that such a thing is possible. They are good boys, Alice. How can you be overwhelmed to be teaching them their sums and declensions? Priscilla was overwhelming, with her wild imagination and careless heart.”

“Wild imagination?” Alice took a sip of her tea, aiming a pointed look at the sketch on the page. Nick had designed a two-story affair patterned to blend right into the surrounding foliage, complete with birds and a birdhouse secreted among the leaves and branches.

“Wild.” He used the eraser the better to shade the foliage, while the scents of cinnamon and clove filled the kitchen. “The stories that child concocts should be published.” He frowned at his sketch then paused to help himself to a sip of Alice’s tea. “You put cinnamon in this, and you’re dodging my question.”

“The boys are busy,” Alice said, “and you’re right. Academically, they are well within my abilities.”

“But?” Nick set his sketch aside and regarded Alice closely, all hint of teasing gone from his features.

“But I realize I am tromping around Tydings like a mountaineer, Nick. I used to go for days at Sutcliffe without leaving the walls of the manor. My hip hurt, true, but here, it seems the more I walk, the less it hurts.”

“This overwhelms you? And why didn’t you just tell us you stayed indoors because you hurt?”

Yes, why hadn’t she? “It doesn’t bother me much now. That’s a change, a big change. Miss Portman,” she said with some consternation, “does not enjoy the outdoors.”

Nick cocked his head. “But you do. You were positively beaming on that horse, Alice. You were enjoying the outdoors and being on horseback.”

“That overwhelms me too. Before this week, I’d gone twelve years without managing a horse, Nick. I’d avoided titled company, but ended up on the arm of an earl here in Ethan’s gardens, and we’re off to do the pretty with more of same on Wednesday. It makes my head swim, to tell the truth.”

“I’m a title.” Nick swiped more of her tea.

“You’re just you, for which I am grateful.”

“So are you overwhelmed with joy, or worries?”

“Both.” Alice peered at her almost-empty mug. “Then there is your brother.”

“Ah.”

What a man could do with one syllable. “He overwhelms me too.”

“It’s the family charm. We’re endowed with it in proportion to our size.”

“Abominable man.” Alice stalled by sipping the last of her tea. “Ethan is charming, and you should not mock him.”

Nick sobered. “I don’t mock him, and I don’t understand him either. He used to have charm to burn, Alice. I was convinced, growing up, he would have made a much better earl than I, and I used to pray he’d end up with the title, though it was a legal impossibility.”

“Why would he have made the better earl? You’re the heir.”

“Ethan is so much more of a man than I am. He’s not just smarter, he’s wiser. He’s not quite too big, whereas I have the dimensions of an ox. He never descended to chasing skirts out of immature resentment of life’s responsibilities. He managed to dust himself off after Papa’s wrongheaded foolishness, and he comprehends finances with an intuition I lack. He’s just… better. I am glad Leah did not meet him first.”

“Have you told him this?” Alice asked, wondering why women were considered less rational than men.

“He would just give me that cool, kind smile of his.” Nick scrubbed a hand over his face. “He’d tell me he hadn’t any idea what I was going on about, then change the subject. It unnerves me.”

“Why would that unnerve you?”