“I’m very sorry to hear that, Mr. Knight, but I must say you’re looking otherwise well. You haven’t changed at all since last I saw you.”
“It’s sorry I was about yer father’s death.”
Lord Paxton’s head lowered as he nodded.
“We played together as lads, yer father and me.” Then Mr. Knight greeted Stevie and Mary. “What have you brought me, lad?”
“We’ve brought you Mrs. Ballard’s fresh bread. Mama says you like it very much.”
“Indeed I do. I never said nothin’ while Mrs. Knight was alive, but that Mrs. Ballard could bake circles around my wife.”
“I daresay Mrs. Ballard has a finer oven,” Lord Paxton said.
Mr. Knight chuckled, then started coughing.
A moment later, he regarded Mary, his eyes twinkling in spite of all his infirmities. “I ask you, Lord David, did you ever see anything prettier than Mrs. Milne?”
A flush crept up Mary’s cheeks. She shook her head. “Oh, no!”
Lord Paxton turned slowly toward her, his smoldering gaze meeting hers. Then he lazily perused her from the top of her head to the tip of her toes. “I don’t believe I have, Mr. Knight. How is it one with eyes as old as yours still can pick out the pretty ones?”
Both men chuckled.
“I’ll tell you what,” Mr. Knight said. “She’s as pretty on the inside as she is on the outside. People in the village who’ve known me my whole life aren’t as good to me as this little lady. She’s an angel, that’s what she is.”
“Mr. Knight! I did not come here to be praised. I merely wanted to see how you are doing today. How are you feeling?”
“About the same as when you were here last.”
“Is there anything you need?”
“I need to be able to sleep without waking myself up coughing.”
She moved to him and stroked his thinning white hair. “I wish I could oblige.”
“How are the boy’s lungs?”
She shrugged. “Not as good as I’d like. In fact we have to go before it gets colder. We’ve got to gather greenery for Christmas.” She could tell that the little bit of talking he’d done had tired him.
David drove past the deciduous beech wood grove and eventually came to a copse of evergreens and stopped. He hopped off the box, and then helped Stevie down.
Stevie gathered pinecones and snapped off low-lying sprigs of holly and conifer while David used his knife to sever larger pieces of conifer to use for garlands on the mantelpieces. As he worked, David found himself thinking about the sprig of mistletoe he’d hung over the drawing room door the previous day and wondering how he could manage to catch Mrs. Milne under it.
Her close proximity during today’s drive had nearly destroyed his composure. What the devil was there about her that stoked his desire the way she did? Why her more than the other women he knew? For none of the other women with whom he associated—either socially as he did with Mrs. Milne or intimately as he did with certain other women—had ever affected him as she did.
Granted, she was pretty. But he knew and had known many beautiful women, women who had never stirred his lust in the way this proper curate’s daughter did.
For he had finally come to concede that she was not The Schemer he’d thought her to be. He should have trusted his father’s instincts. Short of that, he should have trusted Mrs. Ballard. Both of them were too shrewd to be fooled by a manipulator. Both of them were genuinely fond of Mrs. Milne.
And now Mr. Knight added more testament to her intrinsic goodness.
As he moved from tree to tree on this chilly December afternoon, he recalled her words as he’d carried her downstairs before leaving the house. You should tell him…Praise is more precious than jewels.
People are more precious than jewels.
He began to ponder his old tutor and to remember sitting at the man’s shabby desk where David had sat conjugating Latin verbs and reading Plato, and he came to realize that long after the Paxtons’ generous monies had been spent, praise from a future earl would have meant more than the money.
She’s right.
He vowed to write to his old tutor that very night.
His arms piled high with as many branches as he could carry, he started back to his vehicle. “Come, Stevie, it seems to be getting colder by the minute. We’ll hurry home and get you in front of a warm fire, and we’ll have Mrs. Ballard whip up some hot wassail. How does that sound?”
In the daylight David realized Stevie’s blond hair was the same shade as his mother’s. He was also possessed of her sweet nature.
“I love wassail!”
“If the weather’s good tomorrow, you and I are going to the village to purchase Christmas presents for your mother.”
And David knew exactly what he was going to buy for her.
When they arrived at Darnley, David tensed when he saw Benedict Blatherwick’s coach and four drawn up right in front of the doorway. Did the man think he was the proprietor here? “No consideration whatsoever!” he barked.
“Oh, lookey! Mr. Blatherwick’s brought his whole team—and they’re all matched,” Stevie said with admiration.
“My son does love horses,” Mrs. Milne said, smiling.
David was repulsed by the man’s blatant display of wealth. While the use of a coach and four was normally reserved for long travels, Blatherwick was no doubt intent on showing off the fruits of his fortune.
And why in the devil was The Buffoon paying a call at Darnley? It no longer belonged…Then David remembered about the drawn-out story about Blatherwick’s flowers. He’d been bringing them to Mrs. Milne. The fellow meant to be her suitor!
The very idea sent David’s gut plummeting. What a gross misalliance!
He’d show The Fool! He hopped down, then drew Mrs. Milne into his arms while instructing Ballard, who’d just opened the door, to bring in the collected greenery. When she hooked her delicate arms about his neck, David’s breath thinned. He fleetingly wished he could march right upstairs to his bedchamber with this most intoxicating of women. For nothing had ever felt so good as holding her in his arms.
“Mr. Blatherwick awaits in the drawing room, Mrs. Milne,” Ballard said.
David climbed the stairs. In spite of her slimness, by the time he reached the landing, he was winded, but he was determined to make it all the way to the drawing room with her in his arms. He’d show Blatherwick!
He proceeded into the room and went straight to the sofa in front of the fire where he placed her, instructing her to stretch out her legs in order to keep her ankle elevated. Then he turned to the boy. “Why don’t you come and warm yourself by the fire, Stevie?”
Throughout this entrance, Blatherwick had stood, and now Mrs. Milne addressed him. “Good afternoon, Mr. Blatherwick.”
“Good afternoon. Your housekeeper has done me the goodness of putting the flowers I brought you into these vases. Are they not beautiful? Just like the woman for whom they were intended.” He indicated a full vase of pink roses on a tea table near the sofa and another vase of multi-coloured blooms arranged in a footed porcelain pot on the mantelpiece.
David wondered if The Buffoon was going to inquire about her ankle.