CHAPTER 1
A PICNIC - MAY 1817
The pony cart lumbered up the hill.
“Is this safe?” queried Lady Cecilia Branstoke with a delighted laugh as the four-wheeled farm cart hit another bump in the narrow trail, which was little more than a sheep’s path. The cart jerked to the left. She wrapped her right arm around her infant son while holding on to the edge of the cart with her other arm, swaying with the motion.
Since marrying Sir James two years ago, she’d been involved in multiple dangerous mysteries and had come to consider herself an intrepid individual, up for any adventure! And she still thought of herself as such; however, since the birth of their son five months ago, she found she had developed an air of caution she hadn’t detected in herself before. The mother instinct, she supposed.
The pony cart driver—and instigator of a planned picnic—Lady Elinor Aldrich, laughed. “This is the worst, I promise you, and well worth the journey up the hill. Wait till you see the views!”
“I shall hold you to that,” Cecilia returned as young Hugh whimpered at the cart’s jostling.
Tied in place in the back of the pony cart and giggling with each bump rode one-year-old Charlotte, Elinor’s daughter.
She’d met Elinor and her husband, Simon, Lord Aldrich, shortly after she and James had wed and moved into Summerworth Park. They had become fast friends, eschewing titles and addressing each other by their first names.
“Is this our destination?” Cecilia asked as they crested the hill onto a meadow covered with grasses and spring flowers swaying in the light, late morning breeze. She looked about. Though no trees grew within the meadow, stands of trees edged three sides except for where the road they’d come up from the west continued to cross the meadow and where the meadow slipped down to a valley in the east.
“Yes. We’ll stop the cart at the edge of the wood. The horse will find plenty of chalk grass and wildflowers to graze upon.”
Lady Elinor climbed down from the cart first and took Hugh from Cecilia’s arms so she could easily climb down as well. After Cecilia shook out the skirt of her well-worn, comfortable blue muslin dress, she took Hugh back and looked again around the beautiful meadow. She could hear birdsong in the stands of trees and the breeze rustling the leaves like little bells. Cowslips and Bird’s-foot trefoil clusters of yellow and orange dotted the meadow, and a white and blue little flower Cecilia couldn’t name had sprinkled itself throughout the grass.
“Who told you about this place for a picnic?” Cecilia asked Elinor as she inhaled a sweet, honey-like scent from nearby flowers.
“Mrs. Jones,” Elinor said absently as she untied the straps that held Charlotte in place.
“The Vicar’s wife?”
“Yes, she likes to come here to practice her watercolor painting. But after she told me about it, I learned it is a well-known meadow for family outings, with the sheep grazingareas a little further down the road we came up.” Elinor lifted Charlotte out of the cart and then handed her a pillow, telling her she could help Mama take things to their picnic spot.
“Mrs. Jones paints?” Cecilia asked. She couldn’t envision the busy, stout, smiling, and gossipy woman sitting still long enough to paint.
Elinor gave her a side-eye glance with a wry smile as she handed Cecilia the Branstoke basket of picnic offerings. “If one would call it painting. The poor dear tries. I have offered to teach her what I know, and I know others have as well, but she has turned all offers aside. She simply enjoys doing the painting, whether it is good or not. —And I shouldn’t imply she is that bad; I’ve seen improvement over time. Her dawn and dusk skies are not as muddy-colored as they were a year ago.” She picked up a blanket and her basket. She led the way to a spot on the west edge of the meadow where a few ash trees stepped into the meadow, promising shade.
“If I were one to paint, I should imagine this would be a beautiful place to do so. But why don’t the sheep graze here?” Cecilia asked as she followed Elinor.
“Because of the escarpment,” Elinor said, pointing to the far side of the meadow where no trees grew. “Simon tells me sheep and lambs can be amazingly clumsy near a cliff edge,” she said drily.
“I wouldn’t have thought that of sheep,” Cecilia mused.
“The real reason is the edge is where another band of chalk nears the surface of the land, and chalk can be crumbly and fall away underfoot. We shall stay to this side of the meadow.”
“I should say so!”
Elinor spread the blanket out, and the women used their baskets of food to anchor opposite corners of the blanket against the occasional gusts of wind. They went back and forth to the cart a few times for other items.
“There, now that is done, it only needs our husbands, and we may eat,” Elinor said.
“Where do you suppose the gentlemen are?” Cecilia asked. “I expected them to scout out a favored spot for us. I told James, since it isn’t too hot today, that I wanted dappled sunlight.”
“Most likely looking at sheep,” Elinor said. “Simon has been wanting to show James his sheep. He wants to discuss combining resources,” she said with a wry smile. “Charlotte and I will walk to the top of the road—such as it is—to see if we can see them in the valley beyond.”
Cecilia nodded as she removed her straw bonnet. She lay back contentedly against a pillow as she held Hugh. She and Hugh were in the shade, except when the breeze gently blew the leaves of the trees above, allowing sunlight to flit across them. She watched as Elinor and Charlotte walked slowly to the crest of the hill to look down sloping hills into what Cecilia knew was the dry valley below. She saw Elinor raise her handkerchief in the air and wave it before she turned with Charlotte to come back to the picnic blanket. Elinor paused a moment when Charlotte stopped to pick a wildflower. The little girl, surprisingly stable on her chubby little legs, hurried toward Cecilia and held the flower out to her.
“Thank you, Charlotte!” Cecilia enthused. She made a show of sticking the flower in her hair. Charlotte laughed and awkwardly clapped her chubby little hands together.
“As I thought, they are looking at sheep,” Elinor said as she sat down on the blanket. “They saw me and indicated they would join us.” She reached across the blanket to grab Charlotte’s hand before she could put a clump of grass in her mouth. “No, darling, we don’t eat grass,” she said as she pried the grass from her fingers.
