A lump caught at the back of her throat. “Mr. MacKintosh is courting you?”
Jane rocked her head from side to side in a vague response. “Father has encouraged his suit, but even a generous dowry has not been enough to attract his notice. Odd for the eighth son of an earl, is it not? Papa says it’s merely due to his attention to the work being done here.”
A little knot of tension curled in Piper’s gut. “I thought you told me he was nothing more than another bored nobleman who talked nonsense?” A reminder of what her friendhadn’tliked about him. A friendly reminder, that was all.
“Talk of farming methods with a lady is nonsensical, is it not? Partaking of it on a regular basis is even more gauche. No one of good society would consider him if they could see him as we have here in the fields.” Jane gave a delicate shudder. “So rustic.”
Piper silently disagreed. That agrarian coarseness provided her a variety of reactions, none of them disdainful. While riding over the summer, she’d spotted him from a distance many times, clearing new fields with the cottagers. Not overseeing the work, rather in the middle of it like a common man.
The smoke rising from burning stumps and brush had provided clear signals of areas to avoid. Contrarily, she’d been drawn by them. Watching from afar as he labored, swinging an axe or hauling ropes and chains. Had she first met him thus, she would never have assumed him a nobleman. Tall and broad, sweaty and dirty. His sweat-dampened shirt hugged his broad chest, as his dark brown hair clung to his temples and cheekbones.
That he physically participated in the labor most nobles considered beneath them warranted a share of her respect.
Rustic must agree with her. What would Jane think if she knew Piper wielded a dust mop with regularity? She doubted her friend would consider any degree of boredom reason enough for the daughter of a marquis to toil thus. It was one of the few secrets between them.
“You wouldn’t consider him then?” Piper concluded. “If he were to pay his addresses, I mean?”
“Oh dear!” Jane shook her head with a huff of laughter. “He might labor like a field hand, but he is the brother of an earl and a handsome man, at that. I’ll be seeing my third Season soon enough. Mother insists I’m getting to the point where I cannot be fussy.”
Piper refrained from expressing her contrary opinion. She was of the mind that a bit of discernment saved a young miss woes aplenty.
Herself included.
“Why is it so terribly hot today? Last year the trees were nearly turning by this point,” Jane bemoaned, her thoughts apparently not as fixed on the previous subject as Piper’s.
“The days were too cool and damp with rain to sit outside like this.”
“Which is worse? Neither allows a lady to appear or feel her best.” Jane snapped her fan closed and climbed to her feet. “I think I’ll be off, Piper dear.”
Gloom settled, more weighty than the humid air. Piper rolled onto her back then shifted to sit, a plea for her friend to stay longer on her lips. Parliamentary sessions would resume the following week. Jane’s father had already returned to London to occupy his seat in the Commons. Jane and her mother would soon follow.
And Piper would be alone once more.
She shook her head. It did her no better to dwell on her issues than it did to bemoan them to her friends. They were aware enough without her harping about them. If she disguised her loneliness to assuage their worries for her…
Well, that passage fromMiddlemarchneatly explained the reason. Pride.
What an ugly thing it was.
For all that, she couldn’t stop herself. “Must you?”
With a sympathetic smile, Jane reached out and caught her hand. “I will suffer many things for you, unfortunately this heat tries even the devotion of the fiercest friendship, does it not?”
She was teasing. Piper knew it, though she couldn’t summon a smile of her own in turn. “We could go back to the house for some lemonade.”
“If I could bathe in it perhaps. Miss Martin says we’ll have rain tomorrow, which should bring some relief to the weather,” Jane said, referring to her governess. “As soon as I can circumvent Mother’s notice, I’ll send word. For now, I long for a bath before dinner.”
“We haven’t even finished the chapter.”
“Pish, we both know how it ends.”
Piper had readMiddlemarchbefore. Long ago. When they were mere words on a page and not a personal revelation to her.
Glumly, she donned her hat and walked arm in arm with Jane from their shady spot on the western edge of the rose gardens. Dozens of narrow footpaths wove through the sparsely forested areas of the park. Clearings were positioned strategically for the greatest impact of design versus nature. Visitors would pause in awe as they came upon the random glades of grass marked by a rose garden here, an aviary there, or a folly draped in wisteria.
Those had been Harry’s mother’s additions to Dinton Grange. Her brother had painted an enviable picture with his stories of her kindness and grace. Piper always felt as if the sense of peace she found wandering these gardens was a reflection of Grace Milbourne Brudenall. They stretched to the western boundary of the estate where it met Meadowcroft. A low fence marked the line.
With a hug and a kiss farewell as they reached it, Jane climbed the fence without even a flash of an ankle and soon disappeared from sight. For Piper, it was like she was Alice standing on one side of the looking glass, imagining all the fun and amusement on the other side.
