Page 35 of The Lady's Companion
“Yes,” she admitted. “But David, he’s ruined my life!”
The bailiff only smiled and pulled to a stop in the neat half circle in front of a stone building with three sides. “Ruined your life?” he repeated. “Come now, Susan. Do Hamptons run much to high drama?”
“You don’t understand,” she began as he held out his hand to help her down.
“I’m sure I do not, Susan, if you say so,” he agreed, all complacence.
“Only an idiot would argue with you!” she said with some feeling, then put her lips firmly together. I am fast showing myself to be an idiot. I shall change the subject. “What is this place?”
“A good place to change the subject,” he replied promptly, then held up both hands to ward off her expression. “It’s the shearing floor,” he said with only a slight tremor in his voice. He led the horse and gig more within the shelter of the building and blanketed the animal. “We’ll be in there working our arses off when it’s almost summer.”
“You or the sheep?” she asked, and was rewarded with a laugh. “Both, Miss Hampton, both,” he joked. He led her toward the pens, where the sheep milled about. “Ben keeps the ewes with lamb close by, and the rams farther out, but not too far.” He raised his voice to be heard above the sheep. “We try to birth as many of the lambs here, and then release them to the far pasturage when it’s warmer.” He took her hand as the wind picked up, and she followed him to a separate stone cottage where smoke poured from the chimney. “Ben knows his weather.”
She found herself occupied with anchoring her skirt and petticoat against the sudden wind and let him lead her along. As she looked toward the cottage, the door opened and a small boy tugged her inside. He was as dark as David Wiggins, but slim of frame, with that silent watchfulness of shy children. The bailiff nodded to him and spoke in Welsh. The boy’s face lit up and he answered at length, gesturing toward the sheepfold. The bailiff returned another comment, and the boy hunched himself against the wind and ran to the fold.
The single room was cluttered, and Susan was prepared to think ill of its tenants, except that there was no dirt or bad odor.She sniffed the air, breathing in the pungent aroma of wool and lanolin. She sat on one of the two benches, admiring a pile of sheepskins in one comer that must be the communal bed, and a border collie nursing a litter of pups and keeping one eye open on the visitors.
“Is he Ben Rich’s son?” she asked when David sat beside her.
“None of that. I took him out of a Welsh workhouse when Ben reconciled himself to living a few more years without a hand. He was six then, and the workhouse governor had never bothered to give him a name, only a number.”
“Surely not!” Susan said, shocked.
The bailiff shrugged. “That’s what they do when they get little mites who don’t look strong enough to survive.” He managed a short laugh, with no humor. “And they feed ’em watered gruel to make sure they don’t live long, and bury them three or four to a plasterboard coffin.” He looked with satisfaction in the direction that the boy had gone. “Number Three July fooled them and had lived to six years when I came looking for a shepherd’s left hand. I named him Owen Thrice, and Ben Rich can testify that he’s worth his weight in gold.”
You are an amazing man, she thought as he went to the door, alert for sounds she could only strain to hear. “They didn’t recognize you when you returned?” she asked on a hunch.
He grinned at her. “You’re a hard one to surprise, Susan,” he said. “No, they didn’t. A lot of water has tumbled under this bridge.” He sighed. “The old governor was gone, damn his eyes, but they’re still just numbering the babies. Sometimes I think nothing ever changes, but once in a while...”
He opened the door then, and the shepherd came in, his hand held tight in the boy’s two hands. “Wind’s picking up, Davey,” he commented. “What’s so important that it can’t wait until snow’s gone from the air?” He nodded to Susan. “You got married at last,” he surmised, a smile creasing his face.
“No, no luck there, even though I tried,” David said cheerfully while Susan writhed inside with embarrassment. “She turned me down. This is Miss Hampton, Lady Bushnell’s newest companion.”
“You might want to reconsider, lass, so don’t burn that bridge entirely,” Ben told her, his voice mild. He held out his only hand to her. “Pleased to meet you, miss.”
She took his hand, determined not to be embarrassed if no one else was. “Your hand, sir!” she exclaimed, forgetting whatever poise she was attempting. “Oh, my! It’s so soft!”
“Comes from working with sheep, lass.” He winked at her and grinned, and she found it impossible not to do the same back.
She held out Joel Steinman’s glove to the shepherd. “Actually, sir, Mr. Steinman sent this to the bailiff and asked me to present it to you.”
The shepherd took the glove and rubbed it against his cheek. “You mean Colonel Steinman, lass,” he corrected, a smile on his face, “hero of the Fighting Fifth Foot, Regular Army.”
“Oh, no! Yes! I’m sure I do,” she amended as the bailiff trod upon her foot. “He ... he wanted to make sure that you wore it in good health,” she said as she moved away from David Wiggins and his boots.
“Well, I do,” said the shepherd, pulling on the glove with his teeth and flexing his fingers. “I don’t mind telling you that it still gives me a boost on bad days to know that I’m sharing gloves with a genuine Waterloo hero.”
“You know, of course, that you ought to be shot for telling such stretchers,” she scolded the bailiff as he helped her back into the gig an hour later, after mutton stew and coffee strong enough to choose its own path into her stomach. A fat lot of good it does me to admonish you, she thought, taking into account the mild look on his face.
“Who’s hurt by such a lie?” he asked as he reached over herto make sure the blanket was tucked in around her hip. “Joel approved when I told him what I was doing and sent me two more gloves, and it kept a good shepherd out of the boneyard.” He touched her shoulder. “Besides all that, I earned the right to use Waterloo any way I want, and that’s why I lie to Ben Rich and Lady Bushnell, too.”
“It isn’t right.”
“You weren’t there,” he shot back. “I’ve earned my lies.”
An uncomfortable silence settled between them. Amazing, isn’t it, she thought after a long silence, that two people can sit rump to rump and feel so far apart. “I’m sorry,” she said simply. “Forgive me.”
“Forgiven,” he said as he turned the gig onto the main road to Quilling Manor. “Just promise me that if I ever get caught in one of my benevolent lies, that you will have the good grace not to laugh.”
