Page 55 of Pleasantly Pursued

He led us through a small entryway and into each of the rooms on the ground floor before we took the servants’ stairs up to the attics. Tin pots and tubs were strategically placed about the dusty floor and sheets covered a good deal more furniture than I had expected to find.

Tanner moved one of the larger pots aside to reveal a wide circle of damaged wood, and my stomach sank. How many other areas were exactly like it?

“There’s a fair bit of repair that needs doing up here. The bedroom below will need new plaster on the ceiling, and there’s another place down at that far end in bad shape. But we’ve managed to keep most of the water from reaching the floor.”

“We?” Henry asked.

“The missus and me.”

“Why have they not repaired the roof before now?”

“Can’t afford to, I reckon.” He leaned forward a little and lowered his voice. “Between you and me, I think they’re so desperate to sell the house they’ll take anything for it.”

Offering a pittance of the price would be the only way I could afford to buy the estate and also make the necessary repairs.

Tanner led us down to the rest of the servants’ rooms, one of which had the ceiling damage he’d warned us about. We continued the tour, and by the time we finished seeing every room in the house and had made our way down to the kitchens, I was reasonably convinced visiting this house had been a waste of time. Tanner led us outside again and left us near our horses.

I stood on the front porch and looked out over the land, overgrown and yellowing with winter. It was a wildland that reached my heart and filled me with a heavy yearning to be part of something solid and secure like this, to put off the bachelor life I’d long since grown weary of. When Frederick Keller had enticed me to remain at the fight during my journey with Thea back to Chelton, I had not even been tempted to join him. It did not appeal to me any longer.

What appealed to me now was the idea of tending to my own land, my own animals—not James’s, as much as I loved him, but my own. I wanted to fixmyceiling and repairmyroof. It was immature, perhaps, but I wanted to be a master of my own self, and this seemed a possible way to do so.

If only I could talk the owners down to nearly half of what they asked for. It was an insurmountable task, and I was perfectly aware I was hoping for something unrealistic.

“Would you become a hermit, then, if you were to live here?” Henry asked, pulling me from my musings.

“Naturally. It would never do to marry or have a family, of course. I shall grow out my beard and yell at any children who dare to approach my door.”

“Do you have the woman in mind?” he asked, clearly knowing me better than I knew myself.

I pictured Thea standing on the porch beside me as the winter wind whipped her hair and the sun began its descent to visit the other side of the world. The long grass blowing would be shorter, of course, and green. I would have my arm around her waist, and she would be cradling a little—

No. That was unhealthy, and I needed to cut that dream off at the pass. It was more of a shock than I’d admit to, realizing my dreams immediately contained Thea at my side in matrimonial bliss. The ensuing warmth in my belly from the mental image I’d created had permeated my body and left a resounding ache for something that would never come to be.

Henry said nothing more, and I did not bother answering him. Speaking aloud the attraction I felt for Thea would only solidify my hazy thoughts and make them too real. We mounted our horses and turned for home, riding in silence over the long road until we reached Chelton.

It was not until we had dismounted and made our way to the door that Henry stopped me with a hand on the shoulder. “You cannot predict what the future will hold, and she will not wait forever.”

There was pain in his eyes as he spoke, and I was certain he thought of his own past while giving me advice for my future. But it was pointless.

“She does not feel for me the same way—”

“Nonsense,” Henry said, shaking his head. “Listen to me, Ben. She will not wait forever.”

He left me standing on the gravel road, staring up at the door, with those words bouncing about in my head.

She will not wait forever.

Chapter20

THEA

It had been a week since Christmas, an entire fortnight since I received the original letter informing me of the demise of my inheritance, and almost a month since Benedict had brought me back to the warm and welcoming arms of Chelton.

“Part of me wishes I’d stayed in that kitchen where Benedict found me,” I said to Lady Edith, sitting on the chaise longue watching her maid put up her hair for the dinner party we were holding at Chelton that evening. “Then I would not know of my half-brother or the expectations my father had for our relationship.”

She frowned into the mirror, as she often did when I mentioned my soiled months spent in hiding. “You would do better to forget about any of the time you spent away from Mrs. Moulton’s school. If you think of it often, you are more likely to slip and reveal it to the wrong person. Besides, if you had remained in your position in that kitchen, you would still be under the assumption that a fortune waited for you on your birthday.”

“True.” She had a valid point, for if I had learned of it after marrying, I could only imagine the trouble that would have caused. “My farmer husband would have been distraught to learn of my halved inheritance, at any rate.”

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