Now he loved his wife, and “well enough” was less than she deserved.
Radnor sat up, his head appearing over the back of the sofa. “Did you trounce Haverford? He benefits from regular trouncing. I’ve made a career out of keeping His Grace from getting too high in the instep. The job is thankless and tiring, but what are friends for?”
Sherbourne wouldn’t know, never having had any. The more pressing question was, what was a husband for, when a woman could simply remove to her parents’ household, never to be seen again?
Chapter Twenty
Charlotte did not flatter herself that she was welcome at the Caerdenwal household, but after three weeks of polite distance from her husband, she needed a reason to leave her home, any reason at all.
Besides, she wanted to see how the baby was faring, and what household couldn’t use a bag of apples and one of pears? She’d also purloined some oranges from the larder, along with half a wheel of cheese and a tub of butter. A small ham had also fit into her basket. Cook’s growing consternation had stopped Charlotte’s plundering of the larders after she’d appropriated a loaf of sugar and raided the tea chest.
The lot of it rattled and jostled in the back of Charlotte’s gig as she drove over the frozen, rutted lane. Day by day, the sun set earlier and rose later, the temperatures dropped, and the wind became more frigid.
The weather felt like a metaphor for Charlotte’s marriage, and for her life. She’d put off socializing beyond family and the vicarage, because Sherbourne ought by rights to pay calls at her side.
Her visits to Haverford Castle were recitations of the correspondence she’d received from family, for Charlotte was quite up to date on her letters.
Quite. Even the rest of the Mrs. Wesleys had been tended to without any comment from Sherbourne.
Charlotte’s staff had so quickly accommodated her directions and preferences that the household fairly ran itself, which meant she retreated to the library where treatises on steam power at least helped her pass the time.
“Good day, Charlotte Sherbourne!”
Griffin St. David stood by the side of the lane, his hair windblown, his cheeks ruddy. He cut a handsome figure in his country attire, but what Charlotte liked most about him was his great, cheerful smile.
She drew the gig to a halt. “Good day, Griffin. Are you out taking the air?”
“Biddy chased me from the house. She said I am awful, though she didn’t mean it. I like to help in the kitchen, but sometimes…We burned the bread yesterday.” His grin said the loaves had been sacrificed for a fine purpose.
“You can keep me company. I’m on my way to pay a call on Maureen Caerdenwal and her mama.”
“I will visit the chickens,” Griffin said, climbing into the cart. “They are not my chickens, because I gave them away, but I know all of their names. There are six laying hens.”
“You were very generous.”
“Six chickens is not so many. I told Glenys that she must send over sugar and tea, and Radnor should give them a fall heifer so they’ll have milk, cheese, and butter through the winter. I love butter.”
Griffin loved life. He had no complicated depths, no guile. His view of life was uncluttered by moral subtleties, and he thrived on simple rules and the love of his family. Charlotte had a wild urge to confide her troubles in him—perhaps he could cleave the Gordian knot that tied up her marriage—but turning to Griffin would not do.
Assuming Charlotte could explain her problem in terms Griffin grasped, he would fret and pass along her worries to Biddy, and even that much talk felt like disloyalty to Sherbourne.
Whom Charlotte missed hour by hour, even when she could gaze upon his tired, handsome countenance down the distance of a beautiful antique cherry dining table.
“Are you cold?” Griffin asked. “Biddy says it will snow soon. I love snow. Snow makes everything pretty and cozy.”
The sky was a blue-grey quilt above a landscape of bare trees and brown fields. “Snow would be a change, though it tends to turn to mud.” Sherbourne would not welcome snow. His masons had made progress with the tram lines and had laid foundations for a central hall that would serve as a dormitory, school, store, and management office.
Some progress had also been made in setting up the machinery to sink the central shaft, but not enough progress—never enough.
Radnor had drawn up the plans for the central hall, Jones had approved, and Charlotte had been too proud to ask to see a copy. Heulwen’s gossip kept her somewhat informed, but lately even the loquacious maid had grown quiet.
“Mud makes Mr. Jones at the colliery use very bad language,” Griffin said. “Biddy will have a baby this summer.”
Welsh country air was apparently conducive to conception. “Congratulations. I will pay a call on Biddy to wish her well later this week. Are you worried?”
Griffin lounged against the seat, his boot propped on the fender, his elbow braced on the arm rest. “Not yet. Biddy is very healthy, and babies are wonderful.”
For Griffin that was enough information to quiet any misgivings.
Babies were wonderful. All over again, Charlotte wanted to take back the words she’d flung at Sherbourne in anger, but then…She hadn’t been wrong. Brantford was a disgrace who’d never been held accountable for his vile behavior. To enrich him unnecessarily was to collude in his sin.
“You are quiet, Miss Charlotte. Are you doing sums in your head? Biddy says you can. I like sums, but I can only do them on paper.”
Charlotte turned the cart down the track that led to the Caerdenwal cottage. “Few people enjoy sums, though I do. I use paper and pencil more often than not, while Mr. Sherbourne uses an abacus.”
Griffin studied the fallow fields. “I would like to learn how to use an abacus. Sums must come out right, everything just so. I am often very slow because I want the just-so answer, and with sums there is always a just-so figure that is correct. The other figures are not correct. I like that.”
“I do too.” He’d put his finger on something worth pondering. Charlotte liked just-so answers too, but Griffin had brushed up against some other insight, some fact Charlotte had been overlooking.
“I will tell Julian to give the Caerdenwal boy a dog,” Griffin said. “Next year, when the lad can walk. A nice dog like my Henry Tudor.”
Henry Tudor was a canine plough horse, though he was a well-behaved beast and loyal to Griffin.
“You are very kind, Griffin, to prevail on your brother and sister to assist this household.”
“They are my tenants and my neighbors. Love thy neighbor, right?”
And love thy husband.
Though Griffin was a courtesy lord and a duke’s son, the welcome he received at the cottage suggested he might have been any tenant farmer or neighbor ducking in from the cold for a few minutes of a gossip.
He was even allowed to hold the baby, while Charlotte perched awkwardly on one of two chairs in the parlor and tried to make small talk with Maureen’s mother.
After a fifteen-minute eternity, Griffin departed for home, and Mrs. Caerdenwal had barely closed the door behind him before spearing Charlotte with a fierce blue-eyed gaze.
“We are very grateful, Mrs. Sherbourne, for all you’ve done for us, but you must not trouble yourself to come here again.”
Maureen had taken the baby into the other room, though of course she’d overhear every word.
“It’s no trouble, ma’am,” Charlotte said, rising and dodging around a sheaf of dried basil hanging from the rafter. “I’ll be on my way, having accomplished my aims. Lord Griffin predicts snow, and the day does seem to be getting chillier.”
She did not respond to the “no trespassing” ordinance flung at her feet, because she was too upset. What was wrong with wanting to see a child preserved from penury and starvation? What was wrong with aiding a victim of injustice?
“It’s not what you think,” Mrs. Caerdenwal said as she held the door for Charlotte.