By afternoon, however, Bella was free. The twins would be engaged with some lesson or other — a foreign language, dancing, watercolor painting or attempts to learn a musical instrument — which so far had come to nothing although their singing was superb. Genevieve had at least three friends in her rooms for a good gossip. Now was a good time to escape.
Today was the day for another of those activities on Bella’s part that made Bella’s stepmother roll her eyes, for today she had planned to visit Granny.
Everyone in the city knew Granny, whether they admitted it or not. Granny was a fixture. There had been a Granny at Granny’s Cottage for generations. She might or might not actually be a witch; no one would say, and Granny was very closemouthed on the subject. Officially Granny was the Herb Woman, the doctor for those who could not afford doctors, the confidante and giver of advice for those who had no granny of their own, and the dispenser of wisdom that had passed the test of time.
As such, of course, she was exceedingly unfashionable and not the sort of person that the Beauchamps should be associating with, in the mind of Genevieve at least. No one of their status went to an Herb Woman; they had doctors come to attend them.
Bella stopped by the kitchen and put together a basket of the sorts of things Granny liked best: a bottle of sweet wine, a block of good yellow cheese, the end of the roast beef and the ham, and a pound of butter preserved in a jar. Granny was quite self-sufficient; she grew all her own vegetables, had chickens and had good trade in her herbs and medicines for just about anything else she needed, but Bella liked to bring her little luxuries. That was trade in a way, too; the goodies for Granny’s teaching. Bella was fascinated by the art of healing, but of course it was completely impossible for a woman to become a doctor, and even if she could get the training, who would use her services? Perhaps in a place where there were no doctors — but not here, in this neighborhood. The doctors wouldn’t think kindly of competition, and Genevieve would be mortified.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Bella saw herself doing what Granny did one day, though probably not out of the cottage in the middle of the woods. That would be for another Granny — someone this Granny was working with even now, Bella suspected — and anyway, she knew that she was much, much too young to be trusted as Granny was trusted.
When the kitchen staff realized that she was going to visit Granny, she found the basket taken away from her and filled with other tasty odds and ends: some uneaten tarts from last night’s dinner, honeycake from breakfast, a parcel of bacon ends and rinds. She flung a bright red cloak with a hood over herself, gathered up her basket and went out into the cold.
The hooded cloak — a riding cloak — was entirely inappropriate for a young lady; it had been her father’s, from the days when he still had time to go foxhunting with the gentry. But it was warm and cheerful, and besides, when she went out into the woods, she had no desire to be taken for a game animal and shot.
As she made her way out of the city, taking the route that led her down a street lined with shops that catered to this neighborhood, she reflected on her own future. Now, what she had in mind was a little shop with living quarters above, perhaps in a neighborhood that had no Apothecary. If the twins were married and she was left a spinster, she had an independent settlement in her father’s will, which would more than pay for such a thing. And the truth was, such an outcome was very likely. Try as she might, and she did try, she just couldn’t picture herself married.
She nodded to the poet from next door in a friendly fashion as he emerged from the butcher’s with what was clearly a goose done up in brown paper under his arm. He saluted her with a grin and passed on, and she smiled to think how horrified her stepmother would be to know he was doing his own shopping. Now…if she could find a young man like that…
Alas, thus far, she hadn’t met any young man of any station that she would have been willing to consider with warmer feelings than mere friendship. She wanted intelligence, and she required that a young man be willing to accept her as his partner, not regard her as his possession, his inferior, his toy, his casual companion or his convenience. So she was very likely to end up a spinster. Certainly Genevieve was not going to put forth any effort to get her married, not when she had two of her own girls to get properly “placed.”
Deep in thought, she was startled to find herself at the city wall, where guards oversaw everyone coming in and out. She knew most of them on sight, and waved to Ragnar as she approached.
“Bella Beauchamps!” Ragnar saluted her. “Going out to visit Granny?”
“Well, it is certainly too cold to gather mushrooms, even if one could find them under the snow!” she said, laughing. “Ragnar, you look half-starved. Isn’t that wife of yours feeding you properly?”
He looked sheepish. She laughed and tossed him a honey pastry.
Ragnar’s appetite was legendary, and twenty wives probably couldn’t have kept him fed.
“You be back before dark, Bella,” Ragnar warned, as he held back a donkey cart to let her pass through the narrow gate. “The winter’s bound to bring out hungry beasts.”
“I’ll be careful,” she promised, and pulled the red hood of the riding cloak up over her head.
Before long she was very glad of her sheepskin boots, no matter how unfashionable they were, for the snow was well above her ankles. A few tracks in the path showed that she was not the only visitor to trudge out to Granny’s Cottage, though it was a curious thing that in all the time she had been visiting the old woman, she had never met anyone either coming or going. Strange.
Bella had first met Granny when one of Genevieve’s former doctors, laboring under the delusion that Genevieve actually was ill, had sent her for “some of Granny’s nerve tonic.” Needless to say, that doctor had not lasted in Genevieve’s employment long, but Bella had continued to go out to Granny’s Cottage.
The woods were lovely — but undeniably hard to get through with this much snow on the path. Anyone who came out to the cottage in weather like this was someone who definitely needed Granny and no one else.
The path followed an easy course between two low hills or ridges, which blocked the wind. It was extremely quiet; nothing more than the occasional call of a starling or caw of a crow somewhere above the snow-frosted, bare branches of trees. Bella found it rather restful actually, a great relief from the chattering of servants and the twins.
“Hold there, woman!” barked an imperious voice from up the ridge, startling her so much that she nearly dropped the basket.
Down off the ridge stalked possibly the last person she would ever care to meet out here — the Gamekeeper, Eric.
So far, she had managed to avoid the fellow, except for seeing him at a distance or across a market square, but Granny was full of stories about him, none of them flattering, and nothing Bella had seen was inclined to make her doubt them. He was full of his own importance, unremittingly cruel in enforcing the laws against poaching, arrogant and clearly convinced he was the most desirable man in the city or out of it.
He granted her a long, leisurely view of his magnificence as he made his way down the ridge, and it was true that if it had not been for the faint sneer on his lips and the arrogance of his carriage, he could be thought of as handsome. Without his mask, the chiseled features, the fine head of sable hair and the muscular body displayed to advantage by his closely laced leather tunic and trousers probably caused susceptible hearts to flutter. But Bella did not in the least like the set of his chin, nor the speculation and anticipation in his cold blue eyes. Another girl would have been intimidated. Bella knew she had the protection of her rank — but even if she hadn’t, she was not going to back down to this bully.