“I love that sound,” Beck said as North set a mug of hot tea down before him.
“What sound?” North sat across from him at the kitchen table and shuffled a deck of cards.
“If you’re quiet,” Beck said, “you can hear the murmur of the women’s voices in their apartment. They’re discussing the day, trading opinions, making plans for tomorrow, and so on. It’s the same cadence and rhythm in any language.”
And it put him in mind of the music of the stream by the springs.
“You notice odd things. Prepare to be defeated.”
“I notice you’re still disconcerted by today’s letter,” Beck said. “One hopes you’ll be able to concentrate on the game.”
“With your witty repartee to distract me,” North drawled, “the matter is in question.” He played carefully but made the occasional chancy decision, and they were evenly matched halfway around the cribbage board.
Beck moved his pegs. “I have a question for you.”
“You always put your fives in the other fellow’s crib,” North said, which was fine advice provided a man wanted to lose badly.
“Earlier today, you said Polly spoke six languages and had been to every capital in Europe. Were you speaking literally?”
North appeared to consider his cards. “Sara, as well. I don’t think Allie was much more than an infant when they returned to England to visit. Why?”
“So Sara speaks all those languages? Sara’s been to all those exotic places?”
“She has.” North tossed down a card. “If what Polly says is true, Sara was touring.”
“Touring?” Beck glanced over his cards. “As in being a tourist, seeing the sights?”
“That too.” North waited for Beck to play a card. “Sara has musical talent, as a violinist. She performed all over Europe. The Continentals aren’t as stuffy about women on stage as we are.”
Beck set his cards down as a curious prickling sensation ran from his nape to his fingers. “She was that good, and she’s spending her days washing the lamps and polishing the silver?”
“I believe it was her choice,” North said. “She has a child, if you’ll recall, and that effectively ends a career before the public, even on the Continent. Or it should, in the minds of most.”
“Why isn’t she at least giving lessons? This place… you don’t keep house at a place like this if you have other options.”
“Beckman”—North’s voice took on that patient, long-suffering quality—“we all have other options. You, for example, could be with your brother, flirting and gaming your way across London during the Season, but you’re bathing in cisterns and mucking stalls here at Three Springs.”
“Valid point.” And while he did want to be at Belle Maison, Beck did not want to be racketing around the vice-ridden terrain of Mayfair in spring. “You’re impersonating a land steward, and Polly—who I assume is a talented artist—is impersonating a cook.”
“I cannot vouch for her artistic ability.” North counted up his hand. “Allie says her aunt is as good as anybody she saw in London.”
“Allie’s been to the museums?”
“I gather she would have been four at the time.” North moved his peg. “She remembers what she saw.”
“Sara…” Beck ran a hand through his hair, mentally revising and reassessing things he’d tried to tally up before. “She’s hiding then too.”
“What do you mean?” North appropriated the deck and began to deal the next hand.
“You’re hiding.”
“Earlier today I was entitled to privacy. Now I’m hiding. And what of you, are you hiding?”
Beck smiled a little. “Probably. When I keep company with my brother in Town, there are too many females willing to tolerate my attentions in exchange for an introduction to Nick. It’s safer for me and Nick both if we move independently.”
“I’m familiar with the problem,” North said. “I’m told you first become aware of it when some sweet and naughty young thing rises up from your sheets and asks if you ever carouse with your brother.”
Beck’s eyebrows flew up. “And here I thought I was the only one.”
“We always do,” North said, glowering afresh at his cards. “We always think we’re the only ones when it counts, though in fact, we never are.”
Beck finished a quick lunch under a shady tree, soreness reverberating through every muscle and sinew of his body. At least the crushing fatigue of spring plowing had kept him from misbehaving with Sara again.
She hadn’t dragged him to any more pretty corners of the property, and no longer offered to light him to his room. Allie was a good and constant chaperone, and ye gods, the child was sharp. She was waiting for him when he got back to his team, grinning as she stroked the nose of the nearest horse.
“Watch your feet around these fellows,” Beck warned, checking the harness. “One misstep on their part, and you’ll have toes like a duck.”
“I’m wearing my half boots.”
“So have you come to help?” Beck surveyed the ground yet to be turned. Thank all the gods, there wasn’t that much of it. Just another few backbreaking, arm-wrenching, hand-blistering, gut-wearying hours of work.
“I have come to cadge a piggyback ride on old Hector. Mama said I might, because it’s a lovely day, the chores are done, and you’re to send me back to her if I’m a nuisance.”
“Duly noted.” Beck hefted her up into his arms. Hector took the outside position on the left, which, given the direction Beck turned the team, put him on the inside of each turn, and gave him the least to do. He could carry a little girl without even noticing the weight. “Up you go.”
Allie scrambled onto the horse’s broad back and, predictably, began to chatter. Not so predictably, she also scooted around, swinging a leg over the beast’s withers, then another over his rump, so she was sitting on him backward.
“This is more polite,” she informed Beck as the team turned into the first furrow. “So when are you going into Portsmouth? Mama says you might also make a trip into Brighton, because you’re thinking of selling the vegetables there later this summer. I think you ought to sell our flowers.”
Conversing with somebody facing him while he plowed was oddly disorienting. Beck had to look past Allie to fix his gaze on some object at the end of the furrow. Plowing straight was an art, and Beck would have said he had the talent for it, until Allie sat between him and the end of the furrow.
“What sort of flowers, princess?”
“All kinds. I don’t know all their names, but I can draw them. We put them all over the house when summer comes. Before the strawberries even come in, we have bunches and bunches of tulips and irises—I know how to separate those—and there are roses too, but Mama despairs of them. I like to draw the roses—they’re complicated.”
“What have you been drawing lately?” Beck asked, reaching the first turn.
“I always draw. In my head, mostly, which Aunt says is good practice. Mama saw you and Mr. North without your clothes, and Aunt said she wished she could draw you.”
“That’s nice,” Beck muttered. Turns were tricky, especially with horses hitched three across. “What else do you—she saw what?”
“You.” Allie grinned beatifically. “Without your clothes. Both of you. Mama and Aunt Polly saw Mr. North in the pond last summer, but after you unloaded hay, Mama was up in the carriage house and saw you bathing in the cistern. She said the sight would keep her up at night for weeks, which is silly. It’s just skin.”
Beck tried to divide his attention. “Allemande, you can’t go repeating such things merely to provoke a reaction. I’m sure your mother was mortified, and had we known, North and I would have been mortified as well. Modesty is a virtue shared by most decent folk.”