Alice took down an apron from a peg. “I think it does, too. Bring me some hot water, please, and I’ll get these soaking.” He brought her the kettle from the hob, and leaned in to kiss her jaw as he did.
Alice smiled, closed her eyes, and forgot entirely about the dishes. “You’re as bad as your brother.”
“That scamp did not offer to help with the dishes.”
“He did not. If you and Nick are in the house, who is with the boys?”
“They popped down to the paddocks to stuff carrots into the shoats named Lightning and Thunder.” Ethan refilled the kettle, and the reservoir in the stove for good measure. He tidied up as Alice rinsed things off and added them to the collection soaking in the big kitchen sink.
“Ethan Grey, did you just finish my tea?”
“There was only one cold swallow left.” Ethan brought her the empty mug. “Shall I make you another?”
“So you can pilfer from that too? I think not. What are you… Oh, Ethan.”
He’d come up behind her and linked his hands around her waist to pull her back against his chest. She kept her hands in the water, closed her eyes, and enjoyed the simple, warm proximity of him.
Ethan’s voice rumbled at her ear, as she felt his lips graze her jaw. “I told myself I would not pester you, but you look so desperately pesterable, with the apron around your waist and your mouth all pinched up like that.”
“And my hands sopping wet and not a towel within reach. I used to think you weren’t anything like Nick, you know?”
“How could you think such a thing?” Ethan murmured, and dear Jesus, was that his tongue tracing her ear? “We are both tall, blond, blue-eyed, and of an age. We have features alike, and we both make excellent muffins, though mine are better.”
“Turn loose of me.” Alice wiggled a little against him, but not to get away. “Somebody could come along, and this isn’t how you preserve anybody’s reputation, Ethan Grey.” He stepped back, slowly.
“You are a woman of considerable resolve, Alice Portman. Right now, I do admire you for it, but I cannot like it.”
“I’m crushed.” Alice fluttered her lashes dramatically. “Go find your sons and collect your brother before I’m interrupted again by some errant pair of lips. And do not think of peeking into that oven, Mr. Grey, or you’ll forfeit the contest.”
“That wasn’t one of the rules.”
“And neither was it good sportsmanship to try to cozen a judge.” Alice gave him her best The-Governess-Is-Not-Happy glare. “The other team is guilty of the same, so I will not assess a penalty.”
“I will take my leave.” Ethan executed an elaborate bow. “If you see my opponent, tell him I’m at the stables, corrupting his seconds.”
“Out!”
Eleven
Horses needed the occasional drink, especially in warmer weather. At least the coachy looked apologetic when he insisted Hart Collins pause on his journey between house parties.
Boring, staid, excruciatingly proper house parties held by those whose social aspirations meant a title—any title at all—would find welcome in their midst.
“Very well.” Hart Collins stood beside the coach and surveyed the unprepossessing village green. “But if I sicken from drinking the dog piss that passes for ale in such surrounds, be it on your head, John Coachman.”
“Aye, milord.”
The coachy would have a nip too, of course. The man drove better drunk than sober, something Collins did not hold against him—a drunk being less inclined to carp about timely payment of his wages.
The inn was, like its setting, tidy, clean, and completely unremarkable. A bucolic Tudor exponent of English respectability such as Collins occasionally pretended he missed when dealing with the infernal heat and insubordinate servants in Italy.
And sometimes, the barmaids in such establishments were not averse to earning a few extra coins. Then too, the horses would move along more smartly if they were given a chance to blow, after all. One shouldn’t neglect one’s cattle.
“A proper squire would come in occasionally for a pint.”
The speaker was hunched over the dark, polished wood of the bar, and his tone suggested this was not the first drink with which he fueled his discontent.
“Hush, ye, Thatcher. We don’t all of us need to cast our business to the wind. Mr. Grey pays his tithes and minds his own.” The rebuke came from a plump matron sitting in the snug with the unsmiling specimen who must have been her yeoman spouse.
“He can well afford to pay his tithes,” Thatcher retorted, straightening. “Man’s a bloody nabob, and watches every coin.”
Yokels would ever complain about the gentry, the gentry would complain about the nobs, and the titles would complain about the Crown. Merry Old England was predictable, at least.
Collins stepped up to the bar. “A pint of your best, and some decent fare.”
“There’s ham and cheese, and bread just out of the oven,” the bartender said while pulling a pale pint. He wasn’t an old man, but he had the self-contained quality of most in his station.
“Ethan Grey’s cheese,” Thatcher spat. “You purchase your goods from a man who’s too high and mighty to patronize the only inn in the neighborhood.”
Ethan Grey?
“That’s enough from you, Thatcher,” the conscience in the corner piped up. “Most would be spending their free time with family, not biting the hand that feeds them.” She sent a significant glance at Collins, a clear reminder that foreigners—those from outside the parish—were not to be parties to local grievances.
“This Ethan Grey,” Collins said, sliding his drink down the bar and taking a position next to Thatcher. “He’s one of the landholders hereabouts?”
“Owns one of the prettiest properties in the shire,” Thatcher replied. “Imports his sheep and cattle, keeps a prime stable, but spoils his wee brats rotten and thinks he’s too good for the rest of us—and him nothing but some lord’s bastard, or so they say.”
Sometimes, just when it seemed those fickle bitches known as the Fates turned their backs on a man, they were in fact leaving in his hands the means to solve all his problems.
Ethan Grey had children—small children. “Is this Ethan Grey tall, blond, and blue-eyed? Serious as a parson?”
“More serious than Vicar Fleming,” Thatcher groused. “A hard man and hardheaded. Hard on the help what gives him an honest day’s work.”
From the scent of Thatcher and the dirt on his boots and clothes, the man was a hostler of some sort. In pursuit of self-interest, Collins was willing to have truck with even such a one as this.
“And you say he’s wealthy and dotes on his children? Come, Mr. Thatcher. Perhaps you’d like to share in the plebeian offerings that pass for sustenance at this establishment.”
Thatcher looked momentarily wary, until the bartender put a plate of sliced ham, cheese, and brown bread on the bar.
“I’m a mite peckish,” Thatcher allowed.
Collins picked up the plate with one hand and his drink with the other—a surprisingly mellow summer ale. “Come along. I have a few questions for you.”
As they made their way to a corner table as far as possible from the bar and the snug, Collins’s mind began to spin possibilities. Across the room, the bartender scrubbed out a mug with a dingy white rag and said nothing.
When Nick returned to the kitchen, he brought paper, pencils, and a gum eraser, and sat at the worktable. Alice peered over his shoulder as he sketched, startled at the whimsy of the structure on the page.
“You could really build that?”
“Of course.” Nick didn’t look up. “It would take some doing. On a raised structure like this, we might have to paint the boards before we build, which means being able to see how the whole fits together from the raw lumber.”