The Apple Blossom Bower (Historical Romance Novella) Read online

  “Aye, sir.”

  Edwin took his horse’s reins from Bart, who gazed up at him expectantly, his Adam’s apple rising and falling as he gulped. “What is it, lad?”

  “Might—might I ride with you to Squire Dundridge’s, sir?”

  Edwin studied the self-conscious youth. “Have you a sweetheart in his employ?”

  Jenkins chortled, letting the straw fall out of his mouth. “Silly ass, he fancies Miss Annis Kelland. Everyone knows the squire will marry her to a gentleman, not some spotty-faced stable boy.”

  When Bart whirled upon his senior, eyes dark with fury, Edwin gripped his shoulder. “Return to the meadow and inquire of Mr. Corston whether he wishes to ride this morning. Don’t delay.”

  When the reluctant Bart obeyed the order, Jenkins commented, “He b’aint serious about the squire’s lass. He’s at that age where he can’t help but have a care ’bout the one he can’t have. I’ll tease him out of it, sir, you’ll see.”

  “Don’t be harsh,” Edwin cautioned before climbing into the saddle.

  “Eh, I’m fonder of him than I let on. A good boy, that one, but even the best of ’em needs some rough words to keep ’em in line.”

  The road to the squire’s farm carried Edwin southward, past meadows swarming with sheep and their new lambs. The sky was overcast, rather like his mood, for he was concerned that he might be about to receive a scold—or worse—from Squire Dundridge. Had Annis revealed his admission at the Castle Inn that he wanted her to share his bed? That remark would be difficult to explain to her guardian.

  The squire received him quite cordially, allying his fears. Edwin found him flinging corn to the geese wadding about the barton, a large yard enclosed by ricks and outbuildings.

  “I think to see you so soon,” said Dundridge, dusting his hands. He led Edwin to the house, a handsome stone structure with chimneys at each end, a new slate roof, and ivy-covered walls. “My wife is paying a call, and I left Annis in the orchard, supervising the workers. We can converse in private. Sir Edwin, I stand in need of your advice.”

  Squire Dundridge’s income, reportedly an ample one, derived partly from his extensive apples orchards. He brewed hundreds of hogsheads annually, some of them going to the Plymouth and the Navy ships. The remainder was sold to taverns too small to produce their own cider. The squire’s social presence had decreased since his marriage to smuggler’s widow eight years ago, but he seemed quite contented with what the majority of the district regarded as a misalliance. In Edwin’s view, Mrs. Dundridge was a pleasant hostess and an admirable housekeeper and did not disgrace the position to which she had been raised.

  The squire ushered him into a tidy parlor and after pouring out two glasses of amber liquor. “Tell me your opinion of this latest attempt to produce Calvados. I’ve tried with varying success to get it right, ever since I visited France. What began as a hobby has become my obsession.”

  Edwin sampled the contents of his glass, savoring the rich taste of apples mingled with the fiery heat of brandy. “Nectar of the gods,” he delcared, barely repressing an urge to lick the residue coating his lips. “I wasn’t aware that you’d travelled abroad, sir.”

  “Decades ago, between wars. My father sent me to the Channel Islands to pick up a few cider-brewing secrets, and from there it ’twas but a short sail to Normandy. I drank Calvados night and day—and would still, if Mrs. Dundrige didn’t demand moderation.” Setting down his glass, he said on a pensive note, “Our Annis should also see France someday, though I doubt she ever shall.”

  Edwin lifted his head. “This war won’t last forever.”

  “I pray not, for it has wrecked our foreign trade. Even if ’twere peacetime, the girl and her mother together would resist any suggestion that she should travel. A pity.”

  Edwin was seized by a powerful and inexplicable desire to take the squire’s stepdaughter on an extended foreign tour. But not until he’d shown her the part of Somersetshire where he’d grown up, and only after she’d seen London and its many splendors.

  “In fact,” Dundridge continued, “our Annis is the subject I want to discuss with you. For some time now I’ve contemplated the purchase of a horse. Oh, she’s got her pony Pippin, adequate for hacking about the farm. But to my mind she deserves a mount more worthy of a young lady. And you’ve got the finest bloodstock in the neighborhood.

  “I daresay I can provide an animal that will suit Miss Kelland. What are her requirements?”

  “I couldn’t say. I’ve not broached the subject to her, lest she object to my plan. She’s too polite to refuse a gift, especially if it comes as a surprise. Even if it comes from me,” he added, his voice tinged with regret.

  Edwin, struck by his sorrowful demeanor, surmised that relations between the squire and his stepdaughter were not as comfortable as he’d always supposed.

  “I’d prefer that Annis to try out your horses but without knowing she’s to have one of them. If you put the question to her, she’d tell which she likes best, and then you can let me know. Does that seem a reasonable course of action?”

  Edwin was quick to approve a plan that ensured access to the girl who spurned his attentions. “Just this morning my head groom complained my horses don’t get enough exercise.”

  “Annis likes making herself useful,” said the squire. “But don’t let her guess this was my idea, or even that I gave my consent. Women can be contrary-minded.”

  “So I’ve noticed,” Edwin commented.

  When Edwin joined Annis in the orchard, he found her perched on a ladder supported by the branches of an old and venerable apple tree. Her hair was unbound, streaming down her back in thick brown waves. Her skirts and protective apron were pinned up, enabling her to move about unhampered. He studied her slender, well-turned ankles and found them very much to his liking.

  “Your trees will soon be in full flower,” he observed, craning his neck.

  “Within another week or so.” Her thumb and forefinger closed around an unfurled pink bud. She pinched it off and released it, letting it fall to the ground. “I dislike this task,” she confessed to Edwin, “but it does improve the fruit-bearing. Because I can only go so high, I depend upon the bullfinches to strip the blossoms at the very top.”

  When she descended, Edwin steadied the ladder.

  “This tree is my favorite, so I tend it myself. I’m not as swift as the men, who have been doing this work so much longer.” As she hopped down to the grass, her slippers crushed the discarded buds.

  “I was sorry not to see you again in Dartmouth, Miss Kelland.” Her sudden silence and her reluctance to meet his gaze told him she clearly remembered the highly personal nature of their last conversation. “In the morning, when I asked Mrs. Russell where you were, she said you’d traveled on to Brixham with your uncle.”

  “Sam borrowed a friend’s gig and took me to visit my Grandfather Kelland.”

  “I wasn’t aware you had a living grandparent.”

  She nodded. “He’s three-score and five years old, and apart from his rheumatism is a hardy old gentleman. He used to be a schoolmaster and still reads a great deal. He likes to talk of books.”

  “Has he other children besides your uncle?”

  “No other sons. I’ve got two aunts living near Exeter. They married brothers, both farmers. One is very prosperous, I believe, and the other less so. I hardly know my cousins,” she said with a trace of sadness. “After my father died, Mother ceased to visit that part of the shire. And after she remarried, she was too busy.” Abruptly she asked, “What business brings you to Orchard Place, Sir Edwin?”

  “I come to beg a favor. I’ve acquired so many horses that Bart and Jenkins are unable to exercise them as often or as thoroughly as they require. Knowing your fondness for riding, I hoped you might come to my aid. We’ve got at least three well-tempered horses capable of carrying a lady’s sidesaddle, and they’ll give you an easier ride than your Pippin.”

  Annis pressed her hands togethe
r, saying fervently, “I would like to ride them, very much. But my mother wouldn’t like my going to Harbourne Court.” On a grimmer note she added, “Neither would my stepfather.”

  “Trust me to make everything right with them.”

  She sighed. “How I wish you could.” Moving away from him, she perched upon a low limb, broad and crooked. “This is the oldest and most famous apple tree on the farm, the original source of the variety known as Dundridge’s Glory. Plantsmen would travel all the way from London to take grafts. I was glad when they stopped—this place has been my refuge since I first came to live at Orchard Place.”

  They were surrounded and shielded—almost embraced—by the lavishly budded branches. He wished he might take advantage of their seclusion, to seize her slender waist and pull her close and kiss her until she was powerless to rebuff him. And if he tried, she’d never accept his invitation to Harbourne Court.

  “A private and most fragrant bower,” he commented, leaning his back against the sturdy trunk. “From what exactly are you escaping when you come here?”

  “The squire, more often than not.” She ripped away a tiny new leaf shaped like an arrow point and began to shred it into tiny pieces.

  “Can’t you tell me why?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Her lack of faith hit him like a blow. “Your stepfather doesn’t do unseemly things. Caress you? Or strike you?” The questions sounded preposterous, but Edwin had already discovered that the appearance of family harmony was deceiving.

  Shaking her head, she answered, “He’s never once raised his voice to me, much less his hand. He’s never angry with me.” She made it sound like a grievous fault. “Or if he is, he keeps it to himself. And yet I know well I’m a disappointment to him.”

  “I’ve seen no sign of that.”

  “He’s excessively generous, and always has been. I’m the one at fault, you see, for being so common. He can’t accept me as I am, and he means to turn me into a proper lady.” Grasping the branch above her head for support, she elaborated, “When his Cousin Myra in Totnes offered to take me in and make me more genteel, I refused to go. It displeased him. Though I was only twelve at the time, I knew it would be a hopeless effort.”

  “You were right.”

  She stared over at him, her face reflecting dismay at his brutal candor.

  “True ladies are born, not made,” he explained rather more gently. “And you are one. I recognized that within minutes of making your acquaintance. I’m surprised someone as astute as your stepfather could think otherwise.”

  Her voice was flat as she said, “He dislikes my riding about the countryside alone on Pippin. He discourages my visits to my Kelland relations, as though he thinks them tainted by the smuggling trade. But they’re not—no more than anyone else in the district. My father was the only one directly involved in free trading.”

  Edwin interjected, “And I suppose the squire also objects when you wait tables in a public inn.”

  “He doesn’t know about that,” she said quickly, “and he must never find out. I should’ve known better—I did know better. But the landlady said I shouldn’t sit in the kitchen because the squire wouldn’t like it. And then my uncle told me not to go to Brixham and to visit Grandfather Kelland without my stepfather’s permission. All that naysaying goaded me into behaving stupidly, childishly. I wanted to prove my independence from him—and came to grief.”

  “There’s no shame in being human,” he consoled her. “Mind you, I was tempted to give you a good scolding that night. But if you’d behaved more wisely I would have missed the entertaining spectacle of seeing you give Garth Corston his comeuppance. He deserved much worse than having a bowl of cold soup poured over him.”

  “I didn’t want him—touching me,” she declared, her voice dropping when he approached her.

  “Only him, or every man?”

  Annis, uncomfortably aware of his nearness, resisted the urge to shy away. His hand moved upward and his fingers grazed her head. He plucked something from her hair and held it up on the tip of his forefinger—not a creepy-crawly, as she’d expected, but a tiny petal of palest pink. She studied it in silence, waiting for him to speak and wondering what he’d say next.

  “We came here during the harvest home,” he murmured, his voice a caress. “I kissed you under this very tree. And did other things as well,” he added, a wicked glint in his eyes.

  With an assumption of hauteur, she frowned and said, “If you truly think I’m a lady, why remind me of what happened that night? It isn’t gentlemanly of you.”

  “I would be far less gentlemanly to let you think I’d forgotten.”

  She had no answer to that. To cover her confusion she leaped down to the ground, telling him shakily, “I cannot linger, Sir Edwin. Mother will soon be home, if she’s not already, and—” She was silenced by his hand closing upon her forearm.

  “You’ll come to Harbourne Court?”

  “Perhaps. If my stepfather doesn’t refuse his consent, and my mother can spare me.”

  His handsome face wore the expression she always watched for, the tender, yearning one that made her feel so wishful and yet so hopeless. Sir Edwin Page might flirt with her occasionally and even kiss her when the opportunity presented itself, but it was almost inconceivable that he would pay court to a humbly born, freckle-cheeked creature like herself.

  His smile broadened, as if he’d guessed her thoughts and was pleased by them. “Every hour that passes until we meet again will seem longer than the one before. Farewell, Annis Kelland.”

  Watching him stride across the orchard and toward the barton, she felt her despondency lift. His voice, his eyes, his every glance indicated that he did care for her. If he’d attempted to kiss her again, she would have continued to doubt his motives, but he hadn’t. Was his new restraint merely a seducer’s ploy, intended to deceive her into a false sense of security while he plotted his next advance? Or—she drew a hopeful breath—was his interest genuine?

  Her eyes fell upon the bright yellow cowslips blooming abundantly in the grassy patches between the apple trees. The flowers, she knew, were used in an ointment that improved the complexion and lightened freckles. She collected several handfuls in her apron and bore them to the stillroom at the rear of the house.

  She was spreading the flowers across the work table when her mother came in to take inventory of the dried herbs hanging at the window.

  A matronly woman of middle age with a pleasant but infrequent smile, Mrs. Dundridge asked. “What have you there? Cowslips?”

  “I want to get rid of these.” Annis touched the bridge of her nose to illustrate. “I’m going to make a lotion.”

  Her mother’s head wagged. “Your father, rest his soul, was as freckled as a turkey’s egg. I s’pose it came from being out in the sun so much, and on the water.”

  “Where’s your receipt book?”

  Mrs. Dundridge removed the well-worn volume down from its drawer and handed it over. “You’ll want the oil of almonds—it’s behind you, on the topmost shelf. What’s made you so concerned about your complexion so sudden?” she asked suspiciously. “B’aint for my benefit, much less the squire’s. Sir Edwin Page rode past me a while ago, when I was coming home, and proper cordial he was.”

  “He called on me.” Annis couldn’t quite keep the triumph out of her voice.

  Mrs. Dundridge sank down upon a Windsor chair, resting her tightly clenched hands in her lap. “Oh, Annis, have a care. More likely than not he’ll give you a heartache, I’ve said it before. If you want him for your husband, you’re bound to be hurt.”

  “I feared that, too. Likely he was trifling with at the apple harvest,” she conceded. “But since that night he hasn’t kissed—hasn’t tried to do as he did then.”

  “His intentions might be pure as spring water, but they can’t change what he is. A respectable farmer would do better for you than that baronet.”

  In the face of this familiar war
ning, Annis fought to hold onto her optimism. Fetching the mortar and pestle from their compartment, she asked, “Don’t you like him?”

  “So far as I know there’s naught to dislike, apart from his chasing after you last harvest supper, and bussing you because he’d drunk too much of your stepfather’s cider. In my experience, marrying above yourself is as much a trial as a blessing. If your stepfather encourages you in hoping for something that—”

  “He doesn’t,” Annis said firmly. She turned the pages of the receipt book until she found the entry she wanted. “I’ll need your help, Mother. I don’t yet have your skill for concoctions.”

  Her parent heaved a deep sigh. “Very well. I’ll even show you my way of distilling elderflower water, and you can wash your face in it every night. But don’t think that means I want you marrying Sir Edwin and going off to live at Harbourne Court. Not that it wouldn’t ’maze everybody hereabouts if you could become Lady Page,” she added with a shake of her head. “Jem Kelland’s daughter marrying the baronet. It’d cause more talk than his widow wedding the squire.”

  Edwin eyed the flushed and bloated face at the opposite end of the dining table. Garth had imbibed heavily all night and his mood was extremely variable, jovial and surly by turns.

  The guest was scowling at the stem of his empty wineglass, wobbling between his fingers. After nearly dropping the delicate piece, he set it down with a mumbled “Sorry. Though if it shattered you could well afford to replace it. Couldn’t you?” His bloodshot eyes sought Edwin’s stern face.

  “Yes. But I’d rather not.”

  “Lucky man. Rich uncle dies, leaves you all this.” His arm made a broad, sweeping gesture that sent the wine bottle crashing to the floor.

  The fact that it was empty was scant consolation to Edwin, fervently wishing he could order his oafish companion off the premises. It was impossible to do without offending, and having so often been the recipient of the Corstons’ hospitality in London worsened his predicament.