‘Did you not say that Hector needed shoeing?’ Jethro nodded. ‘Very well, can you take him tomorrow, and Susan can go with you and do the marketing. Miss Prudhome and I are going into Aylesbury and I think it would be convenient to give the ghost the opportunity of an empty house to deposit the day’s roses without too much trouble.’
‘How will they know?’
‘I intend calling in and enquiring kindly if I can carry out any little commission for Miss Nugent whilst I am in Aylesbury. I will let drop what you are doing while I am about it.’
‘Driving what, Miss Hester?’
‘Oh, how foolish! I never thought. Well, there is nothing for it, Jethro, you will have to go over and ask Parrott if I might borrow a horse. His lordship must have something suitable for a gig, surely?’
‘Very well, Miss Hester.’
He returned ten minutes later, looking uncommonly flushed. ‘Mr Parrott says that, on his lordship’s behalf, he could not possibly lend us a horse for the gig as his lordship would not like you driving yourself all that way. He says he will have his lordship’s second carriage and a team sent round at ten tomorrow morning, Miss Hester, with two grooms and a footman.’ Jethro grinned. ‘I wish I could learn the way he has of talking, Miss Hester. He said he hopes he knows what is due to your consequence, even if I do not!’
‘Well! My consequence indeed!’
‘Perhaps he knows,’ Miss Prudhome ventured.
‘Mr Parrott knows everything, so I expect he knows about that,’ Jethro opined firmly, taking himself off to the kitchen to tell Susan the news.
Feeling very fine indeed, Hester found some amusement next morning at the expression on the face of the butler at the Hall when he saw the carriage, and even more at the hastily concealed expressions of surprise on Lewis and Sarah’s faces as she swept in, all smiles and chatter.
‘…so I thought, if you are perhaps not feeling quite yourself still, Miss Nugent, that there might be some small commission I might perform for you in Aylesbury. Embroidery silks, rouge, that sort of thing. Is it not kind of his lordship to lend me a carriage? I foolishly forgot that Jethro has to take the cob to the smithy this morning and Susan has to go marketing, so you may imagine what a boon the loan of a footman is as well.’
Five minutes later she remarked to Maria, ‘That was a very fat and obvious fly to cast in front of a trout, but I do not think they suspect I know what they are up to. Now, let us look over our lists and think how to make the best of our time.’
Hester eased her hands cautiously out of her tight gloves, smoothed down the lint that protected her grazed palms and took out her tablets and pencil. ‘It is a lowering thought, Maria, but shopping for presents and fripperies is a delightful way to make one forget almost everything.’
Not that any amount of list writing could drive the thought of Guy from her mind-or the worry of what to buy him for Christmas. What did a young lady buy an earl? What did one buy a man doubtless too rich to want for anything? It was too late to embroider slippers, which was one of the few unexceptional items she had once been told would be allowable as a gift to a man. Not that she could imagine Guy wearing slippers.
Her smile of pure mischief at the thought of him sitting before the fire, pretending to be at ease in a pair of embroidered slippers, faded as the picture led her imagination further, deeper, into much more disturbing byways. Guy with bare feet, Guy wearing an exotic dressing gown of heavy silk- and nothing else.
Hester felt her cheeks burning and fanned herself surreptitiously with her pocket notebook. He was so very male, frighteningly so for a young lady with no experience whatsoever, and the demanding passion of his kisses on the downs and in the barn that night promised something far beyond her expe
rience. But not, she realised, her cheeks burning hotter, beyond her desiring. Her body responded now when she thought of him, recalled his caresses. It was as though she was aware of every inch of bare skin where it touched her clothes, of her breasts, strangely heavier and fuller, of an ache deep in her abdomen.
‘This is a comfort,’ Maria remarked, jolting her out of her heated imaginings. ‘I was dreading the journey in a closed carriage, but this is nothing like that frightful post chaise. You will live in such luxury-there are so many advantages to this marriage.’
‘Indeed, yes,’ Hester agreed, resolutely suppressing the thought of some of them.
They arrived back from their expedition weary, satisfied and more than grateful for the attentions of the footman who had stoically marched behind them all day, gradually vanishing under a mountain of shopping.
Hester felt the day had gone well. The bank manager had been attentive; she had distracted Maria long enough to buy her a fine Paisley shawl for Christmas; a pretty dimity dress length and three yards of lace were wrapped up for Susan and she had even managed to find a copy of the book of household management that Jethro coveted.
But her idea for a present for Guy was inspired, she felt, touching the hard package in her reticule that contained a silhouette of her profile, expertly cut by Signor Olivetti.
As for stockings, gloves and slippers, she could not help but feel she had been somewhat extravagant; but, as Maria pointed out, it would not do to present an off appearance and embarrass Guy when she met his relatives.
Susan and Jethro reported a quiet day after their return from the forge. A bunch of four roses had been duly found, although it had taken some searching, Susan reported. ‘They were in one of the clothes presses in your dressing room. It’s taken me an age to get all that nasty crumbly dead leaf out of the linen.’
‘Clever,’ Hester acknowledged. ‘If we hadn’t been expecting them, it would have been a while before they were found and we would not have known when they were put there. I cannot but feel they are only going through the motions now. I hinted that I was unsettled enough to consider what to do after Christmas, so perhaps they will stop when they run out of roses.’
Despite her calm words, Hester feared she was being optimistic-surely the closer the waxing moon came to being full, the more dramatic the Nugents’ hauntings would become. And if they were badly in need of whatever treasure they had convinced themselves was concealed within these walls, then they would want to turn her vague expressions of uneasiness into a desperate desire to sell up and leave.
What would they do when they learned of her engagement to Guy? Hester gave a little shiver of excitement at the thought of it. Would she ever become used to the knowledge that he loved her?
‘Is Lord Buckland returned yet?’
Jethro shook his head. ‘Mr Parrott says he does not expect him until dinner time at the earliest.’