“This is ready now. Good and strong—should do the job.”
Rand accepted the curved length of solid iron. “Put it on the Throgmorton tab.”
Ferguson nodded genially. “Aye. I’ll do that.” Rand had already assured the man he would stand guarantor for William John.
Rand had tied the horse he’d ridden from the Hall to the ring beside the forge door. He moved around the bay and stowed the brace in the saddlebag. Then, over the horse’s back, he looked at Ferguson, who had remained in the doorway. “I want to give this fellow a run. Is there a way I can circle around”—he tipped his head—“to the west, preferably, that will eventually take me back to the Hall?”
“Oh aye. There’s a good run down the edge of Farmer Highgate’s fields. If you go that way”—Ferguson pointed away from the village—“then turn left and left again, you’ll come to it—a bridle path, it is. You won’t miss it.”
Rand thanked the blacksmith, then swung up to the bay’s broad back. He rode out of the yard, turned north, then, as directed, west. True to Ferguson’s word, Rand found the bridle path easily enough and took the circuitous route back to the Hall, giving the inn a very wide berth.
* * *
By the time he’d reached the Hall’s stables, Rand had started to question just why Felicia had, to all appearances, encouraged Mayhew. She’d gone into the inn with him; however innocent their meeting, Rand had to wonder why she’d agreed to it.
After leaving the bay in Shields’s capable hands along with orders to deliver the brace to the workshop, Rand strode across the lawn to the house with uncertainty itching just beneath his skin. He didn’t know Felicia that well; he’d never seen her in society. Perhaps the artist, charming to his toes, was more to her taste than a gentleman who thought investments were exciting...
Abruptly, he halted, drew in a deep breath, then exhaled and, struggling not to clench his jaw, walked on.
There was that kiss in the dark last night. He shouldn’t—couldn’t—forget that. She’d responded. She’d been as intrigued as he with the prospects—with the promise.
He shouldn’t doubt her.
Not without evidence to the contrary.
Just because he didn’t trust women, especially not those clever enough to be manipulative, that didn’t mean he couldn’t trust her.
He reached the house, opened the side door, and stalked inside. Even as his long strides ate the carpet, at the back of his mind was the realization of what his present state—his churning thoughts—portended.
He knew how irrationally Ryder acted over Mary, and his big brother was the epitome
of calm reason. This morass of uncertainty was, apparently, an unavoidable outcome of allowing oneself to fix on a particular lady, to place her above all others.
He’d already reached the point where Felicia was that for him—the lady he’d placed on his pedestal, the one lady he wanted for his own.
Johnson was crossing the front hall as Rand walked onto the tiles.
“Ah—Johnson. Do you happen to know where Miss Felicia is?”
“Indeed, my lord. She’s in the garden hall.” Johnson pointed past the breakfast parlor. “It’s toward the end of the corridor, my lord.”
“Thank you.” Rand drew in a breath, reminded himself to be calm—that he’d as yet said nothing to Felicia about her being his—then strode in search of her.
She was arranging peonies in a bowl when he walked into the narrow garden hall.
She looked up at him and smiled. “Has William John and his incessant muttering driven you upstairs?”
“No.” He leaned back against the bench alongside where she was working and crossed his arms. “I went into the village to have a brace reforged. I was waiting outside the blacksmith’s and saw you with that artist.”
Her gaze on her hands as she cupped and shifted blooms in the bowl, she nodded. “Yes. Mayhew is back. He met me as I was coming out of the general store. He invited me to tea so he could impress me with the sketches he’s done over the last days.” She paused, then glanced at Rand, briefly meeting his eyes. “He must have been hard at work to have produced so many in just seven days. They were as good as his sketches of the Hall. I recognized some scenes from a hamlet near Basildon, so he must have traveled up there.”
He frowned. “So his story of having to do more sketches for the London News rings true?”
“So it seems.”
To his ears, she sounded equivocal, possibly unconvinced, but at the very least unimpressed.
“The reason he wanted to make a point of the quality of his work was to pave the way for him to request permission to return here and do more sketches of the house.”