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Authors: This Magic Moment
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the buildings at the bottom of the hill. “Will it have a stationery? I wish to keep a journal of events.”
“The mercantile used to sell books and papers. It’s a far cry from London, though,” he warned her.
She gave him one of those looks he was coming to think of as her “seer-look.” Anyone who believed in witches would certainly think himself hexed by now. Or bewitched. He thought that look enchanting.
“I love living simply. London is all artifice and not for me.”
Harry didn’t think she’d lived in the country long enough if that was her opinion, but he politely refrained from saying so.
Sheep gamboled in a nearby field, and Harry could see newly plowed furrows in the distance. The hedgerow could use some work. Perhaps the field hands were too busy with spring planting to clean up the roadside.
Christina examined the village unfolding in front of them as they rode down the hill. “How far is your home?”
“A mile or so by road. It can’t be seen until one comes upon it.” Harry frowned as the blacksmith’s cottage came into view. He remembered it as a bustling place where men gathered to discuss the weather and local gossip while Abraham mended their wagon wheels and shod their horses. The yard was empty and silent today.
The only reason he could think of for this oddly inactive street was a funeral. But if there was a funeral, everyone should be gathered at the church.
“Do you have no carpenters or thatch-menders?” Christina asked, slowing her horse to gaze around her.
“We employed several last I was here.” The wind picked up with the approaching storm, and Harry watched a loose tile slide down the vicar’s roof. The colorful flowers he remembered filling the vicarage yard had been replaced by the new green leaves of spring vegetables.
Shouldn’t there be some sign of the townspeople preparing a welcome for him? Or had it been so long since the duke had gone away that they’d forgotten the traditions he remembered from childhood?
“Is that a tavern?” Christina indicated a half-timbered Elizabethan cottage that had once housed a family of weavers.
A crudely-painted sign bearing a red lion swung over the door now. The wattle-and-daub paneling between the timbers had cracked, and gaping holes revealed the lathes inside. In the prosperous villages they had passed, failing wattle had been replaced by brick nogging or weatherboarding. Why hadn’t Sommersville prospered as those other villages had?
He could almost feel disapproval radiating off his new wife as they rode through a dirt street empty of all but a few dogs. Christina fell silent, but her head veered back and forth, taking in the deplorable state of the mercantile and grocer’s establishments, the tumble-down remnants of houses, the lone sheep tethered and grazing in someone’s front yard.
Behind the hedgerows and fences of backyards, women looked up from hanging their wash, but no one recognized him, Harry realized with relief.
Why hadn’t Jack told him that the village had come to this pass?
His steward was still in Scotland, looking for buyers for the hunting box. He’d have to have a word or two with him when he returned. Jack had told him the estate was in debt, but that was no reason for the village not to prosper. Unless the crops had failed, the tenants should have cash to spend.
He caught up with Christina after examining the dilapidated condition of a cottage. “I have distant cousins living on the estate property. I think you’ll enjoy their company. We all grew up together. My grandfather left them the use of the dower house. Margaret is perhaps a year or two older than you, and Peter is a year or two younger than me, so we should make an amiable group.”
“Your cousins have never married?”
“Not that anyone has told me, but it seems no one has told me much in some time. They came up to London several years ago, so Margaret could be presented, but she preferred the country. I don’t
“The mercantile used to sell books and papers. It’s a far cry from London, though,” he warned her.
She gave him one of those looks he was coming to think of as her “seer-look.” Anyone who believed in witches would certainly think himself hexed by now. Or bewitched. He thought that look enchanting.
“I love living simply. London is all artifice and not for me.”
Harry didn’t think she’d lived in the country long enough if that was her opinion, but he politely refrained from saying so.
Sheep gamboled in a nearby field, and Harry could see newly plowed furrows in the distance. The hedgerow could use some work. Perhaps the field hands were too busy with spring planting to clean up the roadside.
Christina examined the village unfolding in front of them as they rode down the hill. “How far is your home?”
“A mile or so by road. It can’t be seen until one comes upon it.” Harry frowned as the blacksmith’s cottage came into view. He remembered it as a bustling place where men gathered to discuss the weather and local gossip while Abraham mended their wagon wheels and shod their horses. The yard was empty and silent today.
The only reason he could think of for this oddly inactive street was a funeral. But if there was a funeral, everyone should be gathered at the church.
“Do you have no carpenters or thatch-menders?” Christina asked, slowing her horse to gaze around her.
“We employed several last I was here.” The wind picked up with the approaching storm, and Harry watched a loose tile slide down the vicar’s roof. The colorful flowers he remembered filling the vicarage yard had been replaced by the new green leaves of spring vegetables.
Shouldn’t there be some sign of the townspeople preparing a welcome for him? Or had it been so long since the duke had gone away that they’d forgotten the traditions he remembered from childhood?
“Is that a tavern?” Christina indicated a half-timbered Elizabethan cottage that had once housed a family of weavers.
A crudely-painted sign bearing a red lion swung over the door now. The wattle-and-daub paneling between the timbers had cracked, and gaping holes revealed the lathes inside. In the prosperous villages they had passed, failing wattle had been replaced by brick nogging or weatherboarding. Why hadn’t Sommersville prospered as those other villages had?
He could almost feel disapproval radiating off his new wife as they rode through a dirt street empty of all but a few dogs. Christina fell silent, but her head veered back and forth, taking in the deplorable state of the mercantile and grocer’s establishments, the tumble-down remnants of houses, the lone sheep tethered and grazing in someone’s front yard.
Behind the hedgerows and fences of backyards, women looked up from hanging their wash, but no one recognized him, Harry realized with relief.
Why hadn’t Jack told him that the village had come to this pass?
His steward was still in Scotland, looking for buyers for the hunting box. He’d have to have a word or two with him when he returned. Jack had told him the estate was in debt, but that was no reason for the village not to prosper. Unless the crops had failed, the tenants should have cash to spend.
He caught up with Christina after examining the dilapidated condition of a cottage. “I have distant cousins living on the estate property. I think you’ll enjoy their company. We all grew up together. My grandfather left them the use of the dower house. Margaret is perhaps a year or two older than you, and Peter is a year or two younger than me, so we should make an amiable group.”
“Your cousins have never married?”
“Not that anyone has told me, but it seems no one has told me much in some time. They came up to London several years ago, so Margaret could be presented, but she preferred the country. I don’t
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