Read Online The Waltzing Widow/Smith by Joan Smith - Free Book Online Page A

garden behind the house would not be offensive enough to anger Avedon, and all her stunts had the same goal of repaying him. “He cannot encroach on your property with his tiling.”
    Bigelow puffed up like a pigeon. “Just let him try it!”
    “A garden wouldn’t produce in time to do us any good,” Mrs. Percy said with unusual crossness. The maddening persistence of the noise and dust were driving her to distraction. With all the windows closed, the house was like an oven, but still the dust was everywhere.
    “I have a strange notion these tiles will set a new record for slowness in being laid,” Lucy replied. “Where can I hire a couple of garden boys, Tony?”
    “It won’t be easy,” he worried. “I see Avedon has hired up every spare man in the neighborhood, along with his own men.”
    “The crew are your uncle’s own men?” Lucy asked softly.
    “Certainly. Who else should he use?”
    “Who indeed?” Not a word was uttered about a crew from Canterbury.
    “I’ll send a couple of my own lads over, the Crawley brothers,” Tony decided. “They’re not bright fellows, but they’ll do well enough to dig you up a garden.”
    The day was spent in a thoroughly enjoyable manner by Lucy, and incidentally by Avedon’s crew, who had to admire the young lady’s ingenuity. The cow was led on foot up the dusty, excavated road. The Crawley boys left off their digging to lay planks across the ditch and guide her to safety. Half a dozen hens were carried in, and the backhouse boy was sent off to the village on foot to order lumber and wire mesh for a henhouse, and seeds and seedlings for the garden. Lucy also had him post a letter to London, ordering her mount and phaeton. The latter she arranged to stable at Milhaven—and let us see how milord Avedon liked that! Certainly his nephew was tickled pink.
    Tony stayed discreetly away from Chenely for a few days, and neither Avedon nor Lady Sara went near Rose Cottage. The latter was occupied with arranging her garden party, and Avedon stood too high on his dignity to be seen hanging around the meadow.
    The men continued moving earth around, making a deal of noise and generally having such a holiday as they had never before enjoyed. The Percys were much discussed at Chenely, but there was no direct news of them. The servants, who could have told them the whole tale, were reluctant to receive Avedon’s wrath.
    On the evening of the third day, Mrs. Percy’s nerves were frayed from all the commotion, and she retired early to her dusty chamber. Avedon’s frustration at not knowing what was going on reached a peak, and he had his mount saddled up. With great inconvenience he worked his way through the meadow to Rose Cottage. He arrived powdered in dust, with his hands pricked from a detour into nettles to reach the stable, and his cravat disarranged from branches flying against him. He surveyed with grim satisfaction the damage done to his road and the piles of earth all around the exterior of the cottage.
    At the rear he saw one of Tony’s milchers tethered to a post, grazing idly. He uttered a low curse just before his lips clenched angrily. The henhouse of wire and wood had been hastily constructed. Movement within told him it was already stocked. He went around to the front and stopped short. His eyebrows rose when he spotted the seedlings planted in what used to be a lawn. Mounds of dirt that surely held cucumbers had been formed along the west side. Other neat rows bespoke carrots and onions.
    Very much accustomed to having his way, Avedon was vexed with the ladies’ tactics. His nostrils pinched, but there was an unwilling wisp of admiration, too, at such high initiative and low cunning.
    He fully expected to find Tony inside and went to the door ready to haul him out by the ear. He was greeted by a butler—such ostentation, a butler in a cottage—and shown into the parlor, where Lucy sat at the tambour frame in a state of the utmost serenity, to judge by her