Mary Balogh - Gentle conquest

Georgiana was surprised to note that all of the women smiled at their approach. Some of them called greetings. On her father's estate she always stayed as far away from the workers as possible. It was not that they were openly hostile. Rather, they lacked all expression whenever she was forced to be close to them. But she had always sensed hostility. The children here stopped their play to gaze curiously at the new arrivals. One child ran up to Ralph, grinned up at him to reveal two missing front teeth, and shyly stroked the toe of his boot.

"Hello, Will," Ralph said, smiling down at the child. "Now did I imagine it, or did you really run all the way over here without once limping?"

"I ain't limping, y'r lordship," the boy said. "See? It's all better." He lifted one skinny bare leg off the ground.

Ralph leaned down from his horse's back and tousled the boy's hair. "Do you want to hold my horse's head while I get down and talk to your grandmama?" he asked. "And…" he looked around the group of eager faces and frantically waving hands of children who had gathered close. "Colin. Yes, you. Colin. Will you look after the countess's horse?"

Georgiana watched in fascination. What had happened to her shy boy? Ralph had soon swung himself down from his horse's back and was stooping on his haunches examining with serious attention the string of gaudy beads that a scruffy urchin of a child had held up from her neck for his inspection.

He touched the child's cheek and straightened up, turning a brightly smiling face in her direction. "Do let me lift you down, Georgiana," he said. "The horse will be quite safe. You can be sure that Colin here would die rather than let harm come to one hair of its body. And I assure you that Mrs. Harris will be mortally offended if we do not sample her cider. She has been plying me with it ever since I was too old to drink warm milk."

Mrs. Harris turned out to be a withered little old lady whose face was so full of wrinkles that Georgiana wondered if she had ever been a girl. She was the grandmother of Will, the boy who had first approached Ralph, and lived with her son and his family in a tiny but immaculately tidy cottage. There were two mugs of cider and two small cakes on the table already when Ralph led his wife inside.

Georgiana for once felt genuinely shy. She had never associated with the lower classes. The closest she had ever come to talking with any of them was in giving orders to house servants. She did not know how to behave or what to say. She clung to Ralph's arm and allowed him to lead her to a bench.

"Mrs. Harris," Ralph said, "I had to bring my wife to meet my oldest friend almost as soon as we arrived home, you see. She cannot know Chartleigh without knowing you, now, can she? And without sampling your cider? Mrs. Harris used to spoil me shamefully when I was a boy, Georgiana. She could never let me pass without feeding me."

The old lady chuckled. "Such a little dab of a boy you was too, Master Ralph," she said. "You always looked as if you would blow away in the wind. But look at you now. As handsome a lord as the king and all the dukes, I dare swear. And as pretty a wife as a queen or a princess."

Ralph grinned.

"Y'r lordship, y'r lordship," the urgent voice of Will Harris called, first from outside the house and then from Ralph's elbow. "Judy had her pups last week. Six of 'em. The prettiest little things. Susie's pa was going to drownd them, but me and Harold and Ellie's going to take one each and the others is to be let live. Will you come and see them, y'r lordship? They are ever such little pups and we ain't let take them out of their box. Else we would bring them here to show you."

"William!" a woman hissed from the doorway, and Georgiana recognized one of the women who had been standing at the well when they arrived. "Leave his lordship be! He don't want to be looking at no puppies."

"On the contrary!" Ralph said, laughing and getting to his feet. "How could I possibly miss the treat of seeing six newborns? Lead the way, Will, and show me which one is to be yours. Georgiana?" He turned a laughing face and held out a hand for hers.

"Oh, go on with you, Master Ralph," Mrs. Harris said, "Your young countess will stay here and have another cake. Such a pretty little thing don't want to be poking around a smelly old dog box."

Ralph was dragged away by an excited Will.

Mrs. Harris put another cake on Georgiana's plate. "Such a fine young lord," she said. "It was a glorious day for us when he became the Earl of Chartleigh. Not that I mean any disrespect to his dead lordship."

Georgiana felt tense without Ralph to stand between her and exposure to this old lady who belonged to a class of which she knew nothing. "You knew him as a child?" she asked politely.

"And such a sweet little lost soul!" the old lady said. "As different from his pa as day and night. I think he used to like being here, y'r lordship, more than he liked being at the house. He used to laugh here."

"I am glad he had you to turn to," Georgiana said hesitantly. She was feeling decidedly self-conscious and uncomfortable.

"Bless his dear heart!" Mrs. Harris continued, picking up the jug of cider and adding more to Georgiana's mug. "Going to build us all new houses, he is, because he says these cottages ain't fit for hogs to live in and there ain't no use doing more repairs to them, else we will be adding repairs to repairs, if you know what I mean, y'r ladyship."

"Ralph is going to build a whole new village?" Georgiana asked in some surprise.

"Right after the harvest, we may begin," the old lady said, "and our dear Master Ralph will pay for it all. He hasn't told you, y'r ladyship? You don't know the half of the goodness of that young man, I'll bet my life on it. You have a treasure there, let me tell you. There's nobody like our earl. His pa always said there was no money even for repairs."

"Oh?" Georgiana said.

"Our Will fair worships him," Mrs. Harris said with a chuckle. "Poaching for rabbits he was when he broke his leg in the woods at Eastertime. His lordship was the one to find him. The poor little mite expected a good thrashing if he was lucky. Instead Master Ralph carried him to the big house, called a physician, had his bones set, sent word to my son, and kept the boy at the house for a whole week. In a feather bed, if you please! 'That's not the way to learn the boy what's right and wrong,' I says to him. And do you know what he said, y'r ladyship? He says, 'P'raps I'm the one what's learned something, Mrs. Harris. I've talked to your son,' he says, 'and I've told him that from now on anyone from the village can hunt in the woods for food, though not just for fun, mind,' he says. 'This land is as much yours as mine.' "

Mrs. Harris nodded sagely, her eyes on Georgiana. "I am certainly glad he has married himself a pretty young wife," she said.

Georgiana smiled. "I can see why Ralph keeps coming back for more of your cider," she said, looking down at her empty mug and plate. "Thank you, Mrs. Harris."

She was relieved to hear the returning noise of the group of children and to find that Ralph was in their midst. He took her away immediately afterward. They had been in the village for no longer than fifteen minutes. To Georgiana it had seemed more like fifteen hours.

"How CAN You be so friendly with those people?" Georgiana asked when they had ridden out of earshot of the villagers. "How do you know what to say to them?"

Ralph looked across at her in some surprise. "But it is so easy," he said. "They are so open and so willing to share their possessions and themselves. I have always been most at ease with people of the lower classes. Don't you find that our own class is so hemmed in by rules and conventions that one is not free to be oneself? It is with my own class that I find myself stiff and tongue-tied."