Elizabeth Beacon - The Black Sheep's Return

‘Better?’ he asked at last, seeming to wake from some sort of reverie when she sighed and handed Atlas the still-savoury remains of the bread where the crust was too hard to eat without endangering her teeth.

‘Much better, thank you,’ she said with a contented sigh. ‘Your dog has very fine manners, Mr Craven,’ she added as Atlas took the morsel with such polite courtesy she felt no fear as his impressive teeth and powerful jaws closed on it.

‘Nice to know I can flatter myself on one success in that area,’ he said with a stern eye on his angelic-looking offspring that argued he hadn’t forgotten their disobedience.

‘I wonder what time it is?’ she mused, more to divert him than from an urgent need to know.

‘About seven of the clock,’ he said without reference to a timepiece and she must have betrayed her disbelief, since Sally piped up,

‘Papa always knows what time it is.’

‘I’ve learnt the habits of the sun and the creatures around me,’ he said with a shrug, as if that wasn’t an unusual skill, and Freya felt guiltily at her own ignorance about the busy schedules of those who must toil for a living.

‘It must prove very useful,’ she said and heard self-consciousness in her voice as she couldn’t get the awkwardness of their last encounter out of her head.

‘It is,’ he said as if he couldn’t either.

‘Can we go, Papa?’ Henry interrupted as if growing tired of adult silliness.

‘So long as you stay within earshot,’ his father said with a straight look that said he meant it and his son returned it with a solemn nod. Sally gave an exasperated shrug at the sheer contrariness of men that made Freya long to laugh out loud.

‘And while my little demons are gone, we need to think about your day, Miss Rowan,’ Orlando said without looking directly at her.

‘I will try not to get in the way,’ she said, Lady Freya’s rigid dignity hard in her voice and she regretted the return to her old self more than she would have dreamt she could only yesterday.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he snapped as if she was demanding he devote every minute of it to her comfort.

Now Freya knew what Sally meant to convey with her long-suffering gesture. She must know all too well what it was like to live with two such prickly males. Freya wished she had the faintest idea how to cope with this Craven male and bit back a weary sigh.

‘You still need to do whatever it is you do to earn your bread. I cannot see how my offer to let you do so is ridiculous, sir,’ she told him with icy dignity.

Hopefully he didn’t know how conscious She was of sitting here with bare shoulders and a rather inept plait of hair hanging down her back. She did her best to stop her impromptu gown showing the length of her right leg to anyone who wanted to see it, even if he already had, along with the rest of her, and she tried hard not to blush at the very idea.

‘A day away from it won’t hurt me,’ he said gruffly as if silently agreeing he was being unreasonable, but unable to stop being so.

‘I don’t need to be entertained like a fractious child.’

‘Good, I already have two of those to cope with,’ he said and finally the wry smile that had made her trust him against her will last night broke through his dark mood. ‘We need to solve some practicalities before you hoe my peas to the ground or randomly chop down trees,’ he told her as if he had as little confidence in her domestic skills as she did herself.

‘Even I know this isn’t the time of year to fell whatever it is you usually fell.’

‘And do you know a pea from a bean?’

‘Not unless it’s on my plate.’

‘So you might as well agree to leave them where they are until I can teach you which is which, might you not?’ he said.

She wondered if he really thought Lady Freya Buckle might dirty her hands and get blisters on her fine soft skin to repay his hospitality, or relieve her boredom in a household without the usual ladylike occupations. Freya nodded regally and wondered what on earth she was going to do with herself while she waited to be well enough to walk away.

‘It will all work out in the end,’ he reassured her as if he knew the reality of her situation had come rushing back as soon as she thought about the day she would have to leave here and go back to finding her way in the wider world.

‘I really don’t see how,’ she argued with a quiet despair that sounded very un-Lady Freya-like in her own ears.

‘With life and hope it’s remarkable what the human spirit can cope with, Perdita,’ he said and she supposed he must know what he was talking about.

‘I know and I will try to be more optimistic.’

‘And perhaps agree you need to sleep as well?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Then why don’t you do so while I take the children over to fetch some clothes for you?’

‘I don’t see why you should put yourself to so much trouble, sir,’ she said a little stiffly, wondering where he was to get them and a ludicrous shaft of jealousy bit into her as some likely possibilities leapt into her mind.

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