Seasons of Waiting by Christina Morland

Author:Christina Morland [Morland, Christina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Darcy, Austenesque, JAFF
Published: 2018-12-27T05:00:00+00:00

THE REYNOLDS COTTAGE

OCTOBER 1813

He knew how the other footmen laughed at him for spending his half days with his elderly aunt, but he didn’t mind. Archie was nothing if not good natured. Besides, it was good form, the head footman giving his underlings some small reason to feel as if they were not wholly inferior to him. They knew damn well that when it came to household service, they couldn’t hold a candle to him. So when they saw him leaving Pemberley each Sunday, they could at least tell themselves they had something better to do with their time off than visit old women.

Yet Archie also knew that there was no better place to spend an autumn afternoon than in the front yard of his aunt’s cottage. The other footmen might play cards or visit Lambton, woo silly young maids or catch up on their sleep, but they would have envied him, if only they had known what it meant to visit the home of Nancy Reynolds. It meant rocking in chairs crafted by Lambton’s finest woodworker (his father, her brother); it meant passing back and forth two baskets, one full of steaming buns from Nancy’s own kitchen, the other piled high with apples from Pemberley’s orchard. But most of all—and this was the real prize, the thing that would have made all the other footmen wish they, too, had elderly aunts like his—it meant a tall, frothing mug of beer.

It just so happened that Archie Reynolds was nephew to the best brewer in Derbyshire. To the other footman, she was the recently-retired housekeeper: strict, fair, and eminently respectable. And these were all accurate ways to describe her—most of the time. But when she was not being strict, fair, and eminently respectable (and even when she was), Nancy Reynolds loved to brew. Her porter, cider, pale ale, even her less intoxicating small beers and spruce beers—all would have made the other footmen weep with joy.

And oh, how they would have laughed to have seen the proper Mrs. Reynolds at her leisure: skirts hiked to her shins, feet propped on a stool, eyes closed as she tipped her wrinkled face up to catch the breeze that whistled through the orange-and-gold foliage above them.

Usually, Archie would have propped his feet up, as well; he would be making chit chat and listening to her news between large gulps of beer. But on this afternoon, he sat back, the mug untouched on the table next to him, and just watched the leaves drift down from the branches above him. Yes, Archie was nothing if not good natured, but even he had his limits, and after the scene he had just witnessed in Pemberley’s main hall, he needed some time to clear his head.

Aunt Nancy seemed to understand this, for she did not speak. For a good quarter of an hour, she hardly even moved. Then, finally, without opening her eyes, she reached for her earthenware mug, took a large gulp, and sighed lustily.

He laughed when she wiped the foam from her chin with the back of her hand.

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