Susan Johnson by Brazen (Braddock Black)

Author:Brazen (Braddock Black)
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

17

Sunday afternoon began a blissful idyll of blind hope, glowing happiness, and unfettered love. Angela came for him at one, she and Baby May and Peter Rabbit, and they all walked back together to Easton. The servants were all waiting on the drive as though the master had come home, and they greeted him with courtesy and smiles as she wished them to, he didn’t doubt. They walked in her parkland, and she showed him her well-run estate with pride in her accomplishments. He saw the new agricultural college with the several buildings almost complete, the primary and secondary schools she maintained for the village, the sewing business she’d established for young women who were too frail to work with their families on the land—the one for which she’d been accused of coddling her tenants by the conservative press. He met the tenant farmers, too, and their wives and children, who all made a fuss over Baby May.

May had decided he should carry her on their expedition, and she fit into his arms with the same natural state of perfection as her mother. They walked miles that afternoon in their tour of the estate, stopping once for tea at her steward’s cottage, where the men talked at length about threshers as if they’d been lifelong friends.

“Do you like it?” Angela asked as they strolled back to the house, Baby May asleep in Kit’s arms.

“It’s a model estate; I’ve never seen better, but you know that, don’t you?” he replied, smiling at her. “A countess who farms. I’m impressed.”

“I’ll show you the rest tomorrow. But we’ll have to ride.”

“I’d like that. I’ve some plantations on Java. I’ll show them to you some day.”

She touched his arm in answer and smiled up at him. “It seems as if you’ve always been here.”

“Get used to it,” he said. “I intend to stay.”

Isolated at Easton, they lived in a dream world the next fortnight, making love, being in love, talking of love, obsessed with the rare, quixotic, hotheaded, and devastating splendor of their feelings.

They rose early because May did, and Kit had always liked the mornings best, regardless that in the past he’d often greeted the day still in evening dress. And they contented themselves with the simple rhythms of a country day. They helped with the harvests of hay and oats, Kit surprising the farmers by pitching in and coaxing Angela to participate as well. And they made a daily visit to the carpenters working on the buildings for the agricultural college, each new bit of progress a delight to Angela.

Often in the evenings after May had gone to sleep, they rode along the shore road and watched the moon rise over the misty marshlands, the sense of solitude both grand and sublime, nothing of the outside world intruding on their contentment.

They frequently sailed the Shark with a minimum crew, up the east coast and down again, Angela showing her off one day in a high wind, the sails all aloft and screaming as they raced south to Dover.

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