Royal Regard

Chapter Thirty-Five, Part 1

1821: Saltash, Cornwall, England

The megrim that had kept Bella home from Sunday services had blown away on the sweet late summer breeze, drifting on the salt wind over the Tamar River with the musty smell of plumping grapes. Feeling cooped up, she had walked across her few acres of food crops—wheat, oats, vegetables for the table, and a small orchard of fruit trees. She had hiked past the barn, through the fields where they kept a small flock of sheep and herd of beeves. The sounds of sea birds mingled with church bells in the distance and the lowing of contented cows.

As she made her solitary trek to the vineyards, she turned over the day's concerns. The cook at Antony House wanted to buy more cheeses than usual for a house party, and Bella wasn't sure she could accommodate. The farm manager needed more workers for the midsummer planting, and she wasn't sure where she could find the money or the men, the mines a more regular source of income than her fifty acres. Her stableboy was talking about moving to Plymouth, and the housemaid thought Bella didn't know she had snuck out last night, to meet God-only-knew-who under the moonlight. One of the horses had colic, she had lost three lambs to a well-concealed den of foxes since last week, and her plan to start raising pigs had been scuttled by the need to re-thatch the cottage.

She had built a life for herself here, as Mrs. Isabella Clewes, though not the one of ease her husband had intended. Her identity was not unknown—nowhere the length or breadth of England could she reside completely anonymously—but by living quietly, modestly, and frugally, as well as refusing absolutely to acknowledge she was a countess, she had finally worked her way into the good graces of most of her neighbors. It had helped that the vicar was of an age with Myron and had heard her husband's opinion before the stories from London had travelled this far south. Here in Saltash, at least, she wasn't the pariah she might have been anywhere else.

No longer, by any measure, the wealthiest widow in England, Wellbridge's Statement of Claim had cost nearly every shilling she'd had, and with no funds to keep them operating, left most of her properties dormant. Only the shipping line remained viable and that only because the king, in his own interest, had made it so. But he had also ensured Myron's other investors decamped in droves, keeping her in much reduced circumstances.

Worse still, when she refused to marry Wellbridge, her claim to feme sole was nullified, leaving all of her assets in the hands of a trustee who had no interest in her opinions—or for that matter, her wellbeing—as long she was in opposition to the king. Saddest of all, the situation had tarnished her fond reminiscences of Myron, since he was the one who had agreed to the unjust contract, determined to over-protect her even into the afterlife.

Alexander and Charlotte would have taken food from their own mouths to ensure her care, but Bella had no wish to rely on anyone for her support if it could be helped. Rather, she increased her hidden cache by five times in the lies she told Charlotte. Since the Firthleys rarely had reason to travel so far south, and Bella would never again find reason to be in London, they couldn't know the precarious nature of her life as minor gentry.

A circumstance which, without the approval of His Majesty, seemed unlikely to ever be resolved. The peace offering she had sent, a barrel of her vineyard's first blend, had resulted in a kind note of thanks, in Prinny's own hand, requesting a few barrels more. At her expense, of course, leaving her with a decided lack of available coin and less than half the small vintage to sell.

The vines were at the heart of today's worries. The malbec grapes were showing signs of gall, a grave concern, as they were needed in every blend, particularly the red the king enjoyed so much. If she lost them, she might not produce a decent vintage for two or three more years, which meant another winter lived lean by everyone who worked her small acreage. Her farm manager was importing new cuttings from one of Bella's recent acquaintances in France, but until the new vines were producing, several seasons from now, she had to find a solution to the parasite slowly killing her grapes.

With any luck, this would also prove a distraction from the parasite of her mind: Wellbridge.

Almost a year since she had seen him, and she hadn't yet decided how to feel. She loved him still, wanted to be joined with him, mind, body, and spirit. She could imagine no context in which that would change. Thoughts of him were imbued with a tenderness, a sweetness, a poignancy that did nothing so much as...enrage her.

Only a weak-willed woman would allow a man to destroy her life, and still wish to feel his lips on hers. Only a pathetic woman would pine for a man who ran for the Continent like a coward without even reading her letters. Only a senseless woman would cuckold a good man with a libertine, then believe the rake would make her happy. Only a stupid woman would allow remembrances of one hour with a man to invade her dreams and her bedchamber night after night, months later. Scowling, she ran through the familiar refrains, searching the horizon for her vineyard manager, who would surely have some opinion on the malbecs that might, for a few minutes, take her mind off the miserable cur.

Before she could find the stocky Spaniard who had taken on the challenge of taming and expanding Myron's parents' small private vineyard, wild for a decade, she was distracted by the sound of muddy footsteps coming nearer. Against her will, she shivered and took a step backward, then whipped her head around to see if anyone was within shouting distance, but she saw no one. She found herself grasping a pergola as though it were a spear she could throw.

Stomping her foot to clear her irrational fright, excess emotion splashing like the mud on her boots, she slowly placed one trembling hand back at her side. She held a grey bonnet over her eyes, trying to peer through rays of muted sunshine. She hadn't heard horses or a carriage, but the vineyards were a fair walk from the house. A visitor would have gone to the front door, an unknown tradesman, the back, and neither would have followed her into the fields. A neighboring farmer would have announced himself by now, as would anyone in her employ. If someone important were waiting, the housekeeper would have sent a groom to find her, and he would have called out to determine her direction.

"Who is it? Who is there?" she cried out, as the footsteps reached the end of the row where she was standing, the shadow crowding the sun, chilling her. She wished she had brought her shawl, if not a cloak.

"I know am a bit scruffy, Bella, but it's not even been a twelvemonth."