The Arrangement by Joan Wolf Page B

lord?”
    “Yes, Mrs. Saunders. I might add that I have mucked out yours as well.”
    “Then I shall throw them down some hay.”
    I marched stiff-backed to the ladder to the hayloft, put a foot on the first rung, and stopped as I realized that I could scarcely climb the ladder in a skirt with Savile and Grove standing there below me.
    I turned around, a scowl on my face.
    Savile was grinning.
    I clenched my fists.
    Grove stepped forward. “Let me drop the hay, Mrs. Saunders,” he said. “You and the lad and his lordship go on back to the house and get ready for your dinner.”
    In fuming silence I trudged back through the snow, with Savile on one side of me and Nicky on the other.
    I was growing very tired of being ordered about by the Earl of Savile.
     

Chapter Five
     
    For dinner Mr. Macintosh served potted chicken stuffed with herbs, and I realized that Mrs. Macintosh had sacrificed one of her hens to the necessity of feeding a man the size of the Earl of Savile. There was a fragrant potato casserole to go along with the chicken and a large loaf of delicious crusty bread. I gave a big helping of chicken to Savile, a smaller one to Nicky, and served myself just the potato casserole.
    Nicky was very quiet as he ate his chicken. I kept shooting worried glances in his direction as I made halfhearted conversation with the earl.
    “Do you know, Nicky, I suspect that your mama is worried about leaving you here with the Macintoshes,” Savile surprised me by saying suddenly. “I have tried to reassure her that an eight-year-old boy can survive for a few days without his mother, but I do not think she is convinced.”
    The earl’s tone was humorous and colored with just the sort of odious “we males together” condescension that a young boy was guaranteed to find flattering.
    Sure enough, Nicky lifted his chin and, for the first time since we had sat down, looked at me directly. “I shall be perfectly fine, Mama,” he said. “I’m not a baby anymore, you know.”
    “Those were my exact words,” Savile said in the same odious tone he had just used.
    Nicky basked in the light of the earl’s approval. He sat up taller in his seat.
    “You will have plenty to keep you busy,” I said. “I’ll want you to keep an eye on Tim to make certain he does what he’s supposed to do with the horses. And you have your schoolwork for Mr. Ludgate as well.”
    “Yes, Mama,” Nicky said with commendably superior male patience.
    I forced myself to smile at him as I said, “I suppose you are growing up.”
    He looked so small and slight as he sat between Savile and me at the large dining-room table. My heart shivered with love and fear as I met his innocent blue gaze across the dinner plates.
    “Yes,” he returned with surprised pleasure. “I rather believe that I am.”
    * * * *
    I left Savile with the dregs of the sherry bottle and went upstairs to pack. The will was scheduled to be read on the nineteenth, which was the day after next. I reckoned that I would arrive at Savile Castle on the afternoon of the eighteenth, hear the will read sometime on the nineteenth, and depart on the morning of the twentieth. This meant that I would be eating two dinners at the castle, and, unfortunately, I owned only one decent evening dress. This was the gown I had purchased in December to wear to the annual Christmas party the squire always hosted for the neighborhood.
    I removed the gown from my closet and laid it out on my bed. It was made of celestial-blue silk, the exact same color as Nicky’s eyes, and it had a fashionably deep, square-cut neckline, short, puffed sleeves, and a scalloped flounce along the hem. The dressmaker in the village had copied it from a picture I had picked out in the Ladies Magazine. It was the first new evening dress I had purchased since Tommy’s death, and I loved it.
    The blue silk would not be an embarrassment at the table of an earl. The same could not be said for my two other evening dresses,