The Weeping Ash by Joan Aiken Page A

he neither knew nor cared if he subjected his wife to severe physical suffering.—He was unlovable, that was all there was to it.—Obey him, though, Fanny must and would; she would take pains to carry out his will in domestic matters and do her best to ensure that day-to-day life in the Hermitage ran smoothly. This she resolved, and hastened toward the garden door so that her lateness for breakfast on the first morning should not be an immediate cause for his displeasure.
    Reaching the flagged path, she hurried along it; but the flags were smooth, slippery with dew that was almost frost, and she slid on one of them and would have fallen, had not a hand grasped her arm from behind. A voice exclaimed solicitously:
    â€œCareful, ma’am! They stones be main gliddery, yet!”
    â€œOh, thank you!” Fanny gasped, recovering her balance with an effort.
    Turning, she found herself looking up into the dark blue eyes of a tall young man who had jumped forward to catch her, dropping the lawn scythe he had been carrying; he wore a gardener’s hessian apron, and his curly black hair was tied back with a piece of bast; his face and hands were brown as those of a gypsy. Long, and strongly boned, his face looked as if it wore a habitually serious expression, but now it broke into a smile, with a flash of very white teeth, as he released her arm, and she stood up straight, shaking her blue dress to rights.
    â€œEh, it would never do for the new mistress of the Hermitage to slip and break her ankle, first morning out! That’d be a bad omen for sure, that would!”
    â€œBut one which you have luckily averted!” Fanny said, smiling too. “Thank you—no harm is done. I am much obliged to you for your quickness. You must be the gardener; but I am afraid that, as yet, I do not know your name.”
    â€œIt is Andrew Talgarth, ma’am.”
    â€œDid—are you—” Are you one of the servants that my husband brought with him? Fanny wanted to ask, but the phrase, somehow, seemed inapplicable to the tall, black-haired young man who stood so easily beside her holding the scythe which he had picked up again. “Do you belong to Petworth, or did you come here with my husband?” she finally said.
    â€œI was working here as gardener, ma’am, before you came, for Madame Reynard, the French lady, and then for Miss Juliana—but I dunna belong to Petworth. I come from Breconshire, from the Black Mountains; Lord Egremont fetched my father an’ me here, a long time since, to work in the Petworth House gardens and park; and then he asked me to help lay out the garden here, for Madame Reynard, when he had this house built for her, sixteen, seventeen year agone.”
    â€œSo long ago as that?” asked Fanny, surprised. “You hardly look old enough!”
    â€œI’m thirty-two, ma’am, but I’ve been a gardener’s boy ever since I was weaned, as you might say,” he answered, smiling. “Born with a trowel in my hand. My da was used to work for a mort of different gentry, all over the country, laying out their pleasure grounds—afore he settled down with Lord Egremont, up at Petworth House yonder.”
    Talgarth gestured toward the western end of the garden where, Fanny now noticed, beyond a stone barn, a high wall, and a pair of coach houses, there rose the red-tiled roofs of the town. Beyond them, higher still, severely rectangular, the stone portico and slate roof of an impressively large mansion could be seen. It seemed almost as big as a castle.
    â€œDear me, is that Petworth House? I had no notion that it was so close. Or so large! Does your father still work for Lord Egremont?”
    â€œNay, he’s retired now, ma’am; Lord Egremont builded him a liddle house, up in the dilly woods yonder”—Talgarth gestured across the valley—“where he has his bean plot and his gillyflowers an’ his pipe an’