A Fearsome Doubt - Charles Todd [44]
The meal was excellent, and the conversation exhilarating, leaving Hamish out as if shutting the door. The Scot was still making up his mind about Mrs. Crawford.
“In another time,” Rutledge heard him muttering, “she’d ha’ been burned at the stake for witchcraft.”
Amused, Rutledge had silently answered, “Or been the mistress of Kings.”
They talked about the war, and about India, where she’d spent her childhood, and about Kent.
“Do you know what I remembered most about Kent, as a child in India?” she asked Rutledge at one point.
“That it was green?”
“No, I remembered the orchards, trees filled with white and pink blossoms, like butterflies, and I remembered the man on stilts with grape leaves on his head.”
“Good God!”
“When they do the twiddling—that is, when they’re tying the hop strings from the ground to the wires that run on the wooden framework built above the gardens—there’s a man on stilts who does the high knots. It’s quite a difficult task—the vines as they grow follow those strings, and mustn’t be led astray. And such a man will often wear a hat to keep the sun off his head. This one had found young grape leaves—they’re not unlike hop leaves, you know—and had twisted himself a Bacchus crown, to keep his head cool. We stopped at the hop farm to water the horses, and he came over to the carriage and bent down to peer in at me, making a face because I was tired and cross. I was instantly enchanted. And I wanted to see him again.” She smiled. “I was quite in love. With a man on stilts.”
“And what did Mr. Crawford, when he arrived on the scene, think of your infatuation?”
“He was a tall man. I’ve always fancied tall men. That’s your claim to my affection, by the way. And he went to the bazaar in Agra one day and found someone to fashion him a pair of stilts. I was grown up by that time, and knew better than to laugh when he went headfirst into the nasturtiums.”
Rutledge chuckled, and then sobered. “I think Elizabeth Mayhew has found someone to love.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Crawford said pensively as she poured milk into her tea. “I tried to warn you of that.”
“I wasn’t in danger of falling in love with her.”
“No, but you’d put her on a pedestal, you know. Richard’s widow. She’s quite human, like the rest of us.”
“Who is this man?” He heard the edge in his voice.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been invited to meet him. But I hear from my seamstress that he’s from Northumberland, and quite handsome.”
“I wasn’t aware that Elizabeth or Richard had friends in Northumberland.”
“My dear Ian! What does that have to say to anything?” Mrs. Crawford demanded, amused.
“I meant,” he replied testily, “that it’s likely to be someone she’s met since the war. Since Richard’s death.”
“Yes, I should expect it is. He was buying a trinket for a lady. A shawl, my seamstress told me. It was described to me in great detail, because it was so lovely. And quite a harmless gift. The very next week, I happened to see Elizabeth wearing that particular shawl. I didn’t ask how she came by it. Occasionally I do remember my manners.” Her lips curved in amusement, but her eyes were no longer smiling. “Nor did she tell me, when I admired it.”
Hamish spoke up for the first time in an hour. “She’s no’ happy with this match. But she willna’ tell you why . . .”
They spent the remainder of the meal talking about Mrs. Crawford’s years in India. In the span of her life, the subcontinent had changed enormously. The vast private holding in the hands of the East India Company had collapsed in the Great Indian Mutiny, which had seen such bloody horrors at Cawnpore. The British government had taken over the country after that, and in the course of time, Disraeli had made Queen Victoria Empress of India, equal in majesty to the German Kaiser Wilhelm. Britain had poured civilians and soldiers into the subcontinent since then, and now there were rumblings of a movement for independence.