Miracle (15 page)

Miracle placed a bowl of hot porridge onto the table before Jonathan Hoyt, then a saucer of scones. The table, the bench chairs, the iron-hooped harvest bottles, pewter, and stoneware utensils had furnished
Cavisbrooke's
kitchen for three hundred years.

"She's a worrier," Johnny stated while staring with some disappointment into his thick cereal, squinting one eye in order to more easily discern the conglomeration of grains and fruit swimming in a froth of rich cream and a slab of butter. "Has been since she was a child, always
flutterin
' about like a mother hen. . . . If I've told her once, I've told her a hundred times: There comes a time when the ignorant folk of this world must take care of them
selves. If the damn fools
ain't
got the sense to make for port in a storm, they deserve to be smashed against the bloody Race."

Miracle cleared her throat, as if to remind him that Salterdon had been one of those "ignorant folk" not so long ago, then cast a glance at his dukeship, only to discover that the remark appeared to have fallen on deaf ears. Salterdon, like John, only stared down into his mash with contemplation.

Well, she thought, as least he had yet to complain about the
spartan
meal, as he had done on his first visit. In truth, he had said little at all that morning. Then again, neither had she, she realized. She supposed she should thank him again for his rather daring rescue the night before. Perhaps she would, she decided, at a more appropriate time.

Raising his eyebrows, fixing the sleepy-eyed duke sitting across the table with a speculative stare, Johnny said, "She says she cares about me health—"

"I do," Miracle interjected, and rewarded him with a brilliant smile and a pot of honey she fetched from the mahogany corner cupboard stacked untidily with blocks of cheeses, baskets of herbs, and bunches of brightly colored yarn.

"Sheep's fleas if you do. A woman who truly cares for a man's well
bein
' would feed him meat occasionally. This is a
mornin
' for rashers and black
puddin
'. She's constantly
feedin
' me as if I were a cow with the
mulligrubs
, Your Grace. Warm mash for breakfast, applesauce for me mid-meal, and potato pie and carrot fritters before bed, when what I'm
wantin
'
is a slab of mutton this thick." He held up his fingers two inches apart, and his eyes looked dreamy.

"Too much meat will give you gout," she stated firmly and delivered the duke his porridge, bracing herself for his typical grunt of disapproval and a curl of his lips, at which time she would happily invite him to take a leisurely leap off the Undercliff, or else walk into Niton and partake at the Hound and Hare as he and his cohorts had done before.

Salterdon did not look up, but continued to stare somewhat bleary-eyed into his black coffee. He had not shaved so his jaw appeared very dark. No farmer today, she thought, but a gypsy whose hair was a trifle too long; it spilled over his noble brow and touched the bridge of his nose. He did, however, as his custom must dictate, wear a splendid cutaway coat to the table—not the midnight blue coat he had spoiled during last night's heroic escapade on the Undercliff, but an elegant forest green wool that made his eyes look dark as slate—
when
he looked at her. He'd barely acknowledged her all morning, however.

Not that she was bothered, of course.

The anxiousness swirling around in her stomach had more to do with the fact that she might certainly be dead now had it not been for him—and
not
because she thought he might be reconsidering his curious interest in her.

Not at all! Heaven forbid.

The sooner she saw the back of him, the better.

"Thank you," he muttered in a gravelly voice.

Her eyebrows raising, she replied, "You're welcome," then turned to Benjamin who stood near the door, ready to comply with his employer's directives. "Benjamin," she said, "You'll join us, of course."

The man, whose eyes were weary as well—no doubt from searching out specters all night—looked startled.

"Come, come, sir. Surely you're hungry."

"Famished, miss, but—"

"Then be seated, and quickly, before the porridge grows cold. There. Beside His Grace." She pointed to an empty place at the table.

"Lady Cavendish," the valet began, still obviously ill at ease with this unexpected turn. He glanced nervously at the duke, who shrugged and nodded before focusing his attention again on his fruited porridge.

"We don't stand on ceremony at Cavisbrooke," Miracle stated. "Isn't that right, Johnny?"

"Right!" Hoyt replied and dove with relish into his breakfast. "Though I could certainly do with standing on a strip of pork. Aye, I would. Did you know, Your Grace, that the Lady Cavendish refuses to cook me flesh but once a week? And then she buys it from the
bleedin
' butcher in Niton. We've got sheep and cattle and pigs, not to mention enough chickens, pigeons, and rabbits to feed King George's army and she won't have me
wringin
' a one of
them's
necks. My mistake was
allowin
' her to name them. Once she christened the damnable beasts they became part of the family."

Putting down his spoon and wiping his mouth with a napkin, His Grace raised his gaze to Miracle. "And what, pray tell, does one name a pig?"

"Samuel," she replied without hesitation. "And Claude. And Charles."

"Calls him Chuck," Johnny said, then belched. "By sausage, but the ugly boar answers to his confounded name. 'Chuck!' she calls to him and he comes
flyin
' as quick as his runty little legs will carry him."

Miracle wiped her damp hands on a cloth, her lips smiling and her voice quivering with humor. "I ask you, Your Grace: How does one eat something that is intelligent enough to know his own name?"

"How do you know he's not responding simply to the sound of your voice?" Salterdon asked, his own eyes beginning to twinkle and one side of his handsome mouth curling in amusement. The effect felt somewhat startling, and she almost dropped her dishcloth.

Brow slightly furrowing, her countenance taking on intense seriousness, she replied, "Because he doesn't come when I call Samuel, of course."

"By Jove," Benjamin declared as he stared with round eyes at His Grace. "What a shocking and frightening possibility. Would it not be consternating to discover that the pitiable beasts we've been devouring are intelligent enough to be eating
us
were they fortunate to have been born with hands instead of hooves? I shan't look at a boar again without imagining myself on a skewer."

Miracle laughed. "And speaking of names . . ." Centering the duke with a curious look, she asked, "why did Ben call you Basingstoke?"

The master and his servant stared at her. They looked at one another. Then Salterdon said, "He worked for my brother . . . at Basingstoke—"

"For years!" Ben chimed in.

"Old habits, you see, are difficult to break," Salterdon declared, and nodded at the servant.

"Dreadful nuisance," Ben declared.

Miracle tossed her damp cloth onto the washbasin, then swept up the kindling bag from near the ovens. The remainder of the morning would be spent baking enough bread to last them the next three days. Therefore the ovens must be stoked as hot as possible.

Stepping from the room and into the morning that had dawned cold and gray, a white layer of mist pressing upon the wet land in a
vaporlike
blanket, she let the door swing closed behind her. Miracle gazed out over the countryside, her eyes feasting on the undulating green pastures and distant forests that looked pale and ghostly, sheep dotting the land that dropped off suddenly into somber gray cliffs overlooking the sea. Birds flew there: rooks and screaming gulls, black and white, as much a dichotomy as the verdant, peaceful land and the turbid waters beyond. As great a dichotomy as the emotions swirling around inside her . . .this disenchantment and curiosity over her guest. Her mind did its best to rationalize this odd turn of events.

At that moment, her friend and lifelong companion, Johnny Hoyt, was sitting at their table talking to a duke as if he were the dairy man come to swap tales. The duke was eating her porridge and drinking their coffee as if it were the most natural thing in the world to break stale bread with a lighthouse keeper and a groom.

On his former stay, His Grace had requested venison and partridge and lobster. He had declined her invitation to join them at the kitchen table. Instead, he and his friends had dined in the drawing room and complained that they had no
Marsalas
and
Madeiras
to imbibe during the partaking of their "plowman's fare."

For a long while, Miracle wandered about the garden, kindling forgotten, as she wove through the hedges and rock walls, her mind going back to the previous night and those moments she had nestled in Salterdon's arms before the fire. Only once had she stood so close to a man—or rather a boy—when they had pressed together beneath a shelf of rock to escape the rain. That had been half a year ago, and she hadn't seen him since.

Joe Cobbett, however, had not looked, felt, and smelled like Salterdon. This man was a gypsy king, whose chest and arms were like stone. He smelled of soap and leather and sandalwood.

"I don't believe you," came the voice behind her.
His
voice. Her heart leaped, and she spun around, causing her skirt to swirl and her kindling bag to slide from her shoulder and down her arm.

Salterdon poised on the pathway, resplendent in his green woolen double-breasted tailcoat, which was open and displayed his green and gold striped waistcoat, buff
nankin
trousers, and glistening Hessian boots that nearly reached his knees. No doubt Benjamin had spent hours on the spit and polish. She could imagine his dukeship watching over his manservant's efforts with a kind of hubristic air. She tried to breathe and think what to say.

"I said I don't believe you," he repeated very solemnly.

"Believe what? And why do you continue to sneak up on me that way?"

"About the pigs; and I don't sneak. I called your name twice. Obviously," he slowly blinked and shrugged one broad shoulder, "you were occupied with your thoughts. Are you always so contemplative, Miss Cavendish, or is something troubling you? Or perhaps you simply find inordinate pleasure in reverie . . .?"

She did not reply, but turned and walked away, toward the roost where the cackling of hens heralded the arrival of morning eggs.

Salterdon said nothing, just leaned against the door of the coop, and with his arms crossed over his chest, he watched as she unseated several hens that squawked and filled the air with the batting of wings and a flurry of feathers. With her apron, she made a pouch for the eggs— several of them, brown and speckled, and a scattering of white ones.

"So tell me," the duke said as she stepped from the coop. "Why do you do it?"

"Collect eggs?" she replied with amusement and a dismissive glance back over her shoulder.

"The shirts." He plucked a feather from her hair and twirled it in his fingers. "Why do you hide up there"—he pointed with the feather toward the fog-shrouded turret above—"and sew them?"

"Have you mentioned it to Jonathan?" she demanded in panic.

Raising both dark eyebrows and tilting his head, he said, "I saw no reason to."

Miracle allowed herself the privilege of meeting his gray eyes with her own. His gaze was penetrating and dark, somehow disturbing and revealing—revealing not himself, however, but her. The intensity of it sluiced like liquid sun through her.

Miracle stepped back, allowing for more space between them. His closeness bothered her, made her feel oddly unnerved and confused. This time, she did not meet his eyes, but focused on the pigs in the distance that were rooting in the mud and squabbling among themselves.