Joshua Ramsay had had a great deal to say against all these renovations. The words “sacrilege”
and “desecration”
rang in Esther’s ears, as though it were St. Paul’s Cathedral she was changing and not an ugly old house.
None of her work so incensed him as the elegant brass plaque, only about fifteen inches square—one would think it was a broadsheet. Engraved on it in the best of good, discreet taste and the finest Gothic script were the simple words Lowden Arms--Dining and Accommodation. To call it vulgar was ridiculous, and to call it criminal was a plain lie. She had secured her license in the usual way, by a hefty bribe.
The stables had had to be enlarged. Esther confessed to a twinge at seeing the old garden cobbled over for a stable yard. One thing she did not have to desecrate was the wonderful location. The Thames flowed idly by, a few hundred yards behind the Hall, and the willows still wept over it. It was a popular walk for guests on a fine afternoon.
When all her renovations were done, Esther removed to the dower house with her aunt, Lady Brown, to save the disgrace of saying she actually ran the inn herself. Her solicitor gravely informed her that for a lady to have the wits and will to make money was beneath contempt, so he set up the investment company to put her at one remove from commerce. It was a ruse that didn’t fool the locals, but if ever she became rich and decided to try the London marriage mart, it would sound respectable.
It happened that Buck Ramsay, Joshua’s cousin, had a falling out with his father just prior to the opening and was happy to act as manager. Buck usually came over to the dower house every night to fill Esther in on the details of how her business was progressing. He entered on that evening just as Joshua and she were staring at each other.
Buck had escaped the Ramsay looks. He was slighter of frame than his cousin, lighter of complexion, smaller of nose, and altogether a more agreeable specimen, though somewhat dandyish in appearance.
“Your clerk has arrived to hand over the day’s receipts,”
Joshua said with a satirical grin at his cousin.
“My manager has come to make his report,”
she corrected, and winked at Buck. “I never sully my genteel hands with money. How much did I take in, Buck?”
“Twenty-eight rooms taken,”
Buck reported. “Not including Lady Gloria Devere.”
He went to the wine table and poured himself a glass.
To assuage Joshua’s temper, Esther offered him wine.
“Is it from your inn?”
he inquired.
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll pass.”
“A pity I hadn’t known you were coming, and I might have got in some hemlock,”
Esther snipped. “How is old Lady Gloria, Buck?”
Not that she cared, but it was a thorn in Joshua’s side that such a noble old relict as Lord Grodon’s spinster daughter had taken up permanent residence at the Lowden Arms, bringing a whiff of nobility with her.
“Poorly. She never owns up to good health, though she’ll outlive the lot of us. We served sixty dinners, all told,”
he added. “We’ll have to think of buying new china. I’ve been looking through some catalogs. I think pink would add eye appeal to Peters’s dinners.”
Joshua stared to hear a man discuss such feminine details.
“It is our excellent location that accounts for the extra meals,”
Esther explained to him. “Close to Windsor and, of course, Strawberry Hill, where the tourists are always eager to see Mr. Walpole’s Gothic monstrosity.”
“The location is far from ideal,”
Joshua said. “Too close to London for folks traveling west from it to be ready for a stop, and too close for those traveling east to draw a halt. With London only a few miles away, they will go ahead rather than put up at an inn.”
“Twenty-eight travelers seem to be unaware of it today. Of course London is more than a few miles away. And there is Hounslow Heath to be traversed, where the highwaymen do me a very good turn. Travelers are so frightened of them, they rarely venture past my place unless they can reach London before dark. As our reputation spreads and they know they will find a good meal and a well-aired bed awaiting them, they stop over for dinner and remain the night.”
“That’s true,’
Buck agreed. “I personally see that every bed is aired after use. From five o’clock on we have carriages pulling in every ten minutes. All the travelers say the same thing; they might as well call it a day, for they won’t tackle Hounslow Heath with dark coming on. The highwaymen are getting bolder by the day. Captain Johnnie is the main culprit.”
“I don’t know why Bow Street doesn’t set up a stronger patrol on the heath,”
Joshua grumbled.
“He would like to see my business ruined,”
Esther joked to Buck.
“It would take a downturn if they ever captured Captain Johnnie,”
Buck said, and refilled his glass. He was not much atuned to a joke.
“Then I hope he runs free for a good many years yet.”
Joshua bristled, but whether it was her support of the Royal Scamp or Buck’s making free with the wine that caused it, she couldn’t say. “Just the foolish attitude I would expect you to take!”
“You know where to place the blame,”
she told him airily.
“I suppose you’re half in love with the rogue, like all the ladies. They were singing a ballad in his honor last week in London. 'The Royal Scamp’
it is called. Making a hero of a villain—a common thief.”
“You have all the romance of a turnip, Joshua,”
Esther told him. “How could any lady in her right mind fail to be in love with a dashing highwayman who dares to attack whole caravans single-handed? They say he is very gentlemanly, too. Why, Mrs. Heskett, who had the pleasure of being robbed by him, said he left her very fine diamond wedding ring on her finger rather than hurt her by pulling it off, for it was a trifle tight, you know. I daresay all wedding rings bind after a while,”
she added mischievously.
“If he works alone, he hadn’t much choice, had he?”
Joshua asked. “If he put down his pistol to yank a tight ring off, it wouldn’t be long before the men in the carriage would overcome him.”
“That is one explanation for his gallantry. He seems to be safe from attack while he kisses all the ladies, at least. Odd none of the gentlemen bother to overpower him then. One would think that would nudge them out of their cowardice if anything would, to see their women being mauled by a criminal.”
Before Joshua could think of a setdown, she turned to Buck and inquired about her guests.
Joshua disliked being left out of the discussion, or perhaps it was the subject matter that displeased him. “If we are sunk to discussing housekeeping, I shall run along. Are you coming, Buck?”
“I haven’t finished my wine,”
Buck told him.
“Drink it up. You won’t want to remain alone with an unchaperoned lady.”
“That is true, Buck,”
Esther agreed. “You wouldn’t want to sink so low as your cousin. The fact that you are alone with me every other night of the week is no excuse to do it now, when Joshua is afraid to go home alone. He fears Captain Johnnie may abandon the heath and go after to him.”
“I would be very happy to tangle with the rogue, alone or otherwise," Joshua boasted.
Esther rolled her eyes ceilingward and sighed. “Ah, so would I! Preferably alone.”
“Come along, Buck,”
Joshua repeated irritably.
Buck drank up his wine, and they left. Esther sat on alone, mulling over their conversation. Joshua’s visits always upset her. She felt it her duty to love him and marry him. Her father had expected it, and Lady Brown still pushed the idea forward. But how could you love a man with no sense of humor? Joshua hadn’t used to be so dour. It was her turning her home into an inn that had robbed him of his former spirits.
How could anyone envisage being Mrs. Joshua Ramsay, hanging on the Abbey wall with all those dull grenadiers? No, she couldn’t possibly marry him, but if others of his class shared his opinion, then turning Lowden Hall into the Lowden Arms had made her ineligible.
That was what bothered her. Twenty-three years old. Her looks, such as they were, wouldn’t last forever, and despite her proud boast, she didn’t want to grow old living in the dower house with her aunt. She wanted much more from life than that. She sighed, blew out the lamps, and went upstairs to bed.
There were periods when Esther didn’t darken the door of the Lowden Arms from head to toe of the week. Spring was not one of those times. When the fashionable people were on the road traveling to London for the season, going to each other’s country homes, or just out enjoying a drive in the country, often stopping for lunch or dinner at her hostelry, she was tempted to slip over and take a meal in her old dining room, which she did not call the common room. The public dining room was so elegant, her paying guests could sit down without fear of rubbing shoulders with undesirables. Her prices ensured keeping such clients at the Black Knight, a few miles down the road.
She had an additional excuse for going to the inn, as she kept the family nags at the inn stable. A footboy could bring Flame to her, but on a fine day in April, with the sun beckoning overhead, with a view of the inn from her bedroom window above the intervening row of stately poplars showing bright gowns and dashing blue jackets, she decided to stroll over to the inn herself and have Flame saddled up. She was always careful to have the escort of a groom to lend her dignity. A canter into the village to visit the modiste was her outing.
Esther went down to breakfast in her riding habit, to see her aunt, Lady Brown, fiddling with her poached eggs. Lady Brown was as elegant as a hundred pounds a year could make her. Her husband—a knight, not a baronet—had left her nearly penniless, but Esther gave her a pension as well as room and board. The chaperon was a plump matron of sixty years, with a round pink face that belied her astringent nature. She looked like one of those jolly old ladies, but she was, in fact, a complainer.
“I hear Joshua Ramsay dropped in last night, Esther,”
was Lady Brown’s first speech. The chaperon’s main goal in life was to awaken her niece to the many excellencies of Joshua Ramsay and Heath Abbey. Esther was disappointed to realize her breakfast was going to be ruined by a lecture. “Did he remain long?”
“No, not long.”
“You should have called me. He is too nice to have prolonged his visit when you were alone. We don’t want to give him the notion you are behaving improperly.”
To avoid the subject Esther said, “He didn’t mind, Auntie. Is there any news from the inn?”
The servants visited back and forth often and kept the ladies informed of events.
Lady Brown, being an excellent gossip, was diverted to this new subject with no trouble. “I was out for a little stroll along the Thames before you came down. Such a lovely day! I happened to bump into one of your guests.”
This was French for saying she’d spotted an interesting client and gone tailing after him. Her niece required no translation. “He’s a navy fellow, a young lad just lately back from Canada. Fletcher is the name, Beau Fletcher.”
“A decent-seeming sort?”
Esther asked, jealous for her inn’s reputation.
“Top of the trees. Well to grass. You need not fear Mr. Fletcher will lower the tone.”
“What is a naval man doing here, I wonder.”
“He is ex-navy, looking about for a place to buy, he mentioned. Or a business to put his money into. He must have plenty of it. He hired the west tower suite for a week, while he looks around the countryside.”
“I didn’t realize the navy was so profitable. He must have made good prize money. What was his rank?”
“Captain. He would have been admiral if he had stuck with it, I don’t doubt. He seemed very bright.”
Esther poured coffee and asked, “How old is he?”
“Youngish. His wealth is inherited, I believe. At least he didn’t mention prize money. He was regretting he had not been here two years earlier, and he would have bought your land, Esther. It is about the size he has in mind. We got chatting, you know, when he found out who I was. It would not do for you to chat to a young fellow, but when you reach my years, there is no harm in it.”
Lady Brown never found any harm in ferreting out gossip.
If Beau Fletcher had in mind a thousand acres of prime land and a home to be built besides, he was certainly well to grass. “Was Mrs. Fletcher with him?”
Esther asked nonchalantly.
“He’s a bachelor.”
“It’s odd he would not set up his estate where he was born and bred. What part of the country is he from?”
“Northumberland. He has some affairs in London that keep him from home. He imports furs and lumber from Canada.”
“I see.”
Mr. Fletcher became more interesting by the minute. Esther meant to discover his appearance for herself while at the inn. Any gentleman who had half his hair and was neither blind nor halt was considered young and handsome by Lady Brown, if he was civil enough to let her engage him in conversation.
It was not long in occurring to Esther that a gentleman traveler would eat in her public dining hall. If she were there, it was possible she might have Mr. Fletcher presented to her, as he now knew Lady Brown. “What do you say we take dinner at the Arms this evening, Auntie?”
“We’re about due for it,”
she agreed. Lady Brown always enjoyed eating out, surrounded by a lively crowd, instead of sitting alone with only a niece for company. The chef at the Arms was unexceptionable, which was an added inducement.
“What’s on the menu tonight?”
Lady Brown asked,
“Roast beef is always on. There might be some spring lamb—I’m not sure Buck ordered any. Then there will be seafood, if you prefer that.”
“With a raised pigeon pie and a slice of ham, we shall be well fed,”
she decided, considering the menu.
After breakfast Esther went over to the Arms and had Flame saddled up. She didn’t make Mr. Fletcher’s acquaintance, but she did see a handsome young gentleman hopping into a dashing black carriage, and heard a groom say, “Shall I exercise your mare, Mr. Fletcher?”
She also heard Mr. Fletcher reply, “If you will be so kind,”
and saw him behave with that civility to inferiors that marks the true gentleman.