"Miss Crewe!" Ian called down the alleyway, but she wouldn't stop. "Miss Crewe!" He moved quickly after her. "Charity!"

She did stop then, turning to him with reddened cheeks and pursed lips. "So you do remember my name. I thought you'd forgot completely." Her eyes were damp and, though he had some idea why, he was not about to address it.

"The cart is back there," he said, shifting his eyes to her parcels. "Let me take—"

"I'm sure I can manage." She moved past him. "In fact, I can wait. Please go back and finish your... your debauchery."

He couldn't help a slight laugh. "I see you finally looked it up."

She whirled on him. "Do you find this funny?"

"Not really. We'd best get back."

"Don't change the subject!" She shrugged him off as he reached for her parcels again.

"We weren't on a subject."

"Yes, we were. It was the subject of debauchery. Yours and whatever her name is."

"You know very well it's Jenny."

"I don't know any such thing." She moved to the cart stiffly, chin high. He wondered if it would make things better or worse if he told her she sounded exactly like her mother.

He watched with what he was sure was the patience of a saint as she tried to hand herself up into the cart without letting go of her parcels until he finally turned her around and took them, putting them unceremoniously in the back before taking her by the waist and setting her on the bench.

"I could have done that myself." Her face was even redder now. "I wanted to hold them."

"They're fine where they are," he said tightly, moving around to hoist himself up, grip the reins, and start them off.

What did she expect, anyway? That he'd wait outside that dress shop for hours? And why shouldn't he kiss a pretty girl now and then? He was a man. He was a man who did the work of at least three men. Was he supposed to do nothing else but work? He was well aware he'd agreed to, even argued for, his current set of duties, but that didn't mean he didn't sometimes deserve a reward at the end of a long day. Kissing a pretty girl was actually poor compensation. Even Lord Crewe might forgive him a brief dalliance with Jenny Martin, if Charity chose to tell. And she well might.

He'd be lying if he said he didn't know why she was sniping at him and it was ludicrous. This girlish infatuation had gone on too long and seemed impossible to shake. He'd tried everything. He'd tried being kind, brotherly and, when that didn't work, avoiding her like the pox. Yet every time she saw him, she still had that terrifying look in her eyes, as if he were supposed to be some kind of paragon or literary hero. It was too much for a man to live up to and definitely more than a man could take.

He glanced to his side briefly, keeping his eyes on her bonnet. He dared not look lower, not since the winter when she... Well, things had changed. Two things, to be specific

He kept his eyes on her face. That seemed safe enough. She was still the same there, just a round-cheeked girl with more spirit than was good for her. She was still flushed. It would be rather fetching on her if she weren't so thin-lipped and hard-eyed. Perhaps it was just as well. There would be a lot less adoring gazes if she stayed angry. It would be easier on him to keep her that way.

Yet he didn't like it. "What's in the parcels?" he finally asked, unable to take the stony silence any longer.

She didn't answer.

"Doesn't look big enough to be a dress."

Still nothing from her.

"The grocer had some nice, fat beetroots," he tried after a while. "I'll tell Cook to make something special for supper."

That got her. She hated beetroot. "Don't you dare!"

He chuckled. "There were some nice pears as well. I could tell her about those instead."

She wasn't mollified. "I'm surprised you want to talk to me. It's seemed like such a chore for you lately."

"Charity..."

"I think I prefer Miss Crewe. In fact, you can call me ma'am from now on."

"Fine, then. What's in the parcels, Ma'am?"

"Some ribbons and pins, powders, Mother's bonnet was mended. I'm sure it's hopelessly crushed after the way you threw it around so carelessly."

"I didn't throw it."

"You've been surprisingly careless about a lot of things today. Leaving the cart unattended for Lord knows how long—"

"The cart was safe."

"Outside a tavern?"

He could see she was going to keep finding reasons to be angry, avoiding the real reason, but he was not going to discuss that. "I talk to you often enough. Almost every day."

"Not the way you used to," she said, her voice losing that angry edge, a bit softer, sadder. "It's not the same."

"That's because it shouldn't be, not now that we're older." His mother had said something like that last year — much more than that, in fact — and he hadn't forgotten it.

1810

"...and the look of abject horror on her face," Charity was saying, swinging her leg as she propped herself on the fence. "It landed right on her head almost perfectly. Until it disintegrated, for just a moment, you'd think it was a hat. Talk about making a cake of oneself!" She laughed.

Ian couldn't help but join her. He'd heard the same story from Ernie but, not having witnessed the events, his version was lacking in dramatic flair: "Someone dropped a cake on Miss Hartley. Right mess, I hear."

"Aye, I wouldn't have minded seeing that," he said, gesturing for her to move down. He could hardly secure the fence from under her.

"Oh, I wish you'd been there," she giggled. "It was the best dinner party I've ever been to. Not that I've been to much. It was so hard not to laugh, but it would have been much easier if someone else were suffering with me. Pru looked like she might, but then Mary Hartley gave her such a glare, even through all the frosting in her eyes, that she didn't dare. I don't see why Pru lets Mary boss her around so." She sighed. "But I suppose it's hard to find good friends in Pickering."

Ian wasn't sure what to say to that. He'd long since learned not to comment on the flaws and foibles of the gentry around their village. Sometimes he wasn't quite sure whether he should laugh at Charity's descriptions of everyone, though it was hard to help.

Despite the fact that he'd been sent to Eton with Ernest, he knew that his place was nothing close to equal with the Crewe siblings. Ernest would be at Oxford in the autumn and he... Well, he would be working the estate. He didn't mind it. Lord Crewe certainly needed the help. Thomas, the gardener, already split his time between Crewe House and two other smaller estates. They needed someone to take care of the stables with Leary getting near retirement and there was also the need of a footman at formal dinners.

He thought it was that moment, being fitted for his livery, that it truly came home to him. He may have been indulged as a boy, only tasked with errands here and there for the odd ha'penny, but now he was nearly eighteen and he had to settle into a position. He just didn't quite know what that position was. "Am I a footman now?" he'd asked his mother.

"You are if you need to be," she'd answered, pinning and marking his knee breeches. "You're to be whatever Lord Crewe needs at the time. It's a good deal of work here, to be sure, but it's secure and they always set a fine table, even for the servants. They've shown us many kindnesses."

"I know." He wasn't resentful of it. Though he was young, he remembered the times before settling at Crewe House, the hunger and the motion of those times, never quite knowing where they would be next. He sometimes tried to remember before that. He had these vague memories of a large anvil and a room with blue ducks on the wall as his mother sang him to sleep.

When he'd brought these up, she'd just laughed. "Ducks aren't blue, Ian. You must have had a dream. And giant anvils... I don't know where you get your fanciful ideas, I'm sure."

"But what am I now?" he'd asked his mother again as she took in the old livery, trying not to wince as she poked him.

"You're in service. Like your old Ma," she'd said with a smile. "And I haven't wasted away from it yet."

"It's not that."

It truly wasn't that he was upset to be taking his place in service. He knew it would come. The boys at Eton, despite Ernie fighting them off, never quite let him forget he was a charity case. Ernest hadn't let them say it for long, blackening at least one boy's eye and popping another in the nose. Ian had wanted to be the one to do it, but he knew almost instinctively that he couldn't, that Ernie could fight all he wanted, but if Ian lifted a finger — or a fist as the case may be — those boys could and would have him sent back to Yorkshire and maybe his mother sent packing as well.

"Never mind what they say about me," Ian told Ernest in first year. "It's all true."

"It's no... Well, maybe it is. But they shouldn't say it," Ernest insisted hotly. "Look, Father goes on and on about Eton being where you learn to be a gentleman and they aren't being very—"

"They're learning well enough," Ian cut in. "They know who matters and who doesn't and, if you keep defending me, you won't matter to them." He didn't like to think himself too far above Ernie just for being older, but sometimes Ernie seemed hopelessly naive, almost as bad as Charity.

"It isn't fair," Ernest insisted. "Your marks are better than mine, better than theirs. They aren't so much better than—"

"It doesn't have to be fair. Is e sin a th 'ann." Ian shrugged.

"Don't toss your fancy Scottish words around to throw me off. It's not fair and that's that!" However passionately Ernest protested, it didn't change a thing... at least not till Stanborough stepped in. Richard Headley was an earl in his own right and when he declared Ernie and The Monk to be good sorts, being in his third year, everyone else seemed to agree. In any case, it carried them through their time at Eton without much further incident even though Ian knew it wouldn't last.

While Ernest prepared for his studies at Oxford, Ian was being fitted for livery.

"I just want to know where I fit now." As a child, he was treated almost as one with the Crewe children even though he dined with his mother. At Eton, he learned that was not the case. Now, he just wanted a place of his own.

"Well, you fit very handsomely into this suit," his mother said, "if you must know. I'd thought I'd have to take the legs up, but I may well have to let them down, so stop growing this instant."

Of course, the livery was only for dinner parties and carriage rides. Outside of Sundays and the odd party, he was able to wear the uniform he felt more at home in, which was nothing much at all. Just some well-worn trousers and a homespun shirt as he tended the garden or the horses. He actually preferred that work to standing up straight and holding the soup tureen on the rare occasions the Crewes had their neighbors for supper under the supercilious, though fading, eyes of Dawes, the butler. 

He'd said as much to Lord Crewe, going to see his master for inspection after his fitting. His mother had been petitioning for his place as footman -- First Footman, she'd said, which he thought was a ridiculous title in a house with only one footman -- with the idea that he might one day advance to Dawes' position. Ian, foolish as his mother might think it is, argued against it.

"Begging your pardon, Lord Crewe, but I think the life of Dawes might drive me mad." He resisted the urge to tug at the stifling neck cloth his mother had pulled so tight, but couldn't seem to help sweating under all the layers in summer.

Lord Crewe had laughed at that. "Well, as a young man, I wouldn't doubt it. But perhaps when you are older, you might see things differently."

"If I may speak freely..."

Lord Crewe waved a hand. "Oh, go on. And you can loosen that damned cravat, if you like. It's obviously choking the life out of you."

Ian did so, sighing. "I don't think the life of a butler would suit me. I prefer being out of doors when I can."

"You might have the right of it, my boy. I do need someone to see to the tenants."

"If you pardon me saying so, with Leary getting on and Thomas only here half the time, you might need more than that."

And so Ian, foolish as some might say he was, argued his way to the work that filled his days. Even as it more than filled his days, he liked knowing every corner of the estate, liked being depended upon. Someone needed to make sure things were done right. The repairs, the gardens, the stables... It was hard work, but it was work he felt good about, something he could look at, at the end of the day, see that it was done to his satisfaction.

He frowned at his fence now. It was not close to done to his satisfaction or anyone else's, and he couldn't help but blame Char. She did like to linger rather than moving along as he hammered in the wire. "Look at this. I've barely gotten half done. The chickens will roam all over the county if you have your way. Move along with you."

She hopped down, shaking out her skirts and pouting at him. "I was only telling you how my party was. If it's such a bother, then..."

He laughed and caught her arm, not ready for her to leave just yet. She was a distraction, but not entirely unwelcome. "And I'm only telling you to keep your skirts out of my work, you little minx. Now what were you saying before? I quite forgot."

She shrugged, mollified as she watched him nail down the wire over the fencing. "Just that it's hard to find good friends when everyone is either too old to bother with you or too young to be worth bothering with, and it seems that's all there is here."

"It's early days, Char. You've only been to three dinners." Then again, what were her chances when the best Pru could find was Mary Hartley? She was a sour-faced harpy if there ever was one — not that he had opinions of the gentry, of course.

"Yes, but I know absolutely everyone already. And I have yet to find anyone I would call my dearest friend except... Well, possibly," she slid down the fence again before finishing softly, "you."

He laughed. "I hope you aren't going to be after me to talk bonnets and lace with you."

"Oh, no. Just ribbons and flounces." She nudged him and put him off his aim.

He raised his hammer. "You keep that up and I will hammer your flounce to the fence."

She squealed and pranced away. He turned and followed her laughing eyes until he met his mother's face.

Usually, that wasn't such a terrible thing, but right now his mother seemed rather dour. She held out a basket. "If you're quite finished securing the coop, Ian, Cook needs a half-dozen for dinner."

He moved to grasp the basket, but Charity got there first.

"Let me, Mrs. Douglass! My mother wants me to recite Latin and I am convinced that gathering eggs will be of greater benefit to all of us, don't you think?" His mother barely had time to answer before Charity had taken the basket, then turned to Ian. "There now. You can no longer say I'm of no use to the chickens."

"I can say it all I want if you keep bothering me." He brandished his hammer again and she ran off, laughing. He grinned as well until... Well, until he met his mother's eyes again, still altogether too cold for a summer's day. "Are you well, Mother?"

She tapped her foot loudly, even in the dirt. Never a good sign. "Are you, Ian? I think you may have forgot yourself."

He shook his head. "I'm not sure what you—"

"Neither am I sure what you were thinkin,' threatening a daughter of the house with a hammer, talking of... of lace and ribbons."

He laughed loudly. "You mean just now? We were only making fun. It's nothing."

"Is it? Is it really?"

He stared at his mother, shaking his head. "What do you mean?"

She sighed, her eyes softening. "So you don't know?" She seemed to deflate as she stared at him. "Of course you don't."

"Know what?"

"I suppose I thought you were encouraging her somehow, letting her roam out here. Maybe flattered by her attraction."

"Are you talking about Charity? She's always come out here. She needs no encouragement from me. I can barely convince her to go away even when I..." He trailed off, suddenly catching on to his mother's meaning. "Attraction? You can't think Charity—"

"Yes, I can and do think it."

"But she's..."

"A daughter of this house."

"She's a child," he protested, laughing at the idea. He was a man of eighteen, after all and she was but fifteen. "I don't even think of her as... well..."

"Ian, it doesn't matter what you think," his mother said impatiently, "it matters what she thinks. And she thinks she's in love with you."

"But she's not really—"

"Even if she weren't," his mother cut in, "do you really think there wouldn't be talk, for her to be seen in your company? You're both older now. It can't be like it was. Charity has always been a bit... Well, she's a fine girl, but she can be impulsive. You must be careful not to lead her, however little you might mean to, into something that you will both regret."

Even as a man who liked to consider himself fully grown, he never took his mother's words lightly. Most boys, especially including Ernie, seemed to think their mothers knew very little indeed upon leaving Eton. After all, finishing school, whether there was Oxford or Cambridge to come after, was largely a time when boy was considered a man, but Ian was never silly enough to think the last year brought with it any new wisdom.

He turned eighteen in his final year at Eton, a year but for a month before Ernest did, and he never thought of himself as any wiser than the night before. Possibly and maybe especially because the previous night had been spent gambling and losing all of his pocket money, he felt stupider. Ernest had some allowance to spare, but he did not. He considered that night a hard-learned lesson and spent the last of his final year quite soberly watching over Ernest.

It was Ernest he searched out now, looking for some kind of reassurance, someone to tell him his mother must be succumbing to the same disease all mothers did upon their boys becoming men, maybe that she'd gone mad, suggesting a child like Charity would act the wanton, let alone with him.

"With you? Oh, she might," Ernest said, which did little to calm him. Then again, Ernest was quite foxed, having come for lunch with Richard Headley, The Earl of Stanborough, who was now nearing his third year at Oxford and determined to show Ernest the ropes before he started. The ropes, so far, involved port and cigars. His mother and father wouldn't like it, not that Ian would be telling them, but they seemed to have less to say about their son's comings and goings these days. Lord Crewe often declared him a lost cause.

"It's a shame you can't join us, Monk," Stanborough droned, lounging indolently with one booted foot flung over the arm of his chair. "Langston is planning a huge spread for the first Saturday back and even ballock-less boys like this one can follow along."

"I resemble that," Ernie said on a cough.

Richard laughed. "You certainly do."

"I meant resent," he corrected, holding his cheroot away. "This thing has my head all befogged."

"Sure it's not that third glass?" Richard smirked.

"What do you mean she might?" Ian asked, trying to keep him on track. Ernest had a tendency to stray off subject even without a drink or two in him.

"Oh, don't say you haven't noticed. She's been dangling after you since God knows when! Even Stan'll tell you."

Stanborough only shrugged. "Can't say I've noticed."

"Come, it's not like that." Ian sat down heavily. "She always followed the both of us, wanting to play or—"

Ernie snorted. "The difference is that now she only wants to play with one of us."

**************

To be continued....