During the next few days, John had difficulty spending any time at all in Linnett’s company. She was always out of doors, generally riding. Sir Thomas’s appeal to her to show John the estate was simply ignored. After a spending a day or two trying to track the elusive Miss Wainwright down, John was despairing of ever having the opportunity to acquaint himself with her. He enlisted the help of an under-groom at great cost -- a gold sovereign no less. The groom was to let him know when Linnett next went out riding for he was to have a horse saddled and ready for John’s use. Word duly came that Linnett had requested her horse Pango to be ready for ten o’clock that morning, the third since John’s arrival at the Hall.
John hurried for his horse only to see his quarry disappearing out of the stable yard at a canter, into a chilly morning lit by bright, pale sunshine. Muttering a curse, he yelled for the boy to bring round his horse quickly, but by the time John had ridden after her, Linnett was out of sight. John rode in the direction he had first seen her on the day of his arrival. He gave the horse its head and urged him on at speed, both man and horse enjoying the freedom and exhilaration of the ride.
John slowed his horse to a trot, and they were approaching a thicket of trees when a rider suddenly burst forth and galloped away in the direction John had just travelled. It was, without a doubt, Linnett Wainwright, her hair flying out behind her like a streak of bright lightning. John urged his horse forward and gave chase. Linnett knew that he was pursuing her and determined to lose him. John, however, was an excellent horseman and had no intention of losing sight of his quarry again. They raced on until, to Linnett’s furious dismay, John drew alongside of her mount, riding at breakneck speed for a mile or so until he drew close enough to lean over and grab Linnett’s reins. Holding tight to the leather halter, he gradually slowed both horses to a walk, all the while calming Linnett’s mount with soothing words in his deep American drawl.
Indignantly, Linnett tried to slap John’s hands away from the reigns, but to no avail. She turned on him furiously, her green eyes flashing with rage. “You utter fool! What do you think you are doing? You might have killed me!” John studied Linnett’s flushed face, his eyes then straying to the swell of her rounded breasts, and immediately he experienced a tightening in his loins. He shifted uncomfortably in the saddle, trying in vain to ease the uncomfortable increasing tightness of his breeches. He was most pleasantly surprised by his body’s instant reaction to the girl. A smile twitched at his lips as he attempted to smooth her ruffled feathers. “Oh, come now. I think you exaggerate, Miss Wainwright, a fine horse woman such as yourself? It would take at least a thunderbolt to unseat you.”
Or a lusty fellow such as myself, he thought privately. “What is it that you want with me, Mr. Foster?” Linnett interrupted him impatiently. John raised an eyebrow at her abruptness, but he made no comment, deciding it was a good thing she was no mind reader, for she would flee if she could discern his thoughts.
Linnett sat awaiting his reply, glowering, a mulish expression marring her pretty features. When John made no attempt to reply, she tossed her head and looked haughtily in the other direction, thinking that since he had engineered this encounter he could carry the conversation; all she wanted was to be left alone to her own devices. They sat in an uneasy silence until the horses, growing restless, began to dance around, snorting and stamping their feet, impatient to be on the move again.
John openly assessed Linnett. He admired her proud profile and straight back and the soft wisps of her dark honey-coloured hair that had escaped the chignon in which she’d tried to arrange it and floated around her pretty, if sullen, face. John had a sudden urge to reach out and smooth back the silky strands, but he resisted and kept firm hold on his reigns. Shifting his weight in the saddle, he sighed heavily. “I suppose,” he drawled, “it was too much to expect courtesy from you, Miss Wainwright, although I thought that at the very least you would honour your father’s request that you show me over the Lavenstock estate. Perhaps you are unaware that I am a very stubborn man, Miss Linnett Wainwright, and I will not leave your house until I have spent some time with you, especially since it is your father’s wish that we become further acquainted. I would have thought that to accomplish this, you would see the sense in our continuing to ride together to fulfil your obligation to your father.”
Two spots of red colour appeared on Linnett’s cheeks. Who did this man think he was, to point out her duty to her father, knowing nothing at all about her! Instantly she came to a decision, at least if I show him around the estate my duty is then done and I can then ignore the wretched man, she reasoned.
The truth be told, Linnett felt very uneasy in John’s presence for some reason, and she could not fathom why he made her nervous. He was so arrogant, so darkly forbidding, not at all the type of man she would consider for her husband. Taking a sideways look at him from beneath lowered lashes, she observed his stern, hawk-like profile, his hooded pewter gaze. Linnett cast her eyes downwards over his self-assured body, the powerful shoulders, sturdy thighs clad in fawn riding breeches, muscles standing out as he controlled the restless movements of the horse between his thighs. Linnett shivered at the very thought of enduring such a man as a husband. Her taste ran to an altogether different breed of gentleman, one man in particular with merry blue eyes and a quick and ready smile.
Taking a deep breath, Linnett said coldly, “Very well, Mr. Foster, I will escort you on a tour of our estate because my father has requested it of me. Will you then agree to leave me in peace?”
John frowned thoughtfully. “Do I invade your peace of mind so much then, Miss Wainwright?” he asked mildly.
Linnett flushed, lifted her chin and glared at him. “You seem to be ignorant of the fact that since my mother is dead. I am not Miss Wainwright but Lady Wainwright. Please try to remember that fact, Mr. Foster. Come along… if you still wish to see the estate, that is?” Without waiting for a reply, Linnett turned her horse with a flourish and cantered off. John urged his mount forward and muttered an acerbic curse, one definitely not for a lady’s ears, before he galloped after her.
First, they rode the estates boundaries, and then Linnett led John to a small row of farm cottages. All were in reasonably good repair except the first, which had a battered, dilapidated front door and shutters missing from most of the windows. Linnett jumped down from her horse and was greeted by a pair of yapping mongrels, which she stooped to pat, before walking to the cottage and rapping at the door with the end of her riding crop. John dismounted and followed, assuming that was what she expected.
The door was opened by an elderly, unkempt man. His hair, what remained of it, hung in thin, greasy strands. His clothing was stained, and he emitted a pungent odour of unwashed body. At the sight of Linnett, however, his face broke into an almost toothless grin. “Ah, ‘tis yerself is it? Come to see Esmerelda, have ee!” He flung the old wooden door wide for Linnett to enter. John followed behind, listening to Linnett chatting easily with the old man.
“Has she whelped yet, Jacob?”
“Ay, she has that, Miss, yesterday t’was.”
“How many?” asked Linnett.
“Would ye believe nine?”
“Nine!?” Linnett exclaimed, clapping her hands.
Shamus led them through the untidy, foetid cottage and out of the back, where a large brick pen, smelling strongly of pig, stood. Linnett leaned over the wall, excitedly exclaiming over the nine small piglets that lay nestled close to their large pink mother. “Hello, my darling, what a clever girl you are. Nine little babies just as lovely as their mam! You will let me hold them in a day or two won’t you, Esmerelda? Look at the little sweetings!” she said, turning shining green eyes to John. He listened in amazement as this aloof and beautiful girl cooed lovingly at a large, rather dirty, not to mention smelly, porcine mother. All her past animosity towards John seemed forgotten as she explained that pigs liked to keep their piglets to themselves for a few days before they allowed others to hold them.
“How did you become so enamoured with hogs, Lady Wainwright?” he asked her curiously. Linnett gave Shamus a wide smile and he gave her a wink, breaking into a phleghmy cough before saying, “Ah, well t’was like this -- I’ve two dogs, d’y see, always ‘ad two, blest if I knows why?” Jacob stopped speaking and scratched his stubbly chin thoughtfully.
Linnett chuckled and carried on the tale. “One of Jacob’s dogs was known to be fierce; in fact, my father was always saying that he would knock it on the head, if ever it bit anyone. When I was eight or thereabouts, I was down here in the apple orchard scrumping apples with the village children, well strictly speaking they were scrumping but since we own the orchard, I was not.” Linnett waved a hand at the orchard that ran up almost to the back of the cottages.
“I just couldn’t manage to climb a tree with my long skirts, so the boys threw the apples down to me and I caught them in my apron. Suddenly one of the boys shouted out a warning, ‘Run, it be Jacob’s dog!’ So up I flew and ran as fast as I possibly could, and this awful dog streaked after me barking like mad! It was at my heels already by the time I had reached here, so I scrambled up the wall and flung myself over the other side -- straight into Esmerelda’s grandmother Primrose’s stall! I landed in all the pig filth and slid over to the far side of the pen, squashed up against the wall covered with pig muck. Goodness, I was terrified! This simply enormous pink pig started to come towards me, and I had heard that pigs can give a very nasty bite. Their teeth lock like so.” Linnett linked her fingers to demonstrate.
“Then I remembered the apples in my apron pocket. Luckily, I still had three, so I rolled one across to Primrose, and she gobbled it up and came a bit closer. So I rolled another, and Primrose ate that one, too, then walked right up to me! I dropped the third apple in fright onto my knee and Primrose ate it and then snuffled my apron looking for more. When she couldn’t find any more apples she just lay down like a dog and rested her head on my lap!” Linnett stopped and laughed.
“Aye!” said Jacob shaking his head, “when I comes out t’see what d’rackets all about I looks over d’wall ‘ere and see’s ‘er Ladyship sat covered in pig filth petting old Primrose like she was her little pet dog! She’s a’scratching ‘er ears and patting old Primrose an’ that pig is a’lyin’ there adoring yon lassie! Never seen nothin’ like in me loife and that’s a fact!”
Linnett giggled with infectious laughter and flapped her hand at John. “Wait though!” She chirruped, ‘the b..best.. b..bit.. oh! Oh!”
Linnett tried to talk but was doubled up with gurgles of infectious laughter, and John began to chuckle with her. “The dogs!” spluttered Linnett, “Shamus’s dogs! One was fierce and one was that soppy old lump over there!” She pointed at the larger of the two hairy mongrels, who sat with a lolling tongue, basking in a patch of sunlight. “It was that dog, you see, that had chased me, not the fierce dog at all!” Linnett clutched Shamus as they howled with laughter together.
It was at this point John realised with a jolt that he very much wanted to marry this bewitching, mercurial girl.