“At least you’ve brought gifts. What’s in the basket?”
She rummaged through the contents. “A few sweetmeats and lozenges. Packets of raisins. But mostly it’s Aunt Thea’s surplus cosmetics and remedies. She sends away for every product advertised in every ladies’ magazine. I like to see them put to some use.”
He blinked at her. “These are your gifts?”
“Your men have depleted our stores of food, and I didn’t have time to prepare anything else.”
“What are they supposed to do with”—he held up a brown bottle and peered at the label—“Dr. Jacobs’ Miracle Elixir?” He plucked a small jar out next. “Excelsior Blemish Cream?”
“Women are women, Logan. Every girl needs a bit of luxury and a chance to feel pretty now and then.”
He passed a hand over his face. This was going to be a disaster.
“Miss Gracechurch! Miss Gracechurch!”
No sooner had Logan finished his stern warnings than the youngest occupants of the blackhouses began pouring out from their homes and rushing to meet Maddie in the lane. Soon she had children gathered around her, tugging at her skirts.
“What was that you said, Logan? That they’d be frightened of me?”
She reached into her basket and pulled out a handful of sweetmeats, distributing them into the waiting hands of the children.
“You might have mentioned that they’d know you already,” he said.
“And spoil your informative lecture on the evils of the Clearances? That would have been a pity.”
He shook his head. The canny minx.
“Hullo, Aileen.” She crouched at the side of a gap-toothed girl who could not have been more than four or five years old. “How is your scar then, dear?”
She lifted the edge of the girl’s sleeve and examined a thin red mark on her upper arm.
“Very cleanly healed. Good girl. You’ll have a biscuit for that.” She reached into her basket for the treat. “There, darling.”
Once Aileen had run off, Logan remarked, “That was an inoculation scar.”
Maddie nodded. “I’ve been visiting regularly ever since I took possession of the castle. When I learned none of the children had been inoculated, I made certain to order the cowpox matter from Dr. Jenner. We performed the inoculations a month or so ago.”
Damn, she just kept on surprising him. First with her beauty. Then with the illustrations. He’d been forced to accept that there was more to her character than he’d gleaned from her letters, but none of it fell too far outside the borders of his carefully mapped mental territory labeled “Madeline.” She was privileged, sheltered, intelligent, curious, and far too crafty.
But this . . .
This was different.
As he watched her with the tenants’ children, his conception of her pushed against its established boundaries. He was forced to add new descriptors to his list. Ones like “generous” and “responsible” and “protective.” She was conquering new places in his understanding, brazenly invading territory he’d rather die than surrender.
This was all wrong. He’d come here to marry her and claim what he was owed.
He didn’t want to like her—not any more than she wanted to like him.
“Not all of us English landowners aspire to the Countess of Sutherland’s example,” she said. “My father always adhered to strong principles of land stewardship, and inoculation is something I care about. My mother survived smallpox as a young girl. Though she recovered from the pox, her heart was weakened. I believe it was why she died young.”
Logan knew, of course, that she’d lost her mother. Her father’s happy remarriage had been detailed in many a letter. However, she’d never written much about the woman herself, and it hadn’t occurred to him to ask.
“I was hoping this year to start a school,” she said, deftly changing the subject. “Perhaps once your men finish their own cottages, they can work on building a schoolhouse.”
“First they need to work on finding wives and making the children to fill it.”
“That can likely be arranged. Several of the men hereabouts went to war and didn’t return. More than one young woman found herself at loose ends.”
Just looking around them, Logan glimpsed a few potential candidates—a cluster of lasses stood together in a doorway, whispering and giggling amongst themselves. They were quickly joined by others. Soon it seemed the entire population of the small village had come out to greet them, crowding around.