Free The Shore by Sara Taylor Page B

boxhedge. She should have been married off as soon as she was old enough, to one of her father’s overseers or some man of similar station. She should have been sent to foster with a family, perhaps one of his cousins, where she would have had the benefit of a mother. He should never have brought her into his kitchen, certainly not into his parlor. She often wished, after he had decided to take notice of her and make her into his idea of a lady, that he had left her in the kitchen, pretended that she was Calley’s daughter. She did not understand why he bothered with her, whether it was out of stubbornness, out of the same perversity of nature that had made him take her from her mother in the first place, or if he did indeed feel some affection, some responsibility for her, if he were perhaps doing by her as best as he knew how.
    Her upbringing came in stops and starts, and frequently she was sent back to the kitchen and out of her father’s sight, where she had cheerfully helped in whatever way she could and hoped that he would forget about her. Those banishments were the happiest parts of her childhood; she had helped Calley can and jar and absorbed the woman’s knowledge of herbs and natural medicine seemingly by osmosis.
    But eventually her father’s temper abated, no matter how severe the cause had been, and she was always called back into the house to sit stiffly, behave properly, and sneak off to occupy the tedious hours surreptitiously in her grandfather’s medical library.
    —
    Medora was let out of her room before breakfast the next morning, and contrived to have a chance encounter with the strangeron the back porch while her father was mixing his pre-breakfast julep in the dining room. Maybe she should have simpered, preened, looked coyly over her shoulder and said something poetic about the dew on the narcissus. Instead she walked up to him and candidly stuck out her hand and introduced herself. He was taller and broader than she’d realized from the upper window, but still too thin in the beard and around the middle to be many years past twenty.
    His handshake was weak, and though he managed to tell her his name without hesitation—Andrew Robinson Day, Andrew after his father and Robinson after his mother’s most beloved fictional character, an introduction she found a little excessive—his brief fumbling for polite small talk gave her physical pain.
    “It is…I should say…very pleasant…a very pleasant morning for—I suppose you would ride, you do ride, that is…yes?”
    “I do enjoy a turn about from time to time. It is a wonderful way to get some air, I find. Are you yourself quite fond of horses?”
    His answer was lengthy but amounted to “no”; she let him fumble through a comment on the weather, the hospitality of her father, and the becomingness of her dress before losing her patience and making her proposition.
    “If I may be forthright, Mr. Day, I do believe that you and I may be of some use to each other. If you would be so good as to ask me riding this afternoon, we will be assured of privacy and have the chance to discuss further—my father tends to nap just after dinner.” She went back inside before he could respond, and remained demurely quiet through breakfast, carefully keepingher eyes down. He walked out with her father after the meal on his habitual review of the property and, sensing opportunity, she slipped up to the guest bedroom that the young man was occupying to undertake her own review.
    There was nothing of interest in the pockets of the clothing that he had recently worn, and nothing but the usual necessities in his valise, but his document case—cordovan leather, gently scuffed at the corners, well made but with a flimsy lock—proved interesting. She didn’t dare lay out the entire contents, for fear of getting caught by Maisie, the upstairs maid, when she came to neaten up the room, but she did flick through the papers and booklets, pulling a piece out now