An Unusual Courtship by Katherine Marlowe Read Free Book Online

estate quotas than Mr. Everett.” She smiled fondly at her friend, and released Mr. Humphrey’s arm in order to take her brother’s. “Do go on without me, Mr. Everett.”
    “Do you have any objection, Mr. Valentine?” Mr. Everett asked. “I have already imposed significantly on your good nature today.”
    This would result in Percival being alone again with Mr. Everett, a circumstance which he had only just escaped. He wondered that Mr. Everett did not take the easy excuse of going with Miss Bolton and ending the tour for the day, which would allow him to escape from Percival’s clumsy provincial manners.
    Hoping that his blush was not entirely evident, Percival cleared his throat again and nodded. “It would be my pleasure.”
    “How good you are, Mr. Valentine,” Miss Bolton repeated, beaming approvingly upon him. “I wish the two of you the most pleasant afternoon.”
    “And may I express my hopes for your good health!” Percival replied.
    “Simply a matter of too much sun,” Miss Bolton insisted. Mr. Humphrey offered to go with the siblings back to the Grange, and Miss Bolton accepted. Percival wondered whether he should have insisted more strongly that he might escort Miss Bolton home again, but the matter was already decided, and the Boltons set off.
    Mr. Everett offered his arm. “Mr. Valentine.”
    Flustered by this circumstance, Percival looked up into his handsome face with the pale blue eyes, and quickly looked away again. He accepted the arm, clearing his throat again nervously.
    They made better speed through the village when it was only the two of them. Percival made conversation on general topics about the maintenance of the village and its residents. Several more villagers slowed them to make their acquaintance, but it was less mobbish than it had been with the full trio of visitors. It helped, Percival was sure, that the Boltons were the tenants , while Mr. Everett was simply their guest and acquaintance, who might be at Linston for a mere matter of days or weeks, whereas the tenants would be staying for at least the length of the summer’s heat, and perhaps indefinitely.
    When they paused to speak to Mr. Rackham about Mrs. Hartley’s roof, which had been divested of its leafy intruder but still required repairs, Percival disengaged from Mr. Everett’s arm and did not reclaim it. Walking arm in arm with Mr. Everett was all well when they were in the group, but on their own it seemed to imply a more intimate acquaintance than just the three-day friendship, particularly when Mr. Everett was merely his tenants’ guest.
    At last they cleared the edge of the village and were alone on the road toward the Manor. It was not far, and soon they turned off the road onto the Manor lane.
    “How did it come about,” Mr. Everett asked, “that Linston has both a manor and the stately Grange? It seems to me that is extremely unusual.”
    “I suppose it is,” Percival agreed. “The Manor is older, and was once the seat of the Linston estate. It was my thrice-great grandfather, the tenth Baron Lindsay, who expanded the estates and built the Grange in order to have a more elegant, modern residence. This is why it is called the Grange, since it was built upon the old abbey grange—you recall that I mentioned the ruins of a monastery? The monastery had the possession of most of the lands to the east and north of Linston Village, and so the new residence was built upon the old grange lands. They were both the same estate for several generations, but, as I’ve mentioned, my great-grandfather gave the Manor to his daughter, my grandmother, which she held in her own right, so that when the title of Baron Lindsay went extinct and the estate reverted to the property of the crown, my grandmother kept ownership of the Manor.”
    “This may perhaps be very forward of me, but if I may ask—does it injure your pride to be obliged to manage the estates in another man’s name, when you are yourself of such an