“Do you think your—" Miss Murray paused, clearly looking for the right word.
“Frank?” Beau answered, sparing her the trouble. “I think so. I think he always knew. I mean, it all sort of makes sense.”
“What do you mean?”
“I never seemed to be enough for him,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, he never laid a hand on me. Not in anger. But not in love, either. Especially not after my mother passed. I gave up trying get any real affection from the man…”
“Is that why you call him by his given name?” she asked.
Beau shrugged. “I called him Father when I was younger, but as I grew up it just didn’t seem to fit our relationship. He didn’t seem to mind. Maybe we both knew somehow that it was the right thing.”
“Do you miss him?”
He shrugged, then dragged his hands through his hair. “You know the crazy thing is, I sort of do. He was a bastard, but he taught me a lot about the business. He expected me to take it over. Even if he did know, he never begrudged me that. And I know the man well enough to know he didn’t give a hot damn about appearances. He would have cut me out of the will entirely if he didn’t think I’d earned it.”
“If he gave you his entire company, I have to say you earned it,” she said, giving him a smile that was somehow kind without being condescending. “And maybe he loved you in his own way.”
“For a woman of few words, you seem to pick all the right ones,” he said. “Thank you.”
“I read a lot of words,” she said. “I am the school’s librarian after all.”
Her lips turned up in a smile that Beau couldn’t help but return. Every time she graced him with a bit of humour, he felt like he’d discovered something precious about her.
Serenaded by the chirping of crickets and the trilling of sparrows, they paused at a small bench just outside a small, fenced area that housed the berry patch, surrounded by the stillness that Beau had spent his adult life running from. It had been part of the reason he’d decided to sell The Grove. Sitting with the quiet only served to remind him how alone he’d been. He wasn’t miraculously cured of that, but still, it was much more tolerable with Madeline Murray beside him. And through the cow path was a man who was quite possibly his father. A man who had tended a berry patch his grandparents created for years, perhaps out of some kind of devotion to them, or the woman he’d once loved.
Beau wanted to laugh at the irony. Here he was, the scion of a family who’d built a fortune cutting down forests, standing amongst the labour of a man who seemed to take genuine joy from teasing more berries from the soil.
“I have no idea how to feel,” he said at last.
“Your world has just been turned upside down,” she said. “You get to feel however you want.”
There was a certainty in her words he found both comforting and intriguing. Of course, Madeline Murray wasn’t a young child. She was a woman who’d no doubt had her fair share of experience with the world, both good and bad.
“I feel like I want to get drunk,” he said.
“You never know with Tilda. She might have packed a bottle of whisky in case of emergencies,” she said, then brightened. “Of course, Daniel and Hollis will be here first thing, so you might want to treat it like a minor emergency.”
Daniel. Beau had spent the entire day with his brother. And his nephew. Christ, he was going to swoon and it had nothing to do with the way a lock of Madeline’s hair kissed the curve of her neck. He wanted to reach out and take her hand, pull her close, and feel the lush curves of her body against his. The last time he’d come close to kissing her, she’d pulled away.
“I really need that drink,” he said.
“Do you know what might be better than whisky?”
Was this some trick question? Beau knew perfectly well what was better than whisky for pushing aside a host of inconvenient feelings, and it largely involved him worshipping Madeline Murray’s body and losing himself in what he was certain were the most perfect of breasts.
Of course, he knew better than to suggest it. And clearly whatever she had on her mind wasn’t sex.
“I have not spent enough time with women to learn the trick of reading their minds,” he said. “You’ll have to help me.”
“I suspect you’ve spent plenty of time with many women,” she said with a stiffness that he hoped might be a carefully contrived mask for something close to envy. “Come with me.”
She led him to the barn, taking a moment to strike a match and light one of the lanterns hanging up inside. Until he’d arrived here, he hadn’t spent much time in barns, but this had clearly been well taken care of, smelling like old timbers and fresh hay. It was big enough to shelter a few large animals, and no doubt the Chandlers had used it over the years to store extra equipment.
She hung the lantern on a nail overhead, and Beau noticed a large canvas sack stuffed full of straw, hanging from a chain in the ceiling.
“Is this what I think it is?” he asked, poking at the makeshift punching bag. He’d seen plenty of these—some in posh gentleman’s gyms, and others in dark corners where bare-knuckled men beat themselves silly for the betting spoils of the audience, rich and poor.
“It’s not quite the real thing,” she said, running her hands over the rough fabric, the surface jagged from the edges of straw trying to poke through. “But it will do in a pinch.”