Shadow among Sheaves

by Naomi Stephens

  Barric held up a hand to signal all was well. “I understand the circumstances are…strange. But so is my news.”

  His uncle entered the room, eyes narrowing, then froze with realization. “You’ve learned about the Hawley will.”

  Both men stood extremely still. Then Barric nodded.

  His uncle drew out a chair and gestured Barric toward the divan nearest the fire. “Sit! Sit!” His eyes were already alight. “What have you learned? Tell me.”

  Barric eased himself down onto the couch, smoothing his hand over his face as he begrudgingly conceded. “You were right. The property no longer passes to their cousin.”

  “How grim you look about it,” his uncle chided with a broad smile. “That’s wonderful news! Whatever could be the matter with you?”

  “There is…a way,” Barric admitted slowly. “A way for Hawthorn Glen to pass to you.”

  Barric had decided on his way over that there could be no harm in his offering the estate, as he had told Rena he would. Barric would play the dutiful nephew, offering the prized piece of land, and all would be well when his uncle refused.

  But what if Uncle George didn’t refuse?

  Running his hand over his mustache, his uncle perched on the edge of the chair, utterly still as he waited for his nephew to continue. Barric felt the words tangle inside of him, sharp beneath his ribs. If Barric knew his uncle, then Uncle George would never dream of marrying a girl who had come out of obscurity, never ally his title with needless scandal whatever the cost. And why would he? Barric himself had all but laughed in the parson’s face at the very suggestion that he marry Rena. And now?

  Barric studied his uncle and grimly imagined him waltzing through town with Rena on his arm. How would it feel for Barric to watch him kiss her, to know she went to his uncle’s bed as she had so recently come to his? How would it be to know she would never need him again, that she would pass the rest of her days with a man who once played with her out of curiosity?

  “I’ve never been a fan of suspense,” his uncle prodded, his voice stern. “Tell me.”

  Somehow, Barric bit out the words. “You have to marry her.”

  Uncle George drew back in his chair, his lips pursing with confusion. They were probably the strangest terms he’d heard in all his years. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “If you want the estate,” Barric repeated slowly, “then you have to marry her.”

  “What, the Indian girl?”

  Barric gritted his teeth. “Rena,” he corrected. “Yes.”

  Barric waited an eternity for his uncle to shake his head in response. “If I marry her?” the old man repeated, and chuckled awkwardly. “She is a rather pretty thing, to be sure. But to marry her? I’d look as great a fool as Edric Hawley.” Barric must have made a face, because his uncle held up an obliging hand before he continued. “Oh, I know how fond you are of her, Barric. I don’t mean to be insulting. But those are truly the terms?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, what a bit of silliness. Could you imagine a man of my standing, my age, marrying a young, castaway widow? Of course I feel sorry for her. All alone. With next to nothing.”

  Barric wanted to choke on his uncle’s sympathy. “Do you accept the terms?”

  Barric’s question awakened his uncle from a passing stupor. The man frowned more distinctly. “Such an unusual offer,” he said, shaking his head. “Are you sure there isn’t another way?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Oh, but could you imagine taking a knee for her?”

  Nerves frayed with waiting, Barric tried again to corral his uncle into a decision. “So, you refuse?”

  His uncle blinked. “Well, but she’s Indian.”

  “So, you refuse.”

  His uncle seemed disappointed as he realized his own decision, easing back into his chair and tapping the armrest. “Yes,” he sighed. “I’m afraid I must.”

  Barric stood so quickly the divan skidded back a notch. He ought to be frantic, for he had promised Rena he would marry her in his uncle’s stead, if it came to that. His uncle had all but scribbled Barric’s name on the blasted marriage license, but all he could feel was piercing relief.

  But did Rena really wish to marry him, or was he just another in a long line of sacrifices she had made to secure Nell’s safekeeping?

  His uncle had been speaking, but Barric only snapped from his thoughts in time to hear the end. “Could you imagine the rare looks I would get in town, with an Indian bride?” Uncle George chuckled at the image he’d conjured, and smiled wistfully, until Barric cut toward the door with a sudden burst of momentum.

  His uncle rose as Barric reached the door, his expression crumpled with confusion.

  “I say, Barric, where do you think you’re going? Barric?”

  Barric could manage no other reply than to slam the door behind him.

  Rena sat on a large branch on the edge of Lord Barric’s property, bundled within her heavy shawl, even more distressed than she had been the evening she had gone to his bedchamber.

  She had not seen him since that night. No one had, for Lord Barric had entirely disappeared from Abbotsville. His ten-day absence was causing quite the stir, both for locals and for Rena, who was not sure if he had indeed spoken with his uncle, or if he still planned to. William said even Charlie didn’t know where he’d gone.

  Rena glanced up at the sky. Morning had broken a few hours before, the sky brightening out of its early amber glow. Snow drifted like ash as she stared out at the brittle stubs of dead harvest, thinking of how their world changed color so much faster than her own. Her heart had turned as quickly, she thought—withering from bright Indian summers into gray—but she had only just begun to hope that it might not always be so.

  She and Nell both agonized over Barric’s disappearance, wondering if this was his way of dismissing her, perhaps because his uncle had accepted her terms and was making preparations for an offer. If such was the case, then Rena would marry a man she barely knew. A man in equal age to her father. What would her life look like if she was forced to move into her dead husband’s home with a man who was still a stranger to her?

  And if Uncle George refused?

  Her thoughts shifted to Lord Barric. He was a man who turned with the harvest: stern as winter, his hair as rusty red as the autumn leaves. But then in other moments his eyes softened into a subtler look which many likely missed if they hadn’t held his gaze as often as Rena had.

  In the distance, horse hooves pounded a wild, relentless pattern against the frozen ground. The thud rose to a raucous beat, a wall of sound traveling through the branch beneath her and up her stiffened spine. Somehow she knew it was him as soon as the horse pulled up beside her and ground to a halt.

  Though she was surprised by his sudden reappearance, she could not bring herself to look at him. Ten days had passed since she had left his bedchamber. Ten days without word, without any indication that he cared for her whatsoever or had kept his word to her. She stared miserably at her hands as she waited for him to speak.

  “I’ve come to congratulate you,” he announced without dismounting. “You are to be married.”

  His dreadful words, spoken without so much as a hello, brought her eyes despairingly up to his. Her voice emerged in a rasp of broken sound. “You’ve spoken to your uncle?”

  Barric met her eyes. He seemed disheveled from his ride, with hair windblown and coat spattered with melted snow. Even his cravat was unusually loose. He glanced away as if something in the distance held his attention more than their conversation, but still he answered.

  “I have.”

  Barric’s uncle had accepted the terms of the will. The realization struck her like a fist. Rena stood to thank him but staggered sideways on her feet. This was the despair of sacrifice, she realized, the moment when her own life became somewhat less in order to sustain another.

  “I am obliged to you,” she finally managed, brokenly. “Thank you for speakin
g my case so eloquently to your uncle.”

  Barric’s eyes snapped back to her, his mouth twisting into a forbidding line. “And you will marry him?” he asked, his voice so low she could barely make out the words. “A man of whose character you know nearly nothing?”

  “I know he is your relation.”

  Barric dismounted at that. “Yes,” he agreed coolly. “So is Charlie. So is Thomas. Yet you didn’t climb into bed with any of them, did you?”

  Heat poured into Rena’s face, a hot mix of anger and shame. “No,” she accepted through her teeth. “I certainly did not.”

  He tied off Samson to a tree, then approached her. “I want you to answer my question, and this time I want you to tell the truth. Why did you come to me that night?”

  Humiliated in every extreme, Rena fell back on a lie. “I would have gone to any man who could have assured me that Nell would be provided for.”

  He shook his head. “You would throw yourself away to a man who might spend his days despising you? You would share his bed, and let him touch you? Is Nell’s well-being really worth so much more than your own?”

  “Don’t you dare despise me for it!” Her furious words struck as quick as a match, and Barric’s eyes widened. “For months I watched Nell grieve and starve, hardly knowing which might kill her first. We slept in gutters, Lord Barric. We slept in alleys.” She broke off, trying to draw breath, but tears welled up within her, and she had to swallow twice as hard to hold them back. “So, you’ll forgive me if I am willing to throw myself away for her. There is very little else I have to give. I assure you, the price is not too dear if I never again have to watch her scrub floors in a hall filled with prostitutes.”

  Barric didn’t answer that. With a sharp breath of his own, he dropped his gaze, scuffing his boot heel on the ground. Rena turned to leave but only made it three paces before his hand curled around her wrist and he tugged her back.

  “You must be so relieved,” she blurted, fighting a wild urge to laugh at herself, at her own foolishness.

  “Relieved,” he repeated, shaking his head.

  “I ruined him, you know. He had been so admired. Respected. You should have seen how people looked at him after he married me. The whispers, I can still hear them, all the horrible things they said about him. About us. He would have risen in the ranks, except his superiors questioned his judgment. Doors which had been opened to him, opportunities he had once lived to explore—all gone. I’ve done the same to Nell. I’ve ruined her too.”

  Barric listened in silence, but she could see his eyes were that softer green she had just been thinking of.

  “You think Edric regretted marrying you?”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore if he did or if he didn’t. He’s gone.” She pulled her arm out of his hand and shook her head as if trying to clear it. “I ought to go,” she said distractedly. “I must tell Nell the news.”

  “If you must go,” he said to her back as she passed him, “then I might as well tell you that my uncle respectfully declined your offer.”

  Rena stiffened and her breath hung shakily between her lips. She turned quickly to face him as if startled from a daze. “He…didn’t want me?”

  “No.”

  Which meant—

  Lord Barric.

  Rena hadn’t fully realized just how much she wished to marry him—how much she loved him—until she fell to her knees with a sob of resounding relief. At first he let her consume the news in silence, standing near her without uttering a word. Then he moved closer, his feet crunching the frozen grass as he drew near. He knelt at her side, pulled her trembling hands from her face, and frowned as he at last uncovered her eyes.

  “You’re crying,” he said and sounded unsure.

  She didn’t feel the tears or mark them. They fell apart from her, as if they might have been the tears of another person entirely and she was merely their surrogate. They were her father’s tears, perhaps, when she told him she must go, when she had broken his heart by leaving. Or Nell’s tears, so full of loss, so stoic. Or even Edric’s when he had realized he was sick enough to die and leave her with nothing.

  “Where did you go?” she finally demanded through her tears. “Why did you leave?”

  Wincing apologetically, Barric reached into his pocket and removed a piece of folded paper. “I needed a private audience with the nearest bishop,” he admitted. “For this.”

  He handed her the marriage license—there was his name and hers and the name of their parish. Realization dawned as Rena lowered the document into her lap.

  “Forgive me,” Barric said before she had time to collect her thoughts, “but I needed to wait the seven days before returning so I wouldn’t have the chance to damage your reputation any more than I already have.”

  Seven days—the required waiting period for marriages by license, a much quicker process than the three weeks needed for the calling of the banns. Which meant Lord Barric had no intention of waiting a moment longer. Rena’s heart began beating uncommonly fast.

  “And now I have a question for you.” He spoke very softly, reaching to clasp her fingers in his. “Why do you think I am going to marry you?”

  She dared not hope for more than what she had already suspected. “Because you promised me you would.”

  “I’ve broken promises before.” His eyes intently awaited another answer from her.

  “Because you feel sorry for us?”

  He shook his head, his expression turning wry. “I’m not all that altruistic.”

  Her tone bittered. “Because you want the estate, then.”

  “Rena.”

  She choked on the sound of her name, and it was then she noticed how his eyes had softened on her face, how he followed each shift of her expression with unnerving attention.

  Drawing back, she challenged, “What, because you think I’m pretty?”

  There was a laugh waiting behind his lips.

  “You’re getting closer,” he admitted, right before he tipped her chin, pulled her to him, and kissed her.

  CHAPTER 18

  Barric rolled onto his side and admired the slope of Rena’s back. Her bare skin was only half draped beneath his heavy blanket, and she slumbered deeply, dreaming beside him as if she hadn’t slept in weeks. Barric kept time by following the soft lift of her shoulder as it moved beneath each tug of silent breath.

  Parson Richardson had not seemed at all surprised to find them waiting for him in the chapel that morning with license in hand. With a shake of his head, the parson glanced over the necessary signature, remarked it was “about time,” and then summoned a witness with a good deal of haste.

  Barric had thought he’d feel uncertain about marrying Rena so quickly, under such conditions. He was surprised at the altar, however, to find the parson could not speak fast enough for his liking. He’d wanted it done. He’d wanted her. Rena had been far more measured, he thought. She had lingered at the altar long after Barric had finished his own silent petitions, with her eyes fixed on the cross.

  He’d waited for her in the shadowy nave, watching restlessly as she’d at last risen from her knees and come to stand at his side. He had once accused Rena of dangling Sir Alistair’s property in front of him, of using him for his money—but as soon as her lips found his in the back of the chapel, Barric had known their marriage was not about Alistair’s will or even his own bargain with her. Though he still wasn’t sure if she loved him, exactly, he was confident there was far more than money between them.

  Barric’s fingers moved with the memory, tracing a path from Rena’s bare shoulder down her arm to her elbow. At his touch, she shifted beneath the blanket, her face turning up toward his as if drawn to him even in sleep. Word would have spread by now, he realized as he studied her face. Though he knew the rumors would be brutal, he was glad to know the gossip would never reach her here, in his room.

  Their room. It was hard to think in such terms so quickly, but that was the short of it.

&nbs
p; People had stared openly as he’d brought her from the chapel back to Misthold—she walking in her quiet way, dignity intact, and Barric following a half step behind, hardly able to take his eyes off her. She had worn the same exotic dress to their wedding which she’d worn ten nights ago, in his chamber, and she wore it like royalty, her back poised to take the whispers.

  They’d barely made it through the front door when he’d pulled her into a corner and sought her lips, no thought whatsoever for the servants who might happen upon them. She had been flushed and eager and, he thought, still slightly afraid of him. He hadn’t realized how deeply he wanted her until he had her in his arms and there were several dozen stairs left to climb to his room.

  He shifted closer to her in the bed, splaying his fingers against the skin at the base of her neck. Earlier, he had wondered if touching her would still make her think of Edric, but Barric had been the only name to cross her lips that morning, and he had kissed her until even that word was held far beyond her reach.

  Now he traced a hand over his wife’s frame, slowly, as if trying to memorize her: the way her hair was scattered down over the blanket, the way her features softened as they pressed against the pillow, the way her hand reached for him, her fingers brushing his chest…

  He captured that hand, brought it to his lips, and slowly kissed each fingertip. “Don’t you think it’s time you ought to awaken?”

  Far too quick to have been asleep, her expression curved at the jaw, tracing a slight smile. The little pretender. Without opening her eyes, she remarked, “You’ve been thinking so loudly I could hear you even in my sleep.”

  “Really?” He leaned closer. “And what was I thinking about?”

  She cracked one eye to peer over at him, and whatever she caught in his expression made her lips curl upward. She had an intelligent smile, he thought, with depth behind her eyes. Noticing this made him realize how unfamiliar he was with his wife’s shifting expressions, particularly the happy ones. “Do you regret marrying me?” he asked, unsure if he could trust her smiles after everything he’d once counted uncertain between them.