by Valerie King
The subject of haying was not far distant, followed by horse and sheep husbandry, the possibilities presented by the use of canals and succession houses, a discussion of orchards, poaching in the home wood, vagrancy, the plight of the poor, the troubles in the North with machine smashing in some of the new mills, the impact of so many modern inventions on society in general, and whether King George III would live another year.
So delightful was the general flow of the conversation that Constance didn’t even realize they were sitting together on a stone bench to the side of the kitchen garden until Cook suddenly appeared on the steps and called to her.
“Miss Pamberley, there ye be! Yer mother ‘as been callin’ fer ye fer some time. We couldn’t find ye anywhere.”
Constance immediately rose to her feet, as did Ramsdell. “Is she ill?” she called back, quickly gathering up her long, velvet train and moving up the path toward the door to the kitchens.
“Nay,” Cook said. “But ‘twere Mr. Albion wat sent fer ye. He said ‘twere most important. He’s with her now.”
Constance turned to Ramsdell. “You will excuse me, won’t you?”
“Of course. Do you wish me to attend you, for I can see you’re shaken?”
She nodded. “Mama rarely sends for me, you understand. She will request all of my sisters before sending for me—she knows I am continually pressed with concerns about the estate.”
“Then I can understand your trepidation. I will accompany you.”
“Thank you.”
Constance entered her mother’s chamber and found Alby standing near her, a glow on his face. She looked down at her mother, who was sitting up in bed with only a pillow behind her to support her head. She had never been able to do so before.
“Mama!”
She took a step forward, but Charles prevented her from doing so with a lift of his hand and a softly murmured “Wait!”
Mrs. Pamberley opened her mouth and said in a slurred but distinguishable voice,
“Con-nie.”
She had not heard her pet name in seven years. The sound was not of this earth.
“Mama,” she murmured, tears springing to her eyes. “But how? When?” She glanced at Charles. “Alby, was this your doing?”
“I only encouraged her a little. You must remember, I know full well how frail the body grows when it remains unused.” His eyes flitted past her shoulder, reaching Ramsdell, then returned to her face. “We are practicing all your sisters’ names as well, but I felt certain you, most of all, since you carry the burdens of your family on your shoulders alone, would want to hear her progress.”
“Thank you—yes. Thank you so very much.” Remembering Ramsdell, she brought him forward and introduced him to her mother. Ramsdell bowed. Mrs. Pamberley lifted a finger in his direction by way of acknowledgment. She lifted a finger.
“Mother,” she said.
Constance pressed her hands to her cheeks and finally moved forward to sink on her knees beside the bed. She took her mother’s hand in hers and felt a stronger pressure than ever return the squeeze of her fingers. She lowered her forehead to the coverlet and began to weep. She suddenly felt the burdens of the past seven years flow over her in a monstrous wave. An awareness came to her that she had never allowed herself to be sad in all these years, about the direction the course of her life had been forced to take until that very moment, the moment when hope had just flown in the window.
She felt she could weep forever and was grateful when the gentlemen quickly retired. Her mother’s fingers continued to press hers in comforting response as she gave herself for a few minutes to the strong, unexpected emotions that ravaged her heart.
Finally, she felt able to dry her eyes. She drew a chair forward and spent the next half hour looking at her parent, drying the tears that tracked down her mother’s cheeks, and listening to her name spoken at least a dozen times.
She owed Charles everything for the miracle he had somehow wrought in her mother. Somehow she would find a way to repay him.
* * * * * * * * *
Constance could not find her feet when she moved down the hall. She was floating with a happiness she could hardly express. Her mother gave every evidence of finally recovering from her illness after so many years. She went to her chamber and, after calling for a bath, began the process of dressing for dinner.
That night she found herself watching Charles more than was usual for her. She was still awestruck by the changes he had wrought in her mother, and the amazement she felt found expression in her need to look at him and wonder.
During dinner, after she had searched his face for the twentieth time, she suddenly shifted her gaze to Augusta, who she found was very quiet and composed. She was unable to discern the nature of her present thoughts, or how strenuously she was working to keep her heart in line, except that a faint tic worked beneath her left eye. No wonder she loves him, she thought, for his spirit walks with the angels, surely.
Later, when Marianne was noisily teaching Alby, Katherine, and Augusta the intricate steps of the quadrille, with Celeste doggedly playing the pianoforte in accompaniment, she asked Ramsdell to tell her in more detail of Alby’s life.
“What do you wish to know?” he responded quietly, drawing her away from the dancers and toward a settee near the fireplace.
Constance sat down, refusing his offer of a footstool. “Thank you, but my limbs are sufficiently long, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
He nodded, taking up a seat beside her. “Yes, that I have noticed,” he responded. He turned in to her, resting his right elbow on the back of the settee, and watched her closely. He was dressed in elegant black evening wear, his neckcloth folded intricately, his coat of black superfine molded to broad shoulders, and his black silk pantaloons revealing the shape of muscular thighs and calves. Even his arm was supported in a black silk sling.
She had recognized something provocative in his tone, but her mind was too caught up with the extraordinary events of the day for her to do more than smile faintly.
“Are you thinking of your mother?” he asked after she remained silent.
She nodded, turning toward him. She saw that the lace of his shirt was caught beneath the sling. She thought nothing of what she was doing as she extended a hand and began to straighten out each portion.
She spoke quietly. “What has happened to my mother is nothing short of miraculous. You cannot imagine the thoughts that have filled my head—my heart—since Alby sent for me and I saw my mother lift her finger and actually speak my name.” She slowly plucked another crushed edging of lace and with the tip of her finger pressed it against the V of his waistcoat. She continued plucking and speaking. “My mind has been consumed with Charles and how he managed to accomplish in just a few days what even several prominent physicians could not over the course of many years. I am overwhelmed with gratitude.” She worked her finger under another line of lace.
“Constance,” he whispered. “What are you doing?”
Constance slid her gaze to his face and saw that his eyes were hazy with an expression she had seen at least twice before. She wondered what on earth she had said to have brought such a look to his eye. “What is it?” she asked. “What have I said?”
A pained smile crossed his face. “I think my lace ought to be left where it is for the present, don’t you.”
She looked down at her hand, which was searching and plucking the lace, but which also at present was resting over his heart. She gasped as the heat of his chest suddenly communicated to her fingers and then as rapidly to her brain. She withdrew her hand and felt her cheeks begin to burn.
“I would have permitted you to continue had we been alone,” he murmured, “for I have felt nothing so wondrous in years as the touch of your hand on me.”
“I do beg your pardon, Ramsdell,” she whispered, folding her hands primly on her lap. “Only pray did any of the others witness my idiocy?”
“I think not. Can you not hear their laughte
r?”
“It is very difficult through my embarrassment. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You were caught up in your usual housewifery, I think. Ever in search of that piece of your home that is not in order and setting it to rights without a second thought. Maybe later you can finish this chore, say, if we took a stroll in the gardens?”
“What?” she said, a warmth stealing over her in swift, pleasant waves again. “In the moonlight? How very dangerous, to be sure.”
“Indeed,” he murmured throatily.
She met his gaze again. Longing stole into his eyes and wouldn’t depart. A lethargic dizziness pervaded her body at his silent request. They had agreed to remain in company, to prevent the very thing that was rising again between them. In the distance she could hear Celeste’s careful notes on the pianoforte, Marianne’s masterful instructions, Alby’s murmured “yes” and “I see,” and the giggles and chatter of Katherine and Augusta. Yet, so far distant were the sounds that she might as well have been on an island with Ramsdell and her sisters and Alby on a distant shore.
“Later,” he said softly. “When your sisters are abed. Come to me in the rose garden.”
She sat on the settee, knowing she could not possibly oblige him. When she spoke of the danger of such actions, she had spoken the truth. She would refuse him, of course. She paused, she waited, she grew dizzy again. “All right,” she whispered.
She was stunned by her traitorous vocal cords, tongue, and lips. She was supposed to refuse him. To do anything else was madness.
Then the evening began to drag and seemed to resume the normal ticks of the clock only when Katherine and Celeste yawned simultaneously. A half hour later, Constance accompanied Alby and her sisters up the stairs. Ramsdell had previously excused himself.
* * * * * * * * *
Constance waited in her bedchamber for a half hour until all the noises in the adjoining bedrooms ceased—the creaks of the floorboards, the laughter of her sisters as they crisscrossed the hall exchanging bits of lace or hairbrushes or borrowed earbobs, the good-night calls, sister to sister. She rocked in a chair by the window and waited for the last voice to fall silent.
At half past eleven she stole from her room, the only light in the hall a trickle of moonbeams that shone through the muslin at the far window.
She wore a shawl against the damp, cool night air. She found Ramsdell in the shadows, but he pressed a finger to her lips, caught up her hand, and began guiding her away from the house, through the formal garden, past the maze, and into the wood beyond. He didn’t stop until they reached an old bench beside Lady Brook Stream from which her father had fished for trout so many years before.
“I found this on one of my rambles. I think we can enjoy some privacy here.”
Beyond the stream, the wood disappeared and a rolling section of the downs could be seen in a moonlit view that appeared as if snow had fallen on the land.
He sat down and cradled her close in the circle of his right arm. She did not even demur, as she meant to. Instead, she leaned her head on his shoulder and let go of a deep sigh.
“You may repair my lace to your heart’s content now,” he said.
She giggled. Tears were near the surface though. Her heart was full to breaking. Why was it so easy to be in his arms? She thought of all the men she had refused, marveling that she had at last met one who could command her so easily.
“Constance?” His lips were lightly on her forehead. She leaned back and let him cover her mouth with his own. She parted her lips. The world disappeared. Her thoughts became a brilliant rope of images, of being a child and enjoying a carefree life in this very wood, of kissing Jaspar when she was fifteen and standing with him barefooted in the stream, of sitting with her father and angling for fish, of her first London Season, of her numerous beaus, of her love for the manor that had become the focus of her existence—until then.
Ramsdell’s lips were warm and moist on hers, his tongue a joining that swelled her heart. She forgot about everything except the feel of his kiss and the strong arm that surrounded her protectively. She touched his face with her hand, letting her fingers drift lightly over his cheek and the firm line of his jaw.
He left her lips to kiss her fingers. The exact shape of his features was hidden in the night shadows that surrounded them both, but she knew the precise color of his eyes, the curved line of his nose, the shape of his high cheekbones. She let her lips trace each shape, memorizing with small, dragging kisses the flow of his face. She heard him breathe and a low, hoarse sigh escaped his throat as she touched and kissed him.
“Damn,” he murmured into her ear.
“What?” she responded, her throat aching.
“This sling and my wounded arm. I can’t hold you or kiss you properly.”
She drew back and smiled at him and kissed him. “I have begun to believe that is for the best.”
He chuckled, then caught her lips with his own and kissed her maddeningly. “Constance,” he said, his voice anguished as he drew back from her. “I know I’m taking sore advantage of you.”
“Not by half,” she murmured. “I am merely storing up for myself a host of memories that will keep me warm during the winter. Don’t repine, I beg you. There can be no harm in a little kissing.”
* * * * * * * * *
Ramsdell kissed her and felt his heart stretching at every seam. He was fond of Constance, he was drawn to her, every turn about her home made him wish he would find her around the next bend. When she had drifted her lips over his cheek and brow and slid kisses over his eyelids, he felt driven to distraction. His thoughts kept turning to having her beneath him, as his wife, making love to her, planting his children in her womb, having them grow up beneath her gentle, orderly eye. Futile thoughts, but sensual ones that kept him holding her close to his side and searching the depths of her mouth.
A rustling nearby diverted Constance’s attention, and when she shifted her gaze past his shoulder, she nudged him and hushed him. “Do but look,” she murmured against his cheek. “Slowly.”
A magnificent buck, some ten yards away, had come to lap at the stream’s edge. The branches of the trees overhead permitted a dappled moonlight to pattern his back and flanks.
His ears twitched. He took only two or three sips at a time, then lifted his proud head to scrutinize his surroundings.
“Extraordinary,” Ramsdell murmured.
The buck’s head shot up and stared in the direction of the bench. His entire body shook with the tension of waiting and suspecting. He sniffed the air.
Ramsdell chuckled, then spoke to him. “We are but a harmless pair. You’ve nothing to fear from us.”
The buck needed no further encouragement. He wheeled about and in a pig’s whisker disappeared into the woods.
Ramsdell squeezed her shoulder and drew in a deep breath followed by a satisfied sigh. “I could remain with you, in this lush, fragrant spot, until the sun rises.”
She again leaned her head against his shoulder and stared at the beauty of the downs. “I too,” she responded.
She remained with him for an hour, by which time the fatigue of the day’s events laid claim to her comfort. She must seek her bed.
He walked beside her the entire way back to the house, holding her hand and choosing a route that kept them in shadow most of the way. Once inside, he did not immediately relinquish her, but drew her into an antechamber near the foot of the stairs and kissed her soundly. She didn’t know which sensation was finer, the cuddling on the bench or the feel of the entire length of his body against hers as he held her close.
“Tomorrow night?” he asked softly, drifting the words over her lips.
“Yes,” she breathed into his mouth just as he kissed her again.
A half hour later, she made her way to her bedchamber.
***
Chapter Eleven
Over the next several days preceding Lady Bramshill’s ball, Constance no longer forbade herself the enj
oyment of Ramsdell’s company. During the day she frequently included him in her chores, whether delivering foodstuffs to the poor in neighboring villages, or inviting him to walk into the wood along with Stively to dismantle newly planted poaching traps, or discussing with him various tedious estate problems, knowing how intimately he was involved with every aspect of Aston Hall.
The evenings brought a different sort of communing, of dancing, even with his arm still cradled in a sling, of companionable competition at cards, and later, in the warm, secret embraces shared beside Lady Brook Stream. Each day took on a vibrant, dreamlike quality that caused her to awaken with excitement, and close her eyes at night to the sweetest slumber she had ever known.
If she feared her attachment to Ramsdell might become generally known, she was much mistaken, for what her sisters thought of Ramsdell was summed up succinctly by Katherine, who whispered to her one evening, “Won’t you be relieved when Ramsdell departs? I know you must despise having to wait on him hand and foot when you are so very busy. Of course, were he younger . . .” Her sister had then giggled at her little joke.
Were Ramsdell younger . . .
Constance had smiled to herself but made no effort to disabuse Katherine’s mind about her true sentiments toward the aged Lord Ramsdell.
Sir Henry Crowthorne had also helped to enliven their evenings. Having returned from a trip to York, where he had visited his uncle for a fortnight, he had joined in their nightly revelries with Constance’s blessing, particularly since he had quickly gained the favor of both Lord Ramsdell and Charles. The baronet’s manners were so easy and so pleasing that before long a fast friendship had formed among the men.
One day, with hunting rifles in hand, they had spent hours scouring his estate for deer. Ramsdell and Charles had returned late that afternoon with a fine haunch of venison for Cook as well as several brace of pheasant.