by Once a Rogue
“You didn’t think I’d let him dash you off to the parson for hasty vows, without all the feasting, dancing and bridal lace, did you? The day my son finally gets himself a wife? This will be a very special day and we’ll celebrate accordingly.”
A drowsy wasp passed her line of sight, but with her hands holding the basket she couldn’t bat it away. She stared as Mistress Carver shook her apron at it, knocked it to the grass and then ground the insect under her foot.
“Don’t you worry, Lucy. We’ll have the finest wedding Sydney Dovedale has ever seen.”
Sunlight dripped between the branches like melting copper. Playful fingers of a gentle breeze lifted the leaves, rustling them idly, and birds, swooping and darting, performed their last songs of summer.
“What is it Lucy? You’ve gone white as snow.”
I’m a ghost, she mused, ghosts are meant to be pale. Surely she’d died. She couldn’t feel the grass around her feet, or the sun on her face. “Who told you we are to be married, Mistress Carver?”
“Why, John of course. He did ask you, didn’t he?” One hand slapped to her brow, the old lady moaned under her breath. “Fool boy, he would rush on ahead and not think to ask!”
“No.” She bit her lip. “He didn’t ask.”
“Then he just assumed! For pity’s sake.” His mother shook her head, but then carried on with the apple picking. “I’ll make certain he asks you properly, Lucy, and on bended knee! Fancy taking you for granted. I do apologize for my son’s clumsy manners, but how like him.”
Not wanting to upset the lady, Lucy merely smiled as best she could and followed along with her basket. This was it then, now the truth must come out. She’d known this day would come. She should have been prepared.
But even if she were, nothing would have prepared him.
* * * *
“What do you mean, you can’t marry me?”
She’d walked out to the fields to tell him, so his mother needn’t hear. They’d just passed over a stile and into the lane, when she told him she was very sorry but marriage was out of the question.
“Had I known that’s what you were thinking, I would have said sooner,” she exclaimed nervously, “but I never expected you to marry me, John.”
He halted, glaring at her, flicking sweat-dampened hair out of his eyes. “Of course that’s what I was thinking. After last night, what else is there to be done but to marry?”
“You don’t need to feel guilty,” she assured him. “I was quite content just to share your bed.”
His eyes kept growing wider, but at the same time darker, when it was usually the reverse. “You’ll marry me and that’s all there is to it. I’ll not be accused of misusing you.”
“Who would accuse you of that?”
“I would! In my heart I would.”
“Oh, John…”
“I want you for my wife, Lucy. I want you to bear my children and live with me side by side, every day of my life.”
She covered her face with her hands, frustration and sorrow fermenting within, making a potent, volatile brew when mixed with anger at herself for not having the gumption to explain. “I can’t marry you, John. Please don’t speak of it again.”
He took hold of her wrists, pulling her hands from her face. “Why? Tell me! Because of my cousin? I told you, I don’t care about your past and he won’t stand in our way.”
She gritted her teeth, shaking her head, nauseous. “You and I can never marry. Would you get it through your thick, stubborn, mulish head? We can’t have everything we want John Carver, not even you!”
He released her wrists and stood looking at her for a few moments. His chest, bare under his sleeveless jerkin, moved rapidly in and out with the strain of holding his temper. His broad shoulders heaved, those thick, tanned arms lifted in supplication. “But you won’t tell me why?”
“I can’t. What do the reasons matter?” she cried, hating herself more with every word.
“I see.” He stepped back, face taut, knuckles cracking. “If that’s the way you want it. I must’ve been mad to think of marrying my cousin’s whore in any case.”
After this he gave her the silent, brooding treatment. Love was a cruel torment, she decided, if this is what it did to them, especially what it did to him, when none of it was his fault. She took all the culpability for this on her own shoulders. No one should be in pain, or bear the punishment, but her.
* * * *
He couldn’t understand it. She was willing to share his bed, yet she wouldn’t be his wife, neither could she tell him why marriage was impossible for her. They’d had word of English victory over the Spanish Armada and soon they should receive a letter from Nathaniel with some date for his return. John wondered if this was what kept her from making a commitment to him. Perhaps she waited for his cousin’s return, biding her time until Nathaniel came to fetch her.
He kept thinking of what she’d said. “We can’t have everything we want, John Carver, not even you!” It surely meant she wanted to stay with him, but something prevented it.
Although he pretended to ignore her all evening, he slyly followed her in any polished surface: the window, the blade of his knife, the plate over the mantle. In the corner of his eye he saw his mother exchanging glances with Lucy. The two women were of like willfulness, thick as thieves almost the moment he brought the hussy home from Yarmouth on his cart. He shook his head, slumped his shoulders, rested his forearms on the table and shoveled stew into his mouth, as if it might be his last meal.
Well, he wasn’t going to beg the wench to marry him. He’d offered to make her an honest, respectable woman, but apparently she didn’t care to be one. Really, he mused darkly, he should have realized. She was a creature who gave her virginity to a complete stranger in a bawdy house, why would he think she wanted to marry him and become a decent wife and mother? Clearly that was never her object in life, or else she would never have done what she did.
So many unanswered questions. They tore at him, chewed at his anger until it became subdued, a mellow heat instead of a raging inferno, but one just as dangerous as it tickled away at his insides, stealthy and sly, threatening to burst out at any moment.
Lucy went to bed early. Noting the dark shadows under her eyes, the weariness in her usually proud posture, he thought he must have tired her out last night. She would sleep soundly then tonight, if her damned conscience would let her.
As soon as her last steps faded away on the stairs, his mother came over to his chair and kicked his feet until he sat up.
“You might have asked her,” she hissed, “before you came down all full of yourself and told me you were going to marry the girl.”
His reply was cool. He didn’t bother lowering his voice. “I didn’t think I needed to ask her…after last night. I made my intentions plain, I’d say!”
“Apparently not! Had the two of you spent a few moments talking sensibly last night, instead of acting like two beasts in heat, you might have discovered a difference of opinion on the matter of marriage.”
“Don’t lecture me, mother! I’m not in the mood for it tonight.”
“Are you going to marry the girl or not?”
“She says not.”
His mother’s dark eyes burned with her own inner fires. “And you’re going to give up that easily? Your father never would have.” Before he answered, she swept away with her candle, muttering, “Well, that’s it, then. I suppose I’m forced to stay alive another twenty years to look after you on earth, when I should be with your father again by now.”
John watched the door at the foot of the stairs close behind her, listened to her footsteps slowly mounting the old crooked staircase. He looked over at Vince, who sprawled by the low, smoldering fire, dreaming of chasing coneys through the forest, blissfully ignorant of his master’s unhappiness. He wished his father were there now. His father was a straightforward man, not formally educated, but a damn sight smarter about life than most other folk he ever knew. He’d
always had an answer to John’s questions, always a simple solution to his many boyhood dilemmas. No problem was insurmountable in his father’s eyes.
“You can do anything, Johnny lad, if you put your mind to it, if you want it badly enough. Don’t you let anyone tell you otherwise.”
He sighed, rubbing his unshaven chin as he stared across the room at the old chair where his father used to sit. His mother was right, of course, his father wouldn’t give up when he wanted something.
And John wanted Lucy. Plain and simple. Nothing else for it.
It happened when he walked across the dusty boards of that bed chamber in Norwich and placed his fingertips to her proud little jaw, forcing it up so she’d look into his eyes and stop staring so fearfully at his leather breeches. He’d known it then, when he felt her tremble and it rocked his body, sweeping from his fingertips to his toes, back up to his heart, bringing him to life when he thought he already was.
He finally went up to bed, pausing outside her chamber door to listen, wondering if she was still awake. All was silent. He tried the iron loop handle, expecting to find it bolted from the inside, but her door creaked open. Moonlight flooded the chamber.
The bed was empty.
He panicked. His first suspicions took him swiftly to the open window and he stared out, expecting to see her running across his yard. She must have climbed down the ivy; it wasn’t a great distance. Somewhere in the trees, an owl let out a soft, soothing hoot, almost questioning.
Damn her! She’d left him. He should have known. Running into his own chamber for his riding boots and whip, he stopped dead.
She was naked in his bed, sitting up, waiting patiently, her arms around her knees, hair trickling over her bare shoulders.
“Thank goodness,” she whispered. “I thought you were never coming to bed!”
* * * *
For what seemed to her a small lifetime, he stood with his hand on the door latch, staring, rapt. It reminded her of their very first night, when she’d feared he might not do what she wanted.
“I worried I’d made a mistake when I chose you that night,” she said, the words slipping out into the stillness. “Did I?”
At last he closed the door and came toward her slowly. She looked up at him, her heart close to bursting.
“No,” he replied huskily, reaching out to run a finger along her jaw, lifting it. “You chose well.” One knee on the bed, he slid closer. “Never have any doubt.”
She closed her eyes as he kissed her lips gently, little more than a flutter. The bed dipped as it took his weight and then his hands were on her shoulders, easing her down.
“So, my saucy swine-herd…what am I going to do with you?”
Her eyes opened. “I’m surprised you need ask. Surely, you know what to do, Master Carver. I’ve been a naughty girl again and I need guidance.”
He kissed her harder this time, lips slanting to hers, hands under her head, fingers entwined in her hair. Before his breeches were even down to his knees, she wound her legs around his hips and he entered her in the same moment.
“Do you know what I love most about you?” he whispered, holding her tenderly.
“My welcoming availability?”
“Well, there is that,” he grinned, moonlight flaring across his fine teeth. “But more importantly, your utter unpredictability.” He kissed the tip of her nose very gently. “I never know what you’ll do next.”
“Really? I would have imagined that to be one of the things you disliked.”
“Funnily enough, so would I. Until I met you.” And he began to move slowly, making love to her with gentleness tonight, unhurried, controlled, anxious to please.
“I’ll stay, John,” she cried into the warm hollow between his neck and shoulder. “I’ll stay as long as you need me. Just don’t ask me to marry you.”
“You’re killing me,” he groaned softly.
“Then we’ll die together. Like this.”
“Yes.” He moved his hips, pressing ever deeper, his breath quickening. “Yes…”
And she hugged him tighter with her legs, her hands stroking his broad, flexing shoulders, whispering sweet promises in his ear, vows to love him forever, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, to worship and honor him with her body. To keep herself only unto him.
Forever.
And ever.
And ever.
Chapter 19
That halcyon “forever” lasted a mere nine days. The time was gilded with late summer gold, just as she’d imagined in her dream. Lucy helped around the house every day, cleaned out her pigs, and learned how to make cider, even succeeded in getting her petulant lover into a bath. There were no further visits from Lord Oakham, no warning of dark clouds on the horizon. She allowed herself to believe he granted them a reprieve, that he had some tenderness in his soul after all. She had to believe it, because she was desperate to dream on and never be woken.
She joined John’s mother on visits to the sick, poor and elderly, soon becoming known for her kindness and gentle manners. Mostly the villagers accepted her, only a few still held any disdain for John Carver’s woman. Rumor had it they’d be married just as soon as he persuaded her. Hearing how she resisted his persistent, inequitable charms for so long, other girls in the village looked at her with sheer admiration and wonder. But at night, unbeknownst to them, she didn’t resist his charms at all.
His mother made no comment, although she was clearly annoyed and impatient with her son for allowing the bed-sharing to continue with no marriage date set.
John, it seemed, knew better than to argue with either woman in his life, for he loved them both, so he let the days and nights roll by, enjoying them to the fullest, never wasting a moment, declaring himself the luckiest man on earth. Almost.
“If I give you a child, Lucy, you’ll have to marry me then,” he whispered one night, as she fell, sated, across his body.
Rather than answer, she sighed sleepily and rolled over, hugging his arm, nestling her back into his side. However, she lay with her eyes open, thinking him a wily, amorous beast, one who apparently never balked at a challenge. Bull-necked John Carver would try to get her to the chapel door one way or another. He might employ all manner of trickery to get her there, but he was coy for now, knowing a good thing when he had it. Just to be on the safe side, she took all the precautions she knew to prevent her womb quickening. These included jumping up and down on the spot for the count of fifty each morning and making sure to eat a spoonful of honey mixed with salt, while turning in left-handed spins in the northern most corner of the yard. She also took a lock of his hair, while she had him in the bath, entwined it with a lock of her own and burned it in the fire, just to be sure there would be no unwise pregnancy.
Oh yes, she had it all under control.
* * * *
It was a crisp Thursday morning when Mistress Carver asked Lucy to take some eggs and one of her restorative potions down the lane to a sick neighbor.
“I would go myself, but my joints plague me this morning. Must be the change of seasons to come. It was foggy this morning down in the valley.”
Basket under one arm, Lucy crossed the yard to the gate, daydreaming. Her eyes slowly focused on a tall man standing there on the other side of the bars, looking in at her, his familiar face grim.
“Lucy!”
She stumbled, almost dropping her eggs. “Lance!” Her heart’s blood was in her mouth. It had happened, then. They’d found her. She knew how a deer felt when it saw hunters emerge from the forest and heard the hounds at its heels.
He pushed open the gate and it creaked on rusty hinges. “You’d better come with me at once.”
She glanced back over her shoulder to be sure Mistress Carver was still inside. “How did you find me?”
“Mortimer Oakham sent me word you were here.”
He had betrayed her after all.
“We were at Cambridge together,” Lance added. “He recognized you at once.”
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Her heart was bleeding. “Oh Lance, I can’t leave. Please don’t make me go back. Please!” How easily and desperately the word came out now, a word she’d never been accustomed to until she knew what she wanted in life. Until she’d met John Sydney Carver.
“It’s over Lucy. You must come with me now. These people,” he looked over her head at the house, “will be in great trouble if anyone else finds you here.”
It was true. All this fuss she’d caused…
Lance frowned, impatient. “Come with me quickly, unless you want these poor folk to suffer. Haven’t you caused enough trouble?”
Tears burned. She blinked them back, searching for courage. “Can I at least say goodbye?”
“There’s no time. Father and Lord Winton are searching for you in Yarmouth now. I’m ahead of them by no more than half a day’s ride.”
“But I…” she looked around dizzily, thinking of her pigs, of Vince who’d grown so fond of her, of the cows waiting to be milked, hens to be fed. Of John. There was a ponderous, sob-choked silence. She would never see any of this again, never know this life again. Never see him again.
“Lucy!” Mistress Carver appeared in the entrance of the house, her small figure framed with ivy and honeysuckle. “Who is that? Bring them in, dear.”
Despite her brother’s insistence on haste, Lucy dragged him to the door. “She’s been so good to me, Lance. I must say goodbye.”
“Lucy!”
“Five minutes. No more.”
* * * *
Staring through the window, only half-listening to Mistress Carver, Lucy said a mute prayer of thanks to whatever deity had granted her these wondrous few months with John. She might never have known him. She could have gone to her grave never having experienced this much happiness. So she shouldn’t be ungrateful now, and bitter. Some folk never knew love like this.
“Lucy has told us very little about her past,” Mistress Carver was saying, “but she did tell us about her brother. I’m so glad we had the chance to meet. We’ve all grown to love your sister, Master Collyer.”
“Yes, well,” Lance cleared his throat, sitting stiffly at their table, “I must thank you for giving her shelter all this time, but now I’ve come to take her home.”