by Jo Goodman
Quill waited for her on the window bench. When she finally reappeared, he stood. She did not try to mask her annoyance. “I told you I would do anything besides leave.”
“I remember.”
“You didn’t take me at my word?”
“I didn’t take you for being so patient.”
“And I never figured you for a coward.”
Calico bristled. “I am not a coward.”
“Are you saying you weren’t in there longer than you had to be? You were hoping I would give up and be gone.”
Her chin came up. “Well, if I was—and I’m not saying I was—it didn’t work. You’re still here.” Barefooted, she stalked to the bed and unfastened her robe. She dropped it where she stood. Throwing back the covers, she crawled in, set her back against the headboard, and drew the blankets up to her waist. “If you must know, the sheet was stained. I had to wash it out.”
He doubted that the activity accounted for all of her time in the bathing room, but he decided the wiser course was not to challenge her. He’d called her a coward and lived. No sense tempting fate.
“It won’t dry in there,” he said. “Not by the time the maid who sees to your room arrives. What if I bring it in here, lay it over the chair close to the fire?”
“Or I could just make the bed before Molly gets here. I usually do, you know. I’m not used to people tidying up after me.”
Quill gave her a long, contemplative look before he got to his feet. “I don’t know if you could be more stubborn.”
“I could try,” she said under her breath.
“I heard that,” he said, but he was already headed for the adjoining room and he didn’t pause to look back at her. She would not have been pleased that he was grinning.
Calico did not look in his direction when he returned with the sheet over his arm, nor when he snapped it out and draped it over the chair.
Quill pushed the chair closer to the fire. “You don’t have to be embarrassed. In medieval times the lord of the manor would have waved a bloody sheet from his window to show everyone his bride had been a virgin. Or so I’ve read.” He turned in time to get a pillow in the face. He caught it before it dropped to the floor. “I suppose I deserved that.”
“There’s no supposing about it.”
He nodded and carried the pillow back to the bed. He stood at the side, waiting, hoping he had already proved his well of patience was deeper than hers. She did not extend her invitation in words. Rather, she moved over and returned the space he had previously occupied. He lifted the covers himself and stuffed the pillow she’d thrown at him behind his back as he sat. Quite deliberately, he sat close enough to brush shoulders, and took it as a good sign when she did not scoot away.
Of course she could have only been trying to prove she was not a coward.
“There were several things wrong with your story,” she said.
“Oh.” His eyebrows lifted. “We’re going to talk about that?”
She went on as if he had not spoken, ticking off her points on her fingers. “First, we are not living in medieval times. Second, you are not lord of this or any other manor. Third, I am not your bride. And fourth, I was not embarrassed.”
“I will stipulate to the accuracy of the first three items, if you will agree that the fourth is a bald-faced lie.”
“Stipulate?” Her cheeks puffed as she blew out a breath. “You don’t have to pretend to be a lawyer here. In fact, I’d prefer that you didn’t.”
“All right,” he said easily. “But do you agree?”
“That I was embarrassed? Yes, I will agree, but you shouldn’t mistake it for being ashamed. I wasn’t ashamed.”
“I should hope not.”
“Mrs. Riggenbotham told me it could happen.”
“I thought she might have.”
“She also said it doesn’t always. I was hoping that I’d be an exception.”
That made him curious. He looked sideways at her. “Why?” He saw her hesitate then shrug.
“I suppose because you wouldn’t have known for sure that you were the first. It seems like something you would take real serious, probably feel some sort of obligation. I didn’t want to be responsible for that.”
“Hmm. We see it a little differently. I don’t think you are responsible for how I feel about anything.”
“So you don’t feel an obligation.”
“I didn’t say that. I said you’re not responsible if I do.”
“But I don’t want you to be beholden.”
“That’s not up to you.”
“You are worse than stubborn,” she said. “You are deliberately provoking.”
“Look at me, Calico.”
“Not if you’re grinning.”
“I’m not.”
She turned her head. His face was very close to hers.
“You are not responsible,” he said. “And I am serious about this.” He lifted the underside of her chin with his fingertips, tilting her head and lowering his own. He kissed her then. At first it was hardly more than the suggestion of a kiss. His lips brushed hers, gentle and careful. Her mouth softened, parted, but the tenor of the kiss remained unchanged.
He was deliberately provoking.
Quill let his fingers fall away. Calico’s head did not drop a fraction. Her lips were pliant and the kiss was no longer something being done to her. She was returning it with the same care and gentleness that he had shown her. He wanted it to linger, to last long beyond this moment, but there was something else he wanted as well. It was then that he drew back and searched her face. He could tell that she had never closed her eyes. He couldn’t help himself; it made him smile.
Her lips twitched, quirked, and in spite of her efforts to make it otherwise, they unfolded into a wide smile. “It’s like a yawn,” she said, staring at his mouth. “It’s contagious.”
Quill passed a hand over the lower half of his face. When his mouth was revealed again, the smile was gone.
Calico sobered as well.
He said, “I want you to promise that under no circumstances will you cut me out.”
“Cut you out? I don’t understand.”
“I think you do. You tried to get rid of me earlier. Given the chance, you’ll try it again. That’s why I want your word.”
“I told you, I was embarrassed.”
“I know what you said, and I know you will always have a reason. I want to have a say. I want your word.”
Her eyebrows puckered as she frowned. “Why would you even believe me?”
“Are you saying I shouldn’t?”
“No. I’m saying that—” She stopped, shook her head. “Never mind. You’ve got my thinking all twisted. That’s a lawyer trick.”
“Sorry.”
“Hmm.” She continued to regard him with suspicion.
“Your word,” he said again.
“You are like a hound with the blood scent.”
“Uh-huh.”
Calico said nothing. Her eyes never wavered from his, but she did blink first. Swearing softly under her breath, she threw up her hands. “All right. I give you my word.”
“Say all of it. You have to say all of it.”
“I will not cut you out.”
“Under any circumstances.”
“I will not cut you out under any circumstances.” She pointed a finger at him. “And just see if you don’t regret it.”
Quill was philosophical. “Well, that’s something for me to think about, isn’t it?”
“You should have thought of it before you extracted my promise.”
“I did not have a gun to your head.”
“Would you have left this bed if I hadn’t given it?”
“No.”
“And there is my point exactly.”
“Do you want me to leave?”
Calico’s lips parted as her jaw sagged. She required a moment to regain the power of speech. “It didn’t work the last time I asked you. Why would it work now?”
“Because I am the one asking. You can pretty much depend on me to be open to your answer if I’m putting the question to you.”
Abruptly, she slid down the headboard, yanked the pillow from under her neck, and placed it squarely over her face. She then proceeded to groan loudly into it.
Quill waited until she was quiet for almost a minute before he lifted one corner of the pillow. “So do you want me to leave?”
She tore the pillow out of his hand and crossed her arms over it. This time she used it to smother her laughter. She had to give it up when it became almost impossible to breathe. He was a gauzy figure when she looked up, and she had to dash tears from her eyes to see him more clearly.
“I could cheerfully kill you,” she told him, hugging the pillow to her chest. She hiccupped softly. “I swear I could.”
“I believe you.” He stretched out beside her, turning on his side to look at her closely. “You were laughing, weren’t you? I wasn’t sure at first.”
“You don’t sound as if you’re sure now.” She took pity on him, although she had no explanation for it. “Yes, I was laughing. I’m tired and cranky and I don’t think I am going to be able to sleep, and you were buzzing in my ear like a bee I could not swat for fear of knocking myself out, and it was all just . . .” She hiccupped again. “Just . . .”
“Too much?”
She nodded. When she closed her eyes, tears leaked from under her lashes. Her face crumpled. She started to bring the pillow up over her face again, but he stopped her. She did not resist when he took it away, nor did she stop him when he drew her into his arms. She curled into him. His chin rested against her head. He stroked her hair. He never once told her to hush. He never once said everything would be all right. How could he have known that anyway? He did not know why she was crying.
Neither did she.
Quill did not know how long he held her, but he knew he held long after she quieted. She must have been comforted in his arms, or at least comfortable, because he released her as soon as he felt her try to draw back. He did not want to make that hard for her.
He supposed this circumstance would be a good test of the promise she had made. He could not imagine that she cried often, and probably never openly, and she would likely be embarrassed. He waited to see if she told him to leave.
Calico lifted her head while Quill put the pillow under it. She used a corner of one of the quilts to dab at her eyes and blinked rapidly to fan the ones that threatened. Her smile was watery and apologetic, and she did not quite meet Quill’s eyes when she looked up at him.
“That has never happened to me before,” she said. “Is that what is meant by hysterics?”
“The very definition, I believe.”
She sniffed, nodded thoughtfully. “If it happens again, I want your promise that you will put me down. I do not want to end my days in an asylum.”
“I doubt either of those two endings will be necessary.”
“Your promise.”
“You have it.”
“Use your gun and don’t let me see it.”
“You have my promise to put you down. You don’t get to tell me how to do it.” Before she could argue, Quill lifted the covers and rolled out of bed.
“Where are you going? You’re not leaving, are you? If you go, I want it recorded wherever you are keeping score on these things, that I did not ask you to leave.”
Quill looked sideways at her as he bent to retrieve the coat he had dropped on the window seat. He tapped the side of his head with a forefinger. “Noting it right now.”
“You trust that? You should probably write it down.”
Ignoring her, he held up his coat, patted down the pockets, and retrieved his flask. “Hair of the dog,” he said, holding it out as he approached the bed. He uncapped it and handed it to her. When she took it from him, he crawled back in. “Go on. Drink up.”
She took a good swallow and handed the flask back. “At least you didn’t say it would calm my nerves.”
He raised the flask to his lips and drank deeply before he capped it again and set it beside the lamp.
“Why did you take a drink?”
“Well, if I have to have a reason, I figure it’ll calm my nerves.”
Calico’s soft groan did not require a pillow stopper. She flopped on her back and was still shaking her head when he finally made himself comfortable beside her. “Are you going to sleep here?”
“No, but I am going to wait until I know you’re sleeping.”
“I knew it. I bet you feel obliged. See? It has begun. You shouldn’t have followed me. And you definitely shouldn’t have brought a flask.”
“Is it the worst thing you can imagine that someone wants to look out for you?”
“No,” she said. “But then when I was twelve, I imagined a two-headed dragon that breathed blue and green sulfur fire, had a scorpion tail full of poison, and was herding me toward the edge of a canyon.”
Quill could picture it. “That sounds bad. Something at dinner not set right with you? Was it chicken?”
She shook her head. “Peyote.”
Now it was Quill who groaned softly. “I don’t want to know.” He heard her quiet laugh and then just quiet. He slipped an arm under her, drew her close, and she fit herself against him as if she had been doing it for years.
Lying down the way they were, Quill discovered she was tuckable after all.
* * *
Calico awoke as soon as the maid opened the door. She sat straight up. The room swam briefly, but she recognized it as more a consequence of bolting upright than of drink. Quill was gone. She had known that immediately upon waking. What she did not know was if he had taken all the evidence of his recent occupancy with him. Her eyes darted to the window seat, the foot of her bed, the floor, and finally the chair. Everything was gone, even the sheet. She found it after exploring under the covers. He had not precisely made the bed around her, but he certainly had made the attempt.
And all the while, she had slept like the dead.
“Just the fire, please, Molly,” she told the maid. “Am I the last to be awake this morning?”
“No, Miss Nash,” said Molly. She rolled the wood she carried in her plump arms onto the marble apron and set new kindling to bring the fire up. “Mr. Stonechurch is up, of course, and Mr. McKenna, but the ladies are still in their rooms. Miss Ann is reading, and Mrs. Stonechurch is not feeling well, so I believe she will not be down for breakfast.”
“What is Mrs. Stonechurch’s complaint?”
“Dyspepsia, she calls it. She’s delicate that way.”
Calico could not tell if Molly thought Beatrice was delicate because of her word choice, using “dyspepsia” when she might have said “upset stomach,” or if she meant Beatrice herself was delicate. Calico decided it did not matter. They were both true. “What is she taking for it?” she asked.
“Mrs. Friend is brewing one of Mrs. Stonechurch’s special teas right now. It will be something with ginger and peppermint. It always is for stomach ailments. She gives it to Mr. Stonechurch when he is having a time of it. Now when her husband was bedfast, she gave him meadowsweet with a dash of cayenne. Poured it down him by the gallon for the terrible ache in his joints after that awful accident.” Molly sighed so heavily that ashes scattered in the grate. “That was a time, I can tell you. A terrible time.”
Molly stood, brushed her hands on her apron, and then turned to Calico. “Will there be anything else? I could run water for your bath. It’s a pleasure to say that. Run water. I have to pump and haul it by the bucket at home. This house is a miracle of mechanics. Did you know there’s talk of using the boiler to hea
t every room? I don’t know how it would work, but it’d be just fine with me if I don’t have to lay fires every morning.”
“But would you still have a job?”
Molly’s eyes matched the saucer roundness of her face. “Oh. Now there’s something to keep me up all night, same as Mrs. Stonechurch.” She pressed her hands against her belly and frowned. “Do you know, I think I’m feeling a touch dyspeptic?”
Calico swiveled to the edge of the bed. “Perhaps some of the tea will help.” As casually as she could, she asked, “Did I hear you correctly? Mrs. Stonechurch was up all night?”
Molly nodded. She picked up Calico’s robe and brought it to her. “That’s what she told me. I imagine she slept for a time and doesn’t remember, but she said she tried reading, writing letters, even paced a bit, and nothing helped settle her stomach.”
“I wonder why she didn’t make a cup of tea?”
“I asked her the very same thing. I think she was a little embarrassed to tell me, but she did, and I said I understood, because I do.”
“And?” asked Calico.
“And it’s the noises, you see. You must have heard them. Pipes bang. Floorboards creak often enough that you can imagine someone’s stepping on them. When it’s very cold, the wood makes a sound like a gunshot. It’s windy on this knoll. Even in summer, you can hear whispering in the pines, and it slips right in under the windows so as you’d swear there’s a presence at your bedside.” She shrugged. “Leastways, that’s what Mrs. Stonechurch says. Arriving in the wee hours as I do, I’ve heard it, too. And the voices, same as she did, but early on I came to realize that Mr. Stonechurch talks to himself when he’s working, and what with him rising before sunup, it was him I was hearing.”
“Mrs. Stonechurch must know that as well.”
“She does. That’s why I think she felt a little foolish telling me. I tried to put her at ease. I told her I wouldn’t have gone to the kitchen either.”
“That was good of you.”
Molly nodded slowly, thoughtful. “Maybe you’ll remember that if she forgets. I’m saying that just in case Mr. Stonechurch figures out how to put heat in the rooms and there’s no longer a job for me. I might need a recommendation.”