by Liz Tyner
‘Could have been…but—’ He squinted. ‘Did you notice that I never proposed to an unmarried woman except for one time?’
‘Truly?’
He shrugged, arms still crossed. ‘What do you think? Do you really think I could propose to an unmarried woman I didn’t wish to become married to?’ He uncrossed his arms and leaned forward.
She blinked at him.
‘Tell me. Do you?’
She almost closed the book, but then stopped. ‘Perhaps you proposed before and the woman said no. Mrs Lake, for instance.’
His mouth opened, even though he couldn’t keep it from tipping up at the sides. ‘Are you suggesting a woman might say no to me? To a proposal?’ He shook his head and his legs splayed under the table. He leaned back in his chair. ‘Well, I never thought of that.’
‘I assume that would be something the woman might think of, though.’
‘No.’ He shrugged. ‘Except Mrs Lake. When she told me about the duke in her sights, I figured a proposal would fall flat with her.’ He shrugged it away. ‘I didn’t realise how fortunate I was. Best thing…well, second-best thing that ever happened to me.’ He looked at her. ‘The best thing was the beating. It led me to you.’
Her cheeks reddened.
‘Yes,’ he said under his breath. ‘I might not have stopped long enough to really look at you if I had not been forced to be still.’
She began reading again and after a few sentences she looked up. ‘I cannot say that you only planned to ask simple-minded women to wed you. That would put me in a bad light.’
‘I would never ask a simple-minded woman to wed.’ He flicked his next words away with a toss of his head. ‘Unless she was already married.’
‘One person in the marriage should have some thoughts, I suppose.’ She started reading again.
‘Pardon?’
She paused. ‘Don’t you agree?’
‘How could I not?’
She closed the book. ‘You’re smarter than you let on.’
‘I would hope so.’
She slid the book across the table to him. ‘Read to me.’
He took the book in his hands. The words were jumbled but he’d learned to switch them around well enough and make the funny f’s an s. He read aloud and with precision until he finished the page, then he slid the book to her across the table.
‘You said you can hardly read.’
‘I can hardly stand to read.’
She looked at him. And he studied her and, in that moment, he saw something in her face he’d never seen before. Her lips tightened, then relaxed, in tandem with her eyes. ‘I’m not very smart.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I know.’
‘How many women in this village can read?’
Her lids dropped. ‘All of them who wish to.’
‘How?’
‘How else can you write letters for your family if you cannot read? A wife needs to be able to read if her husband cannot. So we started a lending line. With your father’s newspapers. And then books.’
‘A lending line?’
‘The newspaper is given to Mrs Renfro and then she knows it is to go to Mrs Berryfield who knows who it is to go to next. It travels around the village and everyone who wants to be in the lending line can be. Your father passes the books along to the lending line sometimes and they get back to him and he passes another along. Sometimes someone else will inherit a book or buy one.’
‘And they travel right along the line?’
‘After Sunday Services we met and made a provision that a newspaper can only be kept seven days and a book for two months. At first we wrote dates on the newspapers, but now we don’t, but they move along the line fast, except with Mrs Greaves. She has to be reminded with every book, but that is just the way she is.’
‘Who teaches them to read?’
‘Their mothers teach the little girls and boys now. I help when the mother is busy and we take turns with the chores.’ She bent her head forward. ‘It takes hardly any time at all to teach a child to read. And it was going so quickly with the girls that the boys wanted to learn too. Your father bought Maria Edgeworth’s The Parent’s Assistant.’
‘Who started it?’
‘My mother.’ She glanced at him. ‘If you’re trying to tell me I am smart because I can read, then you are not convincing me at all. My mother started the lending line and taught most of the women to read.’
‘Was your mother smart?’
‘Very. She could make medicines.’
‘Can you not do the same?’
She pointed to a shelf. ‘Because she wrote them all down for me. She wrote everything down. She said memories fade faster than ink.
‘So do you keep records as well?’
‘Memories fade faster than ink.’
‘So you have your mother’s knowledge?’
‘Learned. From her.’
‘Doesn’t matter how you get knowledge. Only that you keep it.’
‘I have little knowledge.’
‘Doesn’t mean you can’t learn a lot more.’
‘I will never live long enough to learn all the things that I would need to know to live in London.’
Someone knocked at the door.
She jumped to answer it, but he put a hand on her arm and stood. ‘It’s the carriage. I was hoping you might go with me to my father’s house.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
Rebecca walked into the earl’s sitting room, her arm tucked around Foxworthy’s. Her fingers tightened on his sleeve.
His father’s eyes wavered when he greeted them, but he looked at her with all the warmth her own father had.
She responded from habit. But the walls around her seemed higher and the sconces brighter.
‘Father.’ Foxworthy put his hand over hers. ‘I’d like to show Rebecca the family portraits.’
‘Haven’t you seen them before?’ The earl straightened his waistcoat. ‘I definitely remember showing them to your father once.’
‘Yes. Right before Christmas one year. I remember your housekeeper taking me about the rooms while we put greens out that the ladies had gathered.’
‘Well.’ Fox moved as he spoke, smiling at his father and whisking her along. ‘Now they are family for Rebecca and I hope to test her afterwards to see if she can remember the names.’
‘I added new nameplates.’ The earl’s grumbled words were directed at Foxworthy. ‘After you couldn’t remember any of them but your grandfather.’
They moved into a room she recognised, mostly for its armour standing in the corner. ‘The helmet has returned.’
His eyes followed her. ‘Yes. I borrowed it once to prove a point.’
‘What was the point?’
He shrugged. ‘That I could.’
‘That’s no reason.’
‘It seemed one at the time. But it got annoying bumping against my horse’s rump all the way to London. And I couldn’t just toss it in a hedgerow, that would have been malicious. And I did like it and wanted to keep it in the family.’
They stopped in front of the first portrait. He stared at the man as if he needed to remember every detail from the pointed shoes to the plume in the vase behind him. ‘Father sent a note with a servant demanding I hand it over immediately. I told the servant I absolutely did not have it.’
‘You did.’ She didn’t release his arm. It gave her strength.
‘I suppose the man could see it on the sofa. But I doubt he wished to go through me to get it as I told him I would put his head beside it.’
‘The poor servant. Having to return to your father without accomplishing his errand.’
‘I gave him a silver candlestick to take back, but I dare say he didn’t tell my father what I said to do with it.’
‘You should be ashamed.’
‘I’m not. Not at all. That was who I was. Who a part of me still is and will always be. I can’t take jests nearly as well as I can deal them out. But it jus
t spurs me to improve with dealing them out.’
They walked along the path of portraits. She stopped in front of a picture of a woman in a golden dress. ‘It’s hard to believe she would have five sons survive and each of her daughters die.’
‘Really?’ he asked.
‘Do you wish to tell me about any of your ancestors?’
‘I do believe you know more of them than I do.’ His eyes wandered along the portraits. ‘I don’t remember any stories of any of them.’ He tilted his head to one, then stopped beside it. ‘My grandfather, of course, because I remember him quite well. But none before him. I never liked this hallway. Never.’ He ran a finger over the nameplate at the bottom of his grandfather’s portrait.
‘Why not?’
‘When I was young, the eyes all seemed angry at me. They stared down, fierce. Hateful. Then Grandfather died and I hated to be reminded he wasn’t here when I stood next to his portrait. I just didn’t want to see the likeness when I couldn’t hear his laughter. He laughed more than anyone I’ve ever seen.’
He turned her to face him. He took her chin in his hands. ‘I didn’t have any more wish to look at the portraits today than I did as a youth. I just wanted you to think of them as family.’ His lips covered hers, bursting strength and weakness into her at the same time. The strength to stand alone and the weakness not to wish to.
He pulled back. ‘And the tour continues.’
Moving towards a dark door panelled with narrow overlays, he opened it and indicated for her to precede him.
By the scent of leather and shaving soap, she could tell it was his room. She walked to the desk and opened the small box. Playing cards. ‘No sitting room?’ she asked.
‘Just a dressing chamber. I tend not to sit long.’
She saw the windows. ‘You chose it for the light?’
‘The road. I can see the road leaving the estate.’
She met his eyes. ‘I’m surprised your father ever let you visit.’
‘I was sometimes as well.’ He pointed to the bedside table.
The silver candlestick stood alone. ‘This was here the next time I visited. I’d sent the helmet back to the servant, asking him to please replace it quietly. And saying if Father didn’t know how it returned, I would reward him well. I rewarded him well.’
‘Do you feel uncomfortable with routine? With things going along quite the same time after time. I feel a peace in sitting alone at night stitching, or reading or snapping peas.’
‘I never think about how I feel except if I am not enjoying the day. Then I move somewhere else.’ His eyes lightened. ‘I think I would rather gnaw my fingers than sit quietly.’
‘I think you do.’ She touched his hand. His fingernails had a raggedness that didn’t match the rest of him.
He glanced at the nails. ‘Yes. My valet cannot truly complain of it, but he suggests over and over that he cannot fathom how the nails can break so.’
‘And how is it to be with me?’ she asked.
‘The muscles in my legs want to move and I tap my feet. I stretch my arms. Then I look at you, my body stills and I know I am in the right place.’
‘Not the right place for you.’
‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘There is something I have to tell you and I hope you understand.’ He put his hand on her shoulder. ‘I won’t let you out of my sight for my waking hours until you have returned to the woman I married. I’ve taken some of you away and I must see it return.’
‘I don’t think you have the constancy for it.’
‘I have the constancy to be very annoying. Perhaps that will spur you forward to get me to leave your sight. Or perhaps you will find that I can bring laughter to your lips.’ He scooped her up and deposited her on the bed with care. He put a knee on the bed and fell forward, his arms keeping him upright enough not to touch her. ‘You do remember that I do not like boredom.’ He leaned forward, swung his head from side to side so that his hair tickled the bridge of her nose. ‘I don’t like boredom and I have no intention of indulging in it because we can find so many other ways to spend our hours.’ He stilled, let his lids drop, looked her in the eye and repeated. ‘Hours.’
He made good on his promise, hugging, kissing and cuddling her for an hour, then he sat behind her to reach the buttons on the back of her dress. He unfastened them, moving aside the chemise as he worked and adding a kiss to the skin.
The strings of the corset weren’t tight and he pulled the ties from their knots while he rested his face at her neck, reaching his hands around to remove the dress and encircle her waist, pulling her close.
Once he’d realised how slight she was, he noticed it with every brush over her and felt a pang inside. But each bit of pain soothed away with the touch of his lips against her skin. He wanted her to know how treasured her body was and he took his time, savouring every inch of it. Lingering longer when he could give her more pleasure and hoping the touches he gave her healed, in some way, the feeling that she didn’t look the perfection he’d seen when he watched her bustle around the stove.
He touched her, bringing her to pleasure and holding himself back, hoping to let her know that, sometimes, she was the only one who had to feel good and the only one that mattered.
*
He pulled her fist near to drop a kiss on it as she lay beside him on the bed. ‘I think I am beginning to see this house better now,’ he said. ‘Thick walls. Cosy bedrooms. I could learn to like it.’ He tucked her into the crook of his arm and stared at the ceiling. ‘And a magnificent view above to look at. Well crafted.’
All his life he had been able to walk the exact path he chose. If his father irritated him, he went to his mother’s and she had him on such a high-reaching, wide-based pedestal he could never tumble from it. If she should irritate him, he moved to the Albany or visited his cousins. Only recently had their households grown to include wives.
Before marriage, when he showed up on their doorstep, his cousins had hardly given him more notice than a pair of boots in the corner or they spent time regaling each other with stories and insults. He liked tossing the insults.
He’d even liked opening the newspaper to see if his name would be in it. He didn’t know why he liked that so much, but he did. The pompous criticisms ground his teeth, but somehow, they were erased with the next mention. He might remember the slashing words for ever, but blended with the good it let him know he breathed and lived in other people’s eyes. The words gave him strength, notice and increased the swagger other people saw when they looked at him.
‘What would you have me do for your happiness?’ He meant the question. Even though he held her in his arms, he knew she held him just as firmly, yet in a different way.
‘I’m happy.’
He saw her sinking into the horizon like the evening sun. His world fading into the darkness—not sputtering away, just dropping completely from view. Nothingness. Diminishing.
He pulled her tight for a second. The bones of her. Even her hair seemed different. Tired.
He opened his mouth, a lie on his lips to tell her how much he would enjoy staying at his father’s, then paused. ‘I am staying with you. You will think we are truly one.’
Lightly, he pulled her nearer his heart. He could not leave. Even if she promised to eat, he could not leave and not know for certain how she fared. He might die alongside her, but he could not live away from her.
She shuddered.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
‘I just thought about—The first time you propose to one of the villagers, I will show you what we do to male calves who need to be gentled.’
‘You have to do that before maturity is reached.’
‘I’ve got time then.’ An impish grin looked up at him.
*
She’d dozed, but woke when someone knocked at the door. His arms tightened, his skin pressed against hers.
‘Your meal,’ a servant called out.
‘Leave it at the door,’ Fox answered.
He donned a dressing gown and retrieved a tray. He put the silver in the centre of the table and pulled back a lid. The scent of roasted beef hit her and caused a shudder in her stomach. ‘I’m not hungry.’
He looked at her and picked up the tray.
‘I am.’ He balanced the tray with one hand while he returned to bed and propped against the headboard, the tray on his lap.
‘You cannot eat in bed. It is not done.’ She pulled the covers to her chest as she sat.
‘Neither is riding a horse backwards. Or so I’ve heard. And I don’t recommend it. But eating in bed…’ he paused ‘…no one ever has to know about that.’
‘The marzipan looks good.’ He pulled out a piece of white confection and offered it to her.
She took it and nibbled a tiny bite, forcing the sweetness not to overwhelm her. ‘The Berryfield children would so love this. I should save it for them.’ She put it back on the platter.
‘It was gifted from my father to us. I wouldn’t want to deceive him if he asks us how we enjoyed it.’
He took the small piece from her and popped it into his mouth. ‘Very tasty.
‘Beef,’ he said. ‘Boiled potatoes. Bread. The cheese. The marzipan. A section of cake. Biscuits. Does any of it look good to you?’
‘It’s all very good, I’m sure.’
‘But does any of it look good to you?’
‘No.’
‘What looks the least unappetising?’
‘The potatoes.’
‘Then have some with me. And I really do like the marzipan so I might eat Tommy Berryfield’s.’ He pulled up a piece and held it to her. When she shook her head, he put it in his mouth. Then he reached for a fork. He stuck it into a potato and held it her way.
She waved his wrist away. ‘You will not be feeding me.’
‘Rebecca. Your father needs you healthy. Did you see how frail he looks?’
She took the fork from his hand and sat up. ‘I feel so… I didn’t think I would mind leaving him alone. After all, he has the village to look after him and your father as well. But you’re right. He’s wasted away since I’ve gone. If it weren’t for everyone else feeding him, I doubt he would eat at all.’ She took in a breath. ‘He says he cooks a little, but I believe it is very little.’