by Liz Tyner
That was such a good thing about the village. They bickered with each other, but they banded together to help each other, too. When her mother had died, not a day went by without someone stopping by in the evening hours.
She paused. ‘I just realised. The lending line.’
His brows rose.
‘The lending line. After Mother died, someone always happened by in the late hours of the evening, but never two families on the same day. They would arrive with a question for Father, which wasn’t at all unusual but…’ She tapped her chin. ‘They may have visited in the same order of the lending line. I’m not sure, but now that I think, it did seem odd that no two families ever arrived at the house on the same evening. Sometimes it would be a child, or the women bringing flowers or the men with a question. But…’
‘You think they set up the same order for visiting you?’
She laughed. ‘I am pretty certain that they did. Which is fairly astounding in this place because no one can keep a secret. No one told me. Not even the children.’
‘They all shared in it—except you and your father.’
‘Yes. Their ways may be troubling sometimes but they have golden hearts.’
‘I see why you fit in so well here.’ He pointed to the food.
She shook her head and put down the fork. ‘You are not saying that to be pleasant.’
‘That was not a lie.’ He ran a finger over her hand and then reached for a biscuit, broke it in half and took one half and held the other to her lips.
She took a bite. ‘I know what you’re doing.’
‘So do I.’ He took a bit of the cheese, held it to her. She took a nibble from the edge, chewed and swallowed. Then he ate the last of the cheese he held and reached for the fork, spearing a potato.
She raised her hand, blocking the food.
He looked at her. ‘Your father needs you. I did not realise how much until I saw him this time.’
‘Will you say anything to get me to eat?’
He put his weight on an elbow, moved the utensil from between them and leaned into the air around her. ‘It’s my good work for today.’ He brushed a kiss across her lips, then rested against the headboard. ‘You cannot fault someone for doing a good work.’ His eyes flicked from her to the food. ‘Please. Try.’
When she finished, he put the tray to the side, took her hand and sat, his back against the wall, and pulled her into his arms, cradling her.
He brushed back the tendrils of hair that wisped at her face.
‘You mustn’t keep doing this. I will think you care for me.’
‘Well. I do care for you.’
‘Enough?’
‘Of course.’
She sighed. ‘More than the others?’
‘Certainly. More than the others, the sun, the moon and the stars combined.’
‘Pretty words.’ She burrowed against him. ‘For how long?’
‘Until my eyes can no longer see the world around me, my heart no longer beats and my dust has been scattered in the wind. And if there is a bit of that dust that is floating in the air, and can think anything at all, then its first thought will be of you.’
She hugged him tight. ‘I wish I could believe you.’
‘You don’t have to believe me. You just have to believe in yourself.’
‘You’ve said so many words to so many others before. I’m not happy in the world you like. And you aren’t happy in this world.’
‘You can stay here.’
‘But can you?’
He pulled the covers tight around them. He’d visited his father, time and time again, and each time he’d returned to London he’d felt he was riding back into a living, breathing world after leaving a tomb.
But she had broken down those walls of the tomb and made it a place of life.
‘I don’t think I can ever be strong enough to live in London. The ladies seem so different than I am.’
He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter what the other ladies are like. And some of them may be more like you than you realise. Including my mother.’
‘We are not alike.’
‘My mother is quite the gentle lady. A woman who has little thought in her head except for that yowling pup whose sole purpose is to cover everything inside with shedding hair and everything outside with excrement.’
‘That’s not a good thing to say of your mother. She loves you.’
‘You asked for truth. And, yes, I know she loves me dearly. But she loves Piddles or Puddles, or whatever its name is, more than me.’
‘You can’t believe that.’
‘Well, let me tell you about my dear, delicate mother. Mixed in with the nonsense—and it is her true nonsense—is a woman who will not let anything discourage her from her own wishes. She bends not a whisker. She likes flounces and surrounds herself with them. Don’t try to take that from her or the dog, or you will have a fortress to crash against. Not to fight. But a wall of steel to face. Ask my father.’
‘I’m not like that.’
‘My father said you once tended a woman who died in your arms and you dressed her for burial. Would you care to tell me about that?’
She shook her head. ‘Her children should not have had to do so. It was their mother and no child should have to see a mother’s private sufferings.’
‘The husband told my father. He told him about the blood and the stench and the fact that you shrugged it away as nothing. He suggested someone else do it, but you refused. You said you could not bear for your mother to walk so far as it would hurt her. Every other option he offered, you batted away.’
‘Life is not all flowers. We must accept thorns, too.’
‘And what nightmares do you have?’
She pulled the covers closer and didn’t speak.
‘When my father told me of how you took the duties of the village on when you were still in hair ribbons and your mother could not walk, I listened. And when he told of your nightmares and how you hid them from your mother so she would not worry, I listened. At that age—’ she saw his teeth again, but the laughter was irony at himself ‘—I was learning to use a slingshot to hit my cousins with acorns. You were dreaming of the poultices you needed to put on a dying woman’s skin.’
‘I did what I had to do.’
‘No one could have forced me to do that. That is how my strength would have been used. To resist. And when I heard of your nightmares—if I had had a doubt of standing at your side and saying those vows, then I knew I was honoured to stand at your side. I am honoured to have a wife who will clean feeding parasites off a dying woman’s flesh and dream about it for years, and still walk about bouncing a basket on her arms and with a kind word on her lips.’
‘I know how fast life can go and how cruel it can be.’
‘And you do not turn your back on your belief in sunshine.’
‘Of course not.’
‘Show me your weakness then.’
She said nothing.
‘But I know what your true weakness is.’
He nodded when she met his eyes.
‘It is that you doubt your strength.’
He put his hands on her cheeks. ‘Rebecca, I will give my life for you. I will spend every day seeing that you have food in your mouth and that you are eating. I will walk along beside you and make certain that food does not get put in the chamberpot. Because the good that you can do in the world is so much better than what I can do. I will make the world a better place simply by being at your side. So you can do that one good work a day. That one little good work that you mentioned. Like giving a child a treat, or caring for a dying woman so others will be spared. So those older or younger than you would not have to.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
The next day, Rebecca awoke in her father’s home, in her old bed. Fox would be at her house soon, so she quickly dressed to begin breakfast. Fox had told her he thought he might try his hand at cooking porridge and preparing the bread and she wanted the meal fin
ished by the time he arrived.
She believed him completely when he’d said he planned to cook and she imagined flour becoming a fascinating dust in his hands.
*
By the time they’d eaten, her father had convinced Foxworthy to help with chopping some wood for one of the vicarage’s elderly widows. Fox and her father insisted she go along.
‘Why don’t we get the new vicar to help us?’ Foxworthy asked.
Her father snorted. ‘The man does not know which end of the axe to use.’
‘All the more reason he will need to help us.’
Fox stepped quickly, before an answer could be formed, and moved in the direction of his father’s house.
When they arrived, he insisted on having one of the stable hands prepare a donkey cart for them, gather all the axes around and then he went inside. Not long after, two sour-faced men followed him out. One the new vicar and one his father.
Her father’s shoulder’s tightened and he whispered to Rebecca, ‘He cannot do this. The earl cannot work with us. It’s unthinkable.’
Then two maids rushed out behind, carrying baskets.
‘Are we all to go?’ Rebecca asked.
Foxworthy nodded. ‘Yes. My father and the vicar think it a grand idea that we have a brisk walk and make a quick morning’s work of it.’
*
After they arrived at the trees to be cut, the men gathered around the first tree to be chopped, discussing how to make it fall in the correct direction.
‘Vicar,’ Fox said to her father, ‘why don’t you build a fire and sit with my father while we work? Some quite good brandy is in—’
‘Not the brandy from the—’ the earl gasped.
‘Yes, Father, I knew you were saving it for a special occasion and I thought an outing like this would be perfect.’
The earl frowned. ‘You are so much my father’s grandson.’
‘I believe I am.’ His lips turned up in a smile and he grasped the handle of the axe as if he’d been born with it in his hand. In moments he made quick work at the base of a tree.
‘You’ve done this before,’ Rebecca said to Foxworthy.
‘My cousins and I used to play that we worked in the field and the woods. And how could we let the field hands see our weaknesses? We had to prove we had their grit.’
*
When the vicar took his turn at loading the chopped wood and the earl and her father supervised, Fox asked Rebecca if she would like to walk back to the estate. She nodded.
‘I think I might enjoy this marriage,’ he said, holding her in the crook of his arm. ‘There are more pleasant ways to spend a night than drinking and moving from club to club and stitching my samplers.’
‘Have you ever sewn a single thread?’
‘Yes. And they were quite good stitches. I wish I had been there to see the results.’
‘What did you sew?’
‘My cousin Andrew had been rather pompous about how I was to be an earl and he was just plain Lord Andrew and we both put our pants on one leg at a time. He said it was only in disrobing that we differed. The barb was at me because I’d been too many sails to the wind the night before and I’d crashed into a chair when I took off my trousers. I’d woken the whole house and broken a chair leg.’
He slowed in his steps to let her keep up. ‘So after he and his valet left that day, I sewed the bottom of his trouser leg closed. And his valet’s as well because I heard the man chuckle when he was taking the broken chair leg to be mended.’ He stopped, twirling her hair. ‘I can imagine them hopping with the momentum of their foot hitting a stopping block.’
‘You should be ashamed.’
‘No. My stitches were well disguised.’
‘Not for that. For drinking yourself insensible.’
‘I have done that many times and I expect to do it a few more times before I hang up my needle.’
‘Fox.’ She did a quick press against his chest.
‘Very well. The needle is put away. But I can’t promise I won’t drink to excess from time to time.’
‘I want to try again,’ she said. ‘To live in London. And I’d like my father to live with us, if he wishes.’
‘I’ve already asked him if he would like to go with us if we return to London and he agreed.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ she said.
‘Not completely,’ Fox admitted. ‘He told my father of the request and now Father is assuming he will be able to live with us as well. He said the estate is getting too big for one person. I’m afraid Mother will start feeling left out and decide to join us. And bring the dog.’ He stopped. ‘I may not want to leave the village after all.’
‘Well, you can manage them. A man is supposed to be the head of the family.’
‘You think so?’
‘Well, yes.’ She spoke softly. ‘And you are. The bumble head.’ Her lids blinked, adding a quiet exclamation point to the words.
He leaned forward, eyes challenging. ‘Still the head of the family.’
‘Yes. But Mother said a woman is to be the backbone. To hold the head up because it would toddle to the ground on its own.’ She shrugged.
‘So I need you to keep me upright. But with you—’ In a quick lunge he turned, grabbing her by the waist and lifting her up above him. ‘With you, I am all I wish to be.’
Still in the air, and taking care not to press, she put her hands near his ears, holding his cheeks. She peered into his eyes and a bit beyond. ‘I think I see a few cobwebs, a touch of something that smells of a barnyard and a lost earwax remover.’
His hands remained locked on to her waist, and he pulled her against him, the warmth of her causing a heat that soothed and rushed his blood.
He looked at her eyes. ‘And I see tomes and tomes of rules and Thou Shalt Nots.’
‘I did not know you paid attention to such things.’
‘Have you ever thought about what my father-in-law says to me when you cannot hear us? The man who mixed the wedding vows.’ He held her closer. ‘He said the commandments had been printed with an error when they were transferred to written words.’
‘He’s never said such a thing to me.’
‘No. I’m sure he would find no need to speak such to his daughter. He said we mostly hear the latter version and not the earlier, correct version of the nine commandments. Thou shalt not commit adultery and thou shalt not kill were miswritten because they were originally one sentence. He claims the true version went, Thou shalt not commit adultery, and other than for a son-in-law who does that, thou shalt not kill.’
‘My father did not.’
‘He most certainly did. He said he’d not heard of it until his father-in-law informed him of it.’
Then his words slowed. ‘And he said something about a husband worshipping his wife’s body as much as his own. And that I could never do. Yours deserves so much, much more than that. A thousand times more.’ He finished the words with his lips less than a breath from hers.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Foxworthy and Rebecca had been in London a fortnight on the night of the Duke of Edgeworth’s soirée, and Rebecca had had a gown made in every colour of the rainbow.
Fox took her into the ballroom and let them meld into the wall, but they both knew everyone was curious about Fox’s bride.
When the music stopped, he took her hand and pulled her to the middle of the dance floor. She dug her heels in, but he kept her hand tight until she let out a breath and agreed with her eyes not to vanish.
He knelt on one knee, held her hands in his and looked up and into her eyes. ‘My Rebecca,’ he said.
For the first time, he understood the solemnity of a proposal. Of putting one’s heart at a woman’s feet.
‘You have asked how many women I have proposed to. Many married women. So many women I cannot remember. But I have finally found the married woman that I wish to spend the rest of my life with. The one married woman who holds my heart in her hand, and the one woman, shou
ld she tell me no, that I will spend my life longing for.’
He took her hand and placed it against his chest, holding it so that she could feel his heart beating. ‘My heart beats for you. I breathe for you. I love you. Rebecca, will you spend the rest of your days with me as your humble servant, put upon this earth to make you happy? Will you marry me?’
‘It is a little late for me to change my mind,’ she mumbled.
‘Just as it is too late for me to change my mind. It is made up for ever. I must be the person you want to see reflected in your eyes. I can’t go back to who I was. There is no future for me there. The only future I have is with you.’
‘Is this a pretty speech for the others?’
‘No. It is my heart speaking to you. And if you don’t love me, you can have the freedom of your wishes. I would step into the shadows and be only a memory for you if you wish, but you will never be in the shadows of my heart. You are the last woman I will propose to.’
Silence.
‘Rebecca…’ He studied her eyes.
She leaned forward and the silence of the room gave volume to her whisper. ‘I knew I would be the last when you asked me the first time.’ She smiled.
His eyes opened wider. He stood. ‘Well, then, I’ll take that as a yes.’ He spoke over his shoulder to the musicians. ‘Music, please.’
When the song concealed their words from others, she asked. ‘And would you marry me all over again?’ She looked into his eyes.
‘Is that a proposal?’ He raised a brow.
‘Oh, my. I do believe it is.’
‘That is my first. And I accept.’ He bowed to her and moved to shield her from the rest of the room.
‘Don’t be surprised if my proposal to you will make it to the newspapers,’ Fox looked to the side. ‘Agatha Crump is the biggest talker I know and she’s watching every move we make.’
‘Will you be disappointed if it doesn’t?’ she asked. ‘We may never be mentioned again now that we are on the same page…so to speak.’
‘Oh, I believe we will be,’ Foxworthy said. ‘I heard that the paper is considering an offer from someone who has no notion of how to run a newspaper and plans to cause all sorts of uproar. His man of affairs has been dangling a lot of coins in front of the publisher.’