Sweet and Twenty

by Joan Smith

  He was there when Mr. Hudson returned, on the very day promised, and that little quirk Martha could not quite like dropped away from him like magic. It was not only Lillian’s heart that leapt when he walked into the room, for Martha had also been on tenterhooks wondering if he would come.

  Almost before anyone had asked him about the trip and how Tony was liking being an M.P., Sara gave him her news. “We are getting married too, me and William, Mr. Hudson. He asked me right after you left.”

  “Congratulations! I’m very happy to hear it. It doesn’t come as a complete surprise to me,” Hudson said, then added, “Did you say you are getting married too? Is someone else getting married?”

  There was an awkward pause. Both Martha and Lillian feared—were virtually certain in fact—that she referred to her cousin and Cecilford’s heir, with never an offer from him! Sara blinked her big blue eyes. “Aren’t you— that is—” She stopped dead for a time. “William and I are to be married before Christmas. I’m getting six new gowns from Aunt Martha,” she finally got out, and the bad moment was over.

  Martha promptly chided her for being a peagoose, and her mama said boldly that indeed she was not. She had got quite short with Martha now that she had Sara’s groom to defend her.

  Still there lingered an uneasiness, a feeling that Hudson was there to claim a bride, and that Sara might any moment break out with more embarrassing statements. All the ladies except Lillian kept looking at Hudson expectantly, as though waiting for him to go down on bended knee and say his piece, or at least pull a diamond out of his pocket. Lillian felt all the lively discomfort of being unasked, made tolerable only by the sure feeling that she would be asked as soon as that private spot could be reached.

  But how could it be done? It was nearly five o’clock when Hudson arrived, an inconvenient hour. He could not ask her out for a drive, for besides the time there was a howling wind blowing and considerable rain falling. To arise and suddenly ask to see her alone seemed a gauche thing, so the group chatted on, while Melanie began to get fidgety and wonder if she should invite Mr. Hudson to stay to dinner. Odd Martha had not attended to it. She rather disliked to usurp her place.

  Martha’s mind was tending in a different direction from dinner. Hudson was not to be allowed to get away again without coming up to scratch, and she felt that all that was lacking was the opportunity.

  “Well, Lillian,” she said, taking the bit in her teeth, “why don’t you and Mr. Hudson go out for a little drive? You have time before dinner. I hope you will stay to dinner, Mr. Hudson?”

  “It’s five to five!” Lady Monteith proclaimed in dismay. Did this mean dinner would be put off? She was starved.

  “It’s pouring rain!” Sara put in in her usual helpful fashion.

  “Mr. Hudson has just got here from driving all day,” Mr. Alistair contributed.

  “Nonsense, it’s just a shower,” Martha said. “Lillian doesn’t mind a little rain. It’s a fine day.”

  This had a Fellows-ish sound to it, and the frustrated lovers exchanged a secret smile. Sara caught them out in it and clapped her hands in glee. “I see what it is!” she fairly shouted. “Yes, indeed—Lillian loves the rain and wet!”

  Before she could say more, Hudson cut in. “Let’s go, shall we, Miss Watters?”

  “What about dinner?” Melanie demanded petulantly.

  Martha still had enough authority to silence her with a glance. Lillian went for her pelisse, Hudson to order his carriage, and Martha ran for an umbrella, for going out in the rain was really a thing she disliked very much, for herself or her nieces.

  Once they were safely out of the house, Hudson said, “Now where do we go? It seems there is no such a thing as a private place for us in the whole town.”

  “The grave’s a fine and private place,” Lillian suggested, laughing in relief at getting away.

  “But none, I think, do there embrace,” he added. “That wouldn’t do for us, my coy mistress. You see what evil design I have in mind. We’ll have to make do with the carriage. Or would you prefer to walk, as you like the rain so much?”

  With the wind lashing at her coat and the rain streaking her face, she took this for a joke, and they entered the carriage.

  “What a hard girl you are to see alone for a minute,” he said, and even as he spoke their privacy was invaded. A dark form huddled into a coat was coming up the drive, his head bent into the wind. “That’s Armstrong, isn’t it?” Hudson asked.

  It was indeed Armstrong, wending his way home from the newspaper office and seeking shelter from the storm till the rain should let up.

  “You’ll catch your death of cold, Mr. Armstrong,” Lillian said. “Mr. Hudson, could we not bring him home?”

  Hudson frowned at her heavily, but Isaac answered for him. “No, it is too far out of your way. I only meant to stop for shelter till 5:30, when Mr. Hicks will be going my way; he always takes me up. I meant to be back at the roadside in time to meet him.”

  “Do you mean to say you walk to work in the village?” Hudson asked.

  “The horse is needed on the farm,” Isaac explained, looking guilty about the whole thing.

  “Fellows has his stable full of nags. Take one; he won’t be here to need them.”

  “I couldn’t take his horse without asking him.”

  “He asked me to tell you that he wouldn’t want his secretary going about on foot,” Hudson lied. This was the way Fellows would be talked into agreeing with it. It would detract from his own consequence to have a secretary too poor to ride.

  Isaac had got into the carriage, and it was decided he would be driven to the village to meet Mr. Hicks there. Never one to waste a minute, Hudson used the time to give him all the instructions Fellows had failed to give him regarding his duties, urging him to be in touch with Allingham if any crisis arose and not to go to Basingstoke.

  “I’m very glad you told me, sir, for to tell the truth, Mr. Fellows didn’t make my duties very clear.”

  “He was pretty busy,” Hudson said dryly. Before long Armstrong was being let off at the stable-yard to join Mr. Hicks. Hudson turned to Lillian with an intent light in his eyes, and about his lips a quiet smile of anticipation about to be fulfilled.

  “Now, Miss Watters, did you miss me at all?”

  “Yes, it seemed very quiet with you and Mr. Fellows gone and the elections all over.”

  “How much did you miss me?” he asked, ignoring everything but her affirmative.

  “Quite a lot,” she answered.

  “Oh you wretched, rock-hearted woman! Is that all? I have missed you forty-eight hours a day. More—two hundred and forty. Every hour seemed like ten away from you. I have been gone three weeks.” His arms went out in an instinctive gesture to seize her, but a curious pair of eyes peering in at the window reminded him that this was no very private place, and he laughed forlornly. He moved from his side of the carriage to join her, taking both her hands in a firm grip. “It seems hard to me that after waiting a month and three weeks I still have to go on waiting.”

  “You are exaggerating greatly, Mr. Hudson.”

  “You may, and I hope will, stop calling me Mr. Hudson as though we were mere acquaintances. My name is Matthew, and I am averse to neither Matt nor even some more intimate term of endearment, as there is just a touch of the foot-scraper in that particular nickname that rather irks me. And I am not exaggerating in the least, but understating the case.”

  “You didn’t care for me when first you came here, so don’t let on you did. You sat with Sara all the first evening, and many subsequent evenings as well.”

  “For a half-hour the first evening I thought her prettier, till she began regaling me with tales of Peter Pepper and his pampered pups, or some such thing. As soon as she said you had such books too, all about laughing ladies, I knew I must get on terms with you. There could not be two such charming fools as Sara in one place, and I suspected at once you were a hussy, to be teasing the poor ninny so.”

&
nbsp; “You have a shocking memory! It was not pampered pups but pink-plumed parakeets. And I have such a book too! All about the campaign, about the Whig whip who whisks into . . .” She stopped, having run out of words.

  “Pucker your gorgeous lips once more and you’ll get yourself kissed, my girl,” he warned.

  “It was not nice of you to tease me and pretend you thought me prettier after taking her to dinner at our harvest ball.”

  “To stop her trailing after Alistair. How many explanations must I make about that night? Well, she has a lovely facade, like a big full moon shining in a spring sky, promising romance but not delivering. To me, in any case. I find her cold, and you know my penchant for sunshine. Unlike yourself, who dote on wind and rain!” he added with a satirical glint in his eye.

  “I do like rain,” she responded.

  “Good—we’ll pray for a nice wet day in two weeks' time and get buckled, shall we?”

  She listened starry-eyed, too happy to speak, and he went on. “You’ve seen me at my very worst, Lil, conniving and scheming, and all the rest of it. That is only a small part of my life and will be no part of yours if you truly dislike it.”

  “I don’t think I’d see much of my husband in that case,” she ventured.

  “Only ten or twelve hours a day.”

  “After you’ve got at that with your crooked arithmetic, it would be one hour a day.”

  He smiled and glanced briefly out the carriage window, where Mr. Saunders was strolling by, peering into the carriage with the avid curiosity of the townsman who considers his neighbors’ doings very much his own affair.

  “I have wanted to kiss you for ages,” he said, “and nearly did, too, more than once. First when you accused me of dangling after Miss Ratchett at your aunt’s tea party, and the night of the ball when you accused me—so unjustly!—of importing the dashers. The day of the election in the village you were within an ace of being thoroughly kissed in front of the whole of Crockett. Strange, it is usually your worst behavior that puts these ideas into my head.”

  “I have long suspected you to harbor an admiration for misconduct of any kind.”

  “We don’t need the Honorable Member to remind us that birds of a feather flock together, do we? We don’t need anyone but each other,” he declared, and without further words he pulled her into his arms, to kiss her soundly before ever they were out of the town and to go on kissing her for half a mile down the road, while the storm howled outside, unheard by the acknowledged lover of tempests. He stopped for only a short interval to remove her bonnet and kiss her ears; then he looked up to wave at Mr. Bilkes as he passed them on his mount.

  “I’ve just laid waste your reputation,” he said, and seized her again to resume his evil activities, as she did not seem as disturbed by them as she ought to be. “What fools we are!” Lillian said suddenly. He looked a question at her. “We don’t have to go on living here, and in any case I hope I have made plain I mean to do the right thing by you.”

  “I’m not talking about that. I have just thought what we should have done about Fellows’s letters to Lady Marie. We should have spoken to Basingstoke. I bet you he had answers from her we could have used. If she wrote to Fellows, she surely must have written to him. And as he still cared for her, he would have kept her letters too. You could have had your flash culls steal them. Matt, I’m ashamed of you! How came you not to think of such a thing?”

  “Matt isn’t really my favorite name.”

  “What has that got to do with anything?”

  “You should ask me what I would like you to call me.”

  “But this other thing just popped into my head.”

  “Let it pop out again, wretch!” he commanded. “And never mind reading me any more lectures about my behavior, when you are a step ahead of me at every turn. Basingstoke didn’t keep her letters. It occurred to me also, but too late.”

  “And another thing—the one you really ought to have run in this election is Mr. Ratchett.”

  “I know. I have regretted it since the moment I met him, but it was too late then too.”

  “He is a little bored, I think, since retiring, and besides having such a lot of money to throw around, he has his daughter.”

  “At least I didn’t mention her!”

  “She would like nothing better than to be a hostess, though she is excessively vulgar and would require a good deal of polishing-up.”

  “If she succeeds in nabbing Fellows, you can take her in hand.”

  “I will, to prevent you from doing it. Matthew, I was just thinking ... at the next general election, do you think you could go to Yorkshire?”

  “I don’t have to ask why, do I?”

  “I bet you could get our Whig candidate in. And really, you know, it is dreadful the way the textile workers are treated. The Tory candidate sent out scurrilous literature pretending his opponent was an atheist, and I think if you had been there to beat him up ...”

  “He should have been threatened with a libel suit.”

  “Well, you see, that was never mentioned at all! If you had been there ...”

  “Shut up, Lil,” he said firmly. “I am glad you mean to help me, but I like to run my own show. There will be only one pair of trousers worn in our house.”

  “You will look very strange in skirts, Matt,” she told him without a second’s hesitation.

  “Lil!” he said dangerously, but his laughing black eyes told her she need not fear his menacing tone.

  “Don’t think I am fooled into thinking you would disapprove of my wearing trousers. You have been offering me a pair since we first met practically.”

  “Oh no—if you are to be my accomplice in felony you must keep up an appearance of respectability. You mentioned it yourself—I thought it particularly astute of you. You stick to your petticoats and I’ll continue to douse my hair with whitewash. I expect it is coming out with all this rain.”

  “Matthew!” She stared at his hair in fascination, and to be sure, the wings were less gray than formerly. “Oh, you sneak!” she gasped, then burst into a fit of giggles.

  “You didn’t tumble to it? I thought I saw you looking at my hair rather closely, but perhaps you were just admiring it?”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised at anything you do, but I must confess this takes the cake. You letting on to be an old man!”

  “The pretense is over. I am but a young man, and an impatient young man at that. Come here and kiss me, you hussy. That’s an order.”

  They were so close a piece of thin paper couldn’t have been wedged between them, so she had only to comply with the latter of his demands, and even that token of obedience was not necessary as the impatient young man resumed kissing her instead.

  Copyright © 1979 by Joan Smith

  Originally published by Fawcett Crest (ISBN 0449238180)

  Electronically published in 2014 by Belgrave House/Regency Reads

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part, by printing, faxing, E-mail, copying electronically or by any other means without permission of the publisher. For more

  information, contact Belgrave House, 190 Belgrave Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117-4228

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  This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.