by Sophia Nash
He felt her catch her breath, and looked down at her upturned face. He saw surprise, and trust, and a great longing in her expression. He leaned down and kissed her on her milkand-roses cheek then moved to trace her ear with his tongue. She again inhaled quickly, and he moved his attention to her mouth.
“You have the most enticing lips I have ever seen, Miss Kittridge,” he said , quietly. “As do you, Lord Huntington,” she said, looking at his mouth.
Her bold response augmented his desire, and he leaned in to taste her again, but not as tenderly as before. He kissed her long and deep while stroking her tightened nipples through the drab-colored wet gown.
A light moan escaped her. He looked at her half-shut, passion-filled eyes, and felt the greatest desire he had ever known to take her right there. He stiffened his arms and rested his forehead on her soaked hair, breathing deeply, trying to regain a measure of control. What on earth had he been thinking? This was not the way to keep his word to his father. This was the path toward broken promises. And his lack of control would hurt her, the one person he would not harm for the world. The mood was broken more thoroughly than a giggle in church.
“Miss Kittridge…I am sor—,” he began.
She interrupted. “No, oh, please no. Please don’t say you are sorry. I am not,” she said, looking to one side. “But I am aware we are breaking a goodly number of proprieties. I shall endeavor to avoid smiling at you in future—” she continued and dropped her voice to a whisper—”although I am sure your comments about my physiognomy are all made in kindhearted jest.”
“Miss Kittridge, this is a poor way of showing my gratitude toward you and your father’s care. I had not thought I was the sort of man to engage in such unbecoming behavior toward a young lady.”
“We have discussed this before. I am not a ‘young’ milkand-water miss, although I am well aware that I appear so. I have never been taken seriously by anyone except my family my entire life. You will kindly stop inferring that I am a young innocent, or, or—”
“Or what, Miss Kittridge?” he said, with a smile.
“Or I will be forced to demonstrate that I am not as you think.”
“Perhaps you are not young, I concede” he said, unable to resist moving a lock of tumbled, wet hair from her cheek. “But you are an innocent. Are you not?”
She refused to answer him, and turned away, walking past the stand of birch trees in front of the cottage.
“I take it that you would prefer we postpone our lessons until tomorrow,” he called out to her retreating form.
She did not even pause or turn around. She waved an acquiescent hand and continued walking.
Nicholas watched her stomp away, her delightful small, round posterior clearly visible through the wet muslin. She was correct, she was not a girl, but a mature woman at the peak of her prime, he thought, rubbing his chin. And she exhibited spunk when he was able to goad her out of her natural shyness.
Nicholas remounted his horse and eased the animal into a canter.
Charlotte paused at the top of the hill to watch his elegant form fly toward the abbey. She sighed.
“Charlotte! Wait a moment,” called a deep voice behind her.
She turned to find her brother, James, coming toward her. His clenched hands were pumping as he trudged up the wet hill behind her.
She shivered and felt like a cold, doused cat. She guessed by James’s angry expression that he had witnessed her encounter with Lord Huntington. At least he had not interrupted them—that would have been embarrassing in the extreme.
“Charlotte, what are you thinking to encourage Huntington in that fashion?” he asked. “Have you no shame? No notion of what is proper and decorous for a lady of your standing?”
“Oh, I have a very good notion what is right and proper for a woman of my standing, James. I am a lowly daughter of a physician, a nurse and the sister of a soon-to-be clergyman.”
“Charlotte,” he said, all anger leaving his face. “My dearest, you are the granddaughter of a marquis, do not underestimate your standing in the world.”
“So you think I am acting unladylike do you?”
“No. I think you are making a gross mistake. And I would hate to have to challenge our dear employer’s son to a duel because he was leading my sister to ruin.”
“Really, James, how ridiculous you are. Lord Huntington and I were flirting,” she said, then turned fully to face him. “Just as you have done on every occasion you have found yourself in the company of his sister.”
He had the grace to flush. “I have not been caught kissing Lady Rosamunde, however.”
“Ah, so you have kissed her then?”
He was silent.
She sighed and looked down at her drenched gown. “Ah, so then we are both going to wrack and ruin. Well, if it is any consolation, I suppose we will have each other’s shoulders to cry on when they leave us brokenhearted,” she offered. “Or I shall find myself nursing my brother or Lord Huntington’s wounds of honor.”
“Charlotte, he will not have you,” he said quietly.
“I know.”
“He is the heir to a dukedom. My guess is that he will return to his regiment if Lady Susan does not entice him away altogether.”
“I am well aware that her beauty far outshines any shallow amount of femininity I might claim.”
“Charlotte, I do not mean to degrade your own charms. You have many, and you are very dear to me, you know that. I would not choose another sister for all the world,” he said, looking at her drenched form.
“High praise, indeed,” she said, feeling like a pathetic half-drowned mouse. But then she had no need for her brother to confirm her meager ability to attract the other sex. She had had seven and twenty years of disinterested and disinclined gentlemen to demonstrate the truth. She shook her head.
“I would not see you hurt again,” he said.
“I have never been hurt!”
“You do not think I did not see how unhappy you were when our dear cousin never answered our father’s letters? When you were refused a voucher for Almack’s? When Mr. Cox never paid us a third social call? And what about Mr. Reed, who never appeared to take you on the promised carriage ride? Charlotte?”
“Please, please stop. Enough!” she said, turning to walk away.
“Charlotte, have a care. Do not see him alone again—if only to guard your heart.”
She stopped to face him again. “I promise to heed your advice when you choose the same course.”
Males. They were impossible. The whole lot of them, she thought, while walking toward the cottage. She would not spend one more minute with a brother who knew better than anyone how to reduce her to feeling like a drenched rodent.
Nicholas smiled to himself. Miss Kittridge had left him in her workroom to fetch a covering for his clothes. She had insisted they take a rest from the page when she had caught him clenching his head.
The second and third lessons had proceeded better than he had expected, although Miss Kittridge had been reserved. He had not been able to tease a single half-smile from her grave countenance. But she had continued to prove herself to be a formidable teacher. She had a calming way of listening and not hurrying him, and not destroying his concentration and renewed desire to overcome his affliction.
It was the first time he had ever made any kind of progress. But it was infinitesimal—and frustrating. The letters still swam all over the page, and he always walked away with his head aching from the effort. And to make matters worse, he was having a hard time keeping his hands off her modest form.
Her patience and her kindness, and the sweet innocence she refused to acknowledge, were like aphrodisiacs. If he were a whole man, an intelligent man, he would make an offer for her because he was so attracted to her gentle goodness. Yes, it was going to be difficult to leave her behind when he returned to his regiment.
If only his regiment could see him now, about to dabble in clay, they would be certain he had taken leav
e of his senses. He did not feel like the battle-hardened officer; he felt the fool.
The smoke, mud, and cannon shot seemed a long way away. And in fact, the battles were over. With Bonaparte on Elba and the wild celebrations in London and Paris, he wondered what role he would be able to play in the postwar effort. Certainly not any diplomatic post. Perhaps he would have to seek a commission fighting the Americans. He shook his head. He had little desire to fight the scrappy colonists. Nicholas felt much like an outmoded chariot: too old to fix, too young to throw on the debris pile, yet of little use to anyone.
He had had Charley write a letter, in his neat hand, to Wellington’s aide de camp. Nicholas was anxious to receive a reply. It would determine his future. In the meantime, he would better the lives of the people in the parish.
He had spent a maddening morning with his brother and Mr. Cobum, the steward Edwin had hired three years ago. They had met every single one of his suggestions concerning the brewery, the need to improve the cottages, and the growing ranks of the poor, even the rampant lack of food, with haughty disinterest. Mr. Coburn had brought forth the ledgers and indicated that there was not enough money to start expensive, ill-advised ventures without proof of future income. However, Mr. Coburn had many ideas on how to filter Nicholas’s monies into the dukedom, starting with Her Grace’s plans to redecorate the town house in London.
Edwin’s pleas were difficult to ignore. “Our sister will need to go to London to snare herself a husband. Do you really think our ramshackle pile in Mayfair will entice a rich man to offer for Rosamunde? I think not. Best hand over your blunt to help our dear sister.”
“Her Grace has also mentioned a tour for Lord Edwin,” Mr. Coburn threw in for good measure. “And for herself, of course.”
“Oh, you must help us, for what will you do with it fighting a war? Rethatching cottages is a complete waste. It will just have to be redone again and again. Furthering the lot of Rosamunde is a far better investment. Come now, you have not the head for all this.”
He had withstood the barrage with stoic fortitude as always. Even his ideas on improving the breeding stock of the sheep and cows had been met with negative response.
Well, he would not go back on his word to his father. But, he had not promised that he would not use his own funds to improve the lot of the people in the dukedom’s realm. And he had a considerable amount left to him from his mother’s family, as well as his conserved officer’s pay, meager though it was.
Nicholas was equally sure that the land deeded to him by his maternal grandparents would prove to be as fertile as needed to raise the hops and barley crops necessary for a brewery. And the spring, which provided water for his father’s needs, also ran through Nicholas’s acres.
If Edwin was unwilling to start a venture, Nicholas would do it on his own parcel of land. He could also open a portion of those three hundred acres as common land for those who had been hard hit by the Enclosure Acts. There would be plenty of room for the crops, the common land, and space for the actual brewery as well.
Miss Kittridge’s voice beyond the door, calling out to the maid, brought him back to the situation at hand. He grasped one of the dried bird forms and studied it.
He knew her sculpture meant a great deal to her, and he would show a measure of his gratitude by pleasing her with his interest. He must find a place to have these fired for her. The figures were even better formed than the ones displayed in the front sitting room. She had refined her technique.
The sound of her light steps preceded her return to the workroom.
“I found one of my brother’s shirts—after realizing you would never fit into my father’s,” she said, a little out of breath. A slight flush was in her cheeks as enthusiasm beamed from her face.
“Your brother will not delight in finding his collar ruined.”
“Ah, but there you are wrong. Anything to sway him from his future would please him, I assure you,” she said.
“Then we are alike in one way, I see.”
“My lord?”
“I am being obtuse, Miss Kittridge. A favorite pastime of mine.”
Intent on her art, she did not acknowledge his comment. She cut a square of clay, using a fine wire, and handed it to him after he had removed his coat and donned the second shirt, which proved to be too small after all. She cut a similar block for herself. Engravings of sculpture adorned the walls, and a small marble bust was in the corner. Walking over to it, he noticed that the beautiful bust of a young woman resembled Miss Kittridge in some ways, despite the old-fashioned, high-on-the-crown hair arrangement.
“Who is this?”
She turned to him. “Oh, I had forgotten it was in here,” she said, then paused. “It is of my mother when she was four and twenty.”
“The eyes are so unusual, the pupils and irises complete in form.”
“It is the technique of Monsieur Houdin. Is it not perfection?” she asked with some awe. “He is the artist I most admire, I believe.”
“Most unusual,” he replied, then turned to compare her face with that of the bust. “You favor her.”
“Perhaps I have something of her eyes and mouth, I suppose. But I did not inherit her inherent wit, and loveliness, and charm. My character is all my father’s doing,” she said with a sigh.
“I fear you have been misled somewhere along your life’s path, Miss Kittridge. You have never failed to show me, at one time or another, all of the characteristics you attribute to your mother.”
“Your memory is not as good as I had surmised, my lord,” she said. “I am not sure you found me charming and graceful when I forced ministrations on you and helped deliver a certain large foal several weeks ago.”
“You are incorrect again, Miss Kittridge. I found you most lovely when you were covered in blood and straw while saving the mare and foal. And most charming when you wheedled me into your way of thinking while I was half-delirious.”
He had silenced her. Miss Kittridge’s shyness forbade further comment.
She guided him to a high stool beside her own, and they sat side by side in the sunlit workroom, which looked out into the shrubbery and vibrant green of summer in the Wiltshires. After a comment or two on forming clay, she left him to his thoughts and solitude. From time to time he looked at her fine-boned profile as she concentrated on sculpting the round, diminutive form of a nuthatch. Where had she ever formed the opinion that she exhibited less than a perfect display of charm and grace?
He looked toward her mother’s bust again. The sole variation was in the regal, aristocratic tilt of the cold marble head and chin. Who was her mother that such a sculpture was commissioned of her? He had encountered a distinct silence on the subject, which he had then abandoned out of politeness to the émigrés. Without a doubt, she had been French, and the father thoroughly English—from his ruddy cheeks to his London accent. Nicholas would have questioned Miss Kittridge further but sensed her discomfort on the topic.
The clay would not take the shape of any sort of winged creature. His attempts were childlike and he had no doubt that he had no talent for the medium, unlike his love of music and the pianoforte, an instrument forbidden to him from the age of sixteen, when he had infuriated his stepmother outrageously one final time.
Nicholas rolled the hard clay between his hands and formed a thin, long column and laid it on the table littered with clay dust. He coiled it into a fat snake, pinching a diamond-shaped head at the end. He unrolled it and formed it into the letter S with the head at the top. He took a larger piece of clay and formed a solid N, and finally an A. He had no idea what else was needed to write “snake.”
She looked at his effort and immediately formed the rest of the word. “Take a closer look at this N and see how it is formed from all angles,” she said, placing the letter in his hand. “Perhaps it will help unlock the mysteries of the difference between N and the M and W.”
A certain stillness invaded his being as he studied the letter from every angle. T
he solid figure did not dance, nor did it seem confusing in any way, shape, or form. She handed him an M she had formed. It was as if someone had handed him a key that unlocked a thick door in his brain. The M was very solid, immobile, clear. He turned the letter upside down and could see the W quite clearly. The key was looking at the letters in three dimensions.
Nicholas looked toward Charlotte and saw wordless comprehension. He couldn’t speak, afraid to break the spell of sudden understanding. They each turned to the mound of clay and formed crude letters of the alphabet, rushing their efforts in their excitement. In ten minutes time, the forms were complete. He picked up each one and turned them at all angles. After the first ten or so, he stopped and shuddered as he inhaled deeply. He felt overwhelming emotion—a great weight lifting from his shoulders.
“Perhaps we should hold off a bit,” she said.
“No. I want to look at all of them.”
“All right.”
She handed each one to him, and rearranged them carefully when he was done. Only the sound of the raspy crickets and an insistent blue jay could be heard from the open window. A small but profound transformation had begun in the recesses of his mind. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply again after laying aside the Z.
When he reopened his eyes, Miss Kittridge had arranged a line of letters on the table. “Can you read this?” she asked.
Slowly, he spelled the word, “r-e-m-e-m-b-e-r, re- remember,” he said in wonder, the word he had ironically always failed to read or remember.
She formed a few more letters and made a sentence.
He stared at the words. “You-can-read,” he said without pause. His hands were shaking. She took his hands in her own and gave them a little squeeze.
“I don’t understand it,” he said. “I don’t even want to question why. All I know is that something has changed by looking at these figures. I am afraid to walk away from here and lose this feeling.”
He closed his eyes and willed himself not to show the emotion welling up in his throat and threatening to escape from his eyes. Most unmanly, these emotions were. He gave a shaky laugh and stood up, pushing back his stool. She stood in front of him, holding both his hands and staring up at him, her eyes filled with tears.