Lovers and Ladies

by Jo Beverley

  “I’m afraid not.”

  She looked around thoughtfully. “Do you mind the floor getting wetter?”

  Harry looked down at the stone flags, which were awash with muddy water. “All the better to wash it with, I’d suppose.”

  She passed him the bodice of the dress and took the hem end herself. “Twist.”

  “Twist?”

  He saw what she was doing and began to turn the cloth in the opposite direction, keeping it taut all the while. Water began to pour out.

  “This can’t be doing the garment much good,” he pointed out.

  “This garment is past its last prayers,” said Amy, twisting harder.

  “Perhaps I should buy you a new one,” he said.

  “Why?” she asked with a blankly mystified look. “This is none of your doing.”

  Harry accepted it. He could hardly explain that he didn’t want his future wife in rags, but he began to plan a wardrobe for her. He had never been much interested in women’s clothes, but now he imagined Amy in cerulean blue silk with silver net; in dusky pink muslin trimmed with blond; in pristine white with roses in her hair.

  He realized the work was getting harder as the dress became tight and began to twist on itself. Amy continued to turn her end, grimacing with the effort, determined to squeeze every last drop she could.

  The dress coiled into a tighter and tighter bundle, and Harry and Amy were drawn closer and closer together. When Amy gave the final, grunting twist and said, “There!” she looked up and found herself inches from him.

  Her mouth went dry and her head felt light. It was all that effort. She saw the fine chiseled shape of the end of his nose and thought it very pleasing indeed. She raised her eyes, and there was a warmth in his which shivered through her in the strangest way.

  They were just standing there. She pulled the dress from his hold and hurried over to hang it in front of the stove, being careful that it couldn’t catch fire.

  That would be typical of today, she decided, that her clothes and her very shelter burn down around her ears.

  As she stretched the cloth to try to lessen the creases she wondered what had made her feel so funny. It was this situation. In this predicament it was hardly surprising that she felt peculiar. For the first time in her life she would quite like to have a case of the vapors if she had any idea how to do it. She could at least appreciate the appeal. Just to let go, give up, and let someone else take care of everything.

  Let him take care of everything?

  She checked that her drapery was all securely in place and turned. He was looking out the window. He glanced at her. “Still very heavy,” he said easily. “I think it will be at least an hour before it stops.”

  So he hadn’t felt anything strange. That made her lapse even worse. Here was the one man she had met who treated her as a normal person and she was turning silly.

  He was saying something else. “But you’ll need that long for your dress to even begin to dry. You know,” he said as he left the window, “I don’t feel it’s at all wise for you to try to travel five miles in damp clothes on a chilly day.”

  “What else do you suggest?” Amy heard the edge of sarcasm in her voice and regretted it. She was dreading the trip home.

  “You could go to Ashridge Farm, and I could ride over and reassure your family. Do you have parents still alive, by the way?” The question seemed to have importance for him.

  “No, my father died two years ago, my mother six.”

  “I’m sorry. Who is your guardian, then?”

  “My uncle, but he doesn’t live with us. We have an aunt to lend us respectability.” She couldn’t understand why he seemed to find this displeasing, too. He must be a very high stickler. What would he think to find out that the de Lacys lived almost entirely in the kitchen—certainly in the winter months—and did almost everything for themselves because they felt guilty at asking anything of their two elderly and unpaid retainers?

  “About Ashridge Farm,” he prompted her.

  Amy gathered her wits. “I suppose it is my only option,” she admitted. “If you don’t mind riding over to Stonycourt.”

  “I will be delighted,” he said with a little bow.

  He seemed to have turned rather serious. Amy felt uncomfortable with the lull in conversation and so she walked over to the table, hitching up her blanket so it didn’t trail on the muddy floor. She studied the doll there. “It’s an automaton!” she declared in delight.

  He came to join her. “A broken one.”

  Amy sat down and touched the silk skirt with a gentle finger. “She’s lovely. I had a doll once very like her. French, I think.”

  “Yes, but the mechanism is German. I’m mending her.”

  “Why?”

  He looked up a little coolly. “Because otherwise she’d go on the rubbish dump.”

  Amy realized her question had seemed unfeeling and flushed. “I meant, why you?”

  He sat down in front of the doll. “It’s a hobby. I like to fix things, and these are often so beautiful it seems very worth the trouble. My mother finds them for me.”

  “You haven’t told me anything of your family,” she said. It was only a second later she knew that the curiosity she felt about this man was unwise.

  “I’m an only child,” he answered readily. “My mother and father are still living. Down in Hampshire.”

  “You’re a gentleman,” Amy said and tried to revive her teasing note. “You spend winter hunting, spring dancing and gambling.”

  “I don’t gamble,” he said with a lazy smile. “And I spend the summer sailing.”

  Amy’s heart gave a little lurch. “Oh, I envy you!” Then she wished it unsaid. It was not wise to show one wanted things.

  “You like to sail?” he asked. “Strange for a person living in the middle of the country.”

  “My father took us once with a friend,” she said primly. “It was very pleasant.” It was one of the best times of her life, but she didn’t want him to know that.

  He looked at her quizzically but then moved the automaton a little. “When I was interrupted,” he said with a smile, “I was trying to see the state of the spring at the top of this lady’s leg. I’ll feel better about such a delicate operation now she has a chaperon.”

  Amy grinned at the thought. “Does my charge have a name?”

  “Not as far as I know. Why don’t you christen her?”

  “Jane,” Amy promptly said.

  He looked at the elegant lady with the silk clothes and the high-powered hairstyle. “She doesn’t look like a Jane to me, but if you wish.” He began to inch his fingers up the doll’s leg.

  Amy giggled and felt herself color. “As Jane’s chaperon, I don’t think I should allow you to do that, sir.”

  “Think of me as her doctor,” he said, and something in the way he said it set Amy’s heart speeding. She was determined not to embarrass herself by showing it.

  When he lifted the skirts to reveal layers of silk and lace petticoats, she protested again. “Really, sir! Can you not, as some doctors are supposed to do, examine by feeling alone?”

  His eyes twinkled. “I’m afraid not.” There was more to the words and the smile. Or Amy felt there was more. As his sensitive, long-fingered hands moved Jane’s pale, porcelain leg Amy felt her face heat. She imagined his hands on her own leg.

  He lifted that leg and stretched it.

  Amy leapt to her feet.

  He looked up and there was a flicker of humor in his eyes. “Is something the matter?”

  “The dress,” Amy gasped. “I must turn the dress!” She fled over to the hearth.

  Parts of the gown were dry, but other parts were very damp. Amy rearranged the gown so that the thicker parts of the bodice and sleeves would be close to the heat, wishing she was near something cold, not hot, so she would have a chance to cool her burning face.

  She couldn’t think what had come over her. She had never had such thoughts before in her life. And
with poor Mr. Crisp. The one man who had not ogled her, or protested his devotion, or done anything at all to embarrass her. And here she was having lewd thoughts about him.

  When she’d finished with the dress, she sat in the chair by the fire but still watched him from half a room away.

  He looked over. “Are you cold? There are more blankets.”

  “N-no.” Amy swallowed. “I’d better keep an eye on the dress. It might scorch. I can preserve poor Jane’s virtue from here.”

  He accepted it and they sat in silence as he worked, only the crackling of coal and the ticking of the kitchen clock to disturb the peace. His fingers were constantly entangled in the silk and lace of Jane’s petticoats, and Amy’s thoughts were extraordinary.

  Then Amy realized the rain had stopped, and a glance at the window confirmed this. There was even a lightening as the clouds lifted, but the natural darkness of evening was gathering.

  She glanced at the clock. “It’s five o’clock,” she said. “I should go.”

  He looked up from his work. “So it is. We’ll go in a minute, but I think I’ve fixed part of Lady Jane. It was just a loose connection. Come and look.”

  As if pulled by strings, Amy moved back to the table. He gave the key a few turns. A sweet, tinkling minuet started and the lady turned slightly. Her leg began to rise in an elegant and amazingly realistic manner.

  There was a ping, and it collapsed limp again as the music slowed and stopped.

  He laughed. “A long way to go yet, I’m afraid.”

  Amy touched the silk skirt. “She will be lovely when she works, though.”

  “Yes.”

  She looked up and their eyes met. Amy knew there was something she wanted to say, but didn’t know what it was.

  His smile was rueful as he stood up. “You’re right. It’s time to go. I think it might be best if we don’t tell the Coneybears you have been here at all. We can say you sheltered in the barn and only asked my help when the rain stopped.”

  “That sounds nonsensical to me,” protested Amy.

  His warm hazel eyes twinkled. “And you do not like to be thought foolish. Do you always do the sensible thing, Amy de Lacy?”

  “I try,” retorted Amy, for some reason feeling defensive. “You probably don’t think that very womanly.”

  “Don’t I?”

  He was laughing at her. She quickly turned away. “I don’t suppose so,” she said. “You would doubtless approve of me far more if I had fainted out in the road and were sinking into the grave from inflammation of the lungs!”

  “Now that makes me sound remarkably foolish.”

  He had come up behind her, and she could sense the warmth of his presence there. His hands settled over her towel-covered shoulders and turned her around.

  Amy felt breathlessly dizzy as she looked up, and completely adrift. What was she doing? What was she supposed to be doing? What did she want to be doing?

  He lowered his lips and touched them to hers. It was the lightest touch, velvet soft and warm. It was lovely.

  Amy jerked her lips away but his hands prevented further escape.

  “I’m sorry,” he said gently. “I shouldn’t have done that.” He did not sound repentant.

  “No, no,” she stammered. Then, “Yes. I mean you shouldn’t have. We shouldn’t have….” His hands were still on her shoulders, a firm warm pressure that seemed to be seeping down into her as the damp chill had done so many hours ago.

  “Perhaps not,” he said, and his thumbs made little circles against her collarbone. “But it was not so terrible a sin.” His right hand moved like a warm breeze across her shoulder to her bare neck. She gasped as she felt the soft brush of his fingers against her skin. She knew from his expression that he was thinking of more sinful things, and here she was, doing nothing to stop him.

  He caught his breath and moved a yard or two away. “I do beg your pardon,” he said. He looked around, as if at a loss, and his eyes fastened on her gown. “Perhaps your dress is dry.”

  Amy forced her limbs into movement and went to the dress. It was dry in parts but not in others but she had no intention of lingering here a moment longer. She knew what was happening here and it mustn’t. It had only been a couple of hours. It was not too late. “It’s dry enough,” she said. “My family will be concerned. We must go to the farm quickly so that you can take a message to Stonycourt.”

  “Of course,” he said, as if nothing significant had happened. But the power of the look in his eyes contradicted his tone and sent a shudder through her. “I’ll just go upstairs and dress more warmly. You can put on your dress.”

  When he’d gone, the madness faded a little. Amy looked at her clothing in despair. For a supposedly sensible couple they’d not done very well. They’d done nothing about her shift, stockings, and shoes. What had they been thinking of?

  4

  AMY SPENT A FEW MOMENTS trying to gather the fortitude to put on her sodden, dirty shift but could not do it. Anyway, it was clearly nonsensical, and now above all times was the time to be sensible.

  With a shudder she wriggled into the wet stockings. She could disguise the lack of a shift but she could hardly go barefoot and if she was to put on the soaking shoes she might as well bear the stockings. Then she put on the dress. At least it was warmly damp, not clammy.

  When she came to fasten it she remembered the bottom button. Well, there was nothing to be done about it.

  He cleared his throat outside the door. “Is it all right for me to come in, Miss de Lacy?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He frowned when he saw her. “The sooner we get you to Ashridge and into dry clothes again, the better. Take the blanket to wrap around yourself.”

  Amy picked it up but said, “There is a button missing at the back of my gown. Do you have a pin to fasten it with?”

  He came to look. It only then occurred to Amy that without her shift he would be looking at her bare back where the dress gaped. She didn’t know why that seemed so dangerous, but it did.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said quickly.

  “Hold on,” he said, hands on her shoulders again, but impersonally. “I can fix it with my cravat pin.”

  Amy pulled herself out of his hold. “Don’t be silly! That would set the cat among the pigeons.”

  He grinned. “I suppose it would. Never mind. It’s only a small gap and it will be covered by the blanket. All set?”

  As they walked down the passage toward the door, he said, “Look, there’s an old pair of pattens here, belonged to Corny’s aunt. Do you want to borrow them?”

  “I think my shoes are past protection, but the pattens may keep me out of the mud.” She tied them on and found the fit tolerable. The iron rings raised her a good three inches so that her eyes rose from his chin to his nose. She wasn’t sure why this seemed significant.

  She turned and clink, clink, clinked her way to the door.

  “I don’t know why you women insist on wearing those things,” he said. “A pair of boots would be better.”

  Amy turned. “And needing a jack to get in and out of. Not very practical for a farm woman who’s in and out all the time.”

  “And who has to clean the floors,” he acknowledged. “I see what you mean.”

  He opened the door and they went out. The air was heavy with moisture and chill, too, but the wind had died down. Within her blanket, Amy was not too cold, though she knew her legs and feet would soon be frigid.

  She was more concerned, however, with pondering this man’s reaction to her contradiction. Experience had taught her that men did not like being told they’d said something silly, but she always forgot and told them anyway. This Mr. Crisp hadn’t seemed to mind at all.

  They crossed the muddy, bepuddled yard to a stile. Amy had to take his hand as she climbed over it, and the touch reminded her of that kiss. She looked at him, met his eyes, and looked away. This would not do at all.

  They followed a footpath across a field o
f sheep and lambs, and Amy was glad of the pattens, which kept her feet above the soggy ground. The sheep watched the humans as they passed; the lambs gamboled forward and back, daring each other toward danger.

  “Lambs are endearing, aren’t they?” he said.

  Amy thought so, too, but wanted no part of sweet sentiment today. “It’s a shame they’ll soon look as stupid as their mothers,” she said flatly, “or end up as roast or stew.”

  He looked at her sharply. She met his eyes and saw his shock. That should nip any romantic nonsense in the bud.

  But she was aware of a leaning toward sentiment herself, a desire to delight in lambs and courting birds, spring flowers and pretty ballads. She stamped on it firmly. She had to be ruthlessly practical.

  It all came of having such an impractical family. How could she give in to nonsense when she had a brother who spent his book money on lottery tickets, sisters who believed that wishes would come true, and a father who had given no thought to the future.

  Sir Digby had not been a desperate, haggard debtor; he’d been as happy as a bee in honey as long as he could somehow continue to provide fine wines, rich food, silk dresses, and prime horses for his family.

  Amy couldn’t understand such a mentality at all.

  “Don’t look so worried,” her companion said. “It’ll take me no time at all to ride over to your place and reassure your family.”

  She realized they must have been walking for some time. They were coming to the end of the sheep pasture; Coppice Farm was behind some trees, and another, more prosperous farm was ahead at the top of the rise. Presumably Ashridge.

  “I’m sorry. I was woolgathering.”

  He smiled. “Very appropriate among a field of sheep, and these seem to have a fine thick fleece.”

  They came to a gate. As he opened it he picked a long tuft of wool from the hedge. After they were through and the gate was securely shut, he gave it to her with a smile. “A fleece for your thoughts?”