Anna's Refuge

by Kerryn Reid

  Two workmen deposited the trunk in the middle of Anna’s room. Putnam bent over it to study the markings. “Lord have mercy. It’s from your mama.”

  Anna stared at Lewis’s grinning countenance. “You know what it is, I can see you do. Tell me.”

  He laughed. “Why should I tell you? Open it and see.”

  She walked straight to the trunk, dropped to her knees, and lifted the lid.

  Putnam was the first to speak. “Oh my dear! I can’t believe she would be so considerate.”

  “Lewis made her do it, I expect.”

  “No, no,” he replied. “It was merely a request. She has no use for your clothes, after all.”

  “There’s a note.” Anna read it aloud.

  Dear daughter—

  Your father would have me burn everything, but what a waste that would be, when you will no doubt need every stitch.

  You will be a better mother than I ever was. I never liked children.

  Evelyn Austin Spain

  A pair of small bonnets topped the contents. “Green Park,” Lewis said, taking one up and inspecting it. “I’m surprised it wasn’t ruined.”

  Anna had hardly noticed what she wore that day, and would not have remembered now. But she certainly remembered the rain. “It must have been soaked.”

  The bonnets were followed by walking dresses, morning gowns, and evening gowns, a pair of each. Then there were shawls, shifts, and nightdresses, gloves, stockings, and shoes. Most had been designed for spring and summer in London, and it was mid-winter in Yorkshire. But oh, how good it felt to have some clothes! What a treasure—as valuable at that moment as gold.

  A wail came from the next room and Putnam bustled off to see to the baby.

  Anna fitted herself into the chair beside Lewis. Her vision blurred with tears. “Thank you. You’re so good to me.”

  He kissed her, for the first time full on the lips. It ended much too soon.

  She blinked to keep the tears at bay, but a couple of them welled over and ran down her cheeks.

  “Aww, sweetheart,” he said, wiping them away with his thumbs. “Was it that bad? I haven’t much experience, but I’d hate to think I can never kiss my wife for fear she’ll start bawling.”

  “I’m not bawling, silly.” Shifting to face him more fully, Anna pressed her lips to his. He drew her tight against him, her breasts squeezed against his chest. It hurt, but she would not have pulled away for another trunk full of clothes. He angled her head for a better kiss—she slipped her tongue inside his mouth. Smooth, slick skin inside his lips, and then the wet roughness of his tongue as it met hers, slid deeper…

  Putnam knocked, though the door was ajar. Anna jerked to her feet, her back to the door. The chill of separation came as a shock. Smoothing her gown, she moved to the mirror and saw yet another version of herself, her hair rumpled, her eyes dark and dazed. So many Annas in the past year.

  Lewis came to stand behind her, adjusting his ravaged cravat, his smile full of mischief. “Let’s do that again soon.”

  The rumble of his voice at her ear and the feel of his hand at her waist, warmth flowing deep inside, left her breathless, unable to reply.

  Turning finally toward the intruder, Lewis said, “I suppose you’re going to throw me out now.”

  “Right about that, you are.” Putnam sounded fierce, but her eyes twinkled.

  Anna had a nearly new gown to wear when Mrs. Dusseau and Miss Maxwell came to call two days later. Putnam had added long sleeves beneath the puffed shoulders, trim at the hem and a sash in matching fabric. With the shawl Mama had sent, she was almost warm enough. Putnam gave a sharp nod of approval.

  They sat in the drawing room at the foot of the stairs, a pleasant step toward normalcy. Mrs. Dusseau was chatty and friendly, with a ready laugh that made one want to laugh with her. “We have houseguests,” she said as she shook Anna’s hand, “but they can very well take care of themselves for an hour. I would not pass up this chance to meet you, Miss Spain. Lady Wedbury has told us something of your troubles—such a romantic story, though doubtless uncomfortable.”

  The words vastly overstated the romance and understated the discomfort, but the woman’s expression held sympathy and concern beyond the words she spoke.

  Mrs. Redfern was there to ease any awkwardness, but there was little room for silences with her and Mrs. Dusseau in the same room. Anna and Miss Maxwell found themselves on the edge of the conversation.

  When tea arrived, Miss Maxwell took the opportunity to change seats, sitting next to Anna.

  “They are both such excellent women,” she said, rolling her green eyes toward the other two ladies. “And so admirably fluent.”

  Anna chuckled. “It is admirable, and makes it easy for a stranger. I can listen and learn without worrying about what to say.”

  “One need not be a stranger to feel that way. I’m not good at the social graces—my father tells me I’m too direct. So please tell me if the subject is beyond the pale… Lady Wedbury told me about your baby?”

  Anna felt herself blush. What, exactly, had Lady Wedbury said? “I…”

  Miss Maxwell reached out to touch her arm but drew back. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It’s all right,” Anna said. “We decided not to bring up the subject ourselves, but it’s hardly a secret. I’m relieved to know I need not hide the truth from you. Do you… You don’t have…?”

  “No, I have no children of my own, but I love them. I’ve adopted a whole orphanage full.” Anna gazed at her, dismayed, and she laughed. “Oh, it’s quite unofficial, and there are only three of them. I do not have a dozen orphans overrunning my home. Papa would not tolerate it for an hour. They are cared for by one of the tenants on our estate.”

  Anna placed a hand over her heart. “I did wonder. I would have thought Wrackwater Bridge too small to have orphans.”

  “Sadly, there are orphans everywhere, Miss Spain.”

  So many questions Anna might have asked. Please, can I help? But the ladies rose to take their leave, and she was glad of it. She would likely have embarrassed herself by crying, and given away more of her recent agonies than she had any intention of doing—ever. How close she had come to leaving her own daughter an orphan, for one.

  The next day it snowed, right through the day and harder at nightfall. She was not surprised that Lewis didn’t come. Nor the day after, with all that snow on the ground. It was beautiful, but she could not like anything that kept him away.

  He came on the third day around noon. Anna had finished nursing but continued to laze there by the fire, her forefinger in the loosening grip of one little fist as the babe slipped deeper into sleep. Perched on the arm of the chair, Lewis stroked Anna’s cheek, then the child’s, then Anna’s again. “I’m sorry, my dear, her skin is softer.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “It’s all right. I refuse to be jealous of my own child.” But she was, a little. Not for her soft skin, but for the way Lewis softened whenever he beheld her, his tension melting away as though it had never been. “She’s had the colic again.”

  “Poor little Rose,” he crooned, one hand cupping the baby’s head.

  Anna jerked her head up and searched his face. “Rose?”

  He shrugged. “Short for Rosalie, perhaps? I like it.”

  “I wish… Would it be dreadfully inappropriate to name her for Putnam? She’s the only one who stood my friend. Except for you, and you declined the honor.”

  “She will love that, I’m sure.” His gaze met hers, still tender, with laughter inside it. “What is her name? I assume you’re not suggesting we call the child Putnam.”

  Anna laughed in delight. “No, silly. It’s Doris. It means a gift in Greek, she says. And Rose can be her middle name.”

  “Doris Rose Aubrey.” He repeated it softly and nodded. “It suits her.”

  A weight lifted from Anna’s heart. Her daughter had a name, an identity. “Can we tell her now?”

  Putnam’s mouth dropped op
en at the news. With a catch in her voice, she insisted, “Nay, Miss Anna, ye can’t name your babe after a servant. ’Twouldn’t be proper.”

  “I don’t care about that. Without you, there would be no babe.”

  Putnam shook her head. To Lewis she said, “Tell her it’s unthinkable. I’m all weepy at the thought of it, but—”

  “Without you, I might never have found Anna,” Lewis said. “That is unthinkable. If you’re going to be stubborn, we’ll merely say we love the name, and the end will be the same.”

  Putnam could not resist his sympathetic smile or the arm he draped around her shoulders. A few tears dropped to the baby’s blanket as she lifted her namesake from Anna’s arms, and as they left Putnam’s room, she was crooning something mostly unintelligible. But Anna heard “Doris” more than once.

  Anna shed some tears herself when they returned to her bedchamber. Lewis wiped them away. “That was an excellent notion of yours,” he said. “Now, what do you think of this one? I must go home and fetch my foils. Kate cornered me downstairs and I promised her a fencing lesson. It’s a few days early for your first outing, but the road is safe, and I’ve borrowed Jack’s curricle—would you like to come along? I warn you, it’s cold.”

  Anna jumped in her excitement. “Oh, yes!”

  He bundled her up so she could barely move or see, and half an hour later, she stood in the Aubreys’ drawing room while Lewis went upstairs to get his swords. He had driven into the stable yard when they arrived, carefully inquiring whether his father was at home. Receiving a firm negative from the groom, he’d lifted her down from the seat and led her into the house.

  The windows beckoned her across the room. It was a lovely, sunny day, but there was not much to hold her interest.

  She turned away…and nearly fainted when she saw Gideon above the fireplace, larger than life. Lewis might have warned her!

  The artist had caught him well enough. Even in oils, he mocked her. And she must live here? Several months of seeing his portrait every day? She felt a little sick. At least the man himself was absent. She prayed he would remain so.

  “It’s quite like him, don’t you think?”

  She whirled around. Not Lewis’s voice. Like the machines in her father’s factories that ground rock into grit, hard and abrasive. Angry too.

  “I presume you met him in London?” The man strolled toward her, his hands behind his back. She ransacked her brain for something to say, but found nothing.

  “Don’t suppose he’d want anything more than a little grope with a drab like you. He would have known you were only out for a marriage license.” He examined her up and down, his lip quirked up in a Gideon sneer. “Nobody told me you were so—ah—appetizing. Surprised you couldn’t do better than that nincompoop you’re marrying. I’ve never been quite convinced that he belongs to me.” He came closer. Too close. He was shorter than his sons, but powerfully built.

  Anna held out her hand, hoping it would keep him at a distance. “Anna Spain, sir. I’m pleased to meet you.”

  He stared at her hand. She thought he would reject it.

  Instead he took it and clasped it tight so she could not pull away. He drew her closer, close enough to smell the liquor on his breath, see the red veins in his eyes and the blacking he used to cover the gray in his hair.

  “Sir!” she said. He ignored her.

  “How about a kiss for your new papa, eh?” How could a whisper sound so threatening? She averted her head, but he took her other arm in a painful grip and came a half step closer. She forced herself to stand passive though her skin crawled and every instinct told her to fight. Every instinct, except the one that said he would hurt her if she did.

  “Gone all priggish now that you’ve found a husband, have you? I know your kind, girl. You—”

  “Take your bloody hands off her.”

  Standing midway between them and the door, Lewis sounded every bit as menacing as his father. In one hand he carried a long bundle. His swords.

  The brute let her go, though not in a hurry. She stepped back, a little unsteady, and bit her lip to provide a jolt of pain. You will not faint!

  “Just getting to know my pretty daughter. That’s what you want, ain’t it?” He spoke in a dulcet tone that somehow retained all the threat that seemed an integral part of the man.

  Lewis must have thought the same. His gaze never wavered as his father moved slowly toward him. Anna could see the tension in his mouth, his jaw, in every line of his body. Mr. Aubrey, by contrast, might have been strolling through a garden.

  “You stole a trick on me the other day, you and your mother. Did you think I wouldn’t be interested in your little expedition to meet my daughter and granddaughter?”

  “I thought you’d act the scoundrel.”

  “And I’ve proved you right, eh?” Mr. Aubrey chuckled and slapped Lewis on the shoulder. It looked strong enough to knock him off balance, but Lewis barely swayed. “Relax, my boy! I won’t make you put those sissy swords to use.”

  “These sissy swords can run you through. Don’t you forget it.”

  His father laughed loud and hearty as he headed for the door. “Perhaps they can, in some hands. Not today, however. Save ’em for another time.”

  He was gone. Anna ran to Lewis’s side, desperate for his comfort. But he grabbed her hand with a muttered, “Let’s get out of here,” and dragged her toward the rear of the house, the way they’d come in.

  Instead of going straight outside, though, he pulled her into the kitchen and sat her down in a hard chair set against one wall. He dropped the swords at her feet with a dull clunk.

  “I forgot something. You’ll be safe—he never comes here. If he does, pull a sword on him.” She peered into his face with a shaky smile and realized he was not joking.

  She eyed the bundle, a wrapping of canvas with a leather strap to carry it by. She inched her feet away.

  Curving her lips again, she regarded the cook and a maid, working side by side on a long slab of meat. She received no answering smile. The cook studied her impassively before picking up her mallet again.

  The kitchen maid, surely no older than fourteen, was curious if not friendly. Her eyes round, she nudged the cook and whispered something behind her hand.

  The cook returned that dull gaze to Anna. “Ye be ’is bride, then?” she said, with a jerk of her head.

  Anna nodded. “Yes.”

  The maid whispered something else. This time the cook didn’t even look up. “Aye, she’s pretty enough.”

  Anna watched in fascination as she beat that strip of meat until it was not much thicker than a sheet of parchment. She’d never known there was such violence involved in cookery.

  Lewis dashed through the door with a flat black leather case. He shoved it at her as she rose, picked up the swords, and hurried her out to the stables.

  He drove fast and said nothing. No sound but the horses and harness, the wheels and the wind. Anna hung on to the strap with one hand, his case with the other.

  There were people in the vicarage kitchen, but she did not even see who they were. Not until they reached her room did he stop his mad rush and let go of her hand. He set the swords on the floor and leaned that black case against the wall, and then he dropped onto a hard chair, his elbows on his knees and his fingers torturing his hair.

  “God, Anna, I’m sorry.”

  Anna tossed her cloak and hat onto the bed and swiveled toward him, indignant. Waiting.

  Waiting for what, Anna? Yes, she’d been frightened, but he was more upset than she. How many times had he soothed her, comforted her? Oh, Lewis.

  She kneeled at his feet. Taking gentle hold of his wrists, she peeked at his face but he tilted it further inward, keeping her out.

  “Lewis, please stop. It wasn’t so bad. It’s certainly not your fault.” She tightened her grip and shook his hands free, laced her fingers through his. “Do you hear me? It’s not your fault.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t b
elieve I thought this would work.”

  “It can, Lewis. Except for him, everyone’s been so kind.”

  “You’d be better off in Bristol.”

  “Never, dearest. Shush.” She enforced her order, twining her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck and forcing his mouth to hers.

  For a moment, he remained stiff and unyielding. Then his lips softened, his hand cradling the back of her head.

  He broke it off with a sort of gasp and pressed his cheek hard against hers. She felt the bones, the tense muscles, the beginnings of the day’s stubble. Felt his jaw open as he spoke into her ear, a growl torn from him. “I love you so much. God help me, I’ll kill him if he hurts you.”

  It was not the way she’d hoped to hear that he loved her. She’d looked for tenderness, not desperation. But her heart sang nevertheless, demolishing shock and resentment.

  She tried to keep her joy within bounds—she would hate for him to think she took his distress lightly. Far from it. She feared her love for him would explode, sending bits of her all over the room.

  “He won’t hurt me, Lewis. I’m going to get a meat mallet and keep it in my reticule.”

  He blinked at her. “I beg your pardon?”

  Laughter burst from her. Of course he could have no idea what she meant. “I was watching the cook… Oh, never mind.” Serious again, she brushed his long hair from his forehead. “Don’t worry so. We can make it work for a few months. I must take care not to be alone with him, that’s all.”

  “I think you should stay here until—”

  Anna shook her head. “They’re expecting houseguests shortly after the wedding. And I want to be with you.”

  “Well then, we will all take care,” he said. “Putnam or I will be with you every minute. If we need to hire someone else to care for your clothes and such, so be it.”

  “There. That was easy.” She pushed herself to her feet, using his knees for assistance.

  He peered up at her, his brows knitted quizzically. “A meat mallet?”

  Chapter 43

  What a blunder-headed idiot he was. If only he had followed the plan, Anna’s introduction to his father would have taken place the following day at the vicarage. Neutral ground. What better guard dog than a vicar?