The Virtuous Widow

by Anne Gracie

  He recoiled as something clunked against his teeth. “It is only the teapot,” she murmured in his ear. “It contains warm broth. Now, drink. It will help.”

  He wanted to tell her that he was a man, that he would drink it himself, out of a cup, not a teapot, like some helpless infant, but the words would not come. She tipped the teapot up and he had to swallow or have it spill down him. He swallowed. It was good broth. Warm. Tasty. It warmed his insides. And she felt so soft and good, her breasts against him, her arm around him, holding him upright against her. Weakly, he closed his eyes and allowed himself to be fed like a baby.

  He drank the broth slowly, in small mouthfuls. The woman’s breath was warm against his face. She seemed to know how much to give him and when he needed to wait between mouthfuls. He could smell her hair. He wanted to turn his head and bury his face in it. He drank the broth instead. The fire crackled in the grate. Outside the wind whistled and howled, rattling at the doors and windows. It was chilly inside the cottage, and the floor underneath him was hard and cold, but oddly, he felt warm and cosy and at peace.

  He finished the broth and half-sat, half-lay against her, allowing her to wipe his mouth, like a child. They sat for a moment or two, in companionable silence, with the wind swirling outside the cottage and the questions swirling inside his head.

  Beneath the blanket he was stark naked, he suddenly realised. He stared at her, another question on his unmoving lips. Who was she, to strip him of his clothes?

  As if she knew what he wanted, she murmured gently in his ear, “You arrived at my cottage almost an hour ago. I don’t know what happened to you before that. You were half-dressed and sopping wet. Frozen from the sleet and the rain. I don’t know how long you’d been outside, or how you managed to find the cottage, but you collapsed at the door—”

  “Is Papa awake now?” a little voice said, like the piping of a bird.

  Papa? He opened his eyes and saw a vivid little face staring at him with bright, inquisitive eyes. A child. A little girl.

  “Go back to bed this instant, Amy,” said the woman sharply.

  He winced and jerked his head and the blackness swirled again. When he reopened his eyes, he wasn’t sure how much time had passed. He was no longer leaning against the woman’s shoulder and the little face of the child was gone. And he was shivering. Hard.

  The woman bent over him, her eyes dark with worry. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I didn’t mean to bump you like that. My daughter gave me a fright, that was all. Are you all right?” A faint frown crumpled the smoothness of her brow. “The bleeding has stopped and I have bandaged your head.”

  He barely took in her words. All he could think of was that his head hurt like the devil and she was worried. He lifted a hand and stroked down her cheek slowly with the back of his fingers. It was like touching fine, cool, soft satin.

  She sighed. And then she pulled back. “I’m afraid you will freeze if I leave you down here on the stone floor. Even with the fire going all night—and I don’t have the fuel for that—the stone floor will draw all the warmth from your body.”

  He could only stare at her and try to control the shivering.

  “The only place to keep you warm is in bed.” She blushed and did not meet his eye. “There…there is only one bed.”

  He frowned, trying to absorb what she was telling him, but unable to understand why it would distress her. He still couldn’t recall who she was—the blow had knocked all sense from his head—but the child had called him ’Papa.’ He tried to think, but the effort only made the pain worse.

  “It is upstairs. The bed. I cannot carry you up there.”

  His confusion cleared. She was worried about his ability to get up the stairs. He nodded and gritted his teeth over the subsequent waves of swirling blackness. He could do that much for her. He would climb her stairs. He did not like to see her worried. He held out his hand to her and braced himself to stand. He wished he could remember her name.

  Ellie took his arm and heaved until he was upright—shaky and looking appallingly pale, but standing and still conscious. She tucked the blanket tight under his armpits and knotted it over his shoulder, like a toga. She hoped it was warm enough. His feet and his long brawny calves were bare and probably cold, but it was better than having him trip. Or naked.

  She wedged her shoulder under his armpit and steered him towards the stairs. The first step was in a narrow doorway with a very low lintel, for the cottage had not been designed for such tall men as he.

  “Bend your head,” she told him. Obediently, he bent, but lost his balance and lurched forward. Ellie clung to him, pulling him back against the doorway, to keep him upright. Fearful that he would straighten and hit his injury on the low beam, she cupped one hand protectively around his head and drew it down against her own forehead for safety. He leaned on her, half-unconscious, breathing heavily, one arm around her, one hand clutching the wooden stair-rail, his face against hers. White lines of pain bracketed his mouth.

  There were only fourteen steep and narrow stairs, but it took a superhuman effort to get him up them. He seemed barely conscious, except for the grim frown of concentration on his face and the slow determined putting of one foot in front of the other. He gripped the stair-rail with fists of stone and hauled himself up, pausing at each step achieved, reeling with faintness. Ellie held him tightly, supporting him with all the strength she could muster. He was a big man; if he collapsed, she could not stop him falling. And if he fell, he might never regain consciousness.

  There was little conversation between them, only the grim, silent battle. One painful step at a time. From time to time, she would murmur encouragement—” we are past the halfway mark,” “only four steps left”—but she had no idea if he understood. The only sound he made was a grunt of exertion, or the raw harsh panting of a man in pain, at the end of his tether. He hung on to consciousness by willpower alone. She had never seen such stubbornness, or such courage.

  At last they reached the top of the stairs. Straight ahead of them was the tiny room where Amy’s bed was tucked—no more than a narrow cupboard it was, really, but cosy enough and warm for her daughter. On the right was Ellie’s bedroom.

  “Bend your head again.” This time she was ready when he lurched forward and stumbled into her room. She managed to steer him to the small curtained-off alcove where her bed stood. He sprawled across it with a groan and lay there, unmoving. She collapsed beside him, gasping for breath, weak with relief. Her breath clouded visibly in the icy air. She had to get him covered, while he was still warm from the exertion of the climb.

  She had no nightshirt for him to wear. He was too broad in the shoulders and chest for any of her clothing and she had long ago sold anything of Hart’s that remained. The few thin blankets she had did not look warm enough to keep an unconscious man from catching a chill. The thickest, warmest coverings were on Amy’s bed.

  She wrapped him in a sheet and tugged the covers over him. She took all the clothes she possessed and spread them out over the bed—dresses, shawls, a faded pelisse, a threadbare cloak—any layer of cloth which would help keep out the cold. She fetched the hot brick and set it at his feet. Then she stood back. She could do no more. She was shivering herself, she realised. And her feet were frozen. She normally got into bed to keep warm.

  But tonight there was a strange man in her bed.

  Amy’s bed was only a narrow bench, as long and as wide as a child. No room for Ellie there. Downstairs, the fire was dying. Ellie sat on the wooden stool, drew her knees against her chest and wrapped her shawl even tighter around herself in an illusion of warmth. She had used up all her extra clothes to make the bed warm for the stranger. She stared across at him. He lay there, warm, relaxed, comfortable while she hugged herself against the cold. He had collapsed. He was insensible. He wouldn’t know she was there.

  She crept to the edge of the bed on frozen toes and looked at him. He lay on his back, his breathing deep and regular. In the frail
light of the candle the bandage glimmered white against his tanned skin and the thick, dark, tousled hair. There was a shadow of dark bristle on his lean, angular jaw. He seemed so big and dark and menacing in her bed. He took up much more of it than she did. And what if he woke?

  She couldn’t do this. She crept back to her stool. The chill settled. Drafts whispered up at her, insinuating themselves against her skin, nibbling at her like rats. Her chattering teeth echoed a crazed counterpoint to his deep, even breaths.

  She had no choice. It was her bed, after all. It would do nobody any good if she froze to death out here. What mattered propriety when it came to her very health? She ran downstairs again and fetched her frying pan. She took a deep breath, wrapped the sheet more tightly around herself and stepped into the sleeping alcove, frying pan in hand. Feeling as if she were burning her bridges, she closed the curtains which kept the cold drafts out. In the tiny, enclosed space, she felt even more alone with the stranger than ever…

  Outside, pellets of hail beat against her window.

  Carefully, stealthily, Ellie tucked the pan under the edge of the mattress, comfortingly to hand, then crept under the bedclothes. He wasn’t just in her bed, he took up most of the space. And almost all of the bedclothes. Without warning, she found herself lying hard against him, full length, his big body touching hers from shoulder to ankle. Threadbare sheets were all that lay between them. Ellie went rigid with anxiety. She poked him. “Hsst! Are you awake?” Her hand hovered, ready to snatch up the pan.

  He didn’t move; he just lay there, breathing slowly and evenly as he had for the last fifteen minutes. She tried to move away from him, but his weight had caused the mattress to sag. Her body could not help but roll downhill towards him. Against him. It was a most unsettling sensation. She wriggled a little, trying to reduce the contact between them. Her frozen toes slipped from their sheet and touched his long legs…and she sighed with pleasure. He was warm, like a furnace.

  Fever? She put out a hand in the darkness and felt his forehead. It seemed cool enough. But that could be the effect of the cold night air. She slipped a hand under the bedclothes and felt his chest. The skin was warm and dry, the muscles beneath it firm. He didn’t feel feverish at all. He felt…nice.

  She snatched her hand away and tucked herself back in her own cocoon of bedclothes. She closed her eyes firmly, trying to shut out the awareness of the man in her bed. Of course, she would not get a wink of sleep—she was braced against the possibility that he was awake, shamming unconsciousness, but at least she would be warm.

  She had never actually slept with a man before. Hart had not cared to stay with her longer than necessary. After coitus he had immediately left her, and once she had quickened with child he had never returned to her bed. So the very sensation of having a man sleep beside her was most…unsettling.

  She could smell him, smell the very masculine smell of his body, the scent of the herbal poultice she had made for his injury. His big, hard body seemed to fill the bed. It lifted the bedclothes so that there was a gap between him and her smaller frame, a gap for cold drafts to creep into. She wriggled closer, to close the gap a little, still lying rigid, apart from him, straining against the dip in the mattress.

  Slowly, insidiously, his body heat warmed her and gradually her defences relaxed. The combination of his reassuring stillness and the regularity of his deep breathing eased her anxious mind until finally she slept.

  And as she slept, her body curled against his, closing the gap seamlessly. Her cold toes slipped from their cool linen cocoon and rested on the hard warmth of his long bare calves. And her hand crept out and snuggled itself between the layers that wrapped him, until it was resting on that warm, firm, broad masculine chest…

  Weak winter sun woke her, lighting the small, spare room, setting a golden glow through the faded curtains that covered her sleeping alcove. Feeling cosy, relaxed and contented, Ellie yawned sleepily and stretched…and found herself snuggled hard against a man’s ribs, her feet curled around his leg, her arm across his prone body.

  She shot out of bed like a stone from a catapult and stood there shivering in the sudden cold, staring at the stranger, blinking as it all came back to her. She snatched some of her clothes and hurried downstairs to get the fire going again.

  The man slept on through the day. Apart from him sleeping like the dead, Ellie could find nothing wrong with him. She checked his head wound several times. It was no longer bleeding and showed no sign of infection. His breathing was deep and even. He wasn’t feverish and he didn’t toss and turn. He muttered occasionally, and each time, Amy came running to tell.

  Amy was fascinated by him. Ellie had managed to stop her daughter referring to the stranger as Papa, but she couldn’t seem to keep her away from his bedside. The weather was too bitter for her to play outside and the size of the cottage meant that if Amy wasn’t with Ellie downstairs, she was upstairs watching the man.

  It was harmless, Ellie told herself. And rather sweet. While Amy played with her dolls upstairs, she told him long, rambling stories and sang him songs, a little off-key. She told him of her special red wishing candle, that had brought him home. The child seemed quite unperturbed that he never responded to her prattle, that he just slept on.

  It would be a different story when he woke. If he ever did wake…

  She probably should have fetched Dr. Geddes. But she disliked him intensely. Dr. Geddes dressed fashionably, yet his tools of trade were filthy. He would bleed the man, give him a horrid-tasting potion of his own invention and charge a large fee. Ellie had little money and even less faith in him. Besides, Dr. Geddes was a friend of the squire…

  She folded the shirt, now clean and dry, and set it with his buckskin breeches on the chest in her room. Both garments had once been of good quality, but had seen hard wear and tear. There was nothing incongruous about a poor labourer wearing such clothes, however. In the last year she had been amazed to learn of the thriving trade in used clothing—second-, third-, even fourth-hand clothing. Even things she’d thought at the time were total rags she knew now could have been sold for a few pennies, or a farthing.

  She’d sold everything too cheaply, she realised in retrospect. Her jewellery, her furniture, treasured possessions, Amy’s clothes, her beautiful dolls’ house, with its exquisitely made furnishings, the tiny, perfect dolls with their lovely clothes and charming miniature knick-knacks—she could have sold them to far more purpose now. She had been ignorant, then, of the true value of things.

  Still, they were neither starving nor frozen, and her daughter derived just as much pleasure from her current dolls’ house, made from an old cheese box, with homemade dolls and furnishings made from odds and ends.

  Ellie examined the stranger’s other belongings. There were precious few—just the clothes he stood up in. His stockings were thick and coarse but walking on the bare ground in them had made holes, which she had yet to darn. She had found no other belongings to give a clue to his identity, only one item found wadded in his breeches pocket, a delicate cambric handkerchief, stiff with dried blood. An incongruous thing for such a man to be carrying. It did not go with the rest of him, his strong hands and his bruised knuckles.

  She recalled the way those big, battered knuckles had slipped so gently across her cheek and sighed. Such a small, unthinking gesture…it had unravelled all her resolve to keep him at a distance.

  He was a stranger, she told herself sternly. A brawler and possibly a thief as well. She hoped he had not stolen the handkerchief. It was bad enough having a strange man sleeping in her bed, let alone a thief.

  Rat-tat-tat! Ellie jumped at the sound.

  Amy’s eyes were big with fright. “Someone at the door, Mama,” she whispered.

  “Miz Carmichael?” a thick voice shouted.

  “It’s all right, darling. It’s only Ned. Just wait here.” Ellie put aside her mending and went to answer the door. She hesitated, then turned to her daughter. “You mustn’t tell Ned, or
anyone else, about the man upstairs, all right? It’s a secret, darling.”

  Her daughter gazed at her with solemn blue eyes and nodded. “’Coz of the squire,” she said, and went back to playing with her dolls’ house.

  Ellie closed her eyes in silent anguish, wishing she could have protected her daughter from such grim realities. But there was nothing she could do about it. She opened the door.

  “Brought your milk and the curds you wanted, Miz Carmichael,” said the man at the door and added, “Thought you might like these ‘uns, too.” He handed her a brace of hares. “Make a nice stew, they will. No need to tell the squire, eh?” He winked and made to move off.

  “Ned, you shouldn’t have!” Ellie was horrified, and yet she couldn’t help clutching the dead animals to her. It was a long time since she and Amy had eaten any meat, and yet Ned could hang or be transported for poaching. “I wouldn’t for the world get you into troub—”

  Ned chuckled. “Lord love ye, missus, don’t ye worry about me—I bin takin’ care o’ Squire’s extra livestock all me life, and me father and granfer before me.”

  “But—”

  The grizzled man waved a hand dismissively. “A gift for little missie’s birthday.”

  There was nothing Ellie could say. To argue would be to diminish Ned’s gift, and she could never do that. “Then I thank you, Ned. Amy and I will very much enjoy them.” She smiled and gestured back into the cottage. “Would you care to come in, then, and have a cup of soup? I have some hot on the fire.”

  “Oh, no, no, thank ye, missus. I’d not presume.” He shuffled his feet awkwardly, touched his forehead and stomped off into the forest before she could say another word.

  Ellie watched him go, touched by the man’s awkwardness, his pride and the risky, generous gift. The hares hung heavy in her arms. They would be a feast. And the sooner they were in the pot, the safer it would be for all concerned. She had planned to make curd cakes for Amy’s birthday surprise. Now they would both enjoy a good, thick meaty stew as well—it would almost be a proper birthday celebration. And if the man upstairs ever woke up, she would have something substantial to feed him, too.