by Kris Tualla
Nicolas unfolded his legs and climbed from the floor. He limped to the brandy bottle and poured a last drink. Gulping the fiery liquid, he dropped the glass back on the side table.
“Very well,” he said. “But remember, should you need it, I have offered my assistance.”
Rickard was quiet for so long, Nicolas rounded to look at him.
Rickard lifted his eyes to Nicolas, and locked on his gaze. “Thank you.”
Nicolas nodded. “I’m sheering my sheep tomorrow. Will you come?”
“I’ll be there at dawn.”
“See you, then.” And he left.
March 29, 1822
Cheltenham
Nicolas straightened and leaned backward, bracing his hands behind his waist as he stretched. He wiped sweat from his brow on an already filthy sleeve, then sniffed several times and spat bits of wool on the ground. The long, heavy shears hung loose in his hand.
“I must have had a moment of insanity when I wished to return to this task!” Grinning at Rickard, he shook his head. “I forgot how horribly these creatures smelled!”
“I was wondering what romantic thoughts prompted you thus,” Rickard answered and pointed at Jeremy. “He managed quite well last year when you were in Norway!” Jeremy smiled and wordlessly tagged another sheep’s ear.
“And he shall do fine in the future, I assure you!” Nicolas turned to address his young foreman, pointing with the sharp steel blades. “Should I insist on doing this myself next year, please remind me of my advancing age and accompanying foolishness, will you?”
Jeremy laughed, then. “Oh, yes, sir. I shall readily remind my employer—and my benefactor—that he is old and doddering. Right after I saw my left arm off with a rusty spoon!”
Laughter burst from Nicolas, his bass voice echoing through the trees and startling the small flock. Rickard whooped his amusement. The three men sat down together and ladled water from a bucket. Nicolas poured a cupful over his head, and then shook it. Drops of crystal, refracting tiny rainbows, splattered the other men.
“Easy, you Norwegian hound!” Rickard smacked Nicolas’s chest, backhand. “I’ll bathe myself later!”
Leif and Stefan tumbled through the woods from the sheep’s keep.
“It’s clean now, Pappa! All cleared out. Where’s Wolf?” Stefan’s gaze scanned the flock.
“I sheared him toward the first,” Nicolas answered, waving at the paddock. One ram raised his head and began to trot to toward the railing, tail wagging furiously.
“Wolf!” Stefan called and ran toward his erstwhile pet.
“May I help you, Sir?” Leif offered.
Nicolas glanced at Jeremy. “I suppose you should be trained, since you will be pressed into service next year, eh?”
Jeremy nodded. “Of course.”
“I’ll start you with tying the batts, then.” Nicolas pushed to his feet. “The twine is over here…” The sheep were sheared in such a way that the wool came off in one matted piece, belly to back. Nicolas showed Leif how to roll the batts and tie them into bales to sell.
“We’ll keep a few for ourselves, of course. Anne and Sarah will clean and prepare those a bit later. But for the most part, we’ll take these to market in St. Louis,” Nicolas explained.
“Why are those sheep tied over there?” Leif pointed at five young males on a tether near the stable.
“Those, we’ll eat.”
“Who butchers them?” Leif asked.
“I have in the past, but I understand that Jack has some experience. Is that so, Jeremy?” Nicolas faced his foreman.
“He has,” Jeremy confirmed.
“And Anne is skilled at smoking meat.” Nicolas patted his stomach. “We all are sensible of her culinary skills, are we not?”
A chorus of vigorous assent answered his query.
Leif nodded emphatically. “At Yuletide, her pinnekjøtt was the best I ever had!” he gushed, referring to the smoked lamb ribs that were Norse tradition.
Nicolas squinted at the sky. “We best get back to it, men. Watch us, Leif. You’ll see the routine and how we work together.”
The men fell into their pattern: sorting, tagging, shearing, counting. Two more males were tied to the tether. Wolf was spared because he bred well with the ewes, much to Stefan’s oft-repeated relief.
Sydney and Anne brought the men a hearty lunch of sausage, cheese, bread and apple pie at midday. A much-appreciated pitcher of cold honeyed ale accompanied the food.
The men worked until late afternoon. With Jeremy and Leif helping, it only took one day to complete the task, not the two days that Nicolas and Rickard required in the past.
“Will you stay for supper?” Nicolas asked his friend.
Rickard glanced at the cloudless sky and the lowering sun. “I’d enjoy the company, Nick, but I best be getting back to Bronnie.”
Nicolas flashed a crooked grin. “We’re not bachelors anymore, are we, brother?”
“No, we are not.” Rickard slapped his shoulder. “And someday you must tell me why I remained so for such a long time. What, in God’s name, was in my mind?”
***
“What, i Guds navn, was in my mind?” Nicolas groaned. Forehead resting on crossed arms, he lay on the rug of their bedroom while Sydney generously applied liniment to his abused body. Heat from the fireplace amplified the stench of the balm; it stung her nostrils and made her eyes water.
“You said you wanted to feel your muscles burn with effort,” Sydney reminded him.
“Oh, they burned, all right,” he answered, his deep muffled voice emanating from his armpits. A knock on the door preceded Anne’s entry with a tray of steaming willow bark tea for his pain.
“Set it on my dressing table,” Sydney instructed.
“Will there be anything else, Ma’am?” The young woman’s eyes avoided her half-naked superior stretched out on the floor. But her mouth twitched when he moaned.
Sydney bit back a responding smile and shook her head. “No, Anne. Thank you.” Anne closed the door softly, leaving them alone once more.
“You will need to wear a shirt to bed,” Sydney commented, climbing to her feet and corking the bottle of emolument “Even so, I fear I’ll have to change the sheets tomorrow.”
“Um-hmm.” Nicolas did not move.
Sydney pulled a clean shirt from his dresser and draped it over his back.
“That feels good… Holds the heat…” he grunted. His breathing settled into a deep rhythm.
And then, he snored.
Chapter Twenty Six
March 31, 1822
St. Louis
Candidate Hansen Embroiled in Paternity Dispute
Legislative candidate, Nicolas R. Hansen, has fathered a child out of wedlock according to Lady Lily Atherton Kensington of Raleigh, North Carolina, formerly of Cheltenham. Mrs. Kensington expects to be confined in August with a child she says the candidate fathered.
Mr. Hansen’s wife, Siobhan Sydney Hansen, practices midwifery. Her assistant is one of Mrs. Kensington’s own house slaves, whom Mrs. Hansen is training to deliver Negro women of their infants. Mrs. Kensington, who has been visiting her brother on their shared estate, graciously made the slave girl available to Mrs. Hansen, and transported her on demand to the Hansen estate, nearly two miles distant.
It was often Mrs. Kensington’s practice to await their return at the Hansen estate, at which time she could transport the girl home on top of her carriage. These are the opportunities ~ when she and Mr. Hansen were alone in his manor ~ that Mr. Hansen pressed his full advantage and claimed her affections.
Mrs. Kensington further explains that Mr. Hansen did pursue Mrs. Kensington at one time for the purpose of marriage, but when she declined, he quickly married the current Mrs. Hansen in her stead.
Sir Ezra Warpold Kensington, husband of Lady Kensington, has stated that he will accept Hansen’s child, and raise it as his own heir, once the couple has returned to Raleigh. Mrs. Kensington indicates that they intend to
return as soon as she is able to liquidate her half of the Cheltenham estate she shares with her brother.
April 1, 1822
Rodger knew the woman was lying. He’d done enough of it in his own life to recognize it immediately in someone else.
But it made a dashed good story.
“Is that what I’ve come to?” he wondered aloud, walking home at the end of the day. “In all things? Or only where Hansen is concerned?” A man passing him from the opposite direction glanced up at his words, making curious eye contact. Rodger touched the brim of his hat and kept moving.
Do not speak out loud, he chided himself. Not when you are alone in public!
The claim that Hansen had bedded this young woman repeatedly since his marriage was ludicrous. She was undoubtedly beautiful—even in her delicate condition—and beautifully attired. And she smelled very good. But Rodger had seen Hansen and Siobhan together from the beginning. Rodger would bet his life that Hansen would not stray from her bed for anything. Or anyone.
So why write the article?
Because it made a dashed good story.
“And because he banished Devin from me, and then killed Edward,” Rodger reiterated his litany of injustices. “He must pay.”
Rodger sighed, turning the last corner. He pulled his collar up against a soft spring rain that had begun to drift from a featureless dusky sky. Revenge was tasting less sweet. It required an enormous amount of effort, and seemed to be having little of the desired effect. Certainly it was a thorn in Hansen’s side. How could it not be? And it must have aided Beckermann’s cause; he seemed to be the leading legislative contender in St. Louis proper.
But this was not so in the outlying areas. Those people did not all receive the Enquirer, so his campaign to discredit Hansen had little effect there. Instead, they flocked to meet the man and listened to his words. He was one of them, and he understood the peculiarities of their rustic lives. His own estate thrived because of his physical labors. He inspired their trust.
And all Rodger could attack was his character. His politics, his ideas, and his goals were all perfectly reasonable. Perfectly well thought out. Perfectly modern.
Damn the man.
Rodger’s breath caught. A ripple passed through his lower belly and trickled down his inner thighs. He hated Hansen, then, for an entirely different reason. Damn the man.
Rodger unlocked the door to his apartment. Damn him and all that he is.
April 8, 1822
Sydney’s bleeding had stopped days ago. She had no lingering physical symptoms of the miscarriage, save the unexpected blade of mourning that pricked her at the oddest times and made it hard for her to breathe.
“It was never a child,” she told herself each time, and wiped the inevitable tear.
Nicolas was kind, solicitous, concerned. He inquired about her health and her mood. He made light conversation about the spring weather. He offered her books or articles to read. And he spent hours in his study with his fiddle, as if the instrument’s sad tones spoke of things he could not put into words.
Sydney sat on the staircase outside his study door and listened, imagining how Nicolas looked when he played. How his long fingers moved over the Hardanger’s frets. How he held the bow so tenderly yet firmly in his hand. She wished she was the bow.
Because he did not touch her. At all.
That loss gutted her even more than the other. She put her best face on it, trying to be content and serene in his presence. She smiled, conversed in return, read what he offered. She knew he was worried about the campaign; how could he not be? But he never mentioned it to her.
This night, she reached the end of her endurance.
She sat down to supper with him in the dining room and stared without appetite at the soup Anne set before her. Her throat constricted. Her shoulders began to shudder. Unable to hold herself in check any longer, she groaned in ragged, staccato gasps.
“Sydney? What’s amiss?” Nicolas sprung to her and knelt beside her chair. “Min presang?”
She could not put words to her pain any more than he could. She covered her face and rocked forward and back in her seat, crying without control.
Nicolas pushed her chair away from the table, scraping it from the rug onto the polished wood floor. He grasped her wrists and pulled her hands down. “Sydney! Look at me!”
She would not; could not. She swayed slowly from side to side, eyes closed. Nicolas let go of her wrists. Before she realized his intent, he stood with her cradled in his arms.
“Bring some tea upstairs,” he instructed someone, most likely Anne.
“Yes, sir.”
Sydney leaned her head against his chest. She smelled his shaving soap, and could hear his heart beating, strong and insistent. Though her breath still came in spasmodic gulps of hysteria, she relaxed her legs to ease his burden.
He carried her down the hall and took the stairs two at a time. In their room, he laid her on the bed, on top of the covers. He pulled her shoes off, she heard them drop on the floor, and he stroked her face, pushing her hair back.
“Sydney? Please, tell me what’s amiss,” he murmured. “I’m here, min presang. I’m here.”
Her voice strained awkwardly past her tears. “No… you are not.”
“I am! I am right here!” His alarm was evident. “Open your eyes! Do you not see me?”
Sydney did, then. “Yes, I see you. That is not what I meant.”
“What then?” Nicolas’s beautiful blue eyes owned her. She wanted to climb inside them and never come out.
It was too much effort to be gracious. “You no longer touch me.”
Nicolas recoiled as though shot. His face drained of color.
“What?”
“Ever since that night. In St. Louis. You have not touched me.” Sydney spoke between sob spasms.
“I…that is… you need to—to heal,” he stammered.
“Not only that. You don’t even take my hand.”
Nicolas stood and paced around the bed. He ran his hands through his hair. The scar on his cheek whitened.
Sydney reached reflexively for her wedding ring and turned it around her finger. Anne knocked on the door and brought in the tea. Sydney sat up and reached for the tray, her eyes fixed on the coverlet. She set it on the bed in front of her.
“Thank you, Anne.”
“Is there anything else, ma’am?” Her voice was kind.
“No.”
Anne closed the door softly. Sydney poured tea and added milk. She did not look at Nicolas who continued to pace and fidget.
Hands on his hips, hands through his hair. Gazing out the window, gazing into the fire. Jaw and fists clenching. Sydney finished her cup of tea before he stopped and faced her.
“The thing that eats at me, the thing I cannot get beyond, is that you did not trust me,” he declared.
The cup rattled in the saucer. “Trust you? In what way?” she asked, confused.
“You did not trust me enough to tell me there was a child.”
“But there was not…”
Nicolas slammed his palm on top of the dresser. “Do not play games with me, Sydney! You understand what I mean!” he shouted.
Sydney cringed.
Nicolas saw and softened a bit. “Why did you not tell me?” he pressed.
She swallowed and got her grit up. “I knew it would frighten you.”
Nicolas straightened. “Only that?”
Sydney shook her head. “And all the other things.”
“What other things?”
Sydney held her hand in front of her and ticked off her fingers as she said them.
“The hectic campaign schedule, the upsetting articles in the paper, Lily’s demands on Rickard and her threats of mischief against you… The fire in the apartment and the attack on the road.”
Nicolas spread his hands out to the side. “None of that is as important as a child!”
“But I knew it would upset you. Distract you.” She paused. �
�Anger you.”
Nicolas dropped his hands. He crossed to the hearth and grabbed the rocking chair. He pulled it closer to the bed.
“Anger me,” he whispered; it was so quiet Sydney almost did not hear him.
He heaved a deep breath and sat in the chair, elbows on his knees, and resting his forehead on the heels of his hands.
“Oh, Sydney.”
“Was I so wrong about that?” she ventured.
He did not answer at first. Then, without moving, “Even so, you should have told me.”
Sydney adjusted her stance on the bed. “It was not the same, Nicolas. How do I explain this to a man?”
“With words. Specific words,” he responded, jaw flexing.
Sydney thought a minute. “I was nauseated, but not all the time. And on that day, I woke up feeling wonderful for the first time in over two months.”
Nicolas shrugged. “And how was that hard to explain?”
Sydney rolled her eyes. “There is more to it than that!”
“Go on, then.” He rolled his finger in a circle like a wheel.
“When I have carried before, my bosom was hot and heavy feeling; tender, sore to the touch. Even my clothing hurt at times. But not this time.”
“Oh.” Nicolas sat back in the chair, pondering. “Was there aught else?”
“I bled in January, but only for a day. Do you remember that?”
He nodded. “I do.”
“Why did I bleed at all, if there was a baby?”
“I am beginning to see your point.”
“And if there was a baby, and I bled, did it kill the baby?” Sydney pushed her palms against her cheeks. “Or maybe it died first?”
Nicolas considered her for a long time. Silent and somber, the fire behind him incongruently haloed his form in the darkening room. He looked away, rubbed his finger over his lip. He closed his eyes, jaw jutting, and then opened them again. His voice was low and rough.