A Woman of Choice

by Kris Tualla

  Another flash-boom combination threw Sydney off the bench and into him. She buried her face against his chest and slid her arms around his waist. Nicolas bent his head over hers. His hair hung in dripping strands around her face.

  With his arms still around her, he led her deeper into the trees to a large flat rock where they sat together in the cooling rain. Sydney huddled against him, her head under his chin and her face pressed against his shoulder. Conversation was impossible, as lightening and thunder argued vehemently and shot water bullets all around them.

  Nicolas liked protecting Sydney.

  He liked it because it was unexpected.

  He thought her fearless. The way she faced her situation. The way she faced Fyrste. Even the way she faced him. All depicted an intrepid member of the gender that she redefined as definitely not weaker. But now she looked to him for comfort.

  He wondered about the man who had her first. Had that man comforted her? Had he cared for her? Did he understand her? Was he worthy of her trust? Obviously not.

  If he was, Sydney wouldn’t be in his arms now.

  The storm slowly calmed to a steady rain, but it was still too wet to drive.

  Sydney relaxed a little and looked up at him. Her eyelashes were spiky and black with rain, and water dripped off her nose. Nicolas smiled and wiped the drip away. Then he noticed a drip on her chin and slid his finger along her jaw to catch it. Water ran off her eyebrows. He leaned over and kissed the drops away.

  Sydney brushed heavy strands of wet hair from his face, and tried to tuck them behind his ears. Giggling at the failed attempt, she stood and faced him. Using both hands, she tried again to get his abundant locks to stay out of the way, but the rain thwarted her attempts.

  “I give up!” she laughed. She leaned over and kissed the water drops from his cheeks. Then she kissed them from his eyelashes. Then from his upper lip. And then his lower lip.

  And she waited.

  Nicolas pulled her to him, slippery with rain as his mouth claimed hers. Her hands swiped his back, shoulders and arms as the cloudburst rewetted every inch of his skin. Her mouth traveled down his throat and along his collarbone. He groaned his craving.

  He worked his fingers through her hair and pulled it from its constraints. It clung to her neck like a black vine, heavy with rainwater. He slid off the rock and she leaned against his chest. The downpour slicked their bodies as warm tongues tasted cool rain-washed skin.

  A loud nicker from Sessa brought them back to awareness. The rain had slowed to a drizzle. Nicolas wound Sydney’s hair around his hand and pulled her in for one long, bottomless kiss. Fulfillment would have to wait, however, for another time and place.

  Nicolas handed Sydney up to the wagon bench, then adjusted his breeches with an acknowledging grin and climbed up next to her. Clucking to the team, he shook the reigns. The bays strained to pull the wagon from the roadside mud. Sydney settled under Nicolas’s arm as the team gained purchase and headed toward home.

  “Nicolas?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Might I ask you a hard question?”

  Dread nudged him, spoiling his contented mood. “Hard for you, or hard for me?” he teased, buying a little time.

  “You, I think.” There was no humor in her tone.

  He nodded. “I suppose I owe you that.”

  Sydney didn’t change her position and he couldn’t see her face. So he knew she couldn’t see his. He waited.

  “Why wouldn’t you fetch the midwife?”

  Nicolas’s world went flat. He didn’t know she could knock him senseless without laying a hand on him. Though he intended to, he couldn’t force himself to say the words out loud because every time he did, Lara died again.

  Sydney pulled away and faced him. Her eyes were enormous. Gray like the storm yet green like new life. She didn’t blink.

  “Nicolas?”

  His brow twitched and he shook his head erratically.

  “Was it Lara?” she whispered. “Is that how she died?”

  “Yes,” he rasped.

  “But Stefan lived.”

  “His brother died. They were twins.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s why, you see? The babies were too much for her.” Nicolas pressed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “It was my fault.”

  Sydney gripped his arm and pulled it away. “How? How could that be?”

  Nicolas frowned at her. Wasn’t that answer obvious? “I married her. I laid with her. My lust for her killed her.”

  Her brow lowered. “You don’t truly believe that.”

  Of course he did. It was the truth. “That’s why, Sydney.”

  “Why what?”

  “Why I can never do it again. Ever.”

  Sydney’s chin lifted. Her stare was intense. “Do what?”

  “Love. Marry. My turn has passed.”

  Her countenance shifted. Her mouth opened. She turned away from him, her arms flailing as she scrambled from the moving wagon. Nicolas yanked back on the reins and booted the brake hard.

  “Sydney! What are you doing?” he yelled.

  She didn’t answer him. She fell to her hands and knees on the sodden forest floor and vomited. Nicolas leapt from the wagon and knelt at her side. He held her hair and rubbed her back, and when she sat up on her heels he fished his damp handkerchief from his wet back pocket and gave it to her.

  Sydney wiped her mouth, her face flushed, then pale, then flushed again. “Breakfast was too greasy, it seems. Sat in my belly like a rock…”

  “Is that all it is? Are you certain?” he demanded.

  “Yes.” She staggered to her feet and wobbled back to the wagon.

  “Sydney!” he called after her. He followed when she ignored him.

  He lifted her back to the bench and climbed up next to her, sliding all the way to one side. “Rest like you did the other day,” he

  suggested. He patted his thigh.

  She said nothing, and she didn’t look at him. But she curled on the bench and laid her head in his lap. She closed her eyes.

  “Not much of a traveler, are you?” he said softly. When she didn’t respond, he rested his hand on her hip and slapped the reins.

  He welcomed her silence right then. Something was niggling at him and he needed to figure out what it was. For the next hour he rethought his words and tried to discern why they didn’t feel as they always had. Their flavor was different. The saltiness of his sorrow had turned bitter. But he couldn’t explain how, exactly.

  When they reached his estate, Sessa was tucked in her new stall and then Sydney was tucked in her bed. Nicolas retreated to his study to have a brandy or two and ponder the odd sensation. When he saw his violin case on his desk, it stopped him sure as a bullet. Clarity shot through him.

  He opened the case and lifted the unique instrument. He ran his fingers over the elaborate mother-of-pearl inlays. He inhaled the sharp aroma of the wood and lacquer. He slid his palm along the narrow neck and his fingers over the taught strings.

  This Hardanger fiddle was a work of art. And very valuable to him besides; not only because of the extraordinary craftsmanship that went into it, but because it was a gift from one of his older cousins, given to him over a decade ago when he stayed in Norway.

  When he played it, he experienced music and it stirred his soul. Just like Sydney said.

  And what if this fiddle was taken from him and destroyed?

  If he said that his instrument was gone forever, and music was no longer in his life, he would be understood. Empathized with. Certainly not expected to play again.

  But if he walked into his study one day and another fiddle lay on his desk—what then? It could never be the same as his beloved Hardanger. It would feel different in his hands and tucked under his chin. It would sound different. Make different music.

  For nearly six years, he had stoically shouldered the burden of loss. However, when he spoke to Sydney today, his rhetoric sounded more like he was stubbornly p
rolonging the pain of his loss. To make his situation more complicated, he had a suspicion that a new fiddle might be sleeping in the room upstairs right now.

  “Skitt.” Nicolas gulped a large glass of brandy. He poured another.

   

  Sydney went down to supper at seven. A long nap had served her well and she was ready to face Nicolas again.

  “Are you better?” he asked when she entered the dining room.

  “Yes, thank you.” She sat as he held her chair. “I’m afraid I didn’t sleep much after that horrible encounter last night. Every time I closed my eyes I saw him again.” While Nicolas moved to his own chair she continued, “I think the lack of sleep, combined with those fried eggs and that greasy bacon, did me in.”

  Nicolas unfolded his napkin and laid it in his lap. His brow ebbed and his sea gaze washed over her. “Are you certain, Sydney? There’s nothing else?”

  “Yes, of course.” She stared back at him. “What else could it be? I’m fine.”

  After they helped themselves to supper, Nicolas told her, “Addie said I had a visitor while we were gone.”

  She paused, her knife hovering over the roasted lamb. “Who?”

  “The Cheltenham schoolteacher. Said he was going to homesteads in the area to see if he had any new students coming in the fall. Addie told him I wasn’t here and he should come back.”

  “Has Stefan started school yet?”

  Nicolas cut a precise piece of lamb before he answered. “I had thought to send him away to a military school.”

  That was a surprise. “What on earth prompted you to choose that path?”

  He frowned. “I don’t consider myself able to educate him.”

  “Don’t you like your son?”

  Nicolas slammed his silverware on the table. “What sort of question is that?”

  Sydney looked him hard in the eyes. “I only want to know why it is you don’t want him around.”

  Nicolas’s brow pushed down and his face reddened beyond his perpetual sunburn.

  “Is it because he reminds you?” she pressed.

  Nicolas’s expression transformed into shock and unmasked anger. Pain in his soul escaped through dilated pupils turning his eyes nearly black. He didn’t move, but Sydney saw a tremor in his hands. The scar on his cheek rippled and paled.

  “You have overstepped yourself, Sydney!” he warned.

  She dipped her chin. “If I have, then I apologize.”

  Nicolas looked away and cut another morsel of uneaten lamb.

  “But am I right?”

  “Gud forbanner det!” he shouted. “What are you trying to do?”

  “I’m trying to make you think before you make a decision you might regret!” she declared.

  “It’s none of your affair!” he declared right back.

  Sydney folded her arms. She lifted one brow. “That is why you should listen to me. I’m impartial.”

  “Oh! Is that so?” Nicolas scoffed. He leaned on his elbows. “Then what, pray tell, would you have me do?”

  “Perhaps he could learn some basic things here first,” she proposed in a measured tone. She leaned forward and spoke across the white linen divide. “At home. With his father. Who loves him.”

  Nicolas glared at her. But he didn’t argue. He seemed to be considering her words, so she pushed on. “You could still send Stefan away at a later date, should you prefer. When he’s older, of course.”

  Nicolas faced his dinner plate and ate without answering. Sydney heard the force of his breath and saw the jerk of his hands. His silverware scraped the china, squealing through their brittle silence. Sydney had just about decided to retire to her room and leave him alone to his brooding when he cleared his throat. She met his gaze, glad to note the ocean was visible in his eyes again.

  “I suppose I could consider it. If the teacher comes back, I’ll hear him out. After all, as you said, other decisions can be made if it comes to that.”

  Chapter Twenty

  June 21, 1819

  Cheltenham

  The schoolteacher was medium. Medium height, medium build, sandy brown hair and medium brown eyes. He was so non-descript as to be markedly so. He shook Nicolas’s hand with a medium grip.

  “How do you do, sir? My name is Devin Kilbourne. I’m the teacher here in Cheltenham,” he said in a medium voice. “I understand you have a son who’ll be starting school soon?”

  “Perhaps so.” Nicolas waved Mr. Kilbourne to a seat.

  “Perhaps so?”

  “I’m a widower, Mr. Kilbourne, with an estate to care for. I haven’t time to see to my son’s education. My plans are to send him to military school when he turns seven.”

  “I see. And how old is he now, might I ask?”

  “Five. Six in September.”

  The teacher’s eyes flickered around the room. “And has he had his basic instruction yet?”

  Nicolas frowned. “What precisely do you mean by his basic instruction?”

  “Can he count?”

  “Yes. To ten.”

  “But no farther?”

  Nicolas shook his head.

  “So he has no skills in arithmetic?”

  “No.”

  Mr. Kilbourne tilted his head. “How about his letters, sir? Does he know the alphabet?”

  Nicolas cleared his throat and shifted uneasily in his chair. “Um, no, he doesn’t.”

  “So he’s not able to read at all?”

  Nicolas shook his head again. He was getting a disturbing view of Stefan’s deficiencies, along with the realization that he, by his neglect, was the one to blame for them.

  “If he doesn’t know his letters, then I don’t imagine he can write? Or can he write his name?”

  Humbled by this nondescript entity, Nicolas shook his head for a third time.

  Devin Kilbourne leaned back in his chair and fixed Nicolas with a pleasant gaze. “I can help you, Mr. Hansen. Regular classes don’t begin until September, so I have time to tutor your son—what’s his name?”

  “Stefan.”

  “I can tutor Stefan for the next couple of months and help prepare him for whatever school you wish to send him to.”

  Nicolas leaned forward and fixed a narrowed eye on the teacher. “What will this cost me?”

  Kilbourne chuckled. “Well of course, a man has to eat.” He mentioned a number.

  Nicolas countered.

  Kilbourne accepted and with a handshake the deal was struck. “Shall we go meet the student?”

  Nicolas led the teacher out the back door. “Stefan has chores to do, so he’s most likely in the stable with John Spencer, my foreman.”

  “Chores are important. They build character and responsibility,” Mr. Kilbourne approved. Why that comment vexed Nicolas was beyond him.

   

  Sydney was working Sessa in the corral, dressed as always in the stained breeches and oversized chambray work shirt.

  “Sydney!” Nicolas called. “There’s someone present you need to meet!”

  She turned toward him and he saw her shoulders fall. Her cheeks splotched a vivid red. She ambled toward him, Sessa in tow. Her chin dipped as if she had pulled an invisible hat brim low over her forehead.

  “Sydney, this is Mr. Kilbourne, the Cheltenham school teacher. He’s going to tutor Stefan.” Nicolas grinned, confident she’d be pleased.

  “Nice to meet you.” Sydney didn’t smile. And she didn’t meet the man’s eyes.

  Devin sent an awkward glance at Nicolas then jerked his chin in a semblance of a nod. “Madam.”

  Nicolas grew annoyed by her unexpected rudeness. “Have you seen Stefan?”

  “I believe he’s cleaning stalls. If you’ll excuse me?” She turned, put Sessa between her and the teacher, and crossed the corral.

  Nicolas resolved to take her to task for her discourtesy later. For now, he led Mr. Kilbourne toward the stable. He noticed the teacher stared over his shoulder at Sydney, presently hidden behind the filly. Consider
ing her unusual mode of dress, that wasn’t surprising.

  They found Stefan feeding Wolf, and Nicolas introduced him to Mr. Kilbourne. “He’s going to be your teacher. He’s going to teach you about numbers and letters. You’ll learn to read and do arithmetic.”

  Stefan looked up at the teacher, then at his father.

  “Why?”

  Nicolas wasn’t prepared for that particular response. Before he could concoct an answer, the teacher knelt so his eyes were at Stefan’s level.

  “Someday you’ll be the man at this estate, Stefan. I’m going to teach you some things that you’ll need to know in order to take care of it.”

  Stefan seemed unconvinced. He looked back up at Nicolas with a confused expression.

  “This is important, Stefan. So important, that… um… I’ll do some of your chores so you have time to learn from Mr. Kilbourne,” Nicolas offered.

  That offer obviously held some weight. Stefan turned back to the teacher. “Do you have candy?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right.”

  And that was the end of the discussion.

   

  Nicolas sent the teacher on his way after agreeing to a schedule for Stefan’s tutoring. When there was a knock at the front door, he assumed the man had returned for some reason. Instead, he was surprised to find Lily Atherton standing on his front porch, her carriage and driver in his yard. Of late he had forgotten about her and her seductive pursuit of his attention. That recollection now slapped him across the face with her expensive perfume.

  “Nicolas! How I’ve missed you! I haven’t seen you in weeks.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek and pressed her body to his.

  “I’ve been very busy,” he demurred, setting her away from him. “What can I do for you?”

  “I brought you a present,” she cooed, undaunted. She twirled her finger in circles against his chest.

  He tried not to visibly recoil. “Oh?”

  “It’s outside.”