Liberty for Paul

by Rose Gordon

  Richard was a burly man who had a coarse way with words. “Whoever wrote my book must have the personality of a piece of rope because they wrote, ‘Always be polite, never speak unless spoken to, and always say something cordial and diplomatic’. I don’t like that. Instead, I think it should read, ‘If someone’s rude, ignore them. Speak if you have something to say, and if it angers someone, who gives a hang? You are who you are, and if someone can’t accept it, then you sure as h—’”

  “Well done, Richard,” Mrs. Jones said excitedly, looking like she was going to burst with pride at the fact these people had actually written so many words. Especially since Richard didn’t say anything offensive until the end, and even then she’d been able to cut him off before he got too worked up.

  Liberty, on the other hand, just shook her head. No need to correct their misconceptions. None of these people were likely to dine, or even associate for that matter, with nobility, so why burst their bubble?

  Mrs. Jones collected the books and the adults and older children took their leave. Liberty went to the small group of younger children to wait with them until their mothers showed up.

  When she married Paul she’d acknowledged that she’d never have children. She’d had no desire to be intimate with him, and it seemed that he shared the feeling, for he’d never even tried to visit her bed. Even when she’d been in nothing but a towel in front of him, he hadn’t looked interested in anything more than teasing her by dangling the chemise out of her grip. His eyes held none of the love and desire she’d seen in Andrew’s when he looked at her sister.

  Oh well, she thought, taking a seat by the children. If she couldn’t have her own children, at least she’d have a niece or nephew to dote on in a few months, and until then, she could enjoy being around these children.

  She sat with them and told them stories of America and the scrapes she and her sisters got into as children. She always left off any details that showed her in an unsavory light, of course. These children idolized her, no need to ruin that.

  One by one, mothers came to pick up their children until it was just Liberty and Seth. It wasn’t unusual for Seth to be there longer than the others. His mother worked down the street and sometimes she had a hard time getting away from her duties in order to come get him. Neither Seth nor Liberty seemed to mind though. They’d make up adventure stories or play war with little tin soldiers he brought with him. Last week she’d even let him talk her into a sword fight with two wooden broom sticks.

  She always feared if someone walked in on them while she was engaging in such activities she’d be made into the laughing stock of the village. But somewhere along the way, she’d begun to learn there was more to life than following the rules and doing everything perfectly. As Paul so bluntly pointed out, she already had a husband. And that husband never took her to social events so why did it matter so much anymore to be all prim and proper? At home she tried her best to behave herself and keep calm so not to disappoint her husband or father any further than she already had. But there was no harm in letting her hair down and having fun while nobody was around.

  Today Seth wanted to hear stories about the Indians he’d heard lived in America. Liberty obliged him and told him everything she knew about Indians, which wasn’t much, but the young boy found it fascinating all the same. Finding a few broken quills and an abandoned scarf, Liberty fashioned him a headdress to wear around the room.

  She smiled a smile born of pure joy when she placed it on his head and he started running around the room patting his hand over his open mouth in an attempt to do the Indian war cry she’d showed him. He settled down only for a minute to think up names for the two of them. “I’ll be Chief Learn-to-read and you can be Read-a-lot,” he said with a grin.

  Liberty didn’t particularly love the names, but it was better than she could have come up with. There was nothing in this world that would make her want to ruin the boy’s joy, even if it meant suffering for a half hour with a ridiculous Indian name.

  He ran around the room and jumped over small hurdles yelping and making masculine noises, occasionally saying, “Don’t worry Read-a-lot, Chief Learn-to-read will save you!”

  This would most certainly be a true entry in her journal tonight, and knowing Paul, he wouldn’t even bat an eyelash at the tale. He might or might not believe her, but compared to some of the other stories she’d made up in there, this was actually rather mild.

  Seth came to an abrupt stop in front of her. “Read-a-lot,” he said with wide eyes.

  “Yes?”

  “How am I to protect you without a bow and arrow?” he asked very seriously.

  “Ugh,” she stammered. What did she do now? She wasn’t going to give him a weapon, real or pretend. She had to draw the line somewhere.

  His eyes lit up. “Forget the bow and arrow. How about a tomahawk?!”

  “No!” she exclaimed. That was even worse. “I don’t have the material to help you make a bow and arrow. Why don’t you just use your imagination?” Though she didn’t like the idea of violence, she figured an imaginary weapon was better than a real one, right?

  With a shrug, Chief Learn-to-read went back on the warpath in an effort to save her. He was jumping around and making so much noise neither of them heard his mother enter until he spotted her standing by the door and shouted, “Duck, Read-a-lot, it’s the enemy, MilkyMum.” He then pretended to shoot an imaginary arrow in his mother’s direction.

  Not missing a beat, the woman waited three seconds then brought her hands up to her chest, pretending there was a wound there, then she gave a wounded squeal, rolled her head back and sank to the floor.

  “Bravo, MilkyMum,” Chief Learn-to-read cheered.

  Liberty clapped her hands at the performance and went over to see if the woman needed help getting up off the floor.

  “I’m all right, there’s no need to help me,” Seth’s mother assured her. “He really likes you, you know.” After Liberty shot her a quizzical look, the other woman clarified, “Seth. He enjoys coming to see you. He talks about you all week and gets so excited on the days he gets to come see you.”

  Liberty smiled at both Seth and his mother. As far as she knew, nobody enjoyed seeing her, except maybe the back of her as she was leaving a room. “I enjoy seeing him, too. Our time together is the highlight of my week,” she said truthfully.

  “I’m glad to hear that. I must admit I was a bit surprised when I heard you volunteered. I mean, Paul is a very nice man and all, but even I didn’t expect him to allow his wife to tutor the illegitimate.”

  “You mean the illiterate,” Liberty corrected, scanning the woman’s beautiful face. She had to admit Seth’s mother was a very beautiful woman. She had raven hair, blue eyes, porcelain skin, red lips and very curvaceous figure.

  “Yes, well, that too, I suppose,” the other woman said, with a dim smile.

  Liberty eyed her askance. This woman might be gorgeous, but she didn’t seem very smart. Surely she knew the difference between illiterate and illegitimate.

  “You did read the sign, didn’t you?” the dark haired woman asked skeptically.

  Liberty nodded. Of course she’d read the sign. That’s how she knew there was a need to help the illiterate of the village learn to read.

  “So then you knew you were helping the illegitimate learn to read,” the other woman clarified.

  Liberty sighed. Did she need to explain the difference between illiterate and illegitimate to this woman? Perhaps so. “Ma’am, I volunteered to help those who are unable to read learn to do so. Right now they would be termed as illiterate, but soon they should be literate.” She hoped by emphasizing “illiterate” and “literate”, she’d get her point across without having to spell out for this poor woman the difference between illiterate and illegitimate.

  The woman tucked a lock of black hair behind her ear and nodded. “Seth, gather your things. It’s time to go.” Turning back to Liberty, she said, “Ma’am, I mean you no disrespect, but
perhaps you should reread the sign downstairs.”

  Rolling her eyes, Liberty marched down the stairs and to the front door of the tavern where the sign was posted. Squinting her eyes, she reread the sign:

  NEEDED: Volunteers to help the illegitimate learn to read. Meetings held upstairs Tuesday mornings at 10 a.m.

  “Oh, no,” she breathed right before she dropped to the floor the same way Seth’s mother did when she pretended to be shot with the arrow.

  Chapter 17

  “There you go,” Seth’s mother said to Liberty, helping her to settle into an empty booth and sliding a glass of water into her hands.

  “Thank you,” she murmured, picking up the glass. She brought it to her lips and took a deep swallow. What was she going to do now? She knew society would shun her if they knew she was involved in a group that helped those born on the wrong side of the blanket learn to read. She tried not to laugh when she thought of how surprised everyone would be when they learned of her recent activities. Being caught playing games with a little boy paled in comparison to associating with a group of illegitimate illiterates. Yet, as disapproving as everyone else might be about this, Liberty felt a sudden the urge to ignore Society’s dictums. These were people, granted they were bastards, but that wasn’t their fault. So why should they be denied the ability to read? They hadn’t created their bastardy. Why should they be punished for it?

  “You really didn’t know,” the other woman said, breaking into Liberty’s thoughts. When she merely nodded, the woman added, “Nobody would fault you if you stopped volunteering, you know?”

  Liberty nodded again. Did she have to stop coming? Nobody of any consequence would ever know. That wasn’t true. Brooke and Andrew didn’t live that far away, they’d probably find out in time. She doubted either of them would actually care though. He might be an earl and she a countess, but two people who cared less about other’s opinions she’d never met. That just left Paul. What would he think? Would he want her to stop? He obviously hadn’t found out yet because he’d delivered those books to the wrong literacy group. Would he disapprove? Would this hurt his reputation with his church? Last year when he sought Papa out for guidance he’d said he already had a problem. Even after being married to him for nearly a month, Liberty still had yet to discover what that was. Would this make his existing troubles worse?

  “Do you want to talk about what you’re thinking?” Seth’s mother asked, once again breaking into her thoughts.

  “I just don’t know what my husband is going to say,” Liberty admitted, worrying the sleeve of her best red day dress.

  The other woman waved her hand dismissively. “Paul won’t care. I imagine if you tell him you’ve been coming here for a month without even knowing you were teaching a room full of bastards he’d laugh.”

  Liberty’s eyes went wide. She doubted Paul would find it funny in the least. He’d probably mock her mercilessly about it. That, or go out of his way to find a way to make her suffer. She’d always heard he had a temper, but doubted she’d seen it at its worst—yet. The two times she’d seen him upset, she hadn’t really thought it was that bad; nor did it seem to last long. Her father made it sound like it was preferable to endure the Devil’s wrath over Paul’s. She didn’t truly believe that though, he always seemed to soften after a few minutes.

  This could do it though. This could be the one final thing that would make him snap. “I don’t share your opinion. I think he might be angry with me.”

  “Paul?” she said, shaking her head. “No. He’ll think it’s funny. I promise.”

  “Why do you keep calling him by his Christian name?” Liberty asked, truly interested in the woman’s answer. It was no secret who she was married to, but why did this woman talk about him as if she knew him. She should be calling him Mr. Grimes.

  “We grew up together. Kind of,” she supplied. “My name is Lucy Whitaker; I grew up working in his family’s dairy.”

  Liberty nodded. It felt rather intimidating to be sitting across the table with a gorgeous woman who knew her husband better than she did. “You’ve known him your whole life, then?” she heard herself ask.

  “No, not all our lives. Just most of them,” Lucy said with a laugh. “I was six and he was seven when we met. I used to play with him and his brother, Sam. The three of us got into all sorts of trouble together.”

  The wistful smile on Lucy’s face told Liberty that their punishments had been well worth the scrape they’d gotten into. “It’s hard to imagine Paul getting into any trouble,” Liberty said lightly.

  “Oh, he did. He got in more than any of us. Not that that says a lot. We all got into our fair share. Paul just always seemed to be the one who got caught.” She shook her head. “He always took my side against Sam. See Sam was three years older than me and didn’t want me to join their games, but Paul insisted I could. Then they’d argue and sometimes start tackling each other to the ground.”

  Liberty chuckled. Paul seemed like a very relaxed type person. Picturing him fighting seemed nearly impossible.

  “We had our good times together,” Lucy said lightly. “When we were a bit older, I was maybe ten or so, Sam wanted to build a tree house for boys only, but Paul said he’d only help build it if I could go into it, too. Sam was mad, but he agreed to Paul’s rules because he needed Paul’s help to build it. Paul was always much better with tools than Sam could ever hope to be. It just comes naturally to him. Anyway, all summer we worked on building it. When it was finally done, we decided to sleep in it.

  “None of our parents would allow it, so we all decided to sneak out. When the night finally came, we waited until two hours past our bedtimes and snuck out. Of course Sam was disappointed when he saw I’d come, but there was no way I was going home. He said if I wanted to stay, I could as long as Paul slept in the middle because he didn’t want to have to sleep near me. That was fine with me, I didn’t want to be by him, either.

  “An hour later a storm moved in and the thunder and lightning shook the boards while the rain came in through the cracks and soaked all of us to the skin. We were all cold and scared. Sam tried to talk Paul into going back home and leaving me there alone. Thankfully, Paul always had the bigger heart of the two and said no. He offered to walk me to my house, but I was too scared to walk across the field to my house. Finally, Sam couldn’t take it any longer and he went home. I wondered if Paul would go home too because he was only eleven and was probably just as scared as I was. But he didn’t. He stayed with me all night. He told me every joke and story he could think of to distract me from the weather.

  “The next morning, he mixed up some cream of some sort, pitch or something, and smeared it in all the cracks. He said it was so if it stormed again while we were playing in it at least we wouldn’t get wet.”

  “And did you?” Liberty couldn’t help but ask.

  “No. But we never stayed the night in there again though, either,” she said laughingly. “I caught a fever from that night and when their parents found out, both Paul and Sam had to play indoors for as many days as I was abed. To hear them tell it, you’d think they were made to suffer unfairly. I think Paul even remarked he would have rather had a fever than be well and stuck in the house for two weeks.” She gave a shrug and twisted her glass of water.

  Liberty smiled. There was obviously more to her husband than she knew. She should have known he had a tender spot for those in need of his help. Her family had described in detail how he’d taken care of her when she’d fallen through the ice. He’d probably saved her life, and he didn’t even like her. Imagine what he would have done if he did like her. Most likely he would have stayed with her throughout her ailment. A shiver ran down her spine. Would she have allowed him to? At the time? Definitely not. But now? Yes, she decided, now she wouldn’t be so opposed to his company. “I see the three of you remained friends,” she said just to say something.

  Lucy choked on her water. “No. Not at all. The three of us barely speak. The fact that Paul
and I live in the same area is purely coincidence. And not a happy one, I assure you.”

  “Oh?” Liberty questioned. What could have happened that made the three of them fall out? Even if Sam didn’t want to play with a little girl when he was a boy didn’t mean they couldn’t have become friends later. And why did this woman speak so highly of Paul one minute and then say it wasn’t a good thing they lived so close? What happened?

  Lucy bit her bottom lip and fidgeted in her chair. “Has Paul ever mentioned me?”

  “No,” Liberty said, shaking her head. Sensing that the woman really didn’t want to tell her what happened, she added, “Lucy, Paul and I, well, we’re not close. We’ve never spoken of our childhoods so please don’t take offense that he’s never mentioned you. It’s my fault, really. I’m not the easiest person for him to talk to.” While she hoped that made the other woman feel free to open up, Liberty realized it didn’t shed a good light on herself.

  Releasing a breath, Lucy said, “When I was seventeen, Paul asked me to marry him.”

  Liberty felt her eyes widen and her jaw drop.

  “And, um, as you know, I refused,” Lucy said flatly.

  Liberty’s eyes almost bulged out of her head, although she didn’t know why. Of course Lucy declined. If she’d accepted, then she’d be Mrs. Paul Grimes, not Liberty.

  Lucy sighed. “As I said, we grew up together on his family’s estate. My father worked in the dairy and when I was fourteen, I started working there, too. Paul never seemed to take notice that I was a servant. He was always trying to see me and get me out of work. He paid me unmarked attention and was always bringing me things that he either made or spent his allowance to buy. Simple things really, ribbons, handkerchiefs, a bonnet, trinkets he carved out of wood, just little things.

  “This went on for a few years and when I was seventeen, his brother inherited and Paul decided it was time to make his own way in life. He told me he loved me and asked me to marry him. I knew his words were true, he really did love me. But I had my sights set on Sam. See, though Sam didn’t like being around me as a child, he later changed his opinion.