One Enchanted Summer

by Jane Erickson

  “We all have our challenges.” Mr. Guest made a few more notes on his pad. “And you wouldn’t be saying anything I haven’t already heard. Small village like this and everyone knows everyone’s foibles and faults.”

  The bell above the shop door tinkled as the door swung open and a short, plump woman rushed through the door. She pulled the bow of her bonnet’s ribbons with a snap and practically threw the hat on the counter before hurrying over to the window to peer out in the street again, her ebony curls bouncing with every step. She had taken no notice of the shop’s other occupants.

  “Mr. Guest, that Mia Tillman is off shirking work again and talking to the good reverend. She’ll be in here next, I gather. Where is she getting the money, I wonder? An entire new set of clothes just two weeks ago. Everything from stockings to petticoats to a chemise and a corset! Not to mention that fashionable new gown. What kind of woman has that kind of money to spend on herself? Well, I don’t like to speculate on where she found the sovereigns, but we can all imagine how. I told Halford that it was a blessing that she refused his offer. Imagine, imagine being shackled to a woman like that for a wife!”

  Mr. Guest had cleared his throat a few times trying to catch the woman’s attention but now that she had paused to take a breath, he quickly interrupted.

  “This gentleman is the one renting Neville Lindsey’s old cottage.” Mr. Guest laughed uncomfortably. “I’ve forgotten to ask your name!”

  “Mr. Attwood,” Dominic responded, his onyx eyes glittering in annoyance at the gossip who stood by the window curtains, her mouth agape.

  “Yes, Mr. Attwood. Mr. Attwood, this is my wife. Mrs. Guest, I was telling Mr. Attwood here what a friendly village this is. Never a more welcoming place,” Mr. Guest managed to say without a hint of sarcasm or warning in his tone.

  Mrs. Guest examined Dominic’s face and form indignantly as if he had been the one insulting her before she tossed her black ringlets in annoyance. She kept her nose pointed at the ceiling as she marched through the shop and out the back door.

  Mr. Guest flinched as the door slammed and the shop window’s shook. He apologetically murmured, “Like I said, we all have our challenges. We’ll send the cart around before supper.”

  Chapter 8

  Pulling the iron off the fire, Mia ran it over Mr. Attwood’s shirt color quickly. She hadn’t managed to burn any article of clothing yet and she wasn’t about to risk scorching a shirt that likely cost as much as her summer’s wages.

  “And Mrs. Marwood is cooking for us again today?”

  “Yes. I told you how grateful she was for the few pennies tossed her way that first day. We have to let your hand heal,” Dominic said impatiently.

  Mia looked doubtfully at her knuckles. They had stung and throbbed throughout the first day but after a week had passed, the skin was just barely pinkened. It hardly made sense to still encroach upon Mrs. Marwood when Mia still had to light the stove to warm the food that Mrs. Marwood delivered every evening.

  “Are you listening? I don’t want to go hoarse repeating myself if you’re daydreaming,” Mr. Attwood scolded though Mia understood there was no heat in his words.

  “I apologize, sir. I was distracted by making your shirt’s cuffs perfectly crisp.”

  But she had been woolgathering and hadn’t listened to a word he said for the past few minutes.

  Their new pattern had begun two days earlier, when a rain shower had kept them both indoors after supper. Mia had been waiting for him to excuse her for the night when he suggested that she do her mending in the kitchen while he read The Count of Monte Cristo aloud. He assured her that he could translate the French novel as he read. He had often entertained his sisters in such a manner while they embroidered.

  She found herself listening more to the way he rounded his vowels and admiring the shape of his lips when Dominic read, and she sometimes forgot to actually attend to the storyline. The timbre of his voice sometimes shivers down her spine. It seemed like a betrayal of her class to enjoy his aristocratic, clipped accent. Even his voice reeked of money and privilege – things she had never cared about but also had never seen first-hand – and it seemed like a slap in the face of her father and so many other hardworking men that she was so easily thrilled.

  Once, after he had gotten cross with her not following the plot closely, she claimed it was easy to forget the characters when they all sounded alike and suggested he give them different tones. He had stared at her fiercely as if he wasn’t sure if such behavior was beneath him or if she was mocking him but eventually acquiesced with a shrug – who in the little cottage would ridicule him for such theatrics?

  The villains now all had low, gravelly voices and guffawed in a stereotypical French manner at every opportunity while the poor lovers, Dumas and Mercedes, were elevated to high-born, if pitifully naïve, English aristocrats. Dominic had provided Mercedes a particularly high-pitched voice which grated upon the ears.

  When Mia asked why the ship’s captain now sounded Italian, Dominic had shrugged and replied that it was the only other accent that he could manage. Mia had nodded solemnly since she didn’t have the heart to tell him that, other than his Parisian one, his accents were all pitiful.

  Now Mia found herself waiting for another character to arrive if only to discover which voice Dominic would adopt for the newcomer.

  “Open in the name of the law!” Dominic shouted in a commander’s voice so overwhelmingly intimidating and brutish that Mia giggled a bit which earned her an annoyed look for her lack of appreciation for his oratory skills.

  She held her mouth firmly in a straight line and finished the last stroke of the iron just as Dumas was accused of treason and dragged away from his betrothal breakfast.

  “And the next chapter is rather wordy and all about delightfully wealthy people still loyal to Napoleon. I don’t even want to translate it.” Dominic declared as he snapped the book shut. “And it is just as well because you truly weren’t attending.”

  “No, I was!”

  “Dumas is originally a playwright and I think that’s apparent in his writing. Much more dialogue and less description than some authors love to drone on about. This book was originally a serial in the French newspapers and caused quite a sensation over there. My cousin was visiting Paris at the time and she said people would dash for the morning newspaper and, if they hadn’t had the opportunity to read it, would avoid talking to anyone or even put their hands over their ears in the off chance someone would reveal the newest chapter’s revelations. She said one woman even hit her husband with a chamber pot after he shook her awake only to announce the most exciting moment of the book…which I won’t reveal no matter how much you beg.”

  “Well, I hope the book soon turns back to Dumas’s trials. I don’t really care to hear about the sumptuous living of French aristocrats and their dedication to a man who wanted to rule all of Europe.”

  “Some people love Napoleon just for the sheer impudence of thinking he could govern an area that large. People who are powerful attract all manner of devotees.”

  “Not I. I’m suspicious of a man who wishes to hold any political office…even one as lowly as mayor.”

  “You are unusual for a female,” Dominic admitted with a grin. “You would be amazed what women would do just to have ‘Lady’ before their surname.”

  Mia could well believe it…and she was quite certain these women to whom he was referring weren’t just desperate to have a lord for a husband. Dominic had caused quite a stir in the village without anyone knowing his true title or his financial status. He had the self-assured good looks that would always attract a female eye whether he was a duke or a lowly cowherd.

  And despite her best intentions, Mia was finding it more difficult now to remain unaffected by him. They were comfortable in each other’s company and he no longer seemed quite so superior and conceited. When he breathily sighed and fluttered his eyelashes as he pretended to be the lovestruck Mercedes, Dominic was more likab
le than any other man she had met…and that depressing thought would peal like an alarm bell in her head for an instant before she sternly reminded herself of the many other things that she had once wanted but could not have. Things that she never missed now after the weeks or months had passed and, come the end of September, his handsome face would have to be one of them.

  She was shaken out of her moment of introspection when Dominic continued.

  “While my father’s family’s title has been held for only a few centuries, my mother delights in reminding everyone that her family came over with the Conqueror.”

  “Oh, so true superiority is in direct association with when your family crossed the Channel from France?” Mia called over her shoulder as she carefully laid the shirt over the back of the chair and then picked up his vest from the pile of clean laundry that still needed to be ironed. “I believe Mr. LeFevre is descended from Huguenots. He’ll be delighted to know that he has the highest standing in the whole parish since his family hails from France from at least two centuries ago.”

  “LeFevre? The short, round little man who has nearly twenty pigs?” Dominic wrinkled his nose in distaste, obviously recalling the pungent smell that could drift for miles from the man’s farm if the wind was blowing strongly, but then he looked thoughtful. “Hmmm, my mother should have remarried long ago and, with a pedigree like that, she can hardly complain if I arrange a tête-à-tête.”

  “Well, Mr. LeFevre’s wife would surely protest. Or perhaps not. She does enjoy berating the man.”

  After picking up the iron from the stone beside the fire, Mia began straightening the hem of the vest, relieved that the material didn’t wrinkle nearly as badly as the shirts. She wouldn’t complain about a bit of ironing though. The weather had been remarkably fine and almost all chores could be done outdoors. Mia felt like every day in July was a little brighter than any other in years. She recalled one summer where it rained every day, a cold drizzle that made the days feel depressingly dark and more like November despite the long length of the daylight. The summer’s weather had been not only dry but nearly perfect, as if she was inhabiting a bucolic painting of a bygone era where she would be the remarkably pretty and carefree miss, sitting on the swing and letting her impractical full skirts puff airily around her in the summer sunshine.

  She had only seen two such paintings, but the traveling artist had claimed them nearly perfect reproductions from those in a museum. The men were sickly pale, their lips almost artificially red, and the lace at their wrists and tight hose of their costume nearly emasculating. But then the men’s expressions of ardent devotion had seemed equally ridiculous to her.

  She glanced at her walking companion from the corner of her eye and hid a smirk at the thought of Dominic being a lovesick swain. She couldn’t imagine Dominic covering his new guinea bright hair with a wig or letting his locks be coaxed into cherubic curls no matter what fashion demanded and his cock-sure pride would never have him groveling at his beloved’s feet.

  If anything, the roles would be reversed…Dominic floating far above of her reach while she watched, lovelorn and lurking in the bushes.

  It was depressing to think how easily she could tumble into the lovelorn distinction. It had been delightful to merely walk into the village with him the previous week and inordinately thrilling to have his handsome form next to hers. Mia could see every person they met speculating for a moment on what their relationship could be before shrugging it off as a wealthy man’s whim to while away the afternoon. Dominic was likely bored with his recently adopted reclusive lifestyle and had merely enjoyed some company other than his horse.

  Mia, an aging maid, should be glad she ranked above his beast of burden at all.

  And Mia could admit that she welcomed his conversation herself. She had been in the service of one household or another since she was twelve years old and a maid’s existence could be loneliness itself if there were few other servants to at least lighten each other’s burdens. Even a large house could have its pitfalls; the hierarchy in the dour servants’ quarters could be just as strict and unforgiving as the glittering ballrooms Dominic described in some of his stories.

  She loved hearing him mock the silly London debutantes and their enthusiastic mothers, the inebriated lords and charlatan foreign aristocrats. The entire last week had been a contest of the two of them trying to out-do the other with tales of eccentrics they had met on their journeys. It seemed London had many more people, making it easier more likely to see such madness, but Mia had met wildly inappropriate strangers nearly daily for the two decades of her life, so they were evenly matched.

  Evenly matched in many ways but worlds apart in so many others.

  He had no great urge to prove himself in any way while she had to make herself useful every moment of the day just to assure her employer that she was worth her room and board. If he wanted, he could shape the nation by demanding attention at the House of Lords…and if she was very fortunate, she could sweep the rooms those very speeches were given in and only after the illustrious members had left.

  Their easy banter could only last the few weeks that he remained in Lincolnshire. He would become the handsome stranger that read her French novels one summer and she would be a country maid who would likely never come up in his urbane conversations, even as an anecdote.

  “What’s so amusing?” Dominic queried when he noticed the rueful smile twisting her lips.

  “I was thinking of all those young women hounding you, hoping to have ‘Lady’ etched into their tombstone. Has it been a trial since you were still in short pants or have you inherited your title only recently?” She always imagined titled men to be men in their sixties with slightly askew wigs, red, bulbous noses, and knee britches stretched over their rotund bellies…which was a ridiculous notion since that hadn’t been the fashion for half a century.

  But to gain a title, someone close to him had to die, and she immediately regretted asking the question.

  “I was twenty,” he responded shortly, his closed expression relating that the experience was still painful all these years later.

  “That must have been very difficult.” There was no good time to lose a parent, but she could hardly think of any twenty-year-old man who was mature enough to manage the obligation of a title and lands, the responsibility of running a grand estate, and, from the few things he said, negotiate with a demanding mother. Most women accepted the responsibilities of being a wife or mother when young because she had no other options, but men seemed to need a greater amount of time to adjust to adulthood and some never seemed to make the transition at all.

  “My father drowned,” Dominic bit out, his eyes focusing on the stream that trickled out from the spring in the hill before winding its way to the river. “He was walking along the seaside and someone was calling for help. He dived into the water – I suppose he thought he’d be a hero – and ended up drowning himself.”

  “Oh.” Hardly a sympathetic or consoling response but she had never done well with these types of conversations.

  “Oh, that wasn’t the worst of it,” he assured her, a bitter laugh escaping him. “It seems he was on an excursion with his mistress and their son. I was at university, but my mother and sisters were at our estate in Hampshire. They assumed his absence was because of business in the City. It was quite a shock to hear that not only was he dead, but he was nowhere near London at the time. I didn’t learn of his lover and her son until his solicitor read the will a week later.”

  “How dreadful,” Mia murmured. She had been told her entire life that the upper classes were morally ambiguous and quite shocking, but she had never bothered to read a scandal sheet. It seems the press did not have to invent these types of sordid tales.

  “I’m grateful that my family weren’t privy to the contents of his will. I’ve never told my mother or sisters about the boy. I do think my mother knows about the woman though. She makes remarks when only the family is about, snide comments that could p
ass as innocuous, but we all know they aren’t. Well, I suppose they might go over Edith’s head. She’s the youngest of my sisters and was only ten when he died. She hardly remembers him now, but then, he was never one to set foot in the nursery.”

  “Did your mother know the woman?” Mia asked, hoping the answer was no. She had seen adultery destroy families and so often it was a woman or man the married couple knew well. The betrayal of a friendship was often more hurtful than the affair.

  “Hardly. She was just some maid.”

  “That must have been very difficult for your mother,” she restated, ignoring the derision in his voice. She recalled how often Dominic mentioned how proud his mother was of her lineage, her place in the world. It must have been quite a blow for her husband to have fathered a child with a nobody.

  “Thank goodness your brother was provided for,” she said, thinking of the number of illegitimate children and their mothers left to fend for themselves, and jumped when Dominic turned on her almost vehemently.

  “He’s not my brother,” he spat, and his nearly black eyes glittered hotly. His appalled expression clearly showing his disgust that she would consider his father’s son a relation. “He’s some by-blow that wouldn’t be permitted in the servants’ door. I don’t even know his name.”

  Even the birds seemed stunned by his passionate response; they stopped twittering, and the world seemed to be holding a collective breath for a moment. Mia stared into the fire as she allowed Dominic time to compose himself. She was so accustomed to his unflappable nature that she felt almost slapped by his passionate outburst. It was like seeing a usually mild-mannered toddler suddenly having an unwarranted meltdown.

  He too seemed embarrassed by his reaction and stood abruptly.

  “I have two half-brothers,” Mia’s voice stopped him before he could escape. Her eyes steadfastly watched the smooth movement of the iron across the back of his vest, even though not a wrinkle could be seen. It was something she had never said aloud, but she had the suspicion that Dominic had never willingly revealed his brother’s existence either.