Daniel's True Desire

by Grace Burrowes

  Kirsten had amused her husband. She could feel the humor in him, sense it in the kisses he pressed to her temple. She still didn’t like cathedrals, especially cathedrals in the far away north.

  “You have a wonderful imagination, my lady. Lest you think my time in Town was all socializing and church connections, I did bring you something.”

  “You brought yourself home, safe and sound. I want nothing more.” Kirsten fervently wished Daniel had left his brilliant ideas about uprooting the child and climbing the church hierarchy behind in London.

  “I managed a short excursion to Ludgate Hill too,” he said. “Your brother accompanied me and was quite helpful.”

  This time the bird made a parade ground of the bare altar, its birdy marching accompanied by a few wing flaps that struck Kirsten as exasperated.

  “How was Nicholas helpful?”

  Daniel extracted a small square box from his pocket. “He simply lounged about looking, smelling, and sounding lordly. I’m sure I was given a better bargain as a result. I hope you like it.”

  A ring. Well, perhaps the north had charms Kirsten could learn to appreciate, for Daniel hadn’t forgotten about her after all.

  “I hadn’t wanted to ask, Daniel.”

  “You were willing to press one of your own into service,” Daniel said, opening the box and passing her a small band of gold. “My mother’s was apparently buried with Olivia. Something new was in order. Something new and lovely, if modest.”

  “It’s inscribed.” Which would have taken some doing, given Daniel’s limited stay in London. Kirsten moved toward the open side door, where sunshine came pouring down at a steep angle.

  All my love, Daniel. The ring was a bit of shiny metal, plain as rings went, the sentiment unoriginal, and yet Kirsten teared up, for Daniel had known not to bother with anything fancy.

  “I will treasure it always, Daniel, and I will treasure you always.”

  Kirsten slipped the ring on—a perfect fit—and admired it on her hand. Her other engagement rings had been gaudy, bejeweled tokens of a fiancé’s ostentation, not symbols of enduring love.

  Daniel lounged against the doorjamb, the morning light showing signs of fatigue about his eyes.

  “I had a bad moment, Kirsten, up in London.”

  Ah, this was much more interesting than bishops and cathedrals. “Tell me.”

  “One minute, I was walking along with your brother, quite bemused by having made Howley’s acquaintance, the next, I was sure I’d seen Olivia, a well-dressed, somewhat plumper version, but her. I would have started running, not to stop her but simply to make sure. With Olivia, one always wanted to make sure.”

  A very bad moment, judging from the worry in Daniel’s eyes.

  “I used to hear my mother’s voice in the corridor,” Kirsten said, slipping her arms around him. “It was Nita or the maids or my imagination. With Papa, I smell his pipe tobacco, though none of my brothers smoke. You think you’re going daft, but then your siblings report the same thing.”

  “That’s what Bellefonte said. He’s heard your father’s laughter, but it was the footmen teasing the maids. Gave me quite a start, though. Bellefonte pulled me into the nearest decent pub, sat me down with a brandy, and let me find my balance.”

  Nicholas would never have said a word to Kirsten about this awful moment.

  “What was it like, Daniel, in that instant you thought Olivia might still be alive?”

  Daniel and Olivia had been married for more than a decade, after all, had shared parenting responsibilities, and a bed.

  “When I thought I might be staring at the back of Olivia’s head, I was in hell, Kirsten. Absolute, pitch-black, hopeless, despairing hell. If Olivia were alive, all that would be left to me is my vocation, and while I treasure that, I cannot abide the notion of life without you in it.”

  Oh, he’d said the right words. Kirsten leaned into Daniel, more at peace than at any time since he’d approached the altar to celebrate the morning’s service.

  “She’s gone, Daniel. She can’t hurt you anymore, and she’s gone.”

  The swallow made one last dash for freedom, flitting directly over their heads, and this time gaining the sunshine of the lovely morning. A sign, perhaps, of the freedom Daniel had gained by his wife’s death.

  “Let’s lock up here and admire the new curtains in the vicarage,” Kirsten said, pulling back. “I’ve started on the pantries too, and much of the downstairs furniture has arrived in your absence.”

  “A brief inspection only,” Daniel said, moving off to close windows down one side of the church. “I have much correspondence to tend to, Danny wants to hack out with me, and Ralph asked for some of my time to discuss what the boys have been about in the past week.”

  Kirsten finished with the windows on the other side of the church, for it was a small edifice.

  “I can tell you some of it,” she said. “A lot of botany walks, several cricket matches, two lessons in equitation—the boys are trotting over poles now—and several memorization assignments.”

  Daniel closed the back doors and locked them. “You love those boys, and I love that about you.”

  The interior grew dim without the natural light, so Kirsten could not see her beloved’s expression.

  “Anybody would love those boys. I think you should institute picnics on Fridays after exams, and teach the boys how to fish.”

  Daniel came up the center aisle, as he would on their wedding day. “I wish I could give you children of our own.”

  He still fretted over this? “I haven’t given that a thought since we became engaged. I have you, I have the scholars and Danny. I am not simply content, Daniel, I am full to overflowing with happiness.”

  Daniel stopped directly in front of Kirsten, his smile the old, familiar, kind smile she’d fallen in love with.

  “Your cup runneth over?”

  “Exactly. Now may I show you my curtains?”

  His smile became husbandly, then his brows crashed down. “That dratted bird used my altar as his outhouse.”

  Kirsten snickered. “And the boys aren’t even here to see it.”

  They were both laughing and threatening to put the curtain sashes to inventive uses, when Kirsten recalled she hadn’t told Daniel about finding Matthias in tears.

  Sixteen

  Unease had followed Daniel down from London, a sense of dislocation, as if he’d been dealt a stout blow to the head. Beelzebub had sensed it and taken to dodging and shying all over the shire, which had made the ride home lengthy and tiring.

  Kirsten sensed it too, for she was chattering about chintz and velvet as Daniel admired all the progress made at the vicarage.

  Kirsten seldom chattered, but she was well accomplished at worrying.

  “You’ve been very hard at work while I strolled about the park with your sisters,” Daniel said. The vicarage had become a place of gleaming wood surfaces, sparkling windows, and colorful rugs and curtains. The scents of beeswax and lemon oil followed Daniel from room to room, and a vase of purple irises graced the entryway.

  “The boys have helped,” Kirsten said, “and the staff at Belle Maison was happy to have a project in the family’s absence. Elsie has been a godsend too, for she has an artistic eye.”

  The results said that mostly Kirsten had seen what needed doing and tended to it, as she always would. She preceded Daniel up the stairs, and as he watched the twitch of her skirts and assurance of her stride, he was assailed by two emotions.

  He loved Kirsten Haddonfield. He admired her energy and pragmatism, was touched by her inability to accept praise, and even liked that she’d haul him up short when it came to his career decisions. She’d made him a lovely home in a very brief time, one both welcoming and pleasing to the eye.

  But he did not want to make love with her in the next hour.

&nbs
p; London had contaminated him with doubts. That single glimpse of the woman in the blue dress had been like an older man’s first experience with chest pains.

  Like a rat scuttling along the walls of a king’s throne room. A stark reminder of human fallibility, of how one misstep could shape the path of any life and turn the most innocent, ebullient hopes to relentless despair.

  Now, Daniel’s doubts had acquired the same durability. He’d been wrong about Olivia before—wrong about many things.

  Olivia hadn’t replied to a letter since before Christmas, though they’d had no real need to correspond. Daniel had sent funds north for the care and maintenance of his wife, and she’d sent back…nothing.

  Papa’s letters to Reimer had been full of vitriol over Daniel’s decision to marry Olivia. Page after page had descended into a paternal lament for a misguided boy, though at the time, Daniel had scoffed at his papa’s misgivings.

  “Kirsten, might we talk for a moment?” Daniel asked.

  For if Daniel allowed his intended to take him into the bedroom, she’d expect intimate attentions from him he was in no condition to provide.

  She came back down the stairs halfway and took a seat on a carpeted riser.

  “Talk? Of course.” Not a very cheering sort of “of course.”

  Daniel lowered himself beside her halfway up the staircase. “How are you, my dear?”

  He’d overslept, nearly been late to services, and then been accosted by well-wishers on the church steps. Through the service he’d been distracted, and in the absence of a curate, he’d been responsible for tidying up after the service.

  “I am engaged to be married,” Kirsten said. “Though my fiancé has gone off to London and I’m not sure when he’ll come back to me. I’ve missed him awfully.”

  How Daniel loved her honesty.

  He put an arm around Kirsten’s shoulders. “I’ve always had a distaste for London. My father abhorred the place, with great wealth flaunting its opulence in the face of great poverty, but this time…London is not all bad.”

  Daniel’s unease originated in that moment when he’d been strolling along beside the earl on a pleasant afternoon, aglow from meeting Howley, and then in an instant, the greening plane trees, the well-dressed gentlemen strolling by, the pots of pansies festooning the pubs and stoops—all dross.

  If Olivia were alive…

  Maybe that’s what kept Daniel from going up the stairs with Kirsten. Making love with Kirsten threatened to descend from a joyous anticipation of vows to the sin of adultery. Some traditions preached that a man would be better off dead than an adulterer.

  And from there, every other doubt had found a toehold on Daniel’s mind.

  “London does include great wealth and great poverty,” Kirsten said. “I suppose I’m used to it, to the charity and the venery, the beauty and the squalor. Did it upset you?”

  Her question encompassed both the social chasm between a country vicar and an earl’s daughter, and the bridge that love had formed, because Daniel could answer her honestly.

  “In Little Weldon, I mucked Beelzebub’s stall and turned him out with the milch cow. I limed the jakes. I pounded loose shingles back in place. I was only nominally a gentleman, Kirsten. What was that country vicar doing, trotting around in Bond Street tailoring and bowing to the Bishop of London?”

  She laced an arm around his waist. “In this past week, I’ve beaten rugs, washed dishes by the score, and polished the sideboard and half the wainscoting in the house. I’ve enjoyed the work, Daniel. Perhaps I’m only nominally a lady.”

  Kirsten’s answer helped but didn’t entirely settle him.

  “Would you be very offended if we did not make use of the bedroom today?” Daniel asked.

  She rested her head against his shoulder. “You’re tired and out of sorts and my family in the Seasonal whirl would be enough to overset anybody. Then too, you were cavorting with bishops. I have a suggestion.”

  “Suggest away.”

  “Why don’t we eschew the bedroom until our wedding night? Build up some anticipation, some longing for the pleasures we’ve indulged in so frequently in recent weeks? I’ve dreamed of you, Daniel. Lovely, naughty dreams that have given me all sorts of ideas.”

  He hadn’t dreamed of Kirsten. He’d had the nightmares again, of being married to Olivia. Nightmares of his father lecturing him about meekness and a godly heart in a helpmeet.

  “My immediate response is to reject this idea of yours,” Daniel said. “I rather like anticipating vows with you, Lady Kirsten.” Or he had liked it—liked it a lot, today’s demurrer notwithstanding.

  Kirsten used her free hand to apply a gentle, wifely pressure to his privy parts, and the man-beast in Daniel enjoyed it. A relief, that—and a bewilderment.

  “I’ve wallowed in the bliss of anticipating our vows,” Kirsten said. “But I’d also like for our wedding night to be special.”

  “Our wedding night will be very special,” Daniel said. “Your idea has merit, in that regard.” And in others, because another part of Daniel, not the pawing, snorting fiancé part, was relieved—at least for the moment—to be spared the intimacy of the bedroom.

  A firm rap on the front door forestalled further conversation on any topic.

  “Who could be calling here?” Kirsten said, slipping free of Daniel’s embrace. “If it’s George and Elsie, then they have a fine nerve, interrupting our inspection of the curtains.”

  Kirsten opened the door, and there stood Letty and her viscount, attired in their Sunday finery. Fairly held a wooden box about the right size to safeguard a woman’s jewelry, carved leaves and flowers twining about the sides.

  “Hello,” Kirsten said. “You find us quite unprepared for visitors, but do come in. We do have furniture in the formal parlor, though refreshment will be in short supply.”

  Letty stepped over the threshold and kissed Kirsten’s cheek. “You must forgive us. Fairly said we ought not to try here, but should go straight to Belle Maison, though Lady Susannah writes that you’re biding with your brother George and his household was yet farther—”

  “Letty, they don’t care about that,” Fairly said, nudging past his wife. “We’ll just drop off the spices and be on our way, shall we?”

  Daniel came down the stairs. “You are our first visitors, and we’re pleased to welcome you.” Pleased that family should come to call uninvited, country style, and not by way of all the folded, bent, embossed cards used in Town.

  “Let’s find a place for this in the kitchen, shall we?” Kirsten said to Letty when the greetings were dispensed with and the spice box had been admired. The ladies bustled off, remarking on the changes to the old house, leaving Daniel in the company of his brother-in-law.

  “Banks, you’re looking well. Danny appears to be thriving, and Lady Kirsten makes a wonderful fiancée,” Fairly said, drawing Daniel out to the shaded porch. “Listen well, for I’m about to violate a marital confidence. You’re contemplating matrimony, and a man on his way up the church aisle should be in possession of all the facts.”

  “Fairly, this drama isn’t like you.” Which only added to Daniel’s unease.

  “The ladies will soon rejoin us, and what I have to say is for your ears only. I sent a man north to ensure the fair Olivia was biding in the loving embrace of her family. Turns out, she left Yorkshire before Christmas, well before.”

  Another swallow, or perhaps the same one, came flitting through the porch eaves.

  “Olivia lied about her whereabouts,” Daniel said with a calm he didn’t feel. “I suspected as much when she stopped acknowledging the funds I sent her.”

  Though Daniel hadn’t admitted his suspicions even to himself. Olivia lied, that was what Olivia did. She could easily have had the funds forwarded to her by an obliging family member.

  Daniel tugged Fairly a few steps to the
left, so he wouldn’t stand directly beneath the swallow.

  “She came south, to London,” Fairly went on, oblivious to the bird, “and took up residence in the home of Bertrand Carmichael.”

  “This is not news, Fairly. Carmichael was a relation of hers.” Who had not once called upon Olivia in Little Weldon, that Daniel knew of.

  “Pay attention, Banks. No physician has been summoned to Carmichael’s household since the first of the year. I am a physician, and I’m still connected to the medical men in London. I’ve had Carmichael’s staff discreetly interviewed, over a pint at the pub, in the mews, and so forth. They do not recall anybody suffering illness, but as of last week, they’re heartily sick of Carmichael’s ladybird.”

  This is not happening. This is not happening.

  “Fairly, calm yourself. I’ve been in communication with my successor at Little Weldon. He assures me a burial service was held in Great Weldon for the late Olivia Banks. Carmichael has done well for himself, he’s not married, and he’s a London gentleman. Why shouldn’t he have a ladybird?”

  At mention of the word “bird,” the damned swallow hopped along the rafter to once again perch over Fairly’s head.

  “Have you received an accounting from Carmichael of the expenses?” Fairly asked.

  Death was a business. Everything, from the ringing of the church bells to the graveside recitations of Scripture, to the coffin, to the shroud, came at a cost.

  “I have not,” Daniel said. “Carmichael was Olivia’s cousin, well fixed, and should he send me such an accounting, I would pay it. I have received no such correspondence.” Daniel gestured above, to the bird. “I don’t trust that one. You’d best step aside.”

  Fairly moved away to lean a hip on the porch railing, out of range of loose-boweled birds.

  “Bigamy is a felony, Banks. Letty could not bear for you or Danny to endure any more upheaval.”

  To say nothing of the upheaval to Kirsten. “I’ve kept Carmichael’s sealed missive to me,” Daniel said. “I’ve kept the letter from the vicar in Little Weldon confirming a burial. If Olivia is not dead, then she has done us both a courtesy by this elaborate charade. She can move on with her life, and so can I.”