I didn’t give you permission to do that, said some unruly part of her, but she shushed it. He looked odd, lingering at her bedside. Not so blithe as usual, not so sanguine. Probably still berating himself for using her so hard as he’d done.
She might grant him a kind of pardon. Why not? “Will you stay for a few minutes?” She moved over and touched her hand to the empty side of the bed. “You look as though you could use a rest. And I’d be glad of the company.” Not entirely untrue.
It was the right thing to say. One could see a weight come off his shoulders and his troubled brow. He sat, wordlessly, on the edge of the bed and pulled off his boots. Then his coat. He let it fall on the floor and climbed under the covers, otherwise completely clothed.
What could have cut him up so? Really, the coupling had not been so bad. “You’ve had a trying day, I think.” She studied his profile. Maybe he’d like to confide.
He laughed, a sharp exhalation with very little voice. “Darling, you can’t imagine.”
If you’d just tell me, I wouldn’t have to. She let that rebellious thought float up and away. He wasn’t her husband. He had no obligation to share anything with her. “I’m sorry for it,” she said.
“Don’t you be sorry, when you’re the one with a back rubbed raw on the carpet.” The covers went slack as he twisted toward her. His eyes raked back and forth, working to read her face. He took a breath. “You were afraid of me, I think.”
“Not at all. I never have been.”
“What was it, then?” With a jerk of his chin, he indicated the other room. “You looked near to illness, approaching me. You’ve never looked like that before.”
“Oh. Yes. Well.” She swallowed, and felt the color rising in her cheeks all over again. “Of course I was afraid you would refuse me, and end our bargain.”
But that wasn’t the whole truth, and he knew it. He waited, his eyes steady on hers now. In the silence he touched two gloved knuckles to her arm and stroked just above the elbow. Stop that. No. She wouldn’t wound him with any objection.
“Also, I suppose I was afraid of appearing ridiculous.” A few at a time, she got the words out, her voice awkward even to her own ears. “I have not been in the habit of doing such things. I feared this would be obvious to you, and you would find me ridiculous as a result.”
Already he was struggling to keep a smile in check. She pressed her own lips together, and trained her attention on the canopy, and submitted to the quiet caress of kid leather against her arm. “Ridiculous,” he repeated. “Do you think you looked ridiculous?”
“Yes. I do think so.” Like some clown’s pantomime of a wanton, lurching clumsily through such foreign motions. Her cheeks might burst into flame at the memory.
“Was my response, in your recollection, the response of a man who found you ridiculous?” Still that smile laced itself through his every word, though he was clearly striving for gravity.
She allowed herself a glance at him. “I think I may have overestimated what would be your discrimination in this matter.”
“Oh, very nice.” The smile spread unconstrained to all quarters of his face. “And now you see me to be a mere gluttonous beast, do you? A pig who doesn’t notice whether his trough be full of trifle and sweetmeats or spoilt curds and potato peels.”
“I certainly shouldn’t go that far. I don’t think you’re at all like a pig.”
“Quite right.” He stretched out on his back with a satisfied air. “More in common with a horse. Or so the ladies say.”
That was in exceedingly poor taste. One oughtn’t to find it amusing. But she understood his mood. Each of them had feared the bargain was irreparably damaged, and each was giddily relieved to have salvaged it. “I’m glad to see your spirits are restored.” She brushed a hand over her mouth. Sympathy or no, her smile, if he glimpsed it, would only encourage him to a hundred more advertisements of his masculine largesse.
“For the moment, because I’m occupied with agreeable topics.” Sideways he addressed her, his head pressed back into the pillow. “I expect my morale to sink again once I’m at home and back to the grind.”
So that was the trouble. With new resolve she angled herself toward him. “Is it so dismal, studying the management of an estate? I recall you saying such study suited you.”
“Yes, I hoped to create a good impression. I didn’t realize yet how little you cared for my respectability.” A smile flickered over his lips, but found no purchase. “The truth is I have neither interest in nor aptitude for this subject. Mr. Granville has both. Why should he be burdened with teaching me what I don’t value, and why must I spend my hours in learning responsibilities I never intend to assume? Land agents exist so that gentlemen may be spared all this care and tedium, I’m sure.”
How to word this constructively? She frowned at the far wall. “I consider you rather fortunate to be under his tutelage.” No reproach. Only suggestion. “Sometimes I think men don’t properly appreciate their privileges. If I were lucky enough to have someone teach me about land, I’m sure I should do my best to learn.”
He pivoted toward her again, and this time came up on one elbow. “Are you in earnest? You really find this business interesting?”
“Of course I do. It’s the best work a person in your station, or mine, can have: to make the land fruitful, and benefit all the people who live upon it, and demonstrate that we were born for something better than leisure.”
“What an odd little woman you are.” He picked up a lock of her hair and rubbed it between kid-sheathed fingers, watching her gravely all the while. Hair against a glove made a soft squeaking sound. “I wish you wouldn’t ever wear a cap,” he said.
Always, he would turn a conversation to corporeal matters. The fact wasn’t nearly so distressing now she knew to expect it. “I’m in mourning.”
“Yes, I know.” No glimmer of a smile; he looked as solemn as an archbishop. “But I wish you wouldn’t wear it. I like the sight of your hair.”
“Well … perhaps I could take it off before you come to call.” A small concession. No great breach of propriety. “If you think to do so would be useful.”
“I’d like that.” His voice was low, nearly a whisper.
“Then I’ll try to remember, in future.” Her own voice went low too.
“Yes,” he said, and brought the lock of hair to his lips. “Do that. Try.”
Chapter Six
HAVE YOU had much conversation with Mr. Mirkwood?” Martha spread her fingers to hold the map firmly against the schoolroom wall.
“Almost none. You?” Mr. Atkins had tacks in his mouth; she probably oughtn’t to ask him questions.
“A little. He called last week. We’ve spoken a bit.” She steadied her stance on the chair. The more untruths one scattered, the harder it was to keep track of them. But then she’d come here with an untruth as her purpose; with the flatly false news of a letter from Mr. James Russell approving the school. And Mr. Atkins, of course, had believed her and commenced to celebrate by putting up things on the walls.
“And what impressions have you formed?” he said now in his tack-impeded way.
There was the question, certainly. She could have answered with ease a week ago. Now she hesitated. “I’m not sure I’m acquainted enough to judge. He seems a good-natured man, but one does hear certain reports of what were his habits and pastimes in London.”
The tacks clicked out onto the curate’s palm. “I try to put little stock in such gossip. People have a way of rising, or sinking, to meet one’s expectations. And he is, I think, a very young man. Still forming himself.” He set a tack and lifted the hammer in his other hand.
“A man may be young, and conduct himself in a seemly way.” She spoke up over the pounding of his hammer. “You have not used youth as an excuse for careless living.” And they must be nearly of an age, Mr. Mirkwood and Mr. Atkins.
“Well, the Church will make a man serious, even where other things have not already made him so.�
�� He stepped down from his chair and when he looked up at her his eyes were lit with something not serious at all. “As to Mr. Mirkwood, I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. Did you see he stayed awake for my entire sermon yesterday?”
“To sleep through it would have been shocking. We can all profit, I’m sure, by the lesson of that foolish man and his new barns.”
“Next week I think I’ll be addressing Train up a child in the way wherein he should go. I’ve been meditating on that verse, for obvious reasons, and reading over John Wesley’s sermon on the same subject. I cannot agree with his conviction that a child naturally inclines toward wickedness. So I must compose my rebuttal.” He set the tacks back in his mouth and picked up his chair, moving it from her left side to her right.
What a generous man he was, with charitable thoughts for everyone, and how sorry she would be to lose his good opinion if her duplicity was ever made known. She watched him step up, spit out the tacks, and hammer in another. He held his head back on an angle, looking down his long nose at the work of his hands, and she knew from months of watching him at various industries that this was to thwart a lock of hair that always wanted to fall into his eyes.
“There’s that one done,” he said with a last tap. “Does it look straight to you?”
“Surely you ought to have asked that before you pounded in the tacks!”
“Surely, yes.” He stepped down, and so did she, and they both considered the map from several paces away.
Like the slates and pencils, it had come secondhand and a bit shabby. He’d pressed out the creases as well as he could, with a warm iron—that had been her idea—and inked over where the print had faded, but nothing could be done about the exuberant scrawl of some schoolboy’s name, STEPEN, across the south Pacific. Probably it was meant to be Stephen. He ought to at least have learned to spell, before despoiling property in that way.
“My brother and I had a map like this when we were boys.” He set his hands against his back, elbows bent behind him. “Nowhere near this size, but all the same countries and oceans, as you may imagine. We learned all the names.”
“Including Stepen?”
“Stepen excepted. John Wesley would have strong words for that boy, I’m sure.” He smiled absently, still gazing at the map and no doubt savoring memories of the first time he’d traced the long coast of Africa with a finger, or seen how Italy took the shape of a high-heeled boot. Now he would help other boys—and girls—to those same discoveries.
She lied, and that was wicked. She lay down with Mr. Mirkwood, and that was a terrible sin. She sought to cheat a man of his inheritance, and that was probably a jailable offense. But watching Mr. Atkins, his face alight with the pleasure of good work to be done, she could not feel sorry in the least.
* * *
STAND AND deliver, Mrs. Russell. I’ve had the devil’s own erection this past hour at least.” Mr. Mirkwood shut the door behind him and used that same hand to toss his hat into a corner. His other arm was full of books.
“What have you got, there?” Most certainly she did not stand.
“Erection. I’ve just told you.”
“Those books, I mean.” Really. “That rolled-up document.”
“Afterward.” Four long strides brought him to the sofa, where he unceremoniously dumped his armload and began on his coat buttons. “Why are you still dressed? I was hoping that business of yesterday might become a regular arrangement.”
And so it went. With quick sure hands he undressed them both, moving nearer the bed with each discarded garment until they were naked, and settled in the sheets.
He took his pleasure carefully today, as though to atone for yesterday’s loss of self-command. His eyes stayed fixed to hers, watching, she felt sure, for any symptoms of discomfort. Even when she closed her eyes to escape his gaze, she could feel him watching. It felt … strange. Different. Mr. Russell had never taken such care. Not even the first time, which had been uncomfortable indeed, nor the second, when she’d still been feeling the effects of the first. I’m sorry, he’d said, but he’d exercised his right nevertheless. So husbands did.
“Go on,” she said, eyes still shut. “Truly, it doesn’t hurt.” Doubtless there were better answers to make to a man’s tender restraint. But she no more knew how to make them than she knew how to speak Portuguese, and besides they had no place in this bargain. She only set her hands at his shoulders, because he liked to be touched, and she heard in his breath the moment when he left her behind to go to his crisis, just as she wanted him to do.
Afterward, he explained the books. “They’re all about aspects of agriculture. Crop rotation. Yields and prices. I’m meant to study them, but I find they can’t command my interest. However I’ve had an idea.” He was lying on his stomach; now he raised up onto his elbows. “You might read them, since you do like these matters, and then make reports to me. In particular if you find yourself having insights, write them down. Tell me how a serious person ought to respond to this material, that I may make that response for Mr. Granville.”
One hardly knew whether to laugh, or to rap him across the knuckles. Neither, perhaps. People rise or sink to meet your expectations, Mr. Atkins had said. What if she expected better from him? “I would like to read those books. You’re very good to remember my interest. But I think you’d do better to read with me than to rely on my reports. Perhaps we could spend an hour or so in study each afternoon, after we’ve conducted the other business.”
THE OTHER business. Three days later, the words still lodged with him. She received him politely now, with none of that awful disapproving resistance, but plainly the arrangement was indeed mere business to her. If she had carnal appetites at all, they slumbered soundly.
He yawned and stretched his arms, and felt his shoulder blades indent the carpet. She’d unrolled his enclosure map on the sitting-room floor today, a vase, a saucer, and two books serving as paperweights, and to join her at that level had seemed the companionable thing to do. This study-hour routine had proven quite restful, actually, as most days he reclined on the sofa, half-dozing to the music of her crisp modulations as she read aloud.
She glanced up at his movement, and glanced down again. “One of these outlined patches appears to be between your land and mine, if I’m interpreting the drawing correctly. I’m not entirely sure where to imagine the boundaries of Seton Park. But if it’s the place I’m picturing, I believe some of my tenants pasture their sheep there.” She frowned thoughtfully, and didn’t look to him for any reply.
Theo pushed a hand through his hair. The carpet was not nearly as conducive to rest as the sofa had been, though it did vary one’s view of the room. Rather a fine bit of plasterwork about the ceiling’s border. Italianate, if he didn’t mistake. Scrolling and so forth. He yawned once more, fist at his mouth. “Do you know what we ought to do?”
“No.” She spoke straight down into the map. “We did that already today. We’re supposed to be studying now. Surely you can curb your appetites until tomorrow.”
“What a wicked, wanton mind you have.” He rolled onto his side and propped his head on his hand. Her stern schoolmistress manner provoked him in more agreeable ways, now he was used to it. “I didn’t mean any such thing. But now you’ve put it in my head, haven’t you?”
“Then you must put it out again. May I suggest a brisk walk.” This, too, was delivered to the map, with unruffled authority. Almost certainly she was beginning to derive some little enjoyment from this routine, some satisfaction in strictly correcting his errant wanderings. More satisfaction might follow in time.
“You’re in luck, then. A walk was precisely what I meant to suggest.” Her chin came sharply up, but he wouldn’t let her dissuade him. “We’ll take the map, and see these parcels for ourselves.” One after another, he shoved the paperweights aside. “I’ll go round and call at your front door, and we’ll undertake to find this bit of land that lies between your property and mine. What could be more r
espectable?”
She hesitated. The mantelpiece clock ticked, and the map creaked and whispered as he rolled it up. “You’ll conduct yourself with absolute discretion if we encounter anyone?”
“Discretion such as you can scarcely imagine. I shouldn’t be half so popular among the married ladies of London without I possessed that skill.” He winked at the reprimand gathering in her countenance, and got to his feet. “The fresh air will do us good, I promise you. Do you know we’ve been acquainted eleven days, and only seen each other indoors? I’m sure that’s not healthy, and besides I should like to see how you look under sunlight. Give me fifteen minutes to go round and come up your drive.”
FIFTEEN AND some minutes later they were outdoors, and—well, he still could not say how she looked in the sun. She wore a black bonnet that swallowed her features whole. He should have had to lean down to peer in and see her, first stopping her for the purpose as she was marching beside him, across her great lawn and toward some slopes to the east.
Their paces matched up surprisingly well, considering how ill-matched they were in every other respect. She walked with a determined, mile-eating step that kept her even with his longer, more leisurely stride. Together they might walk to the ends of the earth, though conversation would falter long before they got there.
“Do you look forward to being a baronet?” she said after several minutes of silence.
“Not in the least.” He took the map from under his elbow and switched it to his other side.
“No?” The bonnet’s funnel swiveled his way; he could see her chin and lower lip preparing to judge him.
“No, dear. I’ll have more responsibility then, with no appreciable gain in privilege.”
“Perhaps you’ll find yourself equal to the responsibility, when it comes.”
A Lady Awakened Page 10