A Lady Awakened

by Cecilia Grant

  This was an unpromising start to any conversation. He raised his eyebrows and made a noncommittal sound in his throat.

  “How could I think to bring books and cake? I knew they were parish poor. I ought to have brought meat, and milk.”

  “They might welcome milk. They don’t keep a cow.” He wouldn’t touch the subject of meat. Too clearly he remembered that last packet, heavy in his bag, as he’d made the long walk back to the house after his previous call on the Weavers. “And at least one of the books did come in useful. You’ll have to work up to Waverley, that’s all.”

  “Those people don’t want Waverley.” She strode with even more vigor than usual, swinging the heavy basket as though it were a kind of ballast. “I’d be surprised if the children can even read. I didn’t see a book in that house. I ought to have anticipated as much.”

  He stopped her by catching hold of the basket as it swung by. “Don’t berate yourself so. I don’t want to hear it. You were mistaken in what you expected, and now you know better. We learn that way, don’t we?” She’d said something to that effect, once.

  “All I’ve learned is the extent of my naïveté.” She hadn’t let go of the basket, and they stood facing one another, each gripping on to the handle. “I’ve been that family’s neighbor since I settled here. I ought to have known their circumstances before now. I ought to have interested myself in that oldest girl’s welfare.”

  “Let me propose a bargain.” He pulled gently at the basket until her hand released its grip. “If you cease blaming yourself aloud, I’ll submit to whatever sermon you want to make on education. You may take up the whole of our walk to your house in telling me what ought to be done for the children on my land.”

  Her smile went through him like a fever-chill. What a strange, strange thing, to give a woman such pleasure without touching her. For the second time that afternoon he had to avert his eyes, and then he had to speak gruffly, as well. “But I advise you to put the best bits up front, because you’ll only have as long as it takes us to finish this walk. When we reach your house we’ll have other things to do.” And he set off in full stride.

  ANDREW,” SAID Mr. Mirkwood when the coupling was done and he lay stretched out beside her. He lifted one lazy hand and counted off on his fingers. “Andrew, Katharine, Nicholas, and William.”

  They’d got back to the familiar routine. He’d enjoyed himself without proposing anything untoward, and she’d enjoyed his enjoyment. That was what she’d wanted, of course. If some small part of her had hoped he might build upon the liberties of yesterday, well, that part must learn forbearance. “I’d be more impressed if you recalled what I told you of my curate’s school,” she said now.

  “Shhhh.” Without turning he touched a finger to her lips, finding his way by feel. “I’m missing one name.”

  “No, those are all my siblings.” But her heartbeat skittered. She knew what he meant.

  “My name is Theophilus.” Now he did turn, addressing her as if he were a mannerly boy at a birthday party, albeit a naked one nearly six feet tall. “Though only my father calls me that. Brothers and sisters and intrepid ladies call me Theo.”

  “I know your name already. A servant told me.”

  “Then you have the advantage of me.” He waited. He didn’t tease or demand. He took a strand of her hair between thumb and forefinger and twisted it slowly round the finger, like a python’s lapping coils, bringing his hand ever closer to her head. His eyes, patient and pacific, stayed trained on hers.

  What would she give up, if she gave him her name? He might think himself her intimate, and he wasn’t. For all the commerce of bodies, for all that he might intrude into some of her private thoughts, they were not intimates.

  “Martha,” she said nevertheless. “Andrew, Kitty, Nick, Will, and Martha. In that order. Our family name is Blackshear.”

  “Martha,” he echoed on the softest breath. His lips wore the ghost of a smile and his eyes chased here and there as though attempting to see every part of her at once. “It suits you.”

  “I should say so. A plain, solid name.”

  “If you wish it to be. Or music, if you prefer. All composed of breath and murmur, and sounds that never stop until you want them to.”

  Was that true, about the sounds? Why, so it was. “Such things you notice! I’ve lived with the name for one and twenty years, and never noticed that.”

  In reply he only brought his smile to blossom, and settled his hand against her head as his wound-up finger made its final twist.

  Chapter Nine

  MAY I ask you something? I fear to offend you, but curiosity is getting the better of me.” Three days later they were out of doors again, this time walking the long way, over the road, from her house to his. Mr. Mirkwood was to tramp about with Mr. Granville, reviewing all the land he might enclose, and he’d taken it upon himself to invite her along.

  “I didn’t realize you were capable of that particular fear. Your question must be grave indeed.” She could speak so to Mr. Mirkwood. They’d attained an unexpected ease with one another, a black-humored camaraderie, perhaps, in the absurdity of their misalliance.

  “Not grave, exactly.” In the pause she could picture him rummaging for the proper words—her bonnet, constructed after the fashion of a horse’s blinders, prevented her seeing the picture firsthand. “Blunt, though. Forgive the bluntness. Why don’t you enjoy yourself with me? In bed, I mean.” From the trajectory of his voice she knew he’d turned toward her in asking the question. “I put it down to dislike, at first, but I don’t believe you truly dislike me anymore.”

  Discretion must have a different meaning among the married ladies of London, if he’d made his reputation there. She swiveled to look about her.

  “No one is near. I looked, already. And I’ll keep watch as we walk. Of course whether to answer at all is your decision.” His voice reassured in four or five different ways at once. He’d looked. No one was near. No topic was beyond discussion, if they wished to discuss it. And if she shrank from his question, he would let the matter drop.

  She filled her lungs, settling her eyes on the far horizon where verdant green ended and blue sky began. She would start with the truth least slighting to him, awkward as it would be to say. She angled her bonnet a few degrees toward him and lowered her voice. “That particular act, I find, does not produce the proper sensations in me. Not as it does in you. Or in other men. Or in other women, I suppose,” she added before he could supply this point out of his own experience.

  “Improper sensations would be more to the point than proper ones, I should think.” Yes, she’d known he wouldn’t be able to resist that. “But you do have an idea, then, of how it ought to feel?”

  “I do.” Now he might guess at her private habits. Better that than to have him think her ignorant and pitiable. “I believe there may be something irregular in how I am made up.”

  Her half boots and his top boots had a dialogue of their own in the ensuing pause, creaking rhythmically as they struck the hard-packed earth. What a poor, old-fashioned road this was, pure mud when the rains came and impassable some days. Someone ought to see to putting down rocks, as was done on the larger roads. “Forgive me,” he said. “I’m not quick. You’re speaking of anatomy?”

  “Anatomy. Yes.” She would be blushing ferociously if she’d said this indoors. Out here, it had all the significance of a single leaf on a single tree in the distant great Weald.

  “Forgive me again. You mean, because your chief pleasure-point isn’t on the inside?”

  He was quick enough on certain topics. “You’ve encountered this before?” Her bonnet canted several more degrees his way.

  “It’s common. Not at all irregular.” He spoke with an authority that left no room for dissent. “Most ladies require a bit of attention there to reach a proper climax. Some require more than others.”

  Well, really. One couldn’t think much of whatever planning process had resulted in human reproductive d
esign. Men with their parts dangling like stockings on a washday line. Women with their pleasure put away from the main event. One might easily conclude people weren’t really meant to—

  “There are things I could do.” His words came out low and intent, freighted with hope, but cautious, too, because he knew her well enough to guess at her probable response.

  “I know.” She’d dwelt altogether too much, recently, on the things he could do. “But my conscience would object.”

  A bird was calling somewhere nearby. Three high trills and a low one, counterpoint to the tireless rhythm of their boots. Mr. Mirkwood made a soft throat-clearing sound. “I don’t mean to argue. But I don’t understand. Surely you and your conscience must have come to terms before you engaged me.”

  Now he would think her foolish. So be it. “My conscience permits me to do what is necessary to get a son, because the good that will come of that outweighs the transgression. More people than myself will benefit, I mean. If I were to seek my own pleasure, this bargain would be something else. Something unworthy of the person I have tried to be.” A quick glance round the brim of her bonnet caught his profile, scowling into the distance. “We’re very unlike, you and I, and I don’t expect you to understand entirely.”

  “And so I do not.” His stride had lengthened, so that she must work harder to keep up. “To my way of thinking, if you must offend against your principles by lying with a man, you ought at least to have the pleasure that’s meant to come along. There’s meant to be pleasure, Martha.” It was the first time he’d used her Christian name since gently prising it from her grasp.

  “It’s not so simple for me. First of all, I only laid eyes on you two weeks since.”

  “Two weeks and two days.”

  “Sixteen days, yes. We’d scarcely consider ourselves acquainted, in normal circumstances. And acquaintance may be sufficient for you—well, obviously it is—but for my part, I should have to know a man very well before making that surrender to him.”

  “Must it necessarily be a surrender?” He’d got a bit ahead of her and now turned to peer over his shoulder, plainly baffled by her notions.

  How could he ask such a question? Men. So caught up in conquest, in the thrill of the hunt and the chase, they never paused to consider what might be the experience on the other side. “I think it always is, for a woman.” She met his gaze steadily until he dropped back beside her, his gait more leisurely again.

  “Well,” he said. One gloved hand came out, palm up, fingers spread, while he counted off with the other. “I haven’t been addressing the right part of you. We know that can be corrected. Your conscience interferes. And you haven’t known me very long, but we’ve two weeks or so remaining to our bargain. Are those all my obstacles?”

  For Heaven’s sake, why couldn’t he apply such energy to something worthy and useful? She pointed her bonnet straight ahead, eyes on a distant bend in the road. “The greatest obstacle is the difference in our natures. You’re correct in perceiving that I don’t dislike you. In fact I like you better than I ever expected to do.”

  “But that isn’t enough.” His hand, with three fingers’ worth of obstacles counted, still stuck out before him as if he’d forgot it there.

  “For me it is not.” How did one go about saying these things gently? “You’re not a bad man, Mirkwood. I do think you have promise. But while I find I can be cordial with a man who lives for pleasure, and even come to feel a certain regard for him, I cannot, in the end, truly admire such a man. And I don’t care to give myself up to a man I don’t admire. Pardon my frankness.”

  “Not at all. I’m the one who opened the subject.” His hand went slack, the three obstacles just three among five fingers again. He turned it, and turned it back the other way, and let it fall to his side.

  A CERTAIN regard. What a paltry place for a man to hold in a woman’s esteem. And yet some women could cultivate desire on such flimsy ground. Some women, for that matter, went about claiming just such a preference for upstanding men, and fell into the arms of the first willing scoundrel.

  Though Lord knows, with a willing scoundrel hired to attend her, Mrs. Russell had had every opportunity to take that fall. She wasn’t so susceptible.

  “Did you admire your husband?” What the devil did he think he’d accomplish with that question? Did he mean to console himself with the disappointments of a dead man?—because he knew, even before asking, what the answer must be.

  “No,” she said without any particular emotion. “I did not.”

  He tipped his head back to watch the aimless clouds. Like those wisps of sheep fleece caught on shrubbery all over the widow’s land. Sheep scratched themselves on bushes and left those slight markers behind. So she’d told him, walking one day.

  Had Mr. Russell hoped to be desired by his young bride, and had he ratcheted steadily down into despair? He mightn’t have cared. Some husbands didn’t. Some availed themselves of their conjugal right and no more thought of the woman’s feeling than one would wonder at a chamberpot’s sentiments on being similarly used. Some thought passion in a wife unseemly, and saved up all their best attentions to spend on a mistress.

  But many, many husbands must feel otherwise. Many a man must make a mistress of his wife, or at least wish to do so. That could be quite pleasant, a mistress in one’s house day and night. Flirting with a man over the breakfast table. Sleeping but two or three doors away. Sleeping in his own bed some nights. Poor miserable Mr. Russell, if that had been his hope.

  “We’ll see my drive from this next rise.” He gestured with one hand. “Granville will likely be outside already. I’ve called on you four times, remember, and always with land business to discuss.”

  HERE’S OUR first bit of roadside waste,” Granville said as they approached it. “In general this will be less useful land due to the location. Some of these pieces are thick with trees too.” He was in exceptionally good spirits, the agent, with twice the expected number of young people to lecture, and one of them actually paying rapt attention.

  “What are its boundaries? Besides the road, I mean.” Mrs. Russell, too, appeared to be having as delightful a time as could be allowed to a woman in mourning, as she unrolled her dashed map—his dashed map—to see how this spot was represented.

  Theo walked a bit away from the others, bending shrubbery branches and letting them spring back as he went. Roadside waste. What man would want to add anything of that description to his holdings? Better to leave it for the turf-cutters’ use. Indeed, here was a place where someone had been digging it out. He poked at the ragged edge with the toe of one boot.

  “Why do you suppose the ground drops off there?” The widow had noticed his wandering attention, and swiveled to address him, rather loudly as she still stood beside Mr. Granville with the map. “It looks as though part of it were peeled away.”

  “Cut away, yes. Someone uses this turf.” Someone else he could deprive by enclosing. He kicked idly at a loose bit of ground.

  “Uses it?” She lowered the map and took a step toward him, her face written all over with astonishment and her voice almost indignant. “For what purpose?”

  “To burn. This is the sort of turf people use for fuel.” Didn’t she remember? They’d spent too much of an afternoon reading some tract on the usage of common land, just last week.

  “For fuel, really?” Her eyes narrowed at him and she marched over to inspect the ground’s cut edge.

  “Fuel, to be sure.” Granville trailed her at a distance. “Among people too poor for firewood, it’s quite common.”

  “Do your laborers burn this, Mr. Mirkwood?” She was bending over now, to pick up a crumb of dirt in her gloved fingers, and he looked quickly away from where her skirts gave a sudden elegant delineation to her form.

  Fuel. Turf. No, a plain vision came to him of the Weavers’s firewood box with all those folded papers scattered among the sticks. “I believe all our people burn wood.” He glanced at Granville, who nodded. “I pr
esume your tenants do as well, Mrs. Russell?” Martha. Her name, the name that said nothing of her husband, lingered unspoken on his tongue like an aftertaste.

  “They do.” She frowned at the clod held up between her thumb and first two fingers. “I wonder which of our neighbors does use this.”

  “Perhaps none of them. Gypsies come through a neighborhood sometimes, and take turf away in pieces to sell. Or so my reading tells me.” The gentlest of jabs. She really ought to remember this detail. He recalled quite clearly that she’d been reading aloud when they came to that passage, and had stopped to poke him in the ribs on suspicion that he dozed.

  “Gypsies. Indeed. I have seen them about on occasion.” She dropped her bit of dirt and dusted her gloves together, tucking the map under one elbow. “Does your reading tell you anything of how such people would be affected by enclosure?” She angled her head to look at him, bright-eyed with interest.

  Ah. Sudden daylight. There was nothing accidental about this question, or about anything she’d said. She remembered exactly what learning he’d acquired. “In fact that’s one of the arguments put forth by the defenders of enclosure,” he said, and only now did he notice the way Granville listened, nodding almost imperceptibly. “Enclosing reduces the presence of rootless people in a neighborhood, by eliminating the common land where they might camp.”

  “I collect the practice has its detractors as well, then.” She glanced from one man to the other. “What are the arguments on their side?”

  Theo hesitated, to give Granville a chance to answer, but the agent dipped his head and held out a hand, palm up, to indicate he should proceed.

  “Well, it tends to mean more cropland, to the loss of pastureland. More of the land held by the few wealthiest families in a region.”

  “Though that hasn’t been an unmixedly bad state of affairs,” Granville put in, directing his words to Mrs. Russell. “Many of the last century’s advances, in knowledge of drainage and crop rotation for example, came about through the curiosity of gentleman farmers of ample means and acreage on which to try out their theories. A yeoman farmer hasn’t the leisure to conduct such experiments.”