A Lady Awakened

by Cecilia Grant

  “I see.” Her brow furrowed. “I’m sorry, though, to think of anyone losing the independence of making his own living on the land. So many young people must go to the city now for work.”

  “Work that not so long ago was done in cottages.” Here was something he could add. “Fifty years since, tenants on your own land all had spinning-wheels or looms, and Seton Park was known for its finished cloth as well as the raw wool you produce now.”

  “How do you know that?” Genuine surprise flickered in her eyes. “I’m sure it’s not in any book.”

  “I should think he’s been speaking to people who remember it so.” The agent smiled with undisguised satisfaction. “Visited Mr. Barrow, have you?”

  “He has a great many interesting stories to tell.” He looked at the ground, to avoid the sensation that he was somehow preening under Granville’s approbation. He’d visited the old man to be sociable, after all, not for any high-minded educational purpose.

  “You do well to listen.” The smile came to him, even with his eyes averted. “Books make an excellent foundation, but they haven’t the immediacy of a man’s own experience. To hear the stories of Mr. Barrow, and others both like and unlike him, will give a complexity to your understanding beyond what you could pick up from a book.” The agent’s address broadened to include Mrs. Russell. “Shall we go on to the next piece of land?”

  Theo threw a look to the widow as the other man turned his back. Such a piquant stew of sentiments on her face. Pride at his showing and at her own part in it, surprise that he’d learned something worthy without her assistance, and poorly suppressed disapproval over the implied disparagement of book-learning.

  “Complexity,” he mouthed with a tap at his temple, just to pique her further, and her features resolved themselves in favor of disapproval. His arm wanted very badly to sling itself about her waist, so he clasped both hands behind his back and they walked on.

  Thus the morning went, from one patch of enclosable land to the next, Mrs. Russell framing questions and remarks that would show off the fruit of his study, Mr. Granville hearing it all, and dispensing supplementary wisdom, with a gratified good cheer, and one or another of Theo’s limbs clamoring to touch his subtle mistress every minute.

  A man might get used to landowning, after all. Not only to being outdoors on a morning like this, to see how the little wildflowers, curled indistinct and glistening with dew, gradually opened to reveal their shapes and colors as the sun climbed higher in the sky. A man might get used to discussing things with his agent, for example; to seeing his opinions received and considered as though they had actual weight. He might get used to the company of a neighbor who wished him well. He might even come to welcome the decisions and responsibilities themselves.

  Nobody expected much of him, in London. Nobody ever had. He’d been spoiled from two different directions, really. All the privilege and consequence that went with being an eldest son, yet young enough to be doted on by fond older sisters. Such a boy must necessarily grow up believing himself to be wonderful just as he was, mustn’t he? Then the mistresses and friends of one’s young manhood only reinforced the view. Even his father’s disapproval made but one more tributary to the same stream. Everyone expected him to be feckless and trivial, and all his life he’d gladly obliged.

  At their final stop—another, even less promising piece of waste—he hung back, mulling over these novel conceptions while Granville showed Mrs. Russell how to measure a boundary, until his attention was caught by the unhurried beat of approaching hooves. He looked up the road to see a figure in a black coat on a frankly pitiable horse. “Is that your curate coming?” he said over his shoulder.

  The widow left off her measuring, and came to step round him into the road. She shaded her eyes with one hand. “Indeed I think it is.” She looked … God, but she looked pleased to see the fellow, shabby horse and all, despite the fact that she must see him often enough in the course of his regular business. She let her hand fall and stood where she was, fairly beaming. She must have felt his stare because she glanced his way and smiled, radiant and unself-conscious, as though certain that he, too, had wanted just this chance encounter to make his morning perfect. Then she turned back to the road.

  Something unfurled in him, something base and bitter, as he watched her watch the curate. She’d never looked at him that way.

  For God’s sake, why should she? She’s known that man longer, and she doubtless likes his preaching, and she’s pleased about his school. That’s all. Besides, plenty of women had looked at him, over the years, in plenty of exceedingly agreeable ways. He needn’t command the admiration of every woman on the planet.

  Admiration. Good Lord. Like a fist in the belly, that word. That name for what he saw before him. Admiration it was that put a light in her eyes, and touched her upright, expectant posture with simmering grace. His mouth went suddenly dry.

  Stop it. He’s not a rival, and she’s not yours to guard. He bit down on the inside of his cheek, to will in some discipline and common sense, and only let up when the curate stopped—though really the man needn’t have done any more than raise his hat and keep to his errand—and greeted each of them by name, requiring some sort of civil reply.

  Their outdoor business was explained to him. He listened with interest, and commended the idea of neighbors consulting one another on such decisions, with the slightest bow—an extra measure of endorsement—toward Theo, which might have gratified him had it not so obviously gratified Mrs. Russell. The widow and the churchman, a pair of grave bookends in their black garments, fell into some discussion of the imminent school then, as he’d expected they must. He removed a bit, with Granville, to let them speak.

  The high opinion went both ways. That was plain. But then how should it not? What clergyman wouldn’t think highly of a virtuous, serious-minded young wife or widow, and where common interests and nearness in age promoted it, how should some little bit of friendship not develop? If only he weren’t so damnably interesting-looking, all light and dark and clean-carved angles. Wasn’t that always the way with these country curates? Not one in three of them had the good grace to be ugly, and promote sober-minded attention among the young ladies of a Sunday morning.

  Enough. She had a right to be friendly with other men, handsome as well as plain. And he, not the curate, was the one who would take her to bed an hour or so hence. He needn’t waste these last few minutes in which he might be solidifying Granville’s improved opinion of him.

  But when at last he was at Mrs. Russell’s house, busy in the blue-draperied bed, he was conscious of some additional vehemence, some barbaric will to leave a mark. If he bit her … if he made her sore … if he held her down and put his tongue to her, conspiring with her body’s most mechanical response to drag her unwilling into ecstasy, then she would have cause to think of him when he was out of her sight. The bruise, or the intermittent ache, or the scandalized aftershocks of what he had made her feel, would stay with her as she went about all the daily business in which he had no part.

  But he was no barbarian, and besides, he could picture all too clearly the way she would look at him afterward if he did do any of those things. So he did none of them. He made his solitary journey to bliss, helped her dutifully onto the pillow, and put on his clothes and went home, an unappeased hunger rattling round some empty place inside of him.

  Chapter Ten

  GOOD MORNING, Mrs. Russell. This letter was misdelivered to my house. I broke the seal before I realized it must be meant for you. Will you take a look, please, and confirm that it’s yours, or tell me whether I must carry it about to some other neighbors?”

  What in Heaven’s name could he be meaning by this? The time couldn’t be much past ten o’clock. What purpose would get him out of bed so early to stand before her in this show of respectability?

  With a quick glance at the nearby footman, Martha took the letter and unfolded it. Stark across the paper, in the appalling hand of a highborn gen
tleman, she read, It’s got to be now. Can you contrive to meet me in the room in ten minutes?

  “Yes.” She lifted her eyes back to him. “Yes, this certainly is my letter. Thank you for bringing it to me.” She folded it closed, her worried fingers pressing each crease tight.

  “Just as I thought.” His attention lingered on the anxious industry of her hands, and when he spoke again, she knew he meant to reassure. “I’ll wish you good day, then. I’m sure some duty demands your presence, as it does mine.” With a bow, and an almost conspiratorial smile, he restored his hat and let the footman show him out.

  YOU DID too good a job in showing me off to Granville yesterday.” Already he was shrugging out of his coat. “He thinks I’ve got serious about management duties. I’m to attend the threshing with him today and tomorrow. Never mind that it’s been going on well enough without me for days—I must be present, and then come along while he takes the grain somewhere to be milled, and Lord only knows what else. All manner of tedium, and all of it seeming to take whole afternoons. I couldn’t see how to get out of it.”

  “Nor ought you.” Martha stood still, and waited for his eyes to come to her. “Mr. Mirkwood, that’s wonderful news. You’ve worked hard, studying things you don’t like. You’re to be commended. I could see Mr. Granville was impressed with you, and he has every reason to be. You should be proud.”

  “And you, darling, should be getting out of your clothes. Must I manage everything?” He’d ducked his head, to tend to his waistcoat buttons, but the glow of accomplishment suffused his whole frame. Oh, she had every hope of sending him back to London a better man.

  THEY SKETCHED out the details while he dressed. “I can’t depend on being at liberty this time every day,” he said, pulling on his trousers. “Perhaps I could come at night—after the households have gone to bed—if you don’t mind waiting up for me.”

  “Do you propose to walk all this way and back in the dead of night?” She lifted her head from the pillows to make the admonition more forceful.

  “What would I have to fear?” An indulgent smile creased his face before he disappeared under his shirt. “Ghosts?” he said from within its billowy depths. “Gypsies? Man-eating tigers?” His head poked through and his hands emerged, one, then the other, from the cuffs.

  “Don’t laugh at me. Particularly not on a subject where my experience of living in the country makes me better informed than you.” Her neck was beginning to ache, at this angle. “You’d be in danger from poachers, to take one example.”

  He shook his head dismissively, tucking in the shirt and fastening up his trouser buttons. “I haven’t any game. Surely the poachers of this neighborhood know better than to waste their time on my property.”

  “I still don’t like it.” She let her head fall back. “I would worry.”

  “Save your worries for the child.” The mattress dipped; he’d sat on one end of it to style his cravat. “I’m sure he’ll give you cause enough, particularly if he takes after me.” She could hear the cloth whisking over itself as he arranged it. Most impressive. He wasn’t anywhere near a mirror.

  When he’d risen from the bed to sit down in the chair by which he’d left his boots, she spoke again. “Why can’t you take a horse, and come by way of the road, and stay until morning? You’d be less time abroad, and only one trip in the dark. I can speak to my maid about finding somewhere to put the horse where it won’t be seen.”

  No answer came. She raised her head to find him studying one boot, lashes lowered, fingers evening up the folded-over top part. “Come to your own bed, you mean?” he said, as though it were unclear. “And sleep there with you?”

  “I think it would be best. You can come in the same way you do now. I’ll show you how to get to my rooms from here. I’ll give you a key. Of course you’ll have to be … quiet … in my rooms, closer to the servants as they are.”

  He didn’t speak, or even bring his eyes to hers. He finished with the boot and slowly pulled it on. Then he pulled on the other. He took his time straightening the seams of his trousers at either side of each calf.

  Was he … looking for the politest way to decline? Maybe she’d offended him with that admonition about quiet. Or maybe this proposal transgressed the boundaries of their arrangement altogether. Well, how was one to know what was and wasn’t done? It wasn’t as though she’d made a habit of this.

  He finished with his boots and raised his head. “Yes,” he said. “I can do that.” With a swipe of one hand he gathered his gloves from the table where he’d left them, and rose. “Without the horse, though. Even if we could keep it from your own stablehands, there’d be no way of keeping it from mine. I’ll take along a pistol to ward off the poachers if that will make you easier.” He crossed to where he’d hung his waistcoat and when he turned to her he wore his familiar teasing smile. “I do fear your days will feel interminable without me. You’ll listen to the chatter of your lady-callers and secretly count the hours until bedtime.”

  “I’ll do no such thing.” She propped herself up on her elbows. “Even if I did have callers, my mind would never wander so.”

  “No callers?” He stopped, one arm in the waistcoat and one arm out. “But you have friends in the neighborhood, surely?”

  “I haven’t really formed any such attachments. You’ve seen how it is, I think. People wish me well, but we keep a distance. I haven’t a … confiding temperament, I suppose, or whatever those qualities are that promote affection and friendship.” How the words stumbled about, ungainly on her tongue. Foolish, this reaction. One valued one’s solitude. One asked for nothing from one’s neighbors but the best opinion one could earn.

  “They still ought to call on you.” He busied himself with the second arm. “You’re widowed. It’s the proper thing to do, whether they know you well or not.”

  Of all the men to concern himself with propriety! What a ridiculous conversation this had become. She swallowed her smile and made her voice level, to respect his sentiments. “Don’t fret on my behalf. I’ll find occupation. I have visits to make to my tenants, and I can help Mr. Atkins get his school ready.”

  He frowned at his gloves as he worked his fingers into them. “You ought to have a wider acquaintance. More people to visit than just the tenants and the curate.”

  “Perhaps, but that would have complicated my arrangement with you. We shouldn’t have been able to study so fruitfully in the afternoons. Now help me dress and I’ll show you the way to my rooms.”

  HER BASKET wasn’t so heavy, this time, but its contents did require more frequent attention. Some box or basket with a lid should have been more to the purpose than the cloth she was constantly having to stop and rearrange. So be it. She would know better the next time she undertook this sort of errand.

  On Monday Mr. Atkins’s school would begin, and the following Sunday would bring his first attempt at instruction for young ladies. She’d thought to work upon Mr. Mirkwood in the matter of enrolling some of his cottager children, and perhaps supplying a stipend, but with his time taken up by duties, well, one must take certain matters into one’s own hands.

  The trees whispered about her, stirred by some faint breeze, as though conspiring with her purpose and cheering her on. At a place where sun dropped through sparse boughs to light a clearing, she stopped, again, to extract a set of tiny claws from the basket’s rim and push their owner back under the cloth. As pets went, a cat was a useful one. This individual should have earned its keep honorably in the Seton Park stable; now, if luck held, it would know not only the satisfaction of honest labor, but the tender affection of a young girl.

  Some two dozen yards beyond where the woods trickled down to mere shrubbery and then to rolling pasture, the Weaver cottage came into view. Her breaths wanted to go shallow; she forced them deep and steady. How much less daunting this had been with Mr. Mirkwood, who made himself at home in any household, and made himself liked by even the pig. But mission could carry a person forward, even if
she floundered a bit along the way. She set her shoulders and marched on.

  Baby Job was outside today, somewhere back of the house, voicing his complaints to any who would listen. She let herself through the gate. The pig, busy at its trough, raised its head just long enough, one could easily believe, to ascertain that she was not Mr. Mirkwood before returning to its feed with a dismissive-sounding grunt. Three or four geese waddled toward her with a clear interest in the basket, and followed as she made her way to the backyard.

  Several clotheslines crisscrossed the scene before her, half hung with fresh laundry. The eldest daughter stood over a copper tub, stirring its contents with a washing-stick, while four other children busied themselves in wringing the smaller garments taken from a second tub, presumably already gone through the rinse. Their mother was hanging an apron over one line, baby squalling in a basket at her feet. She turned, her attention no doubt caught by the increasingly vociferous presence of the geese, and, without a word, set both hands expectantly on her hips. Mrs. Russell had called; Mrs. Russell must be the one to speak.

  Martha advanced. “Good afternoon. I’m so glad to see I’ve come at a time when I might be of use to you. I’d be happy to help wring the larger things. Or to hang them up, that you might rest and hold the baby.”

  The woman glanced down at her baby and frowned, as though she’d forgot he was there and didn’t appreciate being reminded. She said nothing.

  “Only I shall have to dispose of my basket first, or rather, what I have within it. I’ve brought a present for your daughter, and it’s the sort of gift that must be put into safe hands. Do you see?” She lifted the cloth to display the kitten, its fur on end and its spine standing out in a ridge, probably as a response to the yard’s general clamor. Quickly she covered it again. “He comes of good mousing stock. His aunts and uncles and cousins live in all my outbuildings and some of the tenant cottages. Your Carrie mentioned you didn’t have a cat for the pantry, the last time I was here. When I called here before, with Mr. Mirkwood.” Good Heavens, would the woman never speak? She herself could not seem to halt her tongue, if the alternative was this crushing silence. “I’m sorry Mr. Mirkwood wasn’t able to accompany me today. But he has a great deal to learn of estate management. Indeed I don’t believe he knew it was proper to call with gifts, before I told him so.”