by Anne Gracie
“It would do you a great deal of good to be prayed over. Ah, here are the children. If you need help getting that boot off, ask John or Henry to help you. I’m busy.”
Ten
“Is there any hot water?” Nash asked before dinner. “I’d like a shave.” She’d been perfectly polite to him all afternoon. So polite he was catching a chill.
He didn’t enjoy Maddy keeping him at a distance, as if they were chance-met strangers—be damned to the fact that they were. They weren’t strangers anymore. He’d tried several times to break through her courteous veneer. Without success.
“Yes, of course,” she said pleasantly. She fetched his shaving kit and brought him hot water and towels.
“Thank you.” With a smile, he held out the shaving brush. “Would you care to do the honors?” The ultimate gesture of appeasement, he thought, to trust her, in the mood she was in, with a razor at his throat.
“Your hands are no longer shaking; you don’t need my help,” she observed, and called John to come and hold the mirror for Mr. Rider.
Henry came, too, and what Nash had hoped would be a reconciliation turned into a shaving lesson for two young boys while Maddy bustled about getting dinner ready.
He didn’t mind it, though. He hadn’t had much to do with young boys before, and initiating these two into the peculiarly masculine practice of shaving gave him a sense of . . . he wasn’t sure what.
He’d never once watched his own father shaving. The man who’d taught him and Marcus to shave was the valet hired for them when they reached that age. Shaving should be, he decided as he showed the boys how to use the strop to sharpen the razor, something a man taught his sons. A small thing, but important.
He’d planned to join them at table for dinner, but almost immediately after they’d packed his shaving things away, the little girls arrived with his dinner on a tray.
He’d opened his mouth to suggest he might get up when he caught Maddy’s eye.
“Is there something you wanted, Mr. Rider?” she asked so politely he decided it was better policy to stay in bed. Any more of her politeness and he’d end up with indigestion.
After dinner, when the table was cleared and the dishes done, she said to the children, “Mr. Rider has been very bored, stuck in bed with nothing to do. Why don’t you show him some of your favorite card games?”
He sighed. Further punishment.
Within minutes all five children were on the bed and he was playing a game called Fish, which involved collecting pairs.
“Won’t you join us?” he called to her at one stage.
“Thank you, Mr. Rider, but I have work to do.” She Mr. Ridered him with every sentence now, treating him with pleasant indifference, as if he really were a lodger instead of . . . whatever he was.
“Mr. Rider, have you got a queen?” Jane said in the sort of voice that meant she’d said it before and that Nash wasn’t paying attention. Nash meekly handed over his queen. Jane took it with a smug smile and Nash bent at least half his attention to the game. His pride had taken some beating in this cottage already, but he wasn’t prepared to let himself be fleeced by small children—not without a battle.
While they played cards, Maddy brought out a large bucketful of straw and some coiled strips of some vine and sat herself on a low stool, a wicked-looking knife in her hands. He could smell damp straw and beeswax.
What the devil was she doing?
“Your turn, Mr. Rider!” Said with exaggerated patience.
Nash bent his mind to the game at hand. It was a simple game but surprisingly enjoyable. Nash didn’t usually have much to do with children. He occasionally saw his brother Gabe’s boys on visits to Zindaria, but they were mad about horses and most of their interaction had been on horseback or in the stables.
He’d never experienced anything like this noisy, happy informality. The children started off being carefully polite to him, but soon they were hooting with triumph as they sent him to fish, or squawking with glee as they relieved him of a card. They sprawled over him and his bed like a tumble of puppies.
Lucy, being too small to play, had, with a propriety air, claimed a place in Nash’s lap. She watched each play with fierce concentration, crowing at each card he won and jealously guarding the pairs he—they—amassed, reluctant to give them up, even when the game was over.
From time to time he glanced at Maddy. She’d made some kind of disc from the straw and was coiling it round and round, first hammering it with a wooden mallet to flatten and shape it, then binding each coil with long springy strips of some vine that she’d dampened, and sewing it tight with a bodkin and twine.
It looked like difficult work, threading the strips through coiled bundles of straw and pulling the twine tight. From time to time she’d wince and suck her hand.
“That knife is dangerous,” Nash said after the third time.
“It’s not the knife,” she told him. “It’s the blackberry binding. I cut it into strips last summer and must have missed a few small thorns. They’re just nicks, nothing serious.”
“What on earth are you doing?”
“Making a skep.”
“A what?”
The children stared at his ignorance. “A skep,” Jane enunciated clearly, thinking he’d misheard. Then as he continued to look blank, she added, “For catching bees.”
“Bees?” Nash exclaimed. “What, you catch real, live bees?”
“Yes, of course,” Maddy said, laughing at his surprise. “How else would we get honey?” It was her first genuine response since the journal incident, and Nash wasn’t going to let it go to waste. Besides he’d never met a lady who kept bees before.
“Don’t you get stung?”
“Not very often. I wear a veil. And when I’m robbing the hives, I use smoke, or course.”
“Smoke?”
“It calms them.”
“You use smoke to catch them in that thing? How?”
John explained. “Every spring we go looking for swarms of bees in the forest, and when we find one, we tell Maddy. She brings a skep and knocks the bees into it—”
“But we don’t use smoke in the forest,” Jane corrected him.
“And then we bring the skep full of bees home,” Henry said in a cutting-a-long-story-short kind of way. Henry wanted to get back to the card game.
“And then the bees make honey for us all summer long,” Jane finished. “And wax.”
Nash was astounded. “You catch wild bees? Bare-handed?”
They all laughed merrily at his expression. “A fresh swarm isn’t usually aggressive,” Maddy explained. “And, of course, I wear gloves, as well as a veil.”
“Is it our turn yet?” Lucy asked with an impatient wriggle. Nash reluctantly returned to the game. Maddy caught and kept bees? He wanted to hear more.
From the corner of his eye he watched as the disc grew into a rounded basket shape and soon took on the familiar shape of a beehive. He’d seen them all his life and never once given a thought to how the honey was obtained: all he knew was that he liked to drizzle it on hot crumpets. He’d met a few beekeepers, too, but they’d been, without exception, grizzled men with large beards, not pretty, young women.
He watched her small, sturdy hands deftly shaping the hive. Damp straw, blackberry vines, and string. Maddy Woodford’s specialty: wresting something productive out of nothing. She was an extraordinary girl.
Woman.
After a while Lucy grew tired. Slowly she slumped against his chest, then gave a large yawn and wriggled into the crook of his arm, where she simply went to sleep, her cheek against his chest. The other children quietened their noise when he asked them to, but it only lasted for about three minutes. Lucy slept on, regardless.
He’d never felt a child fall asleep in his lap before. It was an extraordinary sensation. Total trust.
He glanced at Maddy to see if she’d noticed, but her head was bent over her beehive as she tied off the final coil. She stood and stretched w
earily, then tidied up the mess.
She swept up the straw remnants and shreds of blackberry binder and tossed them into the fire. Flames flared brightly and a few fiery twirls of blackberry danced up into the blackness of the chimney.
“When that game’s ended it’s time for bed,” she told the children. She glanced at Lucy curled up asleep against Nash but said nothing. She collected the children’s nightclothes and warmed them before the fire.
“I’ll take Lucy.” She scooped the little girl from his lap. He could smell Maddy’s hair as she leaned across him.
The children washed, then changed into their nightclothes in front of the fire, the older ones helping the younger ones with buttons and buckles, while Maddy undressed the sleepy Lucy. It was cozy, domestic, and like nothing he’d ever experienced.
“Say good night to Mr. Rider,” Maddy told them, and one by one they lined up beside the bed in their patched white nightclothes, faces scrubbed and shining, demon card players transformed into small angels.
“Thank you for the excellent card games, sir,” John said. “You are a very sneaky player and I enjoyed it very much. Good night.”
“Can we play again, sir?” Henry said. “Perhaps tomorrow?” Nash laughed and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Perhaps.” Henry looked so pleased, Nash was absurdly flattered. Who would have dreamed that children could be good company?
“ ’Night, Mr. Rider,” Susan said sleepily. “Sweet dreams.”
“Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Rider?” Jane asked.
“No, thank you, my dear. You’re quite the demon card player, aren’t you?”
She blinked and gave him an anxious look.
He smiled. “It’s a compliment,” he explained. “You’re going to lead some man a merry dance when you’re older.”
She gave him a wondering look. “Me?”
“Yes, minx, you,” he told her, and flicked her cheek gently with his finger. “ ’Night, Jane.”
She blushed, mumbled something, got halfway to the stairs and came back to wish him, “A very good sleep and sweet dreams, Mr. Rider.” Her eyes were shining.
Maddy stood at the foot of the steps, watching the exchange with Lucy draped over her shoulder, sound asleep. In the dim light, he couldn’t read her expression. Jane ran up the stairs past her, but Maddy made no move to follow.
“What is it?” he asked quietly. The children had gone ahead of her. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No.” She took two steps up the staircase, then turned back. “It was nice, what you said to Jane.” Then she turned and carried Lucy upstairs. She would tuck them in, tell them a bedtime story, and kiss them good night. He already knew the routine.
Nash sat back, feeling strangely affected by the simple domestic routine. There had been nothing in his own experience like it.
When his father was in residence, Nash and Marcus would occasionally be brought down for half an hour’s conversation in the drawing room. It was a nerve-wracking and humbling experience; their father was clearly bored by them.
He’d never played any sort of game with his sons. Not unless they happened to come across him at Whites, or some other club, as adults.
And Nash could no more imagine sitting on his father’s bed than flying, let alone falling asleep in his lap.
As a child, Nash had been put to bed by servants, different servants each year. It wouldn’t do for a son of the Earl of Alverleigh to get vulgarly attached to a servant.
The servants weren’t interested, either. They were usually impatient, indifferent, not unkind—just in a hurry to get the boys off their hands.
Mama had never put them to bed. She occasionally burst into the nursery quarters like some kind of glamorous fairy princess in a cloud of perfume, glittering with jewels, her skirts rustling. She would swoop upon them, hugging and kissing them extravagantly, sprinkling questions over them but never waiting for the answers. And then she’d be gone, leaving two dazed sons behind, Marcus sneezing. Mama’s perfume always made him sneeze.
Maddy wasn’t even these children’s mother . . .
Finally he heard her come down the stairs. He waited as she laid out the bedding in front of the fireplace, as usual, then—
“What are you doing?” he asked sharply.
Maddy gave him a cool glance. “What does it look like? I’m going to bed.” She flipped back the covers and climbed in.
“Your bed is here.”
Maddy shook her head. “You and I both know what will happen if we share a bed again.” She’d tried all evening to hold on to her anger, to use it as a shield against his charm. But it was impossible to stay cross with him for long.
The way he’d played with the children, his patience, his sense of fun, his kindness . . . And then when Lucy fell asleep in his lap, his careful, cautious response, the look in his eyes . . .
She had to keep her distance. It would be too easy to fall in love with this man.
He swung his legs out of bed. “I gave you my word as a gentleman that no harm would come to you from sharing this bed.”
“It depends on your definition of harm.” She didn’t trust herself with him one little bit. He was too appealing. Even in sleep her body sought to get closer to him, and it wasn’t simply his body heat she wanted.
She’d never understood that part in the Bible where it said better to marry than burn. She didn’t understand, then, what it meant to “burn.” Now she did.
She burned, she yearned, she ached for him.
But it was impossible. She knew nothing about him. He knew nothing about himself. He could be married. She would not, could not seduce another woman’s husband.
Did infidelity count if you did not know you were doing it?
Even if she gave herself to him, what then? Would the burning cease, or would it intensify? A craving: once tasted, never forgotten. He could get his memory back at any moment, and go on his merry way, leaving her behind . . . burning.
Maddy used to pride herself on her sound common sense. She was the practical, the realistic, the dependable one.
That Maddy was vanishing fast. A lifetime’s common sense shattered by a pair of blue eyes that invited her to forget her worries and a smile that could melt her bones.
Five children depended on Maddy keeping her head. And her virtue.
A night on the cold hard floor would ensure that. And possibly bring her to her senses.
He frowned. “I’d never hurt you.”
“I know.” She believed him. He wouldn’t harm her. Not deliberately. Not knowingly. But harm was not always physical. Or deliberate.
“Then get into this bed.”
She shook her head and blew out the candle. “Good night, Mr. Rider.” The cottage was lit by the gentle glow of the dying fire.
“Then if you must be so stubborn . . .” He hopped off the bed and limped across the room.
“What are you doing?” She sat up, defensively clutching the bedclothes to her.
He held out his hand to her. “Come on.”
“No, I—”
“You’re sleeping in the bed,” he insisted. “I’ll sleep here.”
She didn’t move.
He gave an exasperated sigh. “If you think I’m going to allow a woman to give up her bed and sleep on the floor while I sleep in hers in comfort—” He snorted and again, held out his hand. “I won’t take no for an answer.”
It was what he’d said the other night. She knew there was no point arguing. “Very well, but I warn you, if you get back into bed with me—”
“I won’t.” It was blunt and to the point, surprising her. Where had the flirtatious rogue gone? Or was this another of his tricks?
Cautiously she put her hand in his and he drew her to her feet. He led her back to her bed and courteously helped her into it as though he were helping a lady into a carriage.
“Lie down,” he ordered, and when she did, he drew the covers up to her chin and tucked her in like a child. She didn’t feel in
the least childlike.
He limped across to the makeshift bed but didn’t slide into it. Instead he poked a few more sticks into the fire, then straddled a chair and sat on it backward. With his elbows planted on the backrest and his chin resting on folded fists, he stared into the dancing flames.
“What are you doing?”
“Thinking. Go to sleep.” Firelight limned the silhouette of his face and gilded the long, hard horseman’s legs, inadequately covered by the vicar’s nightshirt.
Maddy tried not to think about the body hidden beneath it. She closed her eyes, but knowing he was sitting there, awake, was too tempting. Was he brooding again about his memory loss? Staring into the coals, wondering who he was?
He looked . . . lonely.
It surprised her that he hadn’t tried to talk her into sharing the bed. He seemed somehow different from the man of the previous night, the roguish flirt whose smile and laughing eyes were a constant threat to her sense of propriety. Tonight he was much more restrained, almost serious. As if he, too, wanted to put some a distance between them.
Because she’d lost her temper with him? She didn’t think so. He wasn’t sulking. It was as though he needed to be more—cautious? restrained? serious?—around her. Why?
As if he could read her mind, he turned and looked at her. “Why aren’t you asleep?”
“I’m not sleepy,” she admitted.
His face was hidden in shadows. “I can’t help wondering about those sketches in the book. It’s you, isn’t it, the child in those pictures? Who was the artist?”
She hesitated. Part of her was still angry he’d pried into her past. “My mother.”
“Would you let me look at the pictures again, and tell me about them?”
There was no reason to hide them, she supposed. He’d already seen what there was to see. And her memories had been stirred up; part of her wanted to share them with him. “If you like,” she said, sitting up and tucking pillows behind her back.
He lit a candle and brought her Grand-mère’s small valise, then sat on the bed beside her, on top of the bedclothes but close, so she had to scoot over to make room for him. The bed that had felt so spacious a moment before now felt small.