Any Groom Will Do

by Charis Michaels

  “You were too thorough, I’m sure,” said Willow. “We do not deserve your diligence. Of course you shall ride with us.”

  Perry, who remained in a protective dive across Willow’s lap, made a strangled noise of frustration.

  Willow cringed and reached up to feel the braided affair that had taken on sculptural qualities on her head. “Don’t be silly. Perry, you may inflict yourself on my hair with Mr. Fisk inside the carriage, the same as you would do if he was out. And I want him in.” She gave the maid a gentle shove. “In you come, Mr. Fisk.”

  Mr. Fisk chuckled and climbed into the carriage. The smell of horse, and rainwater, and cold wind permeated the vehicle, and Perry set about lowering windows.

  “Real or not,” said Mr. Fisk, “I would not miss my lady’s wedding.” He winked again and tapped the roof of the carriage, signaling the coachman to drive on.

  “Oh, ’tis a real wedding, Mr. Fisk,” insisted Perry, turning from the windows and rummaging through her basket. She came up with a loose end of wine-colored ribbon and began to unspool it, length by length. “The church is real, the vicar is real, the vows will be real, and the groom is a handsome earl who is very real, I assure you.”

  With each new reality, Perry unfurled another length of ribbon into a tangle on the carriage seat.

  “Yes, well, the handsome earl hasn’t been seen for almost as many days as Mr. Fisk has been away, has he?”

  Cassin had taken himself off to London not long after their conversation in her workshop. He’d sent a slapdash note—I’ve business in London but will return in time for the wedding—and then had not been heard from again. Since that time, Willow had vacillated between anger at herself for caring that he’d gone and anger at the earl for sprinting off. In the end, her feelings amounted to very little. Cassin had gone. It was but a small taste of the months and months he would be gone across the ocean. As far as she knew, it was a small taste of the rest of her life.

  “ ’Course, I’ve seen the earl, my lady,” said Mr. Fisk, blotting his wet whiskers with a handkerchief. “In London.”

  Willow’s steadily beating heart stopped. “You saw Cassin?” Perry loomed close with the floppy end of a ribbon, and Willow waved her away. “But where? Not in Belgravia.”

  “Oh, precisely in Belgravia,” said Mr. Fisk, looking not the least bit alarmed. It was Mr. Fisk’s special talent never to appear alarmed. “Standing, he was, proud as you please, on the doorstep of your aunt and uncle’s fine home, two days after I arrived. Your aunt invited him inside. Took tea, they did, and chatted for more than an hour.”

  “Tea?” Willow marveled, wincing as Perry knelt on the seat beside her and began to thread the purple ribbon through her elaborately braided hair. “But why?”

  Mr. Fisk shrugged. “The earl seemed to want to make the acquaintance of your aunt and uncle. And have a look at the house. Asked questions about the nature of your work and what, exactly, you would be doing when you join their business.”

  The nature of my work? Willow thought, shaking her head back and forth in disbelief.

  “Hold still, my lady,” sang Perry.

  “I was glad to hear the answers myself, to be honest,” said Mr. Fisk, but Willow barely heard him. Cassin had gone snooping around her aunt’s home and livelihood?

  Willow had assumed that Cassin had gone to London to collect her dowry. The lawyers had finished haggling, and her mother’s solicitor had called to Leland Park. Cassin would be expected to appear in person.

  “It’s not so improper,” ventured Mr. Fisk, “for a husband to make certain his wife will be provided for when he is away.”

  “But he will not be my husband,” said Willow, “not really—not in the way you suppose. And Aunt Mary is family to me, this is true, but she will also be my employer. I’ve told her by letter than Cassin and I had ‘an arrangement’ but that he would not be part of our lives. What impression is left when he turns up to pass judgment on her home and occupation? After she’s already been so generous, taking me in—and my friends too?” She made the palm-up gesture of why. In her peripheral vision, she saw Perry’s newly pinned ribbon quiver and toss, cascading from her head like a purple waterfall.

  Willow snapped, “Absolutely not, Perry. I resemble a kite.”

  “But this is the way all the ladies will be wearing their hair in London.” Perry rummaged in her basket again and produced a fashion plate.

  “I don’t care about all the ladies in London. Either cut the ribbons, or take them out.” She gathered the loose ends in two hands and began to pull.

  “No, you mustn’t pull, my lady!” pleaded Perry, rummaging again. “I will cut them to your shoulders, but no shorter.”

  The carriage hit a rut in the road, and the three of them were jolted with a shout. The tangled end of the uncut ribbon flew from the seat and unraveled into flying burgundy tentacles. Perry dropped the scissors and they stuck, points down, into the floorboard of the carriage. The maid screamed, diving for the scissors, while Mr. Fisk held his hat out the window, shaking off more rainwater.

  Willow closed her eyes, trying to imagine the conversation between her aunt and Cassin.

  “It is natural to be riddled with a few troublesome nerves on your wedding day, my lady,” said Mr. Fisk.

  “I’m not nervous,” said Willow, not opening her eyes. “I’m . . . I’m . . . losing control. He made no mention of a call to Belgravia. He barely told me he would leave Surrey.”

  But then she did open one eye and looked at Mr. Fisk over Perry’s head. For once the maid was wisely silent, carefully trimming the ribbons. “Were you nervous, Mr. Fisk, on your wedding day?” she asked.

  Mr. Fisk looked wistful. “Oh, not a bit, my lady. But I have it on good authority that Mrs. Fisk was eaten up with nerves.” He winked, and Willow laughed. Mrs. Fisk had been a verbose, jovial woman who hadn’t the slightest proclivity for nervousness.

  “I am glad that you’ve made it back in time for the ceremony. Even if it isn’t a real wedding.”

  Mr. Fisk looked at the passing parkland outside the window. “Oh, are we ever truly certain what is real and what is not?” He looked back at Willow. “You haven’t forgotten what I said to you the day when you and I became such good friends, have you, my lady?”

  Wordlessly, Willow shook her head—no, she hadn’t forgotten.

  She had been eight years old and finally permitted out of bed after months of battling the illness that nearly killed her. Although the infection had gone, the doctor’s visits had not, and she’d just learned from a new doctor about the future limitations of her body.

  Willow had passed a week thinking about the new term, barren, and what it would mean. She thought about why the doctor had been so very grave when he’d explained it and why her mother had refused to discuss it. On the seventh day out of bed, she had requested that a large, empty trunk be delivered to the nursery, where she studied her lessons and played.

  Two footmen promptly complied, and Willow had carefully, tearfully begun to pack up her vast collection of beloved baby dolls and doll dresses, their small cradles and prams. Carefully, stoically, she laid their pliable bodies into the trunk, arranged their copious curls and braids, so similar to her own, and tried not to look at their pert faces and long-lashed, unblinking eyes.

  Before she’d finished the task, her father’s valet—cold, brittle Mr. Fisk—had strode down the corridor just outside the door. She had been mortified to be discovered by a servant in such a private moment, but when she saw that it was only Mr. Fisk—the most aloof and dismissive of Leland Park’s staff—she had assumed he would not notice her and would carry on.

  To her great horror, he had not carried on; instead, she’d heard his footsteps stop, pivot, and return to the nursery door. Willow had wiped her eyes and held her breath, praying that he would not address her.

  “And what are your plans for this lot, my lady?” he had asked, his voice surprisingly gentle, from the doorway.

  W
illow had looked up, and he had smiled, perhaps his first ever smile for her. For some reason, Willow had found herself wanting to answer that smile.

  “No plans, Mr. Fisk,” she had said. “I’m packing them away. Perhaps Abbott can send them to another girl who might enjoy them.”

  “But you enjoy them, don’t you, my lady? Why should you send them away?”

  Willow had sat back on her heels and considered him. His voice was kinder than she had remembered. And certainly he showed more interest in her than anyone else in the household, her parents included. Finally she had said, “Oh, but perhaps you don’t know. I’ve only just learned. The doctor says that I was so very sick that my body will never be able to make a baby. When I’m older. That part of me is broken. This is what the doctors say.”

  “Perhaps I did hear something about it,” Mr. Fisk had said. He had paused then, and Willow remembered wanting desperately to hear what else he might say on the matter. He lingered a moment more, looking as if he could not decide whether he should come in or go out. Finally, he’d taken a step inside the nursery. “But I don’t rightly see how your sickness has anything to do with these dollies,” he had said.

  “Well, I thought,” she had said, “why should I play with dolls if I will not one day grow up to be a mother? Or to have a family of my own?”

  “Because it is a jolly fun thing to do, isn’t it?” Mr. Fisk had answered. “There is fun in make-believe, Lady Willow.”

  And Willow had said, “No, Mr. Fisk. There is not. Not to me. Make-believe for something that will not happen is no fun at all. And that is why I shall pack away these dolls and discover something else I might do. Instead of being a mother.”

  And then—Willow would never forget what came next—Mr. Fisk had not objected again. Instead, he’d said, “Very well, my lady. If that is what you wish. And I shall help you. I will even tell Abbott to send these to another young lady who might enjoy them, just as you have suggested.

  “But,” he had gone on, “I should like to tell you something in exchange. Will you listen to Mr. Fisk while I tell you this one very important, very grown-up thing?”

  Willow had considered this and slowly nodded.

  Mr. Fisk said, “Did you know that everyone has a job to do in this life?”

  “You mean like you are a valet, and Cook is a cook, and father is a earl?”

  “In a way,” he had said. “But those are the jobs that I do, and Cook does, and even your father does to survive. I am talking about a grander, more important job. This is the job that you do to make some impression on the world, to make it better in a large or small way. Usually, this job has to do with the way you affect other people. Some people are mothers or fathers, and they make a difference in the lives of their children.”

  “But not me.” Willow had sniffled.

  “No, not you—nor me, my lady. I’m no longer a father, am I?” Willow had the vague recollection that Mr. Fisk’s own young daughter had died when she was a child.

  Slowly, Willow had shaken her head.

  For a moment, Mr. Fisk had been quiet, and then he had said, “But what I mean is, some men are very wise teachers, and they make a difference in the lives of their students. And some women have the gift of healing, and they make a difference in the lives of sick people. Do you see?”

  Willow had not been sure that she saw, but she had nodded.

  “What I’m trying to say is that some people’s jobs are very clear and very set from the beginning. They always know what they will be. But you? You, my lady, do not yet know, do you?”

  “Well, I know I will not be a mother,” Willow had said.

  “Yes, this we know. But what we do not know is what other type of person you will become—or who you will meet or how you may help them or bring them joy, or comfort, or knowledge, or whatever you may do. It’s not yet been decided, and that is a very exciting thing. Because instead of having your job already set out for you, you may pick.”

  “I may pick?” Willow had repeated, intrigued by the notion of a choice.

  “Well, you may not pick Queen of England,” he had said, “but you are a very clever little girl, kind and thoughtful, with a high spirit, and pretty as a sunrise. There are so many possibilities, you simply have to be ready to accept whatever your job may eventually be, and then work very hard to seize it. Can you do that for me, my lady? Can you watch and listen very carefully and accept that job that we do not yet know but that one day will be plainly seen?”

  “Yes, Mr. Fisk,” Willow had said, her imagination already taking flight. “Yes, I can watch and listen. I will pick my own job. That’s exactly what I shall do, I think.”

  It was a conversation that Willow would never forget, and certainly she remembered it now, in the carriage to her wedding, to which Mr. Fisk, now an old man, had ridden through the rain to reach her in time.

  “There are many possibilities,” she recited roughly, her throat tight. “I simply have to be ready to accept them.”

  “Very true,” chuckled Mr. Fisk. “And now off you go. We’re nearly there. Get married to this earl, and see what might happen. You know I would never have been a party to this if I had not believed in a very great many possibilities.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Cassin returned to Surrey from London with a two-part plan: marry Lady Wilhelmina Hunnicut promptly, and keep away from her indefinitely. Or at the very least until they’d pulled the anchor of Stoker’s brig and sailed safely away from her.

  Cassin’s sojourn to London proved nothing if not that the longer he remained in the same country, the more he would be tempted to seek her out—and not just to take her to bed, which he urgently wanted to do. He found himself wanting to learn if his proposition for unattached sex had turned her irrevocably against him. To compare her notion of the future to his and weigh the possibility of some compromise. To discover how willing she might be to eventually leave London for Yorkshire.

  It was a conversation he hoped, eventually, to have (her body he also hoped eventually to have), but considering the threat of his uncle and the as-yet-unmined guano, his future was too uncertain to make any promise. There was no tangible future he could conjure for them at this point, and to discuss the unknown seemed disingenuous and unfair.

  And so he had stayed away, counting the days until the wedding. When the day finally arrived, he steeled himself to be remote, detached, and businesslike to the bride.

  But good Lord, what a bride.

  She’d worn a deep-purple gown, almost black, and just a hint of plum. The dark silk was scattered here and there with tiny, wine-colored embellishment. Silk rosebuds? Embroidered berries? He tried and failed not to stare, his eyes drawn again and again to the little details clustered just above the swell of her breasts, at her delicate wrists, along the small, tight seam that circled her body just above her waist.

  Her hair had been piled high in a profusion of elaborate braids and trimmed with wine-colored ribbon. The effect accentuated the bright, clear beauty of her face and the elegant curve or her neck. Even the perfection of her small ear, dabbled with freckles, bobbed with a pearl, was enhanced somehow by the drama of her hair. Still, Cassin passed the ceremony glowering at the high sculptural mass of it, making a study of exactly how he might dismantle the braids and ribbons if he were allowed to touch it.

  Cassin’s vague plan for detachment had been to allow himself to stare at her—for this he could not help—but to avoid engaging in real conversation with her. It was the verbal sparring that pushed him over the edge, after all; the debates and teasing and her dazzling cleverness.

  Despite the distance of fifty miles, his time in London had only compounded his preoccupation with her, and he’d lain awake at night, burning to return to her. Now that he was near her, seeing her as his bride, working together to perpetrate this . . . whatever it was . . . this mutually beneficial collaboration, his desire raged nearly beyond his control.

  In the end, it wasn’t the wedding day a
s much as after the wedding, the hours between when he married her and when he could steal himself away again. Brevity, remoteness, and formality had been his very loose plan. And for a time, it worked, as long as they were surrounded by clergymen and Lytton relations and, inexplicably, her mother’s show ponies. But eventually, inevitably, bride and groom were forced to face each other with fewer and fewer interruptions. And then were entirely alone.

  “And so we’ve done it,” Cassin said lightly after the final guest had gone.

  Willow answered with a small smile. “So we have.”

  It was only one o’clock in the afternoon. Her mother had excused herself to look in on a foaling mare. The relations who planned to remain overnight had retired to their rooms to rest. The servants descended on the strewn dining room like ants, clearing the table settings, flowers, and food with swift efficiency. At Caldera, his family tended to lounge around the drawing room after a party, enjoying the last of the wine and gossiping about the guests, but not at Leland Park. Instead, bride and groom stood in the deserted entryway, watching through the door as the last carriage rolled away.

  The impulse to reach for her was so great that Cassin heard himself speak instead. “Lady Wilhelmina—” he began formally, feeling like an idiot. He’d referred to her simply as “Willow” since he’d agreed to marry her.

  She laughed at him, a reaction he deserved, and softly shut the door. “You may address me as ‘Countess,’ ” she said.

  While he gaped at her, dazzled by her laugh, she turned and began to make her way down the corridor. Her mother’s scrum of small dogs scuttled from surrounding rooms to follow at her feet.

  For a long moment, he watched her. From the very first, watching her had been one of his favorite occupations. She was always engaged, mindful of even the smallest details of her surroundings; now she picked at the festive garland strung on the banister, touched the base of each ivory bust in a succession of candlelit nooks. A servant with a heaping tray dropped a linen napkin, and she stooped to collect it. His hand itched to reach out for her, to steady her by the waist, to linger there and lean in close enough to smell the warm cinnamon scent of her.