by Karen Ranney
“And my state of undress? Was this vision summoned while awake or sleeping?”
“I should not have said that.” How could she tell him that the words had flown out of her mouth before she could stop them, the sense of wonder upon viewing him deadening all sense of proper deportment?
“It is not my normal greeting, I’ll admit.” The humor in his tone mocked her, ridiculed her hard-won composure.
Now her attention was all on him, direct and unflinching.
“Why do I feel wanting now? As if the vision was more palatable than the reality?” he asked.
“Perhaps because you did not ridicule me in my dreams?”
“I wonder what’s keeping your tonic?” he said, rising. Deft, polite words coated in concern like candied almonds and uttered in the same tone.
She stared after him, absurdly disappointed. He was rigidly polite and exquisitely proper. The person she’d seen in her dreams had been touched by rage and alive with passion.
But still, a hint of the dream him had been there, buried beneath the proper man.
Chapter 5
Mary Kate sat at the window of her borrowed chamber, staring down at the bare trees and dirt road that stretched in front of the inn. It seemed to beckon her, to call her once more upon her journey.
She’d told Archer St. John she’d had no relatives. The bitter truth was that she did not know where they were, hadn’t known since that night on the side of the Norwich road.
She’d been asleep in the wagon, having thrown together a nest for herself in the corner, cushioning it with the boys’ clothes and her own. It was a crowded place to be, what with all her brothers elbowing for their own resting place. Her mother insisted upon traveling by the light of the moon, despite the dangers, determined to reach the village she’d left upon her marriage to an Irish farmer. Denmouth was to the north, and they were to beg a home from their mother’s father, a dour old man, one of her brothers teased her, who feasted on young girls and ate their livers for dessert.
In her sleep she had felt the slowing of the wagon, the jostling of her makeshift mattress, heard voices swirling above her. She mumbled impatiently, wanting to return to her dream, ignoring the drizzle of rain upon her neck, pulling up the cloak until she felt the cloth bristle against her cheek. She’d awakened in the morning, the dampness seeping past the cloak, the sodden garments upon which she’d slept. She’d crept to her feet, brushed her hair out of her eyes, and then raced down the highway and up again, over and over, not believing they had gone and left her behind until one full day had passed.
And now she wanted to know why. Had it been because there were so many mouths to feed? There were ten in all, six younger after her. Or had it been because she was the only girl? Too, she’d been unruly, apt to play pranks on her older brothers, too quick to laugh, to find something of humor in things. His Irish sprite, her da had said. Laughter had been lost that night alongside the road. It had been years until she’d found it again.
She’d become an itinerant worker at the age of ten, earning bed and board as a dairy maid, maid of all work, scullery apprentice. She’d defended herself as best she could, focusing not on the past or the future, but on surviving the present.
Still, there were times, like now, when she couldn’t quite forestall the grief, when she found herself pulling excuses from her mind like unripe plums. Except, of course, that nothing she ever fabricated was reason enough to explain leaving a child alone on a raw night, defenseless and fearful.
Two years after she’d been abandoned, old Mrs. Tonkett had hired her to keep her house tidy, then insisted upon teaching her as Mary Kate went about her chores.
For five years she had lived in the empty house with Mrs. Tonkett, one last pupil for the frail, retired governess who was just as used to a fuller home as Mary Kate. Her affection for the old lady grew to be second only to that for her father. If it was true that she’d given Mrs. Tonkett a reason to live, a statement her employer repeated often, then Mrs. Tonkett had given Mary Kate a world to explore.
When Mrs. Tonkett had died, Mary Kate had agreed to marry Edwin Bennett, less for reasons of love and affection than because he had promised her some measure of safety and security in a world that had never been very friendly to half-Irish servant girls. Edwin, in turn, expected to find her grateful and docile, not understanding that a spirit capable of surviving such early desertion could never become wholly tractable again. However, Mary Kate had not found it onerous to be as Edwin wished, outwardly composed, serene. Her husband, who did not believe in an excess of emotion, never concerned himself with thoughts that lay unspoken, or feelings that were never expressed.
She had crafted an existence for herself as a wife, spent her household money on the small store of furniture she’d found, her tiny collection of creamware. She’d kept the house on Bell Street spotless, not only because it was Edwin’s wish, but because it was the first home she’d ever had, the first roof under which she’d lived since she was a child that she could call hers.
All of that had ended, of course, the morning she’d discovered Edwin dead in his sleep, so much peace and tranquillity upon his face that she knew what had happened the moment she’d awakened beside him.
“It is with deep regret that I must remind you, Mrs. Bennett, that Edwin made no provision for your future. Although I must confess he was exceedingly generous in his bequests to the firm.”
Those were the words Charles Townsende had used, to thrust her back into penury once more. Mary Kate had wanted to tell her husband’s law partner that she was not unduly surprised. Edwin had made no secret of the fact that he’d been disappointed in her, as wife, helpmate, confidante, as Galatea to his Pygmalion. He’d not bargained for her innate stubbornness, a will more often than not opposed to his own, for all that she’d cloaked it in silence. Yet leaving her penniless as punishment seemed a bit much.
Still, there was enough from the sale of her furniture and her precious creamware to complete her journey, to finish a quest that had begun the night she’d been abandoned. She was eager to resume what had been interrupted for too long.
Already she could walk to the end of the hallway and back again without feeling much pain. She was still breathless, however, a condition caused by her bruised ribs, the physician informed her. Her healing would be slow, he warned, if she continued to refuse his tonic. Mary Kate only leveled a look on him that made him stammer to a halt and reflect upon his next threat.
The headaches continued, never as debilitating as the first occurrence. Yet she grew to expect the pain of them, the strange smell that foretold of their occurrence, and the dreams that accompanied them, dreams she experienced even though fully awake.
She didn’t tell the physician about those at all. In fact, she’d told no one but Archer St. John of her dreams, and he had discounted them as lightly as a parent would a child’s frequent nightmare.
A knock on the door preceded the opening of it by only seconds. Polly’s pert face appeared in the crack.
Mary Kate wanted to tell the young maid that she was not gentry, had never been granted a maid before, had herself served farmers’ wives and daughters, taken their orders and their insults with feigned humility, and their husbands’ groping hands and innuendos with whispered threats. But Polly was taking her job as nursemaid with seriousness. And, too, perhaps her temporary position garnered her some attention belowstairs. For that reason and the fact that she genuinely liked the young girl, Mary Kate allowed herself to be served.
“Cook made these cakes to tempt your appetite, ma’am. Said she didn’t want to hear of you refusing one.” Polly placed the tray on the table next to the bed.
Beside the teapot was a plate of tiny currant cakes dusted with sugar. Squares of pound cake no larger than the length of her thumb sagged under glistening pastel frosting. Mary Kate would have been tempted to try one, if the pain of the headache had not increased so suddenly and with such power.
It felt as though a
band had been placed around her skull and was being dragged tighter each second that passed. She heard Polly’s prattling around the small whimper of her own voice, wanted to shut out the bright glint of the sun on the teapot. Every object within sight seemed to be dusted with brilliance and pain.
“Aren’t they lovely? Cook calls them lady cakes, all sweet and dainty….”
…dainty, he always made her feel, as though his masculinity somehow enhanced her femininity.
She sat at her dressing table, staring into her own eyes. Would the world see something different there? Wasn’t there a softening in her expression, where there had only once been sadness? How odd that she should feel such great joy and it not be bubbling from her with the sweet boundless excitement of a spring-fed brook.
She’d feared loving him so. Never known that one day she would embrace the very emotion she’d been so frightened of before. Even Sanderhurst appeared a golden place, a fairy-tale castle, an enchanted land, just the place to be in love, to feel the sense of belonging she despaired of ever feeling after her marriage.
She was so gloriously in love.
She was entranced by his smile, bemused by his laughter. He laughed and she wanted to chuckle in response. He had moments of sadness that made her want to weep. When he was victorious, she yearned to shout the news, and when he failed she leaned her shoulder against him and longed for strength to lend to him. He was so fully alive, this man whose vulnerabilities he allowed her to see as much as his driving ambition and his rapier-sharp mind.
She’d never meant to love him. Not the way she came to love him, of course. Not with her mind, her heart, her body.
He kissed her with such reverence, as if she were a holy icon. Then kissed her again with such power that she could feel the imprint of his lips there, still. His soft inrush of breath awed her with the knowledge that she could make him feel the same way she felt, frightened, powerful, yearning.
He had the most perfect laugh, one that seemed to echo as fulsomely as the bells of Sanderhurst’s chapel. His eyes lit up with such grace and fire that her heart almost stood still at his smile, so privileged did she feel to have been the recipient of it.
“I love you.” He’d said those words today. In the Sanderhurst chapel, with the soft yellow light from the east window spilling over their faces, he’d murmured those words over and over. Soft words, enough to make her close her eyes against the onrush of feeling.
Could her heart hold all this joy?
“Have a cuppa, it’ll warm the chill of the day.”
Polly’s soft voice penetrated the odd, soft cocoon that enveloped Mary Kate. The bedchamber, the faded blue velvet chair she was sitting in, the golden patina of wood beneath her feet, all seemed shrouded in a deep, impenetrable fog. Mary Kate took a deep breath, concentrated on the sound of Polly’s voice. Such an anchor was useless, as feeble as a paper leash restraining a tiger.
Polly passed Mary Kate a cup of tea from the tray she’d brought in only moments ago. Mary Kate pressed her lips firmly together, closed her eyes against the room swimming in her vision. It seemed a strange tableau, Mary Kate thought wildly, trapped inside herself in a way she had never felt before. She could see Polly standing there, coaxing her to drink from the cup she proffered, see herself helpless to speak.
Help him…. He is in danger….
Her indrawn breath was louder than this sound, yet Mary Kate still heard it. As frail as a snowflake falling in the winter air, as tenuous as a spider’s web, as daunting as a shout, it commanded her.
A woman of less restraint would have succumbed to the shallowness of breath, the light-headed feeling that suffused her at that moment. But she was from farmer’s stock, from a practical station in life that ridiculed such things as female weakness. She’d helped at lambings and wrung the necks of chickens she later ate for supper. She’d never worn a corset until she was seventeen and wed, therefore had never experienced the chronic shortness of breath so familiar to others of her sex. Only once had she fainted in her life, and it was here, in this room, that she had done so. Upon viewing Archer St. John.
Wasn’t it odd the way things could suddenly slip into place, settle down like an old cat before the fire? Mary Kate could almost hear the click of it, one thought rubbing against the next, easing into position. She recognized not the voice that spoke to her, but the essence of the command. Powerful, demanding, scraping away the veil between life and death.
It was a whisper from a spirit.
“I hope all was satisfactory, my lord.”
“Your inn is a marvel of convenience, Mr. Palmerton.”
“And your recommendation would be most gladly received, sir.” The innkeeper smiled brightly, a practiced fawning, Archer St. John thought. But then, it was no doubt expected by most. For his own sake, he would just as soon the man save his talents for those who craved a little subservient toadying. He wanted to be on his way with all possible speed.
“You may post that I have been exquisitely happy here,” St. John said.
“And, if I may beg your pardon, sir, but will the young woman be joining you?” The innkeeper’s smile was tact itself.
“The young woman will be recuperating for another day or so, sir, then continuing on her own journey, no doubt.”
“I see.”
“But I will settle her bill now, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all, my lord, not at all.”
Why, as he left the inn, did St. John find himself prodded by that imp of integrity, who sat on his shoulder and laughed uproariously as Archer attempted to explain it was for decorum’s sake that he did not say farewell to that odd and unsettling woman? Why also did the imp’s sardonic voice whisper in his ear that it was less for propriety than an insane longing to stay that prompted his quick retreat?
Seclusion was looking less than palatable lately. Was it that reason he had stayed four days in an inn whose hospitality was generous but whose accommodations were not? Why had he not traveled on to London, leaving word of his address, and funds for her recovery?
The polite thing to do would have been to say something as farewell. If for no other reason than to assure himself that he had been mistaken. She could not captivate him with the ease with which she had done so. What, though, did he say to someone who told him of cows and dancing and milk dreams? Who bragged of viewing his naked body and pronounced him not as vital as his dream persona had been?
He was a man beset by a riddle, his life torn apart by a mystery even more compelling than the one she presented to him. Why, then, did he linger?
Get on with it, Archer. You’ll never find Alice this way.
Chapter 6
James Edward Moresham, heir to his father’s well-managed horse farm, sat on the edge of the forest that banded the Moresham estate. He’d been awake since midnight monitoring a new foal after a difficult birth, ensuring that its initial problems were corrected, or failing that, that the newest addition to the Moresham stables was put down quickly, without suffering. Samuel Moresham tolerated nothing but the best for his animals, and if that meant his son had to spend the night awake, then so be it.
Yet, it was better than being awake anyway, plagued by his conscience. Despair made a poor bed companion, even worse than loneliness, and loneliness would kill him, he had little doubt.
James sat propped against a huge sycamore, looked up at the sight of the night sky filtered through the branches. This afternoon it had been a pure blue, a color he could not have described any better than to say it reminded him of Alice’s eyes. But then, most everything reminded him of Alice these days.
He had been five years old when she was born, a tiny little thing who had squalled and filled their house with baby smells and demands from morning till night. She was his second sister and a disappointment because his stepmother had promised him a brother. He and his father had been disappointed alike, James thought, when Alice was born. He got over it; he didn’t think his father ever did.
J
ames had, in the way of boys who would be men, decided that babies were too much trouble to bother with, until, of course, he saw Alice all dressed up in baptismal dress, with lace panels down to the floor and a little cap that made her look like a soft white kitten. On that day he’d been allowed to hold her. She’d been fidgety and whimpering and he’d told her to hush in a small, boyish whisper that made her open her eyes wide and decide that it might not be a bad thing to be held in wobbly arms while a smile played down on her face. If it was not love at first sight, it was certainly love early on.
And so they became best friends, the boy five years older and the girl who adored him. Even now James could remember countless times when he and Alice had lain on their backs on this very same hill, looking up at the sky and pointing out clouds that looked suspiciously like Aunt Addy or one of the stable cats or a unicorn perched upon a throne.
They had been friends for so many years. Alice was the one person to whom he’d confided the wish to play the music he heard in his head all day. He wrote it down when he had free time, great glowing symphonies of it, the notes resounding through his mind the way a concerto trickled over the back of his spine, a brook of music, a sweet spring awakening the senses. It was to Alice he’d played his most cherished compositions, on the pianoforte that had been her mother’s only contribution to her marriage other than four daughters.
In the drawing room one night, amidst the gentle light of the branched candlesticks, he’d known mingled horror and joy to realize that his feelings for Alice were so much more than that of a brother. He knew the moment it had turned to more, held that thought deep in his heart, cherished it like a rare and valuable heirloom.