Carla Kelly (13 page)

“Only a little,” he said. “Did he ever read to you, too, or brush your hair, or scold you when you needed it?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “But David, he’s ruined my life!”

The bailiff only smiled and pulled to a stop in the neat half circle in front of a stone building with three sides. “Ruined your life?” he repeated. “Come now, Susan. Do Hamptons run much to high drama?”

“You don’t understand,” she began as he held out his hand to help her down.

“I’m sure I do not, Susan, if you say so,” he agreed, all complacence.

“Only an idiot would argue with you!” she said with some feeling, then put her lips firmly together. And I am fast showing myself to be an idiot. I shall change the subject. “What is this place?”

“A good place to change the subject,” he replied promptly, then held up both hands to ward off her expression. “It’s the shearing floor,” he said with only a slight tremor in his voice. He led the horse and gig more within the shelter of the building and blanketed the animal. “We’ll be in there working our arses off when it’s almost summer.”

“You or the sheep?” she asked, and was rewarded with a laugh.

“Both, Miss Hampton, both,” he said. He led her toward the pens, where the sheep milled about and expressed considerable dissatisfaction. “Ben keeps the ewes with lamb close by, and the rams farther out, but not too far.” He raised his voice to be heard above the sheep. “We try to birth as many of the lambs here, and then release them to the far pasturage when it’s warmer.” He took her hand as the wind picked up, and she followed him to a separate stone cottage where smoke poured from the chimney. “Ben knows his weather.”

She found herself occupied with anchoring her skirt and petticoat against the sudden wind and let him lead her along. As she looked toward the cottage, the door opened and a small boy tugged her inside. He was as dark as David Wiggins, but slim of frame, with that silent watchfulness of shy children. The bailiff nodded to him and spoke in Welsh. The boy’s face lit up, and he answered at length, gesturing toward the sheepfold. The bailiff returned another comment, and the boy hunched himself against the wind and ran to the fold.

The single room was cluttered, and Susan was prepared to think ill of its tenants, except that there was no dirt or bad odor. She sniffed the air, breathing in the pungent aroma of wool and lanolin. She sat on one of the two benches, admiring with her eyes a pile of sheepskins in one comer that must be the communal bed, and a border collie nursing a litter of pups and keeping one eye open on the visitors.

“Is he Ben Rich’s son?” she asked when David sat beside her.

“None of that. I took him out of a Welsh workhouse when Ben reconciled himself to living a few more years without a hand. He was six then, and the workhouse governor had never bothered to give him a name, only a number.”

“Surely not!” Susan said, shocked.

The bailiff shrugged. “That’s what they do when they get little mites who don’t look strong enough to survive.” He managed a short laugh, with no humor. “And they feed ’em watered gruel to make sure they don’t live long, and bury them three or four to a plasterboard coffin.” He looked with satisfaction in the direction that the boy had gone. “Number Three July fooled them and had lived to six years when I came looking for a shepherd’s left hand. I named him Owen Thrice, and Ben Rich can testify that he’s worth his weight in gold.”

You are an amazing man, she thought as he went to the door, alert for sounds she could only strain to hear. “They didn’t recognize you when you returned?” she asked on a hunch.

He grinned at her. “You’re a hard one to surprise, Susan,” he said. “No, they didn’t. A lot of water has tumbled under this bridge.” He sighed. “The old governor was gone, damn his eyes, but they’re still just numbering the babies. Sometimes I think nothing ever changes, but once in a while . . .”

He opened the door then, and the shepherd came in, his hand held tight in the boy’s two hands. “Wind’s picking up, Davey,” he commented. “What’s so important that it can’t wait until snow’s gone from the air?” He nodded to Susan. “You got married at last,” he surmised, a smile creasing his face.

“No, no luck there, even though I tried,” David said cheerfully while Susan writhed inside with embarrassment. “She turned me down. This is Miss Hampton, Lady Bushnell’s newest companion.”

“You might want to reconsider, lass, so don’t burn that bridge entirely,” Ben told her, his voice mild. He held out his only hand to her. “Pleased to meet you, miss.”

She took his hand, determined not to be embarrassed if no one else was. “Your hand, sir!” she exclaimed, forgetting whatever poise she was attempting. “Oh, my! It’s so soft!”

“Comes from working with sheep, lass.” He winked at her and grinned, and she found it imposible not to do the same back.

She held out Joel Steinman’s glove to the shepherd. “Actually, sir, Mr. Steinman sent this to the bailiff and asked me to present it to you.”

The shepherd took the glove and rubbed it against his cheek. “You mean Colonel Steinman, lass,” he corrected, a smile on his face, “hero of the Fighting Fifth Foot, Regular Army.”

“Oh, no! Yes! I’m sure I do,” she amended as the bailiff trod upon her foot. “He . . . he wanted to make sure that you wore it in good health,” she said as she moved away from David Wiggins and his boots.

“Well I do,” said the shepherd, pulling on the glove with his teeth and flexing his fingers. “I don’t mind telling you that it still gives me a boost on bad days to know that I’m sharing gloves with a genuine Waterloo hero.”

“You know, of course, that you ought to be shot for telling such stretchers,” she scolded the bailiff as he helped her back into the gig an hour later, after mutton stew and coffee strong enough to choose its own path into her stomach. A fat lot of good it does me to admonish you, she considered, taking into account the mild look on his face.

“Who’s hurt by such a lie?” he asked as he reached over her to make sure the blanket was tucked in around her hip. “Joel approved when I told him what I was doing and sent me two more gloves, and it kept a good shepherd out of the boneyard.” He touched her shoulder. “Besides all that, I earned the right to use Waterloo any way I want, and that’s why I lie to Ben Rich and Lady Bushnell, too.”

“Well, it isn’t right.”

“You weren’t there,” he shot back. “I’ve earned my lies.”

An uncomfortable silence settled between them. Amazing, isn’t it, she thought after a long silence, that two people can sit rump to rump and feel so far apart. “I’m sorry,” she said simply. “Forgive me.”

“Forgiven,” he said as he turned the gig onto the main road to Quilling Manor, “Just promise me that if I ever get caught in one of my benevolent lies, you will have the good grace not to laugh.”

“I’ll promise no such thing,” she declared. “And I’ll not extricate you from webs of your own weaving.”

“That’s an answer worthy of Jesusa,” the bailiff said. He looked round at her. “Now I suppose I may ask if
you’ve
been married before!”

This conversation could become a trial, she thought, at a loss as to how to answer him. Of course he knew she had not been married before, but she wondered what he was implying, and then sighed. It would be easy to remain impervious to bailiffs, if they did not make it difficult. I do not know what to say.

She was spared the bailiff’s further scrutiny by the approach of Cora’s tenor from the direction of the manor. “Here comes Cora Skerlong’s constant lover,” David said, indicating the gig with his whip. He nodded as the man passed, and continued on slowly, even though it was nearly full dark. “He sits once a week with Cora in Mrs. Skerlong’s parlor. I do not think he has ever kissed her,” the bailiff mused.

“One mustn’t rush into these things,” Susan said.

“But he’s been courting her for five years, Susan!” the bailiff replied with a laugh. “Five years,” he repeated, his voice full of wonder. “I should have wedded, bedded, and been a father several times over in the same space that our tenor the lover has worked up to holding Cora’s hand.”

“Then why have you not, sir?” she asked, before she thought.

He shrugged and then winked at her as he reined into the barnyard. “I can’t get anyone to say yes to a proposal, Miss Hampton!” he teased. “Women are more picky in England than ever they were in Spain. Let me help you.”

If I keep my mouth shut, I may get out of this with no more embarrassment than I deserve, she told herself as she let the bailiff assist her from the gig. “Perhaps you should not persist in asking the wrong women,” she blurted, ignoring all her own good advice.

“I do not ask the wrong women,” he insisted.

“You asked me,” she pointed out. It seemed perfectly logical to her, particularly since he had admitted his proposal had been impulsive. And why
does
he persist in referring to that silly incident? She had started to follow him into the stable, but she stopped. And why do
I
keep remembering such a harmless offer? She turned and started for the house, giving herself a mental shake.

“I could offer some pointers to Cora’s tenor,” the bailiff said, falling in step beside her.

Susan laughed.

“I could!” he protested, the humor high in his voice. “Jesusa used to say I could
besar
and
coger
with the best of them, and she ought to have known. Tell me what you think.”

As she thought about it later, in a lukewarm attempt at justification, Susan decided that there really wasn’t anything she could have done to prevent what happened. He didn’t exert any force, so she couldn’t blame his larger size. What he did do was adroitly maneuver her against the stable wall and kiss her with some considerable thoroughness. Even then, she couldn’t blame tactics. His were sound enough, but she didn’t have to stay there and let him put his hands on each side of her face and kiss her. And yet, once he had begun, she noticed a disturbing tendency on her part to let him do what he wanted.

It had troubled her before on awkward occasions that she never seemed to know where to put her hands, so she bowed to her own inadequacies and just put them around him. It turned out to be as good an idea as any, considering that her mind was turning into cotton wadding, and after all, she reasoned later, she needed something to hold on to when her knees started to melt a little. This must be a Hampton deficiency, she decided, brought about through too many years of inbreeding within the peerage and landed gentry. The bailiff’s knees seemed quite steady, so that piece of logic was sound enough. Even more to the point, he had a certain single-mindedness that she probably would have admired in another setting.

It took a mental leap later, but she decided that even when he pressed against her so tightly, his intentions were benevolent. Not only was he holding her up, he was certainly keeping her warm. She had to admit, however, that it was a strange kind of warmth, one that plonked rather forcefully into her loins and stubbornly stayed there throughout the duration of that kiss.

But later, in the solitude of her bedroom, no amount of mental cartwheels could dance around the realization that she had been kissing him back as thoroughly as he was kissing her. I hope he will overlook it, she thought. Oh, my goodness, did I really do all that exertion with my
tongue
? What could I possibly have been thinking?

At the time, it seemed so reasonable. Their lips came away from each other with a homely little smack that made him smile, even as she was beginning to wonder if her eyes would ever focus again in this life.

“That was, um,
besar
,” he explained. “I think maybe Cora’s tenor hasn’t tried that yet.”

She attempted to pull her jumbled brain back together again as he released her and continued toward the house again, as though he had only stopped to admire the evening sky. “Then what is
coger
?” she asked. Conversation is in order here.

He grinned bigger than any man had a right to, and shook his head. “That’s what comes later when good girls say yes to proposals. Sorry, Susan. Good night, now. Sleep tight.”

Chapter Eleven

Sleep tight, my Aunt Matilda’s blue garters! Susan thought irritably as the sky began to lighten. She sat up and glared at her pillow, turning it over to look for a cool spot. There wasn’t one; they had all been used up in a night of tossing about in indignation, embarrassment, and finally, the acutest sort of misery that the bailiff wasn’t there in bed with her,
besar
ing and
coger
ing.

It had taken most of the night to get to that much truth-telling, and she had to wonder at the pointlessness of lying to herself for all those idiotic hours. In the time between dark and dawn, she reviewed all of Aunt Louisa’s rigid, patient little conversations about men, and what they wanted from women, and how they went about getting it. She recalled the book (How could I forget Professor Fowler and that endless title?
Creative and Sexual Science; Manhood, Womanhood, and Their Mutual Interrelations
) that was passed quickly from aunt to cousin to cousin and then to herself, and the accompanying blushes and titterings. She remembered Aunt Louisa’s stiff question, “Well, do you need to know anything else?” and the tone that dared any of them to say yes.

In particular, after her night of chewing goosedown, Susan remembered that little section called “The Sleep of Love.” She rested her chin on her knees, and couldn’t resist a bleary-eyed smile as she quoted from memory, “‘The disappointed lie awake hour after hour.’” But I’m sure Professor Fowler, the old prude, did not mean what I am thinking, she admitted honestly. His disappointed maiden feels chagrin because she flirted out of turn. My disappointment comes from the fact that I did not go far enough to suit myself.

“Both-er-a-tion!” Susan said. She leaned against the headboard, plumped her pillow behind her head, and drew her knees up to her chin. She wished with all her heart that Mama had been alive to administer the sexual lecture that Aunt Louisa delivered as her duty to her niece. As much as she disliked thinking about her father, Susan remembered the fun that he and Mama had had together. She wished she had a shilling for every time she found Mama sitting on Papa’s lap, or just watched them with their arms around each other, doing something as prosaic as observing the geese cross the lawn at the estate.

Sitting there grumpy and displeased with herself, she knew she could have asked Mama anything. And what would I have asked, she considered as the sun came over the hills. If I could have one question answered now, what would it be? She transferred herself to the window seat and scolded herself for not moving there hours ago. The windowpanes were cold and felt good to lean against.

“I would like to know one thing, Mama,” she said softly. “Just one thing only, and I can carry on from there. Professor Fowler’s tedious book spoke of duty and creating children, and Aunt Louisa assured us that men take what they want and women weep. But, Mama, is sexual congress
fun?
”

Her heart told her it was. When she worked past all the embarrassment and confusion she had felt last night after the bailiff’s thorough kiss and her equally fervent response, one overriding emotion remained. “Mama, I enjoyed that immensely. I didn’t want it to stop, and if I had even held out my hand to the bailiff, he would be lying in that bed right now, taking up space.”

It was power she had never imagined before, and it frightened her even more than the actual act of love for the first time. To exert that kind of authority over another human being awed her, humbled her, and took her breath away. She leaned against the window, wondering how many glittering diamonds each season flirted and danced and teased while fathers and lawyers drew up documents and transferred funds, all in the name of love. It was the way the
ton
—her
ton
—did things, but sitting there watching the immensity of the morning come, and examining her own raw feelings, she knew suddenly how wrong it was.

I worried so much about no dowry and no comeout, she thought, shaking her head over her own stupidity. Even if I had possessed those things, those proud badges of my class, there was never any guarantee that I would be happy with my husband, in bed or anywhere else. Quite the contrary. It’s not called the Marriage Mart for nothing. Well, I am far away from the marketplace here, and I must trust myself to do what will make me happy.

“How frightening,” she murmured and drew her name on the windowpane. “I wonder that anyone makes right decisions.”

It can’t be easy, she thought, reminding herself of the way her brain dissolved into mush last night from nothing more than a kiss. How can rational judgment withstand a kiss from David Wiggins? Well, I do suspect that in the annals of kissing, it was quite a kiss, she told herself. If there were contests for such things, the bailiff would at least be eligible to compete. Oh, my word, he would win, was her next fervent thought.

She had no experience to base that on, beyond the certitude that no woman had ever been so thoroughly entertained in such a brief space of time. She smiled at her own silliness and drew a circle around her name. “Susan, it’s not as if you’re the only female on the planet who ever felt this way.” She drew an exclamation point after her name. “It just seems like it.”

She took her time dressing, choosing a dark green wool with a white collar she had crocheted. For all this, she hoped the bailiff would not be in the kitchen when she came downstairs. I must compose myself, she told herself as she tucked in hairpins here and there to anchor her braids. I must remember that I am a lady.

She sighed and rested her hands in her lap. And that is part of the problem, she reflected. I suppose the bailiff had no business kissing someone of my class, and here I go again, putting that between us like a partition. Aunt Louisa would say that we all have our place in life and that the classes have no business mingling. Susan looked at her name on the window, with its hopeful exclamation mark melting as the sun hit the glass. Oh, I hope she is wrong. I hope I have enough wisdom to do the right thing, as soon as I figure out what that is.

Whatever glee, joy, and luck she had felt in David Wiggins’ embrace last night was gone at breakfast, replaced by the most exquisite sort of confusion. The bailiff was finishing his porridge when she came into the kitchen. If it was any consolation, he stared into his bowl in thoughtful fashion, and his eyes didn’t look any livelier than her own. She watched him quietly from the doorway, shy beyond words and wondering what to do with him.

I mean, do I just sit down and chat about the weather, or the sheep, or that your lips ought to be bronzed and preserved under glass. What am I thinking? she asked herself from the doorway. Calm, Susan. You still have to eat and perform the functions of life, even though you are intrigued with the possibility of all this, and feeling friskier than a spring colt.

She must have made some sound from the doorway (Am I whining and don’t know it? she wondered), because the bailiff looked around and smiled at her. “Good morning, Susan,” he said. She hunted for some sign of shyness on his part, but he looked the same as usual. His calmness deflated her. Either you are not as involved in this as I am, or you are a master at hiding your feelings. I will pretend it is the latter, she told herself.

“Ready to face the lion again?” he asked.

I wonder which lion you are referring to, she considered as she nodded, too bashful to speak, and sat in the chair he patted. She accepted the porridge from Mrs. Skerlong and began to eat. She stopped soon enough, looking down at the bowl in surprise, curious to know why the housekeeper would feed her wood pulp. But no, it was the same porridge; she was different. She applied herself to breakfast again, and Mrs. Skerlong went to her chair by the stove, where the cat was waiting to leap into her lap.

The bailiff shifted his chair a little so he could look at her. “Do I owe you a rather large apology?” he asked in a low voice.

It was a good question, and she was struck all over again how different this situation was from any she had ever encountered before. She considered him thoughtfully, mindful of his nearness, but less fearful of it than if he were a marquess, impeccably dressed and bearing down on her from across a ballroom. The bailiff was so comfortable-looking. She met his eyes briefly, then blushed and looked away. And yet you have the power to disturb me profoundly. I do not remember that quality about any of the viscounts, marquesses, or baronets I pined over, she marveled. Sir, you take my breath from me.

“No, you owe me no apology, large or small,” she said honestly, and set down her spoon. She turned to face him; a man used to plain-dealing deserved more than her profile. “Now, if you had held me down against my will and forced such a kiss on me, I would demand one.” She looked at her hands in her lap, uneasily aware of the warm glow that was spreading throughout her body again. “But as I offered no objection then, I could not expect to make one now. No, you owe me no apology.”

It was the bailiff’s turn for confusion, and it relieved her to know that his air of assurance did not go all the way to the bone. This is not a case-hardened rascal, she thought, and I am so glad. His sudden bewilderment pleased her as nothing else could have.

“Well, I . . . I don’t go around kissing like that on a . . . well, a regular basis,” he managed finally, backing up his chair slightly as though some of her own warmth were reaching him, too.

Or perhaps Mrs. Skerlong was adding a ton or two of coal to the Rumford. She glanced toward the stove, but there were no stokers around it, shoveling in coal. This is an odd kind of warmth, she thought. I like it, but it could make me peevish.

She reached out to touch his arm, to reassure him that she did not mind, but she stopped at such a prosaic gesture. How odd this is, she considered, as shyness took over again. After last night, I am amazingly familiar with this man’s lips, his teeth, his tongue, and yet I won’t be so forward as to touch his arm. This is strange, indeed.

She sighed and looked him in the eye. “David, I don’t want to talk about what happened last night.”

“I can’t wonder at that,” he murmured and started to get up.

“No!” She did put her hand on his arm to detain him then, and he sat down quickly. “No,” she repeated, her voice softer. “But I do want to think about it. There’s a difference.” His shoulders lowered, as though in vast relief, and she was touched to the heart.

“Maybe tonight in the succession house we should talk about it? I won’t have you thinking me a scoundrel.” He shook his head at his own words. “A bastard, a liar, a poacher, and a thief, maybe, but not a scoundrel,” he said with some humor evident.

“Perhaps we’ll talk tonight,” she said, smiling, too, at the absurdity of what he was really saying. “And I do not think you are a scoundrel,” she assured him. “The circumstance of birth was out of your control, and maybe you poached and thieved, and you’re one of the most accomplished liars in the realm, but you’re not a scoundrel.”

“Thank you!” he exclaimed with a laugh. He pulled his watch out and looked at her over the edge of it. “All joking aside, are you avoiding your incarceration in the library with Lady Bushnell and the dread piano?”

He turned the watch around, and she gasped and rose hurriedly to her feet. It’s interesting, she thought as she carried her dishes to the sink, but somehow I am not so frightened by Lady Bushnell now. I have other matters to concern myself with.

Or so she thought, until she stood outside the library door and steeled herself to open it. She reminded herself that this was what she wanted. Lady Bushnell needed something to take an interest in, and if it turned out to be an interest in the shortcomings of Susan Hampton, so be it.

“Need a little push, Susan?” said the bailiff.

She jumped. Why did he persist in sneaking up on her? Before she could scold him, he had opened the door, applied enough pressure to the small of her back to propel her in, and closed the door gently behind her.

“Miss Hampton, so kind of you to come!”

Lady Bushnell sat next to the piano. She motioned Susan closer and indicated the piano stool. “Make sure it is at the right height for you,” she said. “You will be spending much of your time perched upon it, and while I will have you learn discipline, I will not have you uncomfortable. Ready, Miss Hampton? Of course you are. Let us begin with a C-major scale. What could be simpler?”

Susan adjusted the stool, then squared her shoulders and positioned her hands over the keys. She played the scale once, twice, three times and then realized the futility of keeping count as Lady Bushnell tapped her ankles with the cane each time she faltered or abandoned the rhythm. Papa, you would perish if you ever worked so hard for thirty pounds, she thought in desperation each time she neared the end of the scale and the widow took a tighter grip on her cane.

I will still be playing this C-major scale when I am old and arthritic and unable to eat without drooling, Susan thought an hour later. She paused and tried to shift her legs out of the range of Lady Bushnell’s relentless cane. I have played this silly scale in triplets, quarter notes, sixteenths, dotted eighths and sixteenths, and still she hammers at my ankles.

“I don’t seem to be much improved,” she said dubiously to Lady Bushnell, leaning down to rub the ankle closest to the cane.

The widow sat with her eyes closed. “How excellent that we have plenty of mornings to correct your deficiencies,” she murmured.

“I doubt I will ever be much good,” Susan temporized.

Lady Bushnell opened her eyes and glared at Susan. “And that is the trouble with Hamptons! You flit from undertaking to undertaking, and as a result, never accomplish anything.” She raised her cane to point it at Susan. “I intend for you to improve.”

Susan paused, her hands in her lap. I suppose I could take great offense at what this woman is saying about the Hamptons, she considered. I could be like Papa, and pout and frown, or Aunt Louisa, and gobble and snarl. She smiled at Lady Bushnell instead. Or I could grit my teeth and practice and learn from what she is trying to teach me, whatever her motives (indeed, I do not trust my own!). I am trying to run away from the Hamptons, but rather, perhaps I should make the name an honorable one in these parts.