Carla Kelly (17 page)

“Was she pretty?” she asked instead.

Ha lay down again, but he did not touch her. “No, not really,” he said finally, having given the matter some thought. “She was a bit full-blown to be English-pretty, like you, but her eyes were simply matchless.” He laughed softly. “It is enough to say that I loved her.”

“But you did not marry her,” Susan pointed out, wondering where her boldness came from. It was as though I have a stake in this, she thought, even though I know it cannot be so.

“No.” He sat up then and rested himself against the footboard of her bed, crossing his legs and watching her. “I wanted to. I even asked little Charlie Bushnell for permission—he was his father’s adjutant then—but he only laughed.”

His voice sounded hard to her ears. She sat up, too. “How mean of him!”

The bailiff shrugged. “Maybe not, Susan.” He sighed again and got up, stretching, then went to the window to peer out at the coming dawn. “Soldiers and camp followers—older than time. When wars end, they go away to other bivouacs.”

“But you have come here,” she pointed out, lying down again, this time on her back, so she could watch him at the window.

“I have.” He sat by her again and looked into her eyes so long that she wanted to squirm, except that they were hip to hip and he would have felt her nervousness. If nerves it is, she considered. Nerves never gave me a warm feeling. “And I have made so many promises to so many Bushnells that here I remain.” His eyes went to the window. “And I am tied by my own wheat. And now you are here. I cannot leave.”

She knew he would kiss her then, and he did, but it was only the briefest of kisses. “Go to sleep, Susan,” he murmured when his lips were just a little above hers. “And if you think of anything,” he said at the door, “share it, please. I’m fresh out of ideas, and I think the doctor has us over a barrel.”

Susan did not see the bailiff again for three days, and she wondered what kept him away. She went quietly about her own duties, practicing on the harpsichord in Lady Bushnell’s room as the widow kept time with her cane on the floor by the bed. She listened to Lady Bushnell’s advice, whispered softer now, and took it, practicing downstairs in the evenings when she wanted to run to the succession house and watch the bailiff measure, weed, and record the wheat’s progress.

Or it could be that he has no more ideas than I do and cannot bear to see his defeat mirrored in my own eyes, she considered one night over dinner. I could ask Mrs. Skerlong right plainly where he is, she thought, and try not to blush if she winks at me.

“Mrs. Skerlong, where is David?” she asked point-blank, putting down her fork, which had been shifting food from one side of the plate to the other, in imitation of eating. “Sometimes I see a light very late at night in the succession house, and I think I heard him walking to Lady Bushnell’s room this morning, but I do not see him.”

Mrs. Skerlong, bless her, did not wink or blink or make any remark to tease. She pushed a mugful of tea in front of Susan. “Oh, my dear, ’tis the lambing. Since he will not pension off Ben Rich, and the Welsh lad is but a child, he must be there, too.” She smiled at Susan over the rim of her own mug and took a cautious sip. “In the Cotswolds, no farmer’s time is his own until March is over.” She leaned closer across the table, looking around as though to make sure that Cora was not within earshot. “We women have a joke in the Cotswolds: ‘No virtuous farm wife has December babies,’” she said, and laughed at Susan’s blank stare. “My dear, it’s the rare farmer that gets between his sheets or his wife’s legs during March. He belongs to the lambs.”

Susan gulped the scalding tea and coughed. “Oh!” she exclaimed as she reached for the water pot and took a healthy swallow. “You must think me such a dunce.”

Mrs. Skerlong only smiled. “I am thinking you are learning our ways here. But then comes April, and January babies, if there’s time between plowing and plastering fields for fertilizer, and sowing and dipping and shearing come June.” She shook her head. “It’s a wonder farmers ever plow their own fields, lass.”

And this is the life he chooses, Susan thought after Mrs. Skerlong had patted her shoulders and taken up her customary spot by the stove. It is all work, and rhythm of the seasons, and it could be that I feel its pull, too. But right now, I wish I knew what to do about Lady Bushnell.

They finished
Emma
that first afternoon, and then her time was devoted to the letters, putting them in order back to the days in India and on to the final entries as the army moved in triumph over the Pyrenees toward France. She began to copy the letters in a large hand, showing each to the widow until the woman nodded and said, “I can read these. Oh, pray continue.”

She was no closer to a solution as the end of the week approached. The vicar, all blushes and fumbling for words, had paid a visit, and she had spent some time closeted with him in the sitting room, seeking his advice. He had none to offer beyond what she feared. “Miss Hampton, I do not see that you or the bailiff have any recourse but to tell young Lady Bushnell how the wind blows here.” He almost took her hand, but shied off at the last minute. “She needs the care of relatives.”

He was right, of course. She knew it, and surely the bailiff knew it. After an evening of reading to Lady Bushnell, she administered her medicine, stayed to make sure that she took it all, saw her tucked in bed, and went to her own room. She almost went downstairs again, because she knew that all she would do would be to stare at the calendar and cross off another day without an idea. It was worry at its fruitless worst, and she hated it.

She opened the door and stepped back in fright. Someone sat in one of the chairs before the fire. She looked closer. It was the bailiff, and he was asleep, his head nodding forward; he even snored a little. She smiled to herself and closed the door quickly so the light from the hall would not disturb him. Taking off her shoes, she tiptoed across the floor, took up a throw from the foot of her bed and draped it lightly over him as he slept.

She could not go to bed with the bailiff there, so she put a few more coals on the fire, then quietly eased herself into the other chair. With a quick glance at the man, she rested her stockinged feet on the grate and relaxed in the chair, feeling a strange relief at nothing more than his company. He smelled of wool and sweat, and she wondered when he had shaved last. If I had charge of you, she thought as she leaned back and made herself comfortable, at least you would change your linen every day and take time to wash.

She slept in peace and comfort, waking up only when the bailiff covered her with the throw. She jerked awake, then settled quickly as he rested his hand on her arm. She looked at his arm and tried not to gasp, but it escaped her anyway.

“Your arm! And the other one!” she said in dismay, seeing even in the dim firelight the chap, fissures, and cracks running all the way to his elbows. He had pushed up his sleeves, obviously to keep the rough fabric from brushing against what must be painful.

“It comes with lambing,” he said, “and washing my arms over and over in cold water and wind. The cure is lanolin, which I will apply after I am in my own bed and not touching anything.” He grinned at her expression. “Of course, if I turn over too fast, I slide right out of bed. Don’t stare like that! They’ll be better in a month or so when the lambs are bonking around in the pasture.”

She settled lower in the chair and stared into the fire again. “Do you come to tell me that you have no solution, either?”

He was a long time answering. “I come to tell you that I wrote to young Lady Bushnell and requested an audience Friday morning in London.” He sighed heavily. “And I wrote Dr. Pym. My underbailiff and his new bride have returned, and I can leave him in charge while I take the mail coach.”

“Then I am coming, too,” she said.

“To resign?”

She glared at him, hot words on her lips, but she could not deliver them because the bailiff looked so tired. “Of course not, David,” she said softly. “Perhaps if she sees that the two of us could take care of her mother-in-law, she would be content to let well enough alone. Mrs. Skerlong says that young Lady Bushnell is about to remarry. Surely she does not need the added distraction of a frail mother-in-law.”

The bailiff nodded. “I’d like your company. Two may be better than one in this matter.” He smiled at her. “Actually, that was why I came here—to ask you just that. And here I was, snoring away and smelling up your room.”

“Never mind,” she said, sleepy now, relieved to be in the bailiff’s presence, and not overly troubled by the odor of hard work. “Yes. Let us go to London and attempt this.”

“Good then. I will take the news to Lady Bushnell first thing in the morning, and tell her what we have to do and why. I think she will bear it well enough, if she knows that we are doing our best to keep her here. Then we can catch the midmorning mail coach.”

Susan shook her head. “The first thing you will do is wash, and then visit Lady Bushnell.”

“Am I pretty rank?” he said and grinned at her.

“You are disgusting,” she assured him. “If this is how a whole army of you smelled in Spain, I wonder that you even needed muskets to mow down the enemy.”

“They smelled worse, plus garlic,” he said as he rose and went to the door. “Good night, Susan dear. Pack a bag and be ready to go to London in the morning. I do not know that we will succeed, but it won’t be said that we didn’t try.”

Chapter Fifteen

Not until Susan sat herself on the mail coach and rested her traveling boots on the straw underfoot did she really believe that they were actually on their way to plead Lady Bushnell’s cause. The bailiff sat close beside her, wedged in so tight that he had to turn a little sideways and put his arm around her to steady himself.

She couldn’t notice any discomfort on his face, but she was almost too shy to look at him. It was one thing to enjoy his presence from a chair by the fire, and quite another to have him so close that his breath was warm on her neck. They were like whelks in a basket.

Come now, Susan, what is your objection? she asked herself as the coach picked up speed. You know that you care for him, even though it is not the wisest thing you ever did, and hopefully will soon pass. You know how hungry you were for the sight of him during the past few days, and here he is now, practically sitting on you.

She looked at the bailiff then, and discovered that he was watching her, too, his gaze steady and quite calm. His eyes are so brown, she thought, and I did not notice that many freckles before. I wonder if he burns in the summer. She suddenly wanted to kiss him as he had kissed her that one time on the way across the stable yard, and decide for herself if that was merely beginner’s luck on her part.

And that is my objection to this situation, she thought, permitting honesty to shoulder out artifice, as it did more and more these days. I want to kiss him and do much more that I’ve never done, and there are all these dratted passengers who refuse to go away and let me get at my ruin. She permitted herself a little sigh. As my descent into vulgarity does not yet include exhibitions, I will change my thoughts and hope that this irritating warmth will recede and let me breathe.

Her return to normality was aided by the bailiff, or so she thought. He winced when the toddler hugged tight in his mother’s arms, kicked out and caught him in the small of the back, forcing him even closer to her. “I trust that you can tell I bathed,” he whispered—hardly lover’s talk.

She could tell, right down to the carbolic soap he used and the scent of lanolin on his arms. He was so close she thought she could even smell the singe marking the flatiron tip printed on his shirt beside his neckcloth.

“See there, you’ve singed your shirt,” she scolded, her words as prosaic as his.

He shrugged, which made her even more aware of his well-muscled arm around her shoulders and slipping down her back a bit as he grasped the handgrip beside her. “I’m not much of a housewife,” he said. He looked around at the other inmates of the mail coach, and she wondered for the smallest moment if he wanted them gone, too.

“Well, I could have done it for you,” she whispered back, leaning toward him slightly as the toddler aimed another kick into the bailiff, which propelled his chest into her face.

“Sorry, Susan,” he said with a frown over his shoulder and a slight shift away from her. “Didn’t mean for you to eat my buttons.” He tried again. “You’ve added ironing to your catalog of skills now?”

She nodded, deciding silently that even with a blindfold on her eyes, she would probably be able to pick out that certain odor of carbolic, singe, and David in a roomful of bailiffs. “Cora is even now teaching me how to do ruffles.”

“Which I will never require,” he added.

“Thank God for that,” she said quickly, without thinking how intimate it sounded, how permanent. “I am not doing at all well with ruffles.”

He chuckled, and the look on his face changed enough for her to wonder what it was she said that seemed to be settling his countenance into such great contentment. He raised his hand up behind her back and twirled one of her loosening curls into a corkscrew on his finger. “I think your pins are coming out.”

“Drat!” she exclaimed, unable to move to do anything about it. “Perhaps it would help if you did not play with my hair,” she said, sharper than she intended. The bailiff promptly slid the curl from his finger and settled his arm more comfortably on her shoulder. He leaned back as far as he could, closed his eyes, and was soon asleep.

A man must be tired to sleep in a mail coach, she decided an hour later as the bailiff showed no signs of waking. When the coach stopped to let off a passenger, he settled his head against her breast and slumbered on. I suppose you can sleep anywhere, she thought, remembering Lady Bushnell’s letters and the dreadful campaign from Burgos to Lisbon. Did you dream of Jesusa then, and what are you dreaming now? She decided it was a pleasant dream, because his free arm came around her waist and rested in her lap. She looked at the clergyman seated across from them, but he only nodded at her. Oh, dear, I am certain he thinks we are married, she thought.

Well, what of it? she told herself as her eyes began to close, too. I am tired, and I have worried enough for ten lady’s companions this past week. She closed her eyes and rested her cheek against the bailiff’s hair. He murmured something into her breast, and his arm tightened around her waist.

She dreamt then, and it was a naughty dream, with the bailiff figuring prominently in it in considerably more detail than the evasive Professor Fowler ever discussed in his sillly book. She was feeling much too dreadfully warm again for it to be a dream, so she opened her eyes and looked down. The bailiff still slept—she could tell by his even breathing—but he had worked his hand inside her cloak and it was cupping her breast in a most alarming fashion that she did not wish to stop. And what are you dreaming, sir? she asked herself, and was hard put to feel anything but a most curious mixture of amusement and incredible desire.

It was such a wonderful, drowsy feeling, especially when he began to run his thumb lightly across her bodice front. My goodness, she thought as the warmth spread, but I don’t suppose I ever considered my nipples as anything more exciting than items to be carefully covered when wearing light frocks. This puts a new light on matters.

It won’t do, she told herself at last. If he continues this, the other passengers will be vastly distracted when I unbutton my bodice, raise my skirts, and throw myself on the mail coach floor. The thought made her giggle, and the bailiff woke up, removed his hand, and had the good grace to blush a shade somewhere between crimson and bonfire red.

“Susan, I do beg your pardon,” he whispered, his hand at his side now. He straightened up and moved away, careful to keep his army overcoat tight about him.

She thought he wasn’t going to look at her, but after a few minutes, he relaxed, shook his head, and glanced in her direction. “Well, if you ever had any doubts, I like women,” he whispered. “Heartiest apologies.”

“Accepted,” she whispered back.

He didn’t say anything else, and understanding his embarrassment, Susan did not press him. She was content enough to gaze out the window at the growing dark and wonder at herself. I cannot blame Mama or Aunt Louisa, she admitted, considering her upbringing. I was raised to be a pattern card of propriety. She reflected further; that had not changed. Each time the vicar visited her, she had no urge to kiss him, or even rest her hand on his shoulder. And now here is the bailiff, a man decidedly unacceptable, and I want to kiss him and do something—anything—to relieve this edgy feeling I have. Strange, indeed. I will watch for Wambley and think of dinner, instead.

At Wambley, which appeared about as soon as full dark, Susan had good cause to think well again of the bailiff. She remembered Wambley from the nooning stop on her way to the Cotswolds, and as they all left the mail coach in a rush for dinner, she girded her loins for another struggle in the Sword and Shield. I will plead for nothing more than soup and tea, she told herself, remembering her complete inability to summon even that much from the overworked public room staff at the busy coach stop.

In the taproom crowded with ravenous travelers, David Wiggins compensated entirely for his naptime lapse on the coach. As Susan prepared to jump up and down if she had to, to attract attention over much taller heads, the bailiff nodded, gestured, and then ushered her to a table that appeared almost miraculously as the crowd parted like the Red Sea.

“However did you do that?” she whispered as a potboy scurried toward them, wiping his hands on his apron.

The bailiff smiled and leaned closer. “You could do it, too, if you were a foot taller and a former sergeant major. Bring us some soup, bread, cheese, and tea,” he ordered the potboy. “If you’re really quick, there’ll be some extra coins just between you and me.” The boy grinned at the bailiff and hurried toward the kitchen, oblivious to the calls of the other mail coach riders.

They ate and even had time for a brief stroll about the inn yard before the other passengers emerged from the taproom. It was a quiet walk, neither of them saying anything, until Susan stopped and looked up at the bailiff’s outline in the moonlit darkness.

“I can’t help it,” she said, the words tumbling out. “I must worry. Suppose we are unsuccessful? Suppose young Lady Bushnell insists that her mother-in-law come to the home estate?” She tucked her arm more snugly into the crook of the bailiff’s elbow.

“Well, then, you will be looking for another position, and I will have to take my Waterloo wheat somewhere else that needs a bailiff,” he replied. He sighed. “I can’t see the Bushnells keeping anyone at Quilling Manor, once the old lady is forced to capitulate. I’d love to buy it, to be sure, but I have no money for that kind of purchase.”

Somehow, in all her worrying about Lady Bushnell, she hadn’t considered the full effect on the bailiff. “And you’ll have to
leave
Quilling Manor?” she asked, but it was more of a statement.

He nodded. “I’ve received an offer of a similar position near Gloucester, but there’s no succession house, and I don’t think the owner is inclined toward experimentation.” He patted her hand. “We just have to convince young Lady B.” He released his grip on her. “Of course, any year now, our good parson might get up the nerve to make you an offer on a leaky vicarage and all the church mice you could catch, which would assure you a future.”

She laughed. “I can’t count on that happening in this century,” she said. “He still isn’t brave enough to look in my direction for more than ten seconds at a time!” And heaven knows he’s never kissed me as you have, or sat in my bedroom chatting, or put his hands anywhere they don’t belong. I don’t think it would ever occur to him, and more’s the pity. She looked at the bailiff, and the smile that made his brown eyes dance, even in the half light of the inn yard. “And don’t remind me of your proposal!”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he assured her. “It would have been a bad idea, anyway, considering that there would be both of us with no income.” He looked then at the coachman, who was gesturing toward the mail coach like a hen after chickens. “Come on, Susan. We’d hate to miss a minute of our excursion to London.”

The mail coach was much emptier after Wambley, with other passengers remaining behind to make connections further south. They had the entire seat to themselves, and the same parson seated opposite who continued to smile benignly at them. He burped quietly several times—a natural consequence of a rushed meal at the Sword and Shield—then sighed himself to sleep like an old dog before a winter hearth.

“Put your head on my lap, Susan,” the bailiff said as they started off. “No telling how long before we are sandwiched in here again.”

“I shouldn’t,” she protested, even as she swung her legs up on the seat and did as he said.

“If we’re going to talk about
shouldn’t
s, you should still be in London under your father’s care,” he said mildly, resting his hand on her shoulder.

In a few minutes his hand felt heavier and heavier, and she knew he slept again. I wish I could sleep anywhere, she grumbled to herself as she unfastened one hook on her skirt and settled her cloak around her. Perhaps I shall count sheep.

Sheep proved to be unprofitable, because they only reminded her of Ben Rich and the Welsh boy, and then lanolin, and then David Wiggins, and then back to the problem of Lady Bushnell. You are all so complicated, she thought as she ordered her eyes to stay shut. David, you promise good behavior to Lady Bushnell for ever and ever; you promise Lord Bushnell that you will always keep an eye on her. And young Laby B surely promised her husband, the unfortunate Charles, that she would always take good care of his mother, even if good care is too much care.

But I have promised nobody anything, she considered, and surprised herself by beginning to cry. I’m not bound to anyone by any promises, she told herself through her tears and sniffles. I could leave tomorrow and no one could claim me or hold me to a mark. She sniffed back the rest of her tears, determined not to wallow in self-pity.

“Oh, Susan, don’t cry,” the bailiff whispered as he handed her a handkerchief. It smelled of lanolin, and she sobbed harder. “You’re a silly widget, did you know?”

“I thought you were asleep,” she whispered back and then blew her nose. “I’m feeling sorry for myself, that’s all,” she explained in hushed tones, her eyes on the parson as she gathered her dignity about her.

She felt him chuckle. “Well, go ahead and cry, then, Suzie. My overcoat’s had worse on it than tears, I assure you.”

He was still then, resting his hand in the warmth of her neck this time. She felt herself relaxing by degrees, until she heard the parson stir as he leaned forward.

“Is she all right?” he whispered to the bailiff.

“She’ll do,” he replied. “She gets this way sometimes.”

I do not! she wanted to protest, but she had the good sense to lie quiet.

“In the family way?” the parson inquired.

She stiffened, felt herself blush from head to toe, then turned her face against the bailiff’s thigh so she wouldn’t laugh out loud.

“No, I don’t think so,” the bailiff said, his voice remarkably steady, considering how stiff his own leg was just then. “You know the ladies, sir, and how they are sometimes.”

That satisfied the parson. In another moment he snored. Susan rested her cheek against the bailiff’s leg again. “‘You know the ladies,’” she mimicked. “No, how
are
we sometimes, Mr. Wiggins?”