The Soldier's Poisoned Heart (True Love and Deception) (Victorian Historical Romance Book 1) (7 page)

None of this seemed to matter to Lydia, though, who watched with rapt attention. He could see her reacting, every so often, before something would happen, and he wondered if she’d seen it before. It was a well-known play, he knew, but couldn’t imagine why someone would go to see the same one twice. After what seemed like hours, the curtain closed and a man stepped out in a suit, loudly addressing the crowd.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll now take a fifteen minute intermission, please enjoy the rest of the show.” And then the lights cut on.

People stood and left or chatted among themselves quietly, and Lydia leaned over to him and whispered. “You don’t like it.”

“Not at all,” he lied. “It’s wonderful.”

Lydia abandoned the line of questioning and sat straight again. This time it was John Paul’s turn to lean over, softly speaking a few centimeters from her ear. “Will you marry me, Lydia Wakefield?”

And then, feeling as if only a few minutes had passed since the intermission had begun, all around them the patrons were back in their seats were turning off, and before she had time to respond, the curtain opened on the King in his throne room and the play began, the actors and audience reinvigorated from their brief respite.

The second half was a great deal bloodier, and John Paul found himself more interested. In his life, he had had little time nor inclination toward intrigue in the political arena, but it had been a constant specter lurking in the shadows. To see it made plain was interesting enough, and as Macbeth sunk into madness, the Colonel couldn’t help but find himself feeling sorry for the man.

Once everyone had died, the curtain closed once again, and then the entire cast came out to take their final bows and the lights cut back on once more.

Lydia looked over at him, and suddenly the question he’d asked got under his skin again. He needed her to agree, as well. If they had to wait for her father to support them, then they would wait, but he needed to know that she would wait with him. She leaned into him once more, until he could feel her hot breath on his ear.

“Go with me to see Salome,” she said. “Next month.”

John Paul struggled to hide the confusion that ran over him. Had she forgotten that he’d asked her for a promise of marriage?

“And then ask me again.”

A pit opened up in the Colonel’s stomach. It was a no, but he noted hopefully that it was not always to be no. John Paul hated to be left in the dark, but he hated more the thought of leaving things as they were. With that thought in mind, he pushed his doubts away and rose to his feet.

“Of course, miss.”

Chapter 7

The chores, for the time being, all finished, John Paul rose late the next morning. He had an aching head, an aching heart, and no concrete idea of what to do next. He could hardly form a coherent thought throughout breakfast.

He had never felt so exhausted, except after heavy drinking, which he’d not engaged in, though he had considered it. It was finally seeing Henry walk into the dining room that made him decide to do something with the day.

“Good morning,” he said, and Henry grumbled a response that might have been an appropriate one.

His voice was thick with sleep, and the Colonel silently sympathized with his exhaustion, even as he tried to dispel his own.

John Paul stood and carried his used utensils into the kitchen to be washed. Then he sat down in the most comfortable of his chairs and waited for Henry to join him. During that time, he took a mental stock of what had yet to be done.

They hadn’t gotten up the courage to take the gazebo down, and it would need to be done no doubt. The concern was that the roof might fall onto someone. With John Paul and his nephew both exhausted, neither would be in a state to deal with the dangers of such a job.

The patio, as well, had not been fixed. They would need to remove the offending root completely if they were to properly fix it as such, and John Paul had no desire for such a large job.

He looked over at the wall and saw a painting leaned against it. He hadn’t hung it, and from the look of things, neither had anyone else in the house. He stood and walked over to it as Henry walked out of the kitchen and joined him in the room.

John Paul heard him sit back into a chair, but paid him no mind. He could get rid of the old furniture, making room for newer things. The windows were mostly large enough that the stuff could simply be tossed out. Any wood might be kept for kindling over the winter, and the rest could be burned or taken to the local garbage dump.

The Colonel turned, feeling himself pull his shoulders back to hide what little remained of his malaise. He addressed his nephew: “We’ll be doing more work today, my boy.”

Henry looked up at him through heavily-lidded eyes, but said nothing.

“We’ll be heading upstairs and getting rid of the old furniture, I think. Can you manage it?”

Henry nodded, still silent. John Paul clapped him on the shoulder.

“Good lad. I’ll fetch a few pieces of paper; write down whatever was in the room before you toss it, will you?”

Henry nodded again and stretched and yawned. John Paul fetched the papers and handed his nephew a small pencil, and then set off with his own pencil and papers. He went up to the third floor and looked up and down the long hall.

He decided to start on the north side of the building and work his way south. There was no real logic to it, but any orderly fashion was better than none, so he reasoned this was as good a method as any.

The northern-most room was large, with a sloped ceiling that made the room seem smaller than its floor plan implied. There was an armoire against one wall, and a four-post bed nearby to it.

The room was tailored to a woman’s preferences, with portraits of beautiful women from years past. There was a shelf covered in dolls that showed remarkably little of the wear of the rest of the home.

He wrote all of it down save the dolls, which he set in the hallway. He wondered if Lydia would fancy such a toy. With that thought in mind he set off to work tearing down the bed frame. It came apart easily, the glue having long since rotted away and the wood having lost its former strength. He set the windows open and heaved out the first of the posts, hearing a satisfactory ringing from the clatter below.

A second post followed it, and he allowed himself a glance back at the dolls. Perhaps they would make a decent gift after a washing. He was aware that there was cat-and-mouse game of courtship, but he had no notion of how to properly play it. He caught himself leaning back against the wall and stood again. He pulled the bed free from the wall so that he could yank off a third post, then carried it across and threw it out as well.

Further, how could he know that he was not the one being strung along by all of this? A fourth post was heaved out the window, clattering on the stone below. A mildew-smelling mattress joined it a moment later.

He simply had to trust her. Even if she were not simply playing coy, and her father was not simply testing him or some such, he would need to persevere.

Eventually, he would convince them both, or he would be told in no uncertain terms that his efforts could not continue. He pushed the iron bed-frame out the window and leaned out to watch it fall to the ground below.

He went into the Furniture store the very next day. He hadn’t planned on seeing her until Friday, but it seemed as if he had no reason to wait, not when every waking hour seemed an eternity. His need for nearly a dozen rooms’ worth of furniture made an excellent excuse, as well.

He saw Lydia smile when he walked in. He couldn’t help admiring her dark hair, piled onto her head and pinned into place. Lord, he thought, but she is beautiful.

He had planned only on saying hello and doing his business, but it seemed now as if it were impossible not to ask her out to lunch again. He had business to attend to first, though, he reminded himself.

He would address with business first; then he would deal with pleasure. He set the list down on the counter. It was several pages long, and he pushed it across the counter.

“Good morning, miss Wakefield.”

“Mister Foster,” she said. She smiled at him, and he pointed to the stack of papers on the counter.

“I’ve got an order that I’ll need to be filled, miss.”

Lydia picked the papers up and leafed through them.

“I’m sorry to say, sir, that we don’t have all this in stock. Of course, my Father can make do, but it will be a week or two, if that’s acceptable.”

“Of course.”

“And there’s the matter of a deposit, of course.”

“Of course,” he answered again, and pulled a wallet from his jacket, laying down some bills.

Lydia took then and put them into the register, then disappeared into the back room with the list. When she came back, her hands were empty, and she walked up to the counter slowly, smiling at him. He wished that she would stay like that forever, sauntering up to him with that exact warm smile on her beautiful face.

“Is there anything else you needed, mister Foster?”

“Yes, miss Wakefield, I was wondering if you might join me for lunch again.”

“That sounds lovely,” she said, flicking her eyes over to a clock that hung behind her. “But it’s only eleven now. Can you come back in an hour?”

“Of course,” he said again. He tried to burn Lydia’s smile into his mind. If he had no luck with her, then at least the memory of her would be enough to warm his heart, he thought.

He spent the hour patrolling around the block. He had nowhere to go, no one to see, and he found that every time he stopped walking he had an insatiable urge to continue moving. So much of his career had been spent making smart decisions. It had required a healthy patience, and yet now he could not muster even a tiny amount.

He needed to be with her again, and he needed it now. That she had asked him to stay away was all that kept him from waiting inside the store. The only thing that scratched his mental itch was to keep himself busy, to keep moving on and on.

After what seemed like several lifetimes, the clock rang out across the city, twelve loud chimes. He made haste to the store, where he came upon Lydia and Nan locking up the front of the store to meet him.

The choice of where to eat was his, but in reality, his task was to decide what Lydia would prefer without her saying so. He guessed and chose a place on St Peters street and hoped that she wouldn’t mind it too. Her smile told him that either he had chosen well, or that she liked his company enough that it didn't matter.

Lydia gossiped in a loud whisper about the silliness of customers she dealt with on a nearly daily basis, and John Paul laughed.

When finally the meal was over she was flushed in the cheeks and and laughing too hard to tell her stories, which may have been as well. He walked her back to the storefront, but it couldn’t have been enough time to sate his thirst for her attention.

When they reached the store she turned to regard him once more, handing the key to Nan, who busied herself unlocking the door.

John Paul, unable to contain himself any longer, finally exclaimed, “Miss Wakefield, will you not marry me?”

Lydia covered her mouth with one hand, trying to cover up the way her lips curled into a smile. “Not one bit,” she said. “When are you taking me to see Salome, Mister Foster?”

John Paul felt his lips twitch between frustration and amusement. So it was to be that way, he thought. And then young Lydia reached her hand out and touched his cheek before turning to go inside.

“Opening night,” he called in, and set off without waiting one moment more to the box office. Opening night of any show, even in a city smaller than London, was not trivial to get tickets. What he lacked in notoriety, he would make up for in preparedness.

“Have you got time?” John Paul cut into his nephew's reverie when he'd returned home.

“Of course,” Henry answered.

“We’ve got some more work to do. This shouldn’t be too long, though.”

Henry dressed and followed after his uncle.

“We’ve been here for two months, my boy.”

“I suppose that sounds right.”

“And we’ve done a good deal of work, wouldn’t you say?”

Henry agreed that they had.

“So now we need to take a stock of what remains to finish the job. At what point can we invite the finer folk from town to the reinvigorated Foster Estate?”

Henry nodded and said nothing.

John Paul pulled a pair of slates from the counter, handed one to Henry, and picked up a piece of chalk for himself.

“Now, we’ll need some sort of systematic approach,” he said absently.

“I suppose top to bottom and then outside makes as much sense as any, would you agree?”

“I suppose,” Henry answered.

John Paul walked away and up the stairs, hearing Henry tromping up behind him. He walked back to the north side of the building. He regarded the dolls sitting against the wall of the otherwise-empty room.

“The wall-paper is peeling,” he said. It wasn’t an observation of the room so much as the entire house summed up. “It will need to be stripped and replaced.”

Henry snorted in agreement, and John Paul ignored him.

“The floors, as well,” Henry added after a moment. “They’re looking worn. They should be refinished, as well.”

John Paul scowled. One room in, and two more massive jobs to be done. He cursed his own desire to have bought himself into such an ambitious project. The decision, however, had been made. There was no going back on it now.

“Anything else in this room?”

“Those dolls look a little—”

John Paul turned on his heel and walked out of the room. As he passed Henry, he answered “The dolls will stay, I think, until there is something to be done with them.”

When Henry looked a little hurt at the tone, John Paul softened. “They’re perfectly good, after all.”

Even for his softer tone of voice, both of them knew that there was little room, if any, for argument. John Paul continued walking, crossing the hall into the next room. The same problems, here. Someone had broken the window glass, as well, likely some young men with rocks over the past several years.

John Paul wondered if Henry had been that sort. Of course he was, the Colonel thought. He gave all the signs of having lived a terribly, so to speak, exciting life before coming to live with his uncle.

There were curtains to be replaced as well. Most of the curtain rods were broken and bent, and had been thrown out with the rest of the furniture. He wrote this down. At least that was a job that he could do with relative ease.

The rooms were disorganized as well; a mishmash of poorly-selected wallpapers and mislaid floors. Henry wasn’t wrong. The floors looked bad. He couldn’t let anyone of merit see him with such poor flooring.

The second floor was much the same: old-fashioned, mismatched wall-paper. Warped hardwood flooring. The work, at least, was cut out for them. The bottom floor had the same sort of problems, which the entire household had been ignoring for the past month.

Stepping outside, they began to go around the house. The outside would need to be painted, as well. The front path needed to be re-dug and new gravel laid. The back patio would need to be removed and re-grouted once they had the tree roots dealt with, as well.

And of course there was the gazebo, which looked as if a particularly angry storm might knock it over. John Paul hoped secretly that it would, rather than having to do it himself. It would spare everyone the dangerous position of having to risk the thing falling on them as they pulled it down.

Very well, John Paul thought. The list was not so long. It had taken only twenty or thirty minutes to make the whole inspection, even for the extra care they had taken compared to the first time. He looked down at his slate, and then looked out at his yard once more.