The Soldier's Poisoned Heart (True Love and Deception) (Victorian Historical Romance Book 1) (8 page)

He would need to tend the garden. The implication of such a large yard implied one. Anyone attending his home would expect to see it, and he had only a strange tree, a patio, and some untrimmed hedges. He would be a laughingstock.

Yet at the same time, he thought, he had no patience for such things. Gardening was perfectly respectable work, and make no mistake. But he, himself, had no patience for it. He thought about Henry. Perhaps this would be a job for him.

The Colonel considered this, and then rejected it out of hand. There was no reason to assume that this was the right decision, after all. Henry seemed to want to do as little work as possible, and he had no intention of making the lad do anything he wouldn’t do himself. Of all the things he wouldn’t do, of course, gardening featured prominently.

He looked across the lawn once again. A gardener, then. He had furniture to spare coming in at some point. There was no way to know for certain, but he suspected that some part of his order would come in a matter of days. Until that point, he would wait, but it would be no matter for concern to hire another employee.

The night, John Paul declared, was Henry’s. He would be relaxing for the rest of the evening, and turning in early. He gently recommended that Henry do the same. They had an early morning ahead of them heading to Derby.

He retired to his room and lay in the bed, cracking the spine on his newest book. He leafed through it lazily before turning back to the first page, and then he set down to read. An hour later, a knock on the door.

“Come in,” John Paul called out. Mark opened the door, but didn’t enter.

“Dinner’s to be served momentarily, sir.”

“Thank you, Mark.”

“Would you care to join me?” John Paul asked.

He could see the discomfort on the stableboy's face, and almost immediately regretted asking. He hadn’t spent enough time with the lads to make them comfortable with him.

He waited a moment with no response before heading to dinner. After a moment, the young man followed. Thomas served dinner for the three of them and for a while they ate in silence. John Paul broke out a bottle of wine and poured them each a glass.

“How are you liking work here, lads?”

They looked at each other, trying to decide how to answer. John Paul looked down at his food and took a bite, smiling. It would have been impossible to have this sort of experience with his men in Australia.

On the rare occasions he had dined with the men, they’d acted much the same. Afraid to make any comment that might be deemed too offensive. He had disliked it, but it was an unavoidable reality. He had had the same experiences with Colonels when he had been a raw Lieutenant, but seeing it again grated on his nerves.

“Speak freely, now. You won't offend me.”

They thought it over for a minute, and John Paul wondered for a moment where his nephew had gotten off to. Had he gone into town? If he had, then had he told the boys? Oh well, there was no use worrying about it now.

Thomas spoke up finally.

“It’s nice work,” he answered. “Only four people to cook for, good quality ingredients…”

Mark nodded in agreement. Their jobs were different, but something about the description seemed to resonate. John Paul smiled at them.

“Well, boys, eat up! Don’t be shy.” And without waiting he dug in himself.

Chapter 8

The next morning he roused Henry early and the pair of them rode out to Derby. They would need to visit several stores, and John Paul thought it better to do it earlier than later. John Paul could see from his face that Henry would have preferred a later start.

Still, he kept his opinion to himself, electing instead only to slouch tiredly as he rode his horse. Rather, his horse walked underneath him quite happy to follow its partner. The trip took a bit longer than usual, for which John Paul was thankful, given that they would have been quite early otherwise.

They sauntered into the labor office first. They opened nearly at break of dawn. John Paul had heard that there were pools of people who waited outside each morning, though he had never seen them himself.

The man behind the counter was as pleasant as he had ever been, and said that he knew just the gardener to send along. Unlike the cook and stable-boy, it would probably be only a day or two. John Paul put down his deposit, happy that it would be done quickly.

The next stop, then, was to the lumber yard. Neither John Paul nor his nephew had any sort of knowledge about the refinishing and resurfacing of wooden floors. The man behind the counter picked up on this immediately. John Paul could feel his money draining from his coffers as the man spoke.

They would need to buy new lumber for much of it, he said, if they had warping. The job would take several months if it were only the two of them, so they should hire on a few laborers that he would be happy to recommend. Then there was the matter of design. Naturally, anyone of standing would like to have flooring that impressed as much as the rest of the household.

And of course, he could furnish all that… for the right fee. He didn’t say the last part out loud, of course. He made it sound as if he was doing the Colonel a big favor, but in their minds they all knew not to ignore the great cost all the work would incur. A hundred pounds or more might change hands in the sum total of the transaction.

John Paul thanked the man and stepped back out into the street. The man was not a masterful salesman, per se, but he made up for any lack of skill with sheer force of personality and aggressive selling. It was impossible to hear himself think inside the store, with that man in his ears. He needed to think as clearly as possible with such a sum on the line.

John Paul regarded his nephew, who seemed to finally be waking up properly. He decided then that they’d get some tea somewhere. Then they’d talk it over and decide.

Finding tea was easy, and drinking it easier still, but as he sat there looking at his empty cup, he didn’t feel any more awake or alert. He was on-edge, and there was no easy answer to the problem of his flooring. Either he had poor floors, or he was working day in and day out for weeks or more.

He doubted it would take months, but it was possible that the man had been seeding his aggressive sales pitch with some degree of truth. And even still, ‘weeks’ spent replacing the flooring was not something to be taken lightly. Not with so much else going on.

As John Paul found himself lost in such thoughts, he stared down the street. It was a tiring line of thought, the tea provided no relief whatsoever. He longed to see Lydia, but she hadn’t work today, and he had no plans with her for the day. Calling unannounced was out of the question, particularly with Henry along.

He had been avoiding the subject with the lad, though he knew that Henry wondered what his uncle had been spending so much time in town doing. He had been contented to let the boy think that he had been going to the horse track, or gambling around a barroom table.

He was ready for marriage, he thought, but he was not in the slightest ready for the two of them to meet. Though he had grown quite fond of his nephew, there was something in his demeanor that the Colonel couldn’t place. Something he found unnerving, a foreign emotion after twenty years keeping the peace in the colonies.

Then, as if in answer to his prayers, he saw a young woman turn the corner, carrying in her hand a largish bag marked with the name of a shop. Nan trailed a few steps behind, carrying a couple bags of her own, and they stopped for a moment to rest.

John Paul took this as a sign and stood. He dropped a couple shillings on the table and walked across. Henry would follow him, or he would not.

“Miss Wakefield!”

The pair of women both snapped their heads up at the call. “Mister Foster,” said the younger.

“If the two of you need any sort of assistance with those bags, my nephew and I would be more than happy to oblige.”

Lydia didn’t answer immediately. She looked to her chaperone over her shoulder, who gave a nod.

“That would be absolutely lovely,” she said. John Paul took the bag from her hand and felt an immediate jolt of electricity as his hand grazed hers. He saw her touch the spot where they’d touched as well, though she thought he wasn’t looking.

Then he took the bags from Nan, as well. Henry tagged along for the ride, his hands free. The bags themselves were not heavy, but holding them away from his body as he walked, John Paul found his arms tiring as they walked. It was a couple of kilometers to the Wakefield home, and they passed it quietly.

John Paul could feel Lydia’s eyes on him as they walked, but he ignored it as best he could. If he acknowledged it, he thought, she would stop looking, and he couldn’t bear the thought of that. So he would pretend that he did not notice.

When they arrived at the Wakefield home, he stepped in when they opened the doors and set the bags just inside before stepping back out.

“Thank you, sir,” Lydia said. She had an expectant look on her face and for a moment John Paul could not decide what it was. Then he realized.

“Oh, pardon my rudeness. Miss Lydia Wakefield, this is my nephew, Henry Roche. My late sister’s boy.”

Lydia regarded Henry and gave a small curtsy.

“Nice to meet you, Henry.”

“And you, likewise,” he answered. The women stepped inside and shut the door, and the pair of men set off.

“Now, Henry, where were we?”

“We needed to speak to the man about the flooring. You know, I think we should do it.”

“Yes,” John Paul said. It rankled him to know that they were almost certain to be overpaying, but he knew that he had no way of doing it himself, either. It was not a position he was comfortable being in, and he had no greater wish than to see it finished as soon as possible. He swallowed his pride and decided that he would do what he needed to do.

“She seems a nice enough girl, uncle,” Henry noted.

“Oh?”

“Yes, a perfectly nice girl,” he said.

Whatever the rest of his thoughts were, he kept them to himself.

The next few days passed awfully slowly. The gardener, Jacob, came to the house the next day. He was perhaps ten years older than Henry Roche and had a fastidiousness about him that the other boys lacked. John Paul found him easy to like, but at the same time, hard to talk to.

He reminded the Colonel of many of the men he had served alongside for all of those years down in Australia. When he revealed that his father had been in the army and he had considered joining himself, John Paul was not surprised in the least.

There was, he said, a considerable amount of work to be done. Thomas and Mark had never brought up any need for workers under them. Jacob took one walk ‘round the yard and immediately declared that he would need at least one assistant.

He added that the state of the gazebo was quite poor, which John Paul indicated he had known. If he and Henry had time, the gardener said, the destruction job would not take more than an hour. As Jacob began preparing for the task at hand, John Paul went inside to find his nephew reading one of his books.

“Come on,” he said. “We’ve got a bit of work to do.”

The young man stood and followed the Colonel into the back without questioning it. He had long-since learned that it was quicker not to ask questions. There would be no argument if he disagreed, and the explanation would be forthcoming in either case.

John Paul opened the door and stepped through, nearly bumping into Henry, who had stopped for a moment. When John Paul looked up, he had no doubts about the reason why.

Jacob had looped a trio of ropes around the pillars holding the gazebo’s top up, high up for leverage. John Paul mentally kicked himself for not having thought of it himself. He was becoming soft, he thought, to have not come up with such an obvious solution himself.

Even still he walked up to the center of the three ropes, by far the largest, and looped the end of the cord ‘round his waist. He took the slack out of the rope by wrapping it around his arm and setting his weight against it.

When he looked over, he could see the other two doing similarly, and when they were all ready he cried out “Heave!” and set about pulling against the rope with all his might as the other two did the same.

The structure gave a mighty fight, and for a moment John Paul could not feel any give as he tried to push away with his feet. And then the entire thing gave a loud, creaking groan and John Paul felt his weight slip. He took a step back and redoubled his efforts, the groan grew into a loud, sharp Crack! that resounded through the yard.

With that, the entire thing began to snap in half and John Paul began stepping back, trying to keep constant tension on the rope in his hands. When finally he saw it about to fall free, he gave a mighty tug and watched with satisfaction as the whole thing began to fall.

John Paul looked at the other men and saw the same look on their own faces. Clearing it up would be as simple as chopping what was there up for kindling, another hour or so of work. But it was an hour that John Paul didn’t have.

He had a date to keep.

He spent the better part of the day fretting over what suit would be most appropriate. He could still fit easily into his uniform, and he confessed that it cut a rather striking figure. The newer suits looked so much nicer, though. Whether to take the added gravitas of the uniform, if it mattered...

In the evening, he called on the Wakefield home, and a young man answered.

“Is Lydia available?”

The man indicated that he would be a moment and closed the door. A moment later, he was back, and stepped back to clear the doorway.

“This way, sir,” he said. “She’ll be only another few moments.”

I stepped in and waited. There was no special reason she would have known exactly the time, even if she had known the opening night. So there was certainly no reason to fret over her taking the time, but John Paul found himself fretting nonetheless.

Had she seen this play, as well? Would she enjoy it? Would he? Should he bring up his proposal of marriage, or would she? Lydia appeared atop the steps to find John Paul pacing anxiously by the door. In his hands was a red rose, and he wore a fine suit she hadn’t seen him in before. She couldn’t help but think that he looked as good as he ever had.

“We’re going to the theater,” she asked, though John Paul knew that she knew.

“Yes, miss Wakefield, to see the very same play that you asked to see before.”

“Nan will just be a moment, mister Foster.”

“Of course,” he said. A moment of silence passed between them. “I brought you this.”

John Paul held the rose out for her and she took it, smelling it gently. The fragrance was sweet and sharp, and she couldn’t stop a smile from crossing her face.

“Thank you, mister Foster,” she said softly. “It’s beautiful.”

“It pales in comparison to you, miss,” he answered.

Before Lydia could respond, Nan appeared atop the stairs. She had a hat on, and pressed one into Lydia’s free hand as well.

“Is everyone ready,” John Paul asked of no one in particular. When no one answered, he finished, “Then we’ll head out.”

He got out and helped the women into the carriage before stepping himself up to the seat. The ride to the theater was cool, the wind blowing gently across John Paul’s face, and he smiled. Tonight was the night, he thought. Whether he would have his bride or not, he would have at least this one more evening to spend with her. This one, and many more to come.

The play, he found, was a bit more entertaining than the last in his own estimation. He preferred the biblical story to the fantastical Danish nonsense. There was, of course, just as much blood, but he could as easily have done without it.

When Salome did her dance of the seven veils, he found himself captivated. It was not the curves of the dancer’s hips and her graceful movements, but the image of Lydia's curves and hips doing the same dance.

He pushed the thoughts away as best he could when he realized exactly how impure his thoughts were becoming. But in the back of his mind, the idea remained.

John Paul said nothing about marriage during the intermission. He let Lydia do the talking, and she went on about costuming and the acting.

She was surprised at how well they had managed to make the whole thing so convincing. The actors, in her estimation, were top notch. John Paul couldn’t disagree.

As the play continued, John Paul found himself more and more distracted by his own doubts. Would she accept his proposal this time? Would it even be appropriate to ask, or should he leave things as they were? Furthermore, was it even appropriate to be asking her, when her father had left matters the way he had?