The Rogue's Folly

by Donna Lea Simpson

  She should have been grateful to Miss Parsons—should have come to love her, perhaps—but she never could feel more than respect for the vinegary woman. Love was reserved for her Beaty, the best friend of her childhood years.

  May turned over again to seek elusive sleep, aware that she was sternly avoiding the image she carried behind a door in her mind, the image of Beaty and . . . she squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face in the pillow. Resolutely she turned her mind to the village school, and her plans for the course of instruction there.

  • • •

  Early morning mist lay in the hollows of the meadows and clung to the trees as May galloped across fallow fields toward the glade and the folly. She almost thought she would find it had all been a dream and that Etienne would not be there. Surely it was a figment of her feverish imagination to soothe the pain of his death; today she would find the folly uninhabited.

  She carried more food, blankets and supplies with her, as well as a broom from the stable. Zach, the stable boy, had been sleepy-eyed as she told him to go back to bed. She would saddle Cassie herself. He had become used to his mistress’s love for the horses and her multitude of abilities with them, so he pulled his cap and said, “Aye,” stumbling away to find a pile of hay to rest in. He was so young. Would he be able to come to her school when it started in a few weeks? she wondered. She would insist on it as his employer.

  Among the bundle of things she had purloined to take to Etienne was a set of clothing. She had crept into the attic when she had awoken some time around four a.m., and, by the light of a lantern lit from the coals in her bedroom grate—it had become cold enough at night that a fire was welcome—she had rummaged through a trunk of her father’s belongings and a valise that held assorted clothes gentlemen had left at Lark House over the years. It was in that valise that May found a pair of breeches that looked roughly the right size for Etienne and a couple of shirts.

  Her mother had wanted to throw out the late Lord van Hoffen’s things, but May had pleaded to keep them, and Maisie had acquiesced with a shrug. It was all she would ever know of her father, besides the stern portrait of him that resided in a little-used music room. Now she was glad for quite another reason that she had insisted. She had in her possession something that Etienne would be very glad to see.

  There was the wood. She ducked under a branch, then slipped off Cassie and led her through the misty, shadowed glade. It was like the dawn of time, May thought, looking around and breathing deeply of the damp, fresh air, the garden in which Adam and Eve had discovered life. Dew clung to everything, and birds flitted from branch to branch, sending out alarm calls about the intruder in their quiet woodland. Cassie blew out of her nostrils and tossed her head. Did she smell the presence of Théron, her equine admirer? How could Etienne risk his beautiful horse to the vagaries of chance? If anyone found Théron, they would have a valuable commodity, for he was worth hundreds of pounds, perhaps more, both as a riding horse and stud.

  There, at last, was the gray stone folly, like a tiny castle floating in the mists of time, arising from a dream of years gone by. May looped Cassie’s reins over a branch and crept to the door. A dusty haze drifted inside the stone building and one shaft of lonely, early morning light had fingered through the trees and mist to beam through a window and rest on the man who slept on a pallet of blankets.

  May took in a deep breath. He was so very beautiful. The golden morning sun touched his curls where they tumbled over his high forehead, and she thought this must be what the young Lancelot looked like. A stab of longing shot through her body, making her clench against the hideous desire that coursed through her veins. Though she would never admit it was that.

  He shifted, moaned, and his eyes opened, gazing disoriented for a moment, and then sharpening when he saw her standing hesitantly at the door.

  “Little one,” he whispered hoarsely. “I thought you were a dream.”

  “I am here, you slugabed!” She moved briskly into the folly and set down the small basket of food she carried. She laid out fresh bread and more cheese—a Stilton this time—grapes, chicken, and half a rabbit pie. She brought out a corked crockery jug and two pewter mugs.

  “What is this?” he asked, pointing at the jug with a crust of bread he had already started on.

  “English ale,” she said, smiling over at him, at the picture he made with bread crumbs caught in his beard. She reached over and brushed them away but drew back sharply at the jolt of pure pleasure that coursed through her at the merest touch even of his bristly whiskers.

  “You join me in this homely brew?”

  “Of course. There is nothing like good English ale in the morning, and stout in the afternoon. I will bring you some stout. It strengthens the blood and will help you regain your vigor,” she said, pouring them each a hearty draught.

  “Ah, so I may be gone from your little house all the sooner,” he said with a rueful smile. He picked up the rabbit pie, sniffed it, and then eagerly took a piece to eat.

  May felt her heart constrict. “No, Etienne, not at all! Please don’t think I want you gone. You may stay in my folly as long as you want. I promise you will be unmolested here.”

  “Thank you, sweetheart.” He dusted pastry crumbs from his hands. “Lady May’s folly,” Etienne mused, washing down his food with a long drink of ale. He wiped the foam from his lips with his sleeve and nodded his satisfaction with the cleansing brew. “You, little one,” he said, pointing a chicken leg at her, “have no folly, I am convinced. You are perfect in every way.”

  Now, was that a compliment or an insult? She shook her head and watched him eat as she drew her legs up to sit cross-legged on the edge of his blanket. Taking a drink of her own ale and licking the flecks of foam from her lips with the tip of her tongue, she cocked her head and smiled at him, glad that he seemed a little more chipper this morning than he had the previous morning. “I think you prefer your women with a fair bit of folly in them,” she said with a grin.

  “Ah, so wise is the little one,” he said, and winked at her. “My women, yes; I think a little folly is a good thing. But you, you are my saint. You are perfection.”

  It occurred to her briefly that to be a saint was a very cold calling. But then she bounced up, setting her pewter mug aside. “I brought you something,” she said. “Just a minute.” She raced outside and brought back the bundle Cassie still patiently bore.

  She undid the sheet that held the items and they tumbled across the floor. “Clothes,” she said, nudging the breeches and shirts toward him with the toe of her boot. “And look! A razor, a strop, even a cake of shaving soap and a brush! And more witch hazel alcohol, because I spilled so much yesterday.”

  “Oh, bless you!” He scrubbed his fingers through his beard. “I hate the face hair, detest it, in fact. But where did you get these things, the razor, the soap and brush?”

  “They were left among my father’s things.”

  He frowned at her tentative tone. “Was he a good father, little one?”

  “I don’t know,” she said frankly. “I don’t even remember him. He died before my second birthday.”

  “Pauvre petite.”

  She lifted her chin. “I have done just fine without a father.”

  “Truly, you have done admirably. But I am of the opinion that a girl should have a father. It gives her her first experience of what to expect from men. If her father is a good father, she will learn that she deserves to be treated with respect and admiration.”

  “I can’t believe you have even thought on such a subject!” May said, kneeling beside him. “You don’t want to get married, so you don’t plan to have children. How did this even enter your mind?”

  He shrugged. “If I did have children, I would like to have a saucy little girl, someone like you.” He reached out and chucked her under the chin, then laughed quietly at her expression of offended dignity. He held up the razor. “I look forward to this,” he said.

  May eyed him with concern
. It was clear that he was feeling stronger than he had the day before, but the razor shook in his hand. He saw it too, and set the razor down with a sad look.

  He shrugged. “It looks like I will have to wait to feel clean,” he said. “I would likely cut my own throat if I tried to shave myself.” He glanced up at her. “Unless . . . bah, no, I have asked too much already.”

  “What is it? What can I do?” Just seeing him awake and alive was so good, she would have done anything for him, even take his teasing. He had saved her life once, and she always repaid her debts.

  “Would you shave me, little one?”

  His brown eyes held such a look of hope that it actually hurt to say no, but what could she do? “I’ve never done anything like that before. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “I could explain,” he said. “It is not so difficult, after all.” He sat up on the blanket. “I should not ask, but it would make me feel so good!”

  His words were almost seductive. It was in her power to make him feel good, and she knew she would say yes. The water was cold, and the soap was a dried-up little cake, so it did not lather quite as well as it should, but soon she was approaching his lathered chin with the razor, which he had shown her how to strop to sharpness. Her hand was shaking as much as his would be, surely, she thought, but he could not do for himself without a mirror, and she had neglected to bring that necessary item.

  And so she brought up the razor and scraped at his cheek. He stayed steady, his face turned trustingly for her. It took a few minutes but soon she found the rhythm, and exactly how hard to pull to remove whiskers and not skin. Her hands settled as she focused on the task at hand, and finally she was wiping the last flecks of soap from his face.

  “I did it,” she breathed, rinsing and discarding the razor and gazing at his clean face as if it were a rather tricky painting she had executed. The handsome, clean-shaven Etienne she knew had emerged from the forest of facial hair.

  He turned toward her, and her heart leapt at the genuine smile of deep appreciation on his face. “Thank you little . . . Lady May.”

  Before she recognized his intentions, he had encircled her in his arms and pulled her to him for another kiss. He smelled so good, of soap and clean water, and she gave herself up to his embrace without a murmur of demure, even though the night before she swore she would not allow him such freedom again. One kiss became two, and somehow she was resting against his body, stretched out with him on his blanket in his arms. His lips had been warm and soft again, and without the scratchy whiskers to distract she became lost in a hazy, spinning world of sweet languor.

  He plundered her mouth and taught her, without words, to give back as good as she got. Tentatively at first, and then with more urgent need she thrust into his mouth. He pulled away at one point, but she clutched his torn shirt and pulled him back. After a grunt of surprise, he rolled her onto her back and took her mouth in a fiery, questing kiss of desperate desire.

  She was lying on her back. Under him! Conscious of this at last, emerging from a cloud of passion, she was shocked and horrified by the wantonness of her reaction. She pulled away and scrambled to her feet.

  He lay back, panting and grinning up at her. “My lady, you are like the sweetest of chocolate truffles—a brittle crust of chocolate on the outside, still very good, but then, when one bites in, it is to velvety sweetness so good it makes you moan aloud. The pleasure is unexpected and completely overwhelming.”

  “I . . . I . . .” There were no words with which to counter his shockingly evocative praise, if praise it was. She could not, must not, allow him that kind of freedom again. Allow him? She had demanded, begged for his embrace! Shamelessly. Wantonly! She dimly remembered him pulling away and how she had grasped his shirt and pulled him to her again; how humiliating.

  She felt her cheeks flame and pressed them with trembling hands. What must he think of her? After all these years of self-control, she thought she had overcome . . .

  But she would not think of that, of the fantasies and cravings that had plagued her in the years after what she had seen of Beaty and her paramour, until Miss Parsons’s strict morality had allowed her to erase from her mind the inappropriate desires to which she had been prey.

  And there was her reputation to think of too. She could only do her work, the work of educating the children of the village, if her reputation remained spotless. If she were ever disgraced, she could expect no more help from the rector, nor from the draper, the tavern keeper, the doctor . . . all the influential parents of the village. And so she must quash these feelings, but more importantly she must not disappear alone for such long periods of time. People would gossip. Even her own servants. People would begin to wonder if she was another Maisie, slipping off to meet men, as her mother had done. She could not afford that.

  She knelt by Etienne and wordlessly redressed his wound, and then hastily gave him the clothes she had brought, turning her back as he pulled a clean, unripped shirt over his head.

  “I must go,” she said and slipped out of the folly.

  Etienne watched her go, a frown furrowing his brow. Then he slowly, painfully stripped off the bloody and torn breeches, exhausted to the core by the time he had them off. She had not even said good-bye, nor had she told him when she would be back. It left him with a lonely sadness, to think that he had kissed her into a panic. He sighed and settled himself down to sleep on the blankets again, as the morning sun rose and cast shadows where it peered through the one open window and infiltrated the heavy shroud of clinging vines on the others.

  Chapter Seven

  Etienne need not have worried. May faithfully visited him every day and stayed as long as she could, bringing food and books, a lantern, and the all-important mirror. His hands steadied gradually and he shaved himself daily. She had set about making the small building more habitable and had even, one day, managed to have some of her servants bring down some furnishings, having told them that she wanted to use the folly as a study and reading retreat for herself. Etienne lay in the woods a ways off with his bundle of clothes and shaving things, and watched and listened as May directed the men who brought a couch—she thought a bed would cause comment of a most unwelcome kind—a chair and a small table. They stayed a few more minutes and tore the vines away from the other windows, and then took away the other broken-down furniture.

  He was touched beyond belief. Never in his life had any woman done so much for him. It humbled him, and yet he recognized that she felt she owed him a debt of gratitude for taking her away from her would-be rapist that morning the spring before. Personally he believed the intrepid miss would have disabled Dempster somehow, and he was sure she would have found her own way back to London, but he had been so glad to be of aid to her, at first for Emily’s sake—he had been a little obsessed, he admitted to himself, with the sweet, abundant Emily—but now it was all for May’s sake.

  The days were getting shorter as September became October, and the leaves turned to gold and fluttered to the ground around the folly. Night came early and was cool, but he was grateful for the comforts with which she had provided him, though he longed for the one thing he could not have, a fire. He had tried to think of a way, but smoke in the woods would inevitably bring someone to investigate. And so he must make do with extra blankets at night, and cold food always.

  He began to think that he must not trespass on her kindness too long, though, for he did not want to bring her trouble. But he did not know where he would go.

  Until that time, however, the time when he would have to leave, he would enjoy getting to know the intriguing Lady May. He watched her, sometimes, when she was not aware. She would read aloud to him as he lay on his couch, and by turning his head just slightly he could watch the sweet naturalness of her as she curled up in the chair, still wearing breeches, smiling over something she read. Never had he been attracted by the slim, boyish kind of woman, but May . . . he could readily see how a man could become entranced by her, her unstud
ied grace, her joyous laughter.

  But as his interest in her grew, it seemed she kept more physical distance between them. When their eyes met, she looked away. There was no repeat of that so hungry kiss they shared. The only time she touched him now was when she redressed the wound, and she insisted on doing that herself.

  It wasn’t looking good. Even he could see that, for it was oozing an ugly-looking gray substance and refused to heal, and her brow was puckered each day as she cleaned it away and reapplied the ointment. She again broached the subject of the doctor, suggesting that she could swear him to secrecy, make up some tale, but Etienne fiercely negated any talk of that. He knew how it would be and he was not afraid for himself, but for her. With a mother like hers even the most saintly of men would jump to conclusions when he found that she was hiding a man in her folly. She would be ruined, and he found that he cared far too much for her, even aside from the instinctive chivalry with which he treated all women. He would die before he would see her harmed, even in so ephemeral a thing as the reputation.

  He could walk on the leg now, but it ached abominably, and the pain throbbed through his veins. He stayed off it as much as possible, watching with half-closed eyes as May busied herself around the folly, sweeping and washing dishes like a little girl playing at being a housewife.

  But she was not a little girl. In London she had been slender to the point of emaciation, but country air, good food, and the increasing security she seemed to feel was rounding her figure—not to plumpness; she would always be thin—but she was sweetly rounded in all the places a woman should have curves, and he liked to watch her natural grace as she moved about the folly preparing their lunch or tidying up.