The kid smiled again and pulled it out of his mouth, raising it a little in a gesture of salute. And then John Paul was gone, off down the alley he’d come from. Lydia, was it? He sighed happily. A pretty name for a prettier young lady.
He floated back to the carriage and sat on the seat, waiting for Henry to return, thinking how well things had gone. Easy, no need to explain much of anything to anyone. It was almost too easy, but then he remembered his fear that he wouldn’t find out at all.
Perhaps he should be happy with the result after all. He smiled, letting his thoughts drift, until he heard a familiar voice calling him from below. He climbed back down and smiled amiably at his nephew.
“I trust you’ve worked yourself up an appetite?”
Chapter 3
John Paul and his nephew returned home after perhaps an hour. The sun was sitting low on the horizon by the time they had returned the horses to the stables and walked through the door. Henry took the bed once more, and John Paul laid down on one of the old, foul-smelling beds.
They stank of dampness; John Paul wondered to himself what sort of rot must be, but dropped into an easy sleep. There was a woman in his dreams. She was the most beautiful woman he could have imagined, with hair like velvet, skin like milk, and a voice like honey. He thought there was something familiar about her, though he couldn't place it.
He awoke with a start, the moon high in the sky. He couldn’t remember exactly what his dream had been about, but he guessed it well enough. He remembered the woman he had met earlier. It hadn’t even occurred to him that he might look for a wife.
After all, he was far past the romance of youth. Love was a young man’s game, and he was on the other side of what seemed like an entire lifetime. Twenty years in the service, all of them on the opposite side of Her Majesty’s empire.
He was still not entirely comfortable here. Even in the outback, he had known who he could trust, known every one of them and what they were made of. His only companion now was a young man who knew nothing about himself or the world.
It was easy to like him; he had a youthful exuberance and desire to please. Yet at the same time, it was hard to trust him. A man who’d never had his mettle tested may as well have none at all.
All these thoughts plagued John Paul as he tried to drift back into sleep and the embrace of the beautiful goddess of his dreams. But sleep wouldn’t come, he realized. There was no helping it, he would simply need to do what he could to spend the time. He pulled his boots on, slipped his arms through the loops of the coat he’d been lying on, and set off into the night.
It was still cold in the night, even as the days were beginning to warm up. During the day, his jacket was hot, and he preferred not to wear it. He hadn’t expected England to feel hot after years in Australia, yet here he was acclimating quite well to the local opinion.
When they said it was hot, he agreed it was hot. But perhaps his tolerance for cold was not what the city folk had. He quickened his pace, walking down the empty street. He saw, finally, his nearest neighbor’s house, and realized he had be walking for nearly two miles.
There was forest all around, he thought, and in them could be all sorts of animals. He could be attacked by some dingoes—no, he corrected himself. They didn’t have dingoes in Britain. They had dogs, certainly. Wolves, maybe, in some parts. He wondered if they had wolves here before deciding that they hadn’t. It was too civilized, even in this more isolated area. Perhaps there were parts of Britain that did have them, but he had no idea where those places might be. The thought quickened his pace, nonetheless.
He didn’t meet any dogs along the way home, which was lucky for him. He might have been concerned if he had; he had no way to fend them off, after all. He would be absolutely at their mercy, and he had no desire to be at the mercy of wild dogs. John Paul was a strong man, and he could dispatch a man with only his empty hands.
He had done it before, though he didn’t want to repeat the experience. Not only to avoid committing a crime, but because it was hard work. Most men he dealt with—certainly most men he’d needed to attack—had been difficult enough to make it a close thing. If there was one thing that John Paul didn’t prefer in the rare times that he needed to become violent, it was uncertainty. That was how a man got himself killed.
As he pulled the off-kilter door up and back into its frame again, he realized that he felt tired. The constant straining to listen for the sounds of wild animals had exhausted him, and he once again slipped into sleep.
This time he didn’t dream. It felt as if he laid his head down a only a moment before he opened his eyes again. In that time, though, he saw that the sun had risen, and was visible over the horizon.
He heard the sound of movement in the rest of the house and rose to see what was making so much noise. He found a trio of men walking through his foyer carrying a new chair. When they put it down, he crouched to inspect it. It looked to be in quite good shape, entirely unlike the chair he’d returned. Perfect, he thought. That’s exactly what I wanted.
They came next with a bed, which Henry helped them to carry into the room John Paul had left only moments before. Then the two others, who John Paul vaguely recognized as the usual delivery boys, looked at him expectantly.
“Oh, yes, one moment,” he said, pulling a billfold out of his jacket pocket. He counted out a couple of pounds for the furniture, and a shilling a piece for the young men who had helped to unload the furniture. “Thank you, lads. Have a pleasant rest of your day.”
They left without saying anything further. John Paul stepped onto the porch and watched them load up into the wagon. He turned and saw the door sitting beside the frame, unpainted but otherwise quite nice looking.
There was a large pile of lumber with a bit of paper attached to it, which John Paul guessed must have been a note of credit. When the young men had left, he turned on his nephew, the smile that he’d put on for the hired hands gone.
“You should have woken me,” he said, his voice hard with annoyance, made worse by having just woken.
Henry’s face blanched. “I just thought—”
“I know what you thought,” John Paul put in, before Henry could finish his thought. “But even still, I don’t need you to take care of my affairs for me, Henry. I’m the master of the house, after all.”
Henry’s face twisted up into an upset expression, but he kept his mouth shut, and John Paul’s hard edge softened.
“I know, you were only trying to help. But in the future, you need to call me if I’m in, is that clear enough?”
“Yes, sir,” Henry answered, dejected.
John Paul clapped him on the back and smiled at him.
“Well, then,” he said. “I suppose we should get to work.”
At half past twelve in the afternoon, a wagon pulled up. He wasn’t used to anyone coming by at all, so he assumed it must have been someone carrying the servants, and he was not mistaken. A pair of young men, perhaps Henry’s age, stepped off the back and thanked the driver, who nodded and drove off. John Paul could see thick bales of hay piled in the back, as well.
He greeted them. One introduced himself as Thomas, who would be cooking for the house. The other was a Mark, who would take care of the horses. John Paul welcomed them in and invited them to make themselves at home. Some of the furniture was old, he said, but they were free to take their pick of the rooms. There were more than enough, and they set off carrying suitcases into the house. John Paul took the trimmer back into the rear yard along with the sharpening stone and began once again to work on cutting the grass.
He’d figured out the proper pace, though the long grass prevented him from working. He could tell that he was making progress, rather than getting caught on weeds and stones.
After he cut the long part of the lawn, he sharpened the blades once more and ran through the part he’d done days earlier. It was leisurely by comparison to the work he had been doing, and he nearly found it relaxing. When he finished, he decide
d, he would go into town.
He stopped into the house to ask after the new boys, Mark and Thomas, and they seemed pleased. He would acquire new beds for them as soon as possible, and on that pretext he set off toward Derby. He knew what he was truly off for, of course, but it wouldn’t do at all to admit it to anyone.
He hitched his horse just outside of Wakefield’s, peering through the windows and trying to catch a glimpse of Lydia. Instead he saw the burly young man, her older brother perhaps. He had a smile on his face and greeted John Paul as “Mr Foster” and asked what he could do to help.
“I have a few new servants in my home, and I need a new pair of beds, and a proper dining table, as well.”
“Seating how many?”
John Paul thought for a moment.
“I suppose seating for eight should more than suffice.”
The man behind the counter wrote it all down, and then showed it to John Paul, who noted the price and nodded. He pulled out another pound’s deposit and pushed it down on the table. The young man pocketed the money and went off into the back room with the slip of paper.
John Paul didn’t wait for him to return, though he did linger for a moment to look at the furniture on display. There was a considerable amount of the stuff, and all of it was of a remarkable quality. He smiled thinking about it and the door jingled as he stepped out through it.
He returned the next day, as well. He had no need for any more furniture—his need was of a different sort. He resolved that he would walk past, and if she weren’t there, then he would just leave. But she was.
“Hello, Mr. Foster,” she said. It had a delightful ring to it, but he made himself ignore it. He couldn't afford to let her beautiful voice distract him. He stepped up and put his hands on the counter as if to steady himself, though he tried to put out an appearance of calm collectedness. When he didn’t immediately speak, the elder woman behind the counter looked up from her knitting pointedly.
“Hello, miss.” He could feel the urge to fidget under the pressure of the room. He had never had any sort of experience in this situation, and he was unaware of the protocols, having only read about them in books. “I was wondering if you would be…”
He trailed off for a moment, his eyes darting between the young woman, Lydia he supposed, and her chaperone. She looked at him with those wide, beautiful eyes.
“Yes?” He pulled a frown, trying to still the beating of his heart.
“I find myself your most ardent admirer,” he began, “And I was wondering if I might call on you at home some time. Perhaps for tea?”
Lydia blushed and John Paul worried that he had said something wrong. She had someone else, and she would dash his hopes. He looked again from her to the woman beside her.
He imagined for a moment that he saw the faintest of smiles cross the woman’s face. It hid, though, in the crease of her mouth so that he couldn’t have said with any certainty if he saw any sort of expression at all. It may even have been disapproval.
Lydia opened her mouth and closed it again, looking at him with a deep crimson blush. She turned to the older woman and whispered “Nan!”
The woman glanced up from her knitting again and shared a look with Lydia, and then she looked up at John Paul and answered for her charge.
“That would be lovely, Mr. Foster.”
John Paul could feel his knees buckle beneath him, but he forced himself to stay standing. He had never felt so nervous as he felt now, and the relief helped none at all, building a delightful agony that he couldn’t resist.
“When shall I call, then?”
Lydia’s chaperone looked up at her, and back at him before answering for the young lady. “Noontime tomorrow, perhaps, for lunch?”
John Paul nodded, trying to keep his expression neutral, though he was not succeeding as well as he might have liked.
“Noon is perfectly fine, ma’am. Miss,” he said. “I will come tomorrow.”
He had one foot out the door when Lydia called out to him, “Wait!”
He turned on his heel to receive whatever she had to say.
“You don’t know where my home is, sir.”
John Paul blinked. Asking it had slipped his mind. She wrote something on a slip of paper and pushed it across the counter. He picked it up as a bell sounded behind him, and he passed a customer as he walked out, his head bowed.
The entire encounter had taken perhaps three minutes, but it had seemed to be an eternity. At the same time had not lasted long enough. The feeling that threatened to burst out of his chest was one he was not altogether familiar with.
For twenty years, he had lived in a foreign land, and now there was word that they would be independent by the turn of the century.
He had commanded a full battalion, and he had charged head-first into battle on several occasions. None of the iron nerve that made him so well-suited to soldiering saved him from the terror of seeing a girl he could have carried in one arm.
She was everything he was not, he thought, and that was what made her so absolutely perfect. Her beauty, her fragility, her air of serenity. All of that separated them by miles, and he wanted nothing more than to cross that distance as best he could.
The afternoon couldn’t go fast enough. The same as the day before; he wanted nothing more than to attend to this Lydia. He rose early, as was his custom, and dressed, and then he sat in his front room, thinking about what was to come, a bundle of nerves and anxiety.
When the clock struck nine, he set off. Derby was only two hours away. He could justify waiting outside for a few minutes, however, more easily than he could fight the desire to leave his parlor.
The time passed slower than he had expected. When he had pulled his horse up in front of the row of flats, it was difficult not to dismount and knock on the door early. But he thought, checking his watch, that it wouldn’t do to go in early. Even after a stroll through town he had fifteen minutes to wait, and wait he would. It wouldn’t do to cast a poor impression on his first visit to the place, after all.
Still, even though he had made his mind up, he found it difficult to fight against the temptation. It wasn’t just one choice, after all, but a series of choices not to go inside. He had little to comfort him but convictions, while a voice in the back of his mind whispered to him that it wouldn’t be any sort of intrusion. John Paul pushed the voice away.
Finally he did take a step in the direction of the flat, he wondered if perhaps he had lost his nerve after all. It was hard to even think, let alone move. It seemed as if he only managed to make the short journey because of the company he would be keeping when he arrived.
He knocked, and Nan answered; he hadn’t known her name, though Lydia had called her ‘Nan.' She smiled, though he guessed it was just for show. So he smiled back at her.
She took him in to a sitting room. He was intensely aware of his posture in a way that he hadn’t been since his training. After so many years of service he did not need to strain to keep his back straight in the chair. Still, he found himself checking at intervals to ensure that he wasn’t making any sort of mistake.
Nan left him for a moment, and when she returned, she had a beautiful young woman in tow. Lydia wore a fine red gown with a flattering fit. John Paul had not made the place for the home of a particularly wealthy family, but he saw that they did not spare expenses on her finery.
He smiled at her, and she at him, and he meant it. She sat down opposite him, with the older woman sitting alongside, pulling a bit of knitting out of a bag beside her. Before she got to knitting, she looked up at him.
“Tea will be here momentarily, Mister Foster.”
“Thank you ma’am,” he said softly.
John Paul’s throat felt parched, and he realized that he did not know what sort of things polite society talked about. It had been twenty years in the army, and he had not much to talk about with a woman who had never left this town.
The only things that immediately came to mind smacked of bragging ab
out himself and his past. He had no desire to brag, and less desire to force the conversation. He decided that discretion was the better part of valor and kept his mouth shut, looking at Lydia’s hands.
They were thin, almost bony, and had an inhuman elegance to them. Her nails were neatly trimmed, and she lacked callouses. He didn’t need to look at his own to know where his callouses were. It seemed as if an eternity passed in that silence, likely only four or five seconds, before he heard Nan clear her throat. At last, Lydia spoke.
“How long have you been in Derby, Mister Foster?”
“Ah,” he said, caught off guard. It took him a moment to think of the answer. “I suppose about two weeks now, Miss Wakefield.”
She nodded, thinking private thoughts, and then spoke again. “And how are you finding it?”
“The people are nice enough, from what I have seen. The shops seem to be quite large. Quite a few restaurants.”
She was silent again, before adding “There are quite large shops, particularly in the square.”
John Paul finally spoke up. “Are there any in particular you enjoy?”
Lydia put a hand up over her mouth, but he could see from her eyes that she was laughing, either at his naivete or some other private thought. “None that would interest you overmuch, Mister Foster. I don’t imagine you would look—”
John Paul watched Nan give her charge a sharp look and Lydia did not finish her thought. He could see the mirth in Lydia’s eyes, though, and he could imagine a few possible endings for her joke. In either case, her smile was infectious. The conversation was awkward and impersonal, and his discomfort and inexperience was obvious. Even still, he found himself enjoying his time with her.
They did not discuss a wide variety of subjects. He asked her about plays she had attended recently, and she told him. She asked him about where he had lived in Australia, and he told her about New South Wales. Yet when he rose to leave after perhaps an hour, he looked forward to nothing so much as seeing her again.
The Soldier's Poisoned Heart (True Love and Deception) (Victorian Historical Romance Book 1) Page 3
