by Erica Ridley
“Oh dear, that is a pickle.” Elijah pulled her into his embrace and claimed her mouth with a searing kiss. “How ever shall we pass the night?”
Olive licked her lips. “I believe there was a certain sensual kiss you promised to let me try...”
Chapter 17
The Tenth Day
Olive awoke in Elijah’s arms. She didn’t dare to move. The moment was too perfect. They were both on their sides, his strong body wrapped around hers protectively. His strong, naked body.
His strong, naked, aroused body.
“I have an idea,” she whispered. “It involves not leaving this bedroom, ever.”
“That is a phenomenal idea,” he murmured just behind her ear. “But won’t the horses be lonely?”
“The stable hands are back. I haven’t any responsibilities until next Christmas.” She craned her neck toward him.
He kissed her cheek. “Hmm, I’m not certain I believe that. You might be trying to seduce me.”
“I’m definitely trying to seduce you,” she agreed. “Tell me it’s working.”
“I’ve been in a constant state of seduction for the past ten days,” he said fervently. “But your father is waiting for us at the breakfast table. If we don’t get there soon, the maid is liable to ask him why Miss Harper’s door is barred, and Mr. Weston’s room is empty.”
Olive groaned. “Very good point. I must concede to your logic. But after Sunday...”
“From Sunday,” he corrected. “I plan to hand out pieces of dry toast for the wedding breakfast and send everyone on their way. We won’t leave this bed for weeks.”
“I accept your compromise. Reluctantly.” She rolled out of his embrace and to her feet.
Elijah was right. The first order of business was to share their decision with her father.
“What do you think he’ll say?” Elijah asked.
“He’ll be thrilled,” she replied without hesitation, then frowned. “That is, I hope he will be. He thought this union would heal the rift between our families. When he finds out your father has no intention of ending the feud...”
“We did heal the rift.” Elijah took her hands and pressed her fingers to his lips. “You and I are on the same side. If my father wants to keep up a one-man feud of his own making... Then we let him be miserable.”
“From what I understand, the conflict began when your father married. He and Papa divided their shared farm and became rivals instead of partners.” Olive opened her wardrobe. “Ironically, with our marriage, Papa ‘wins’ the final battle, since our union is the last thing your father wants.”
“We win. Father isn’t ready to give up his vengeance plots, but it’s too bad. None of us is playing the game anymore.” Elijah helped her into a gown, then attended to his own attire. “If I had known the best revenge would be marrying the girl I’d been in love with since I was sixteen...”
“You were not!” Olive’s cheeks flushed hot as she unbarred the bedroom door. “You barely knew me then.”
“I was precocious,” he protested, and held out his elbow. “I thought you were the woman of my dreams, and I was right.”
She looped her arm through his. “Very well, Mr. Right. Shall we tell my father?”
When they arrived at the breakfast table, a newspaper and an empty plate sat before her father. Papa rose to his feet when he saw them.
She let go of Elijah’s arm so she could speak freely.
“The tenth day,” signed Papa. “There appears to be a decision?”
Olive beamed at her father. She couldn’t help it. “We wed on Sunday.”
“I don’t want the farm,” said Elijah.
He was not looking at her, but directly at her father. He must have realized Papa could read lips a little.
“All I want is Olive,” Elijah continued. “She’s the one who deserves the farm. If you must give it to someone, please place it in a legal trust for her.”
“Too late.” Papa slid a document out from under the newspaper. “The farm has been in my daughter’s name since November.”
“What?” She snatched the document from the table to scan it, then slammed it down with disbelief so she could communicate with both hands. “You said you were giving the farm to Elijah—”
“I said I would give him all of my shares.” Papa’s eyes twinkled mischievously. “It’s not my fault I don’t have any.”
“It is your fault. It’s literally your fault. You signed a document giving control to me, and you didn’t tell either of us.” Her fingers trembled. “You lied to me. To me, Papa.”
Her throat pricked and her chest constricted. All these years, her father had been the one person who had always been on her side. Her stalwart, through thick and thin. Her best friend. Her bastion of unconditional love.
And he’d manipulated her with the same ease and flippancy with which he fought his petty battles with the enemy he despised above all others.
“I thought you’d be pleased,” Papa said. “The farm is yours outright. It’s a gift.”
“It’s not a gift.” Her lip curled. “It was a stab in the back to Elijah and his father. You were never trying to heal the rift. You were out for vengeance, just like Milbotham. And just like the marquess, you were willing to use your own child as bait.”
How was she supposed to forgive a betrayal like that?
Papa took a step closer. “My intentions toward Milbotham were of secondary concern. You have always been the center of my life. And our farm has always been the center of yours. It was within my power to give you the thing you wanted most, but first I wanted to prove to you that it wasn’t all you wanted. It is perfectly fine to want more out of life than just a farm. I wanted my beautiful daughter to have the world.”
“Why not tell her so?” Elijah said. “Why not let her make her own decisions?”
That was why she loved Elijah. He didn’t just treat her like an equal. He believed she was one.
“I’ve told her the farm wasn’t everything a hundred times. This land isn’t her only legacy. She also inherited my stubbornness. I taught her to hold grudges, and she learned the lesson far too well.” Papa turned to Olive. “I set you up to win, sweetheart. There were too many people for me to understand what was being said that day, but my eyes work just fine. I saw that kiss. You both meant it.”
Olive crossed her hands over her chest.
Papa’s eyes hardened in remembrance. “I also knew Milbotham was the person who ruined it, as he ruins everything. I wanted to give you both a second chance. As far away from the marquess as I could manage, with as few barriers to trying again as possible. For Weston, that meant separating him from his father. Arriving with a license in his hand. But for you... I knew the farm was the only lure that would tempt you to try.”
Olive glared at him. Of course he was right, the manipulative scoundrel.
“The farm was always yours, no matter what. But if I could give you a lifetime with the man you love, too...” Papa’s gaze was earnest. “You deserve to have it.”
“Diabolical... yet heartwarming,” Elijah said. “I can only imagine what your partnership with my father must have been like.”
Olive slanted him a look. “You can’t possibly forgive him for shamelessly manipulating us, just because his intention was to...”
Her voice trailed off.
“Ah, yes.” Elijah winced. “I do have a questionable history of valuing good intentions over potential damage. But in your father’s defense, I had been an arse to you. My father dines on underhanded tactics at teatime, so he can hardly act pious when he discovers—”
“Slow down. You both are speaking too quickly to interpret.” But that didn’t make sense… Olive thought back over the conversation. “I was too caught up in the argument with my father to remember you couldn’t follow along...” She stopped speaking aloud, and continued only with her fingers. “But you weren’t lost at all, were you?”
“I followed the gist,” he replied with his ha
nds, spelling out the word gist rather than use the sign. “I don’t know all of your words, so I have to extrapolate from context, which is difficult, because you two sign so quickly and messily, it’s like... finger-mumbling at high speed.”
His signs were clumsy, but comprehensible.
“We could have slowed down,” she signed back, taking care to form each word clearly and properly, like Elijah had done when he’d spoken to her father. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“I was here for nefarious reasons,” he reminded her, spelling out the word nefarious between otherwise competent, if inelegant, signs. “Deceiving you was bad enough. Ingratiating myself with your father would only have compounded my sins.”
She nodded slowly. That sounded like Elijah. Even playing the villain, he would have wanted to inflict the least damage possible.
“Besides,” he continued, “it’s not just the speed. Even when I know the word, some of them are different now. You’ve modified them over the years. Or perhaps I’ve forgotten exactly how they went.”
“Papa learned to sign at Braidwood’s Academy for the Deaf,” Olive said. “How did you learn to sign?”
“Milbothom,” Papa answered. “He was my age and our estates shared a boundary. We played together from the moment we could toddle. On holidays from the Academy, I taught him everything I could. He was clever, and outpaced my parents from the first. I could speak to him almost as easily as with my Deaf friends.”
“I suppose he was like me,” Olive said. “You taught me from birth. I could use sign language before I could speak. Even when I did start talking, my signs were always more fluent than Mother’s.”
“And me,” Elijah added. “I was also taught from birth, although I did not have an Academy of Deaf friends to converse with. It was more like a private language between me and my father.”
“But if Milbotham took the time to teach you an entire language you didn’t need to know...” Papa blinked in wonder. “Then he expected we would reconcile one day.”
“Or hoped you might,” Olive agreed softly.
Elijah gave a crooked smile. “As a child, I thought he’d made me learn to use signs so that other people wouldn’t hear him being nice to me. Ordinary conversations were sign language, but all of our arguments were mortifyingly out loud.”
“Almost as if sign language was just for good memories,” Olive said. “Almost as if our fathers aren’t vengeful Machiavellian tacticians after all, but rather two stubborn old fools each waiting for the other one to wave the white flag first.”
Papa’s eyes slid away as though pretending he hadn’t seen her comment.
She waved her hand toward his face. “I’ll forgive you on one condition.”
That got his attention.
“Anything.” He quickly made the signs. “Name your terms.”
“Go and talk to him,” she said in exasperation. “He’s only up the road in the castle. All you have to do is—”
“He’s here?” Papa’s eyes widened in shock. “Milbotham swore he would never come north of London.”
“Climb to the fifth story, take the first door on the left,” Elijah said. “With a panoramic view of the Harper stud farm.”
Olive shepherded her protesting father out of the dining room and over to the front door.
“Elijah and I are no longer the middlemen in your drama.” She handed her father his coat and hat. “Don’t come back until you’ve invited the marquess to our wedding on Sunday.”
“But—”
Olive shut the door behind her father before he could argue further, then turned to face Elijah.
They both burst out laughing at the same time.
“I can’t believe you knew how to use sign language and didn’t tell me,” she said with her hands.
He shook his head. “I can’t believe our fathers might have wanted to reconcile all these years, but needed someone else to manipulate them into doing it.”
“We had the greatest tutors,” she said with a sigh.
He pulled her into his embrace. “The best Christmas I ever had was the day that pair of ruthless blackguards manipulated me back into your life.”
“Me, too,” she admitted. She wrapped her arms about Elijah’s neck and smiled wickedly. “In fact... Christmastide is not yet over. Might you have another present you’d like to share with me?”
He swung her into his arms. “Every day with you is another Christmas. And I have the perfect way to celebrate our festive spirits.”
They didn’t leave her bedchamber for hours.
Epilogue
Twelfth Night
Eli leaned an elbow on the back of the Duke of Nottingvale’s pianoforte and couldn’t repress a grin. He might be at the duke’s party, dressed in the duke’s fashionable castoffs, but Eli was living his very best life.
His soon-to-be bride was among the eleven ladies dancing a merry tune on the lymewashed floor. Rather than hide her smiles behind her hand, Olive hadn’t stopped beaming from the moment they’d announced their upcoming nuptials.
Since he wasn’t dancing with her until the next set, Eli was free to interpret conversations to Olive’s father... but his services in this matter were unneeded. Mr. Harper was spending another evening arguing with Eli’s father in his suite at the castle.
Eli had been un-banished. His future inheritance was restored, and the accompanying allowance reinstated at a less miserly amount than before.
As a consequence, Eli intended to use his increased means to continue his research... from up here in Cressmouth.
The Harper farm would remain the Harper farm, even after he and Olive married. Eli’s plans involved making the best use of one of the many unused patches of land.
Come the spring, they would break ground on the brand-new Weston Physic Garden. He was busy drawing the plans now for what would become the finest healing garden outside of London.
In the meantime, Eli was the keeper of the castle conservatory. He had declined the solicitor’s offer of truly generous wages, and negotiated instead for the castle to sponsor fellowships to highly skilled chemists and apothecaries willing to dedicate a year of research to public health projects of Eli’s choosing.
With such critical partnerships in place, Eli would be able to help more people in far more ways than he’d ever dreamed.
The rousing music at the pianoforte transitioned into a smooth waltz. Eli hurried to his soon-to-be wife and swept her into the elegant rhythm.
“I’m marrying you in two days, eight hours, and twenty-three minutes,” he growled into her ear.
She grinned up at him. “Are you going to keep counting after the wedding?”
“Only to count my blessings,” Eli answered. “Beginning and ending with you.”
He couldn’t wait to put down roots together.
Finally, the moment all of Cressmouth has been waiting for: The Duke of Nottingvale’s annual Yuletide house party! This year, he’ll select a bride from one of the lucky guests…
Find out how Miss Finch steals Christmas in Forever Your Duke, the next romance in the 12 Dukes of Christmas series!
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Author’s Note
Although the Oxford English Dictionary indicates the first recorded use of “sign language” as 1824, and the verb “to sign” as 1854, I decided to use these terms for clarity, rather than risk being misunderstood with vague words like “gestured” or “indicated.”
Sign language has been recorded within Deaf communities in England since 1570, although the first school, “Braidwood's Academy for the Deaf and Dumb,” was not founded until 1760.
In the story, I’ve shortened this name slightly so as not to hurt or jar modern readers at the unfortunate terminology that was used at the t
ime.
It’s important to note that reading lips is not easy, particularly for those who are born Deaf. It is often infeasible when there are more than two people in the conversation.
Interpreting also takes extraordinary effort. Because the two languages use different grammatical structures, it’s almost impossible to speak both at the same time without one or both languages suffering.
Even professional interpreters are rarely active participants in the primary conversation they are interpreting, which is why Olive must respond first in one language before repeating dialogue in the other.
I speak a different language at home (Spanish) than the one I use professionally (English).
Although my husband and I are fluent in both languages, we both have different interpretation styles when a situation forces us to act as translator to a mixed crowd.
I like to listen to the whole statement or story before recounting it, in order to keep as much flavor (tone, humor, inflection, timing, etc) to the original as possible.
Roy prefers to pause to translate every few words or after each sentence, in order to minimize the amount of time any one person is left out of the conversation.
There are no simple answers, and either way can be exhausting and frustrating. I empathize very much with all participants.
If you are ever in a situation where you do not speak the language, please be patient and understanding. It is often just as upsetting for the other party, who also desperately wishes it was easier to communicate.
And if you are the one doing the translating… Have an extra hug from me to you! :)
xoxo,
Erica
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