“She laughed in my face, and I was as much in earnest as I could be at that age. I enjoyed her conversation, had no need of her dowry, and had pegged her for a practical, good-natured sort.” Who wouldn’t have minded a marriage where both partners were free to roam, provided appearances were maintained.
The notion struck George as vaguely distasteful now, sad even.
A small pile of shavings accumulated on the desk blotter. “Your expectations of the institution are modest, Mr. Haddonfield. I think your sister’s are too—as were mine.”
Past tense in any accent was worth noting. Somebody needed to take the library in hand, for it now had no less than three copies of The Monk.
“Your estimation of marriage has changed?” George asked. St. Michael had lovely hands—big, competent, elegant. Nita had probably had the same thought.
“Lady Nita is not a woman of modest accomplishments or modest sentiments. Have you never resumed your search for a bride, Mr. Haddonfield?”
The question was casual, while the goose feather had been pared to a perfect point. St. Michael swept the orts and leavings into the waste bin beside the desk and dusted those big palms together.
“I keep an eye out,” George said, which was true. Marriage to the right woman would solve a few problems and stop his siblings from fretting over him.
Would it be fair to the lady, though? George liked women, and even desired them on occasion, the way a fellow might desire a hot cup of tea or chocolate with a dash of cinnamon on a cold morning.
Not the way he longed for the fiery pleasure of a good brandy—stupidly, passionately, without any dignity or care for his own well-being.
“Shall we have a drink?” George asked, crossing to the sideboard.
St. Michael uncapped the ink, laid out a piece of foolscap, and began writing. He made a lovely picture at the vast desk, the white feather moving across the page with an assurance George envied.
“A bit early for me,” St. Michael said, the pen never breaking rhythm, “but don’t let that stop you. When I’ve completed this epistle, could you spare me time for a discussion of your latest German travels?”
“You’re proposing to my sister, then decamping for the Pumpernickel Courts? That will impress Nita not at all. She’ll go right back to her midwifery and tisanes, and forget you ever existed unless you turn up sick or injured.”
St. Michael dipped his pen again, let a drop of ink gather on the tip, and waited, hand immobile, until that droplet had fallen back into the bottle.
“She well might,” he said as a second drop followed the first. “Perhaps that’s for the best. Do you fancy sheep, Mr. Haddonfield?”
In a different, half-drunken context, George might have misconstrued the question.
“I like them well enough. Harmless creatures, pretty, and not given to violence.” Rather like himself.
“I’m passionate about sheep,” St. Michael said. “Your brother-the-earl would do well to recall this.”
George took a steadying sip of excellent brandy and tormented himself by sitting on the edge of the desk, close enough to catch St. Michael’s scent.
“Are you passionate about my sister?”
“Interesting question.” St. Michael did not stop writing, and abruptly, weariness pressed down on George.
St. Michael didn’t even see him, and if he did—if he somehow divined that George regarded him as potentially desirable—he’d be disgusted or, worse, amused. He would never reciprocate George’s interest, and as to that, what did George know of Tremaine St. Michael?
He was attractive, wealthy, and interested in Nita.
So George must pant after him in silent frustration? Must comport himself with all the emotional delicacy of a tomcat?
Such stirrings flattered nobody. They were for strutting, impulsive boys who had one foot planted in rebellion and the other in boredom.
“Nita is lonely,” George said, setting his glass down near the ink. “She was born immediately after her older brothers, and it’s almost as if Mama and Papa didn’t realize there’d been a change in gender. Nita tagged after us boys, rode like a demon, and tried very hard to keep up with us.”
“And you humored her,” St. Michael muttered, “which she hated.”
“Drove her nigh barmy, to be so little and dear. I don’t think it much bothers her lately.”
St. Michael glanced up from his epistle. “She’s very dear, also brave, maybe too brave.” He might have asked George to name his seconds in the same tone, so fierce was Nita’s newly acquired champion shepherd boy.
“You did propose,” George said, feeling pity for the handsome St. Michael, which was an odd relief from indiscriminate desire. “Maybe you’re lonely too, St. Michael.”
George certainly was.
Now where had that notion come from?
St. Michael appended a signature to his letter, legible but with a slight flourish to the initial capitals. Beckman had said that St. Michael dealt in fine art in addition to wool.
“The question is, Mr. Haddonfield, does the lady see any advantage in my suit. One must think practically in any negotiation.”
St. Michael would think at least in part with his breeding organs, like any other male. In this, he and George were no different. And yet loneliness was a problem the breeding organs could not solve.
A day for insights, apparently. George took another sip of his drink and recalled Elsie Nash’s invitation to share a fresh biscuit and cup of tea on a cold day.
“What does Nicholas say about your proposing to Nita?” George asked, for any Haddonfield must be mindful of the earl’s position on matters of significance. Nicholas was tolerant, patient, and practical, but also trying to step into the old earl’s shoes, a delicate and difficult task.
“Bellefonte is attempting to lure two men to the altar with the same flock of sheep,” St. Michael said, casting sand over his letter. “He’s neglected to consider how we’re to lure the ladies to the altar, for a man cannot be married to a lot of bleating livestock.”
“How to lure the object of one’s tender emotions is always a fraught question,” George allowed. “How will you answer it?”
St. Michael sat back. “I want those sheep, but if I acquire them as part of your sister’s dowry, Lady Nita will not be well pleased. Lady Nita doesn’t want Squire Nash to have Lady Susannah or the sheep, but then, what does Lady Susannah want, and what does the earl want?”
“Do you come from a large family?”
“I own enormous quantities of sheep, but come from barely any family.”
“One would not have guessed as much.” George passed St. Michael his glass. “You’ll need this more than I do, but when it comes to my sisters, I’ve been plagued by a thought.”
St. Michael poured the sand off his letter. “Don’t be coy. If I’m not engaged soon, we might be traveling to Germany together.”
Interesting prospect, about which St. Michael seemed to feel no hesitation.
“My sisters each need what the other has,” George said. He would never have aired this notion before Nicholas. “Nita needs more poetry and rest, Susannah needs a purpose beyond verse and endless sedentary hours of embroidery. Della needs to be taken more seriously and patted on the head less, and Kirsten needs to laugh more and be cosseted.”
St. Michael waved the letter gently over the dustbin, then laid it exactly in the middle of the blotter.
“Nash represents a purpose for Lady Susannah, then,” he said. “A household she can take in hand, an estate she can help run. Interesting.”
He took a whiff of George’s drink, grimaced, and set the brandy aside, making even that mundane activity attractive. George noted it, probably the way Nita noted that an infant in the churchyard was healthy or St. Michael would note that a herd of sheep was in good weight.
A passing observation, not a passionate preoccupation—thank God.
George took the empty glass over to the sideboard. “So you want Nita, but she
’ll turn you down if she thinks you’re marrying her to get the sheep, yet Nash shouldn’t have the sheep either. Complicated.”
“She might turn me down because I’m no sort of marital bargain, and because I haven’t proposed.”
St. Michael would propose though. He might not get the prescribed words out in the prescribed order, but he’d convey his intentions well enough.
Lucky Nita. St. Michael would give her babies and a household to run while putting a stop to the endless progression of sore throats, influenza, and rheumatism that now filled her days.
“I would not want to see Lady Susannah attached to Nash’s household,” St. Michael said, “though my hesitance is unrelated to the fate of the sheep.”
George had pleasant associations with Stonebridge. Warm ginger biscuits, the Second Punic War, and Elsie Nash’s surprising tolerance.
“Suze wants Edward Nash,” George said. “The man’s fate is sealed. Nicholas will like that she’s close by, and so will I.”
“Lady Nita fears for the safety of the women in Nash’s home, though I very nearly violate a confidence when I tell you that. If Lady Nita is to be believed, then Mrs. Nash at this moment is sporting a black eye courtesy of the head of her household.”
St. Michael’s voice was as cold as the wind moaning around the corner of the house.
“Lady Nita is to be believed,” George said slowly, while consternation warred with outrage inside him. “Nita does not indulge in falsehoods. Nash struck Elsie?”
Elsie was petite, kindhearted, fair-minded, a mother.
“Lady Nita came to that conclusion, and if you’re about to tell me I must disclose this situation to the earl, I cannot. I gather Lady Nita is in Mrs. Nash’s confidence, and were her ladyship not enraged beyond endurance, she would never have spoken to me so honestly. I apologize for burdening you with this information but will prevail on your gentlemanly honor to keep it between us.”
St. Michael was upset about Elsie’s situation, upset enough to disclose it when he hadn’t meant to. No wonder Nita saw potential in him.
“Nita holds herself to the standards of a physician when it comes to people’s privacy,” George said—though George did not, and perhaps St. Michael perceived as much. Something would have to be done, and Susannah could not marry a man who lacked control of his own temper. “Shall I have Nicholas frank your letter?”
St. Michael capped the ink and tucked it into a drawer. “Thank you, no. The matter requires some discretion. I’ll post it myself.”
George set his mind to the problem that was Elsie Nash’s safety—Digby had also said Nash had a sour temper—but St. Michael’s comment nagged at him too.
What could require such very great discretion that Nicholas mustn’t even be allowed to see the epistle St. Michael had penned with such dispatch?
Nine
The Haddonfields were an incorrigibly merry bunch when the ladies were at their cordials, and Tremaine had thus had an opportunity to give Lady Nita her evening of cards and silliness.
They’d put him in mind of a bunch of shepherds, gathered around the fire and flask. Somebody would get out a fiddle, somebody else would tell a tale or get started on a rendition of “Willie Brew’d a Peck o’ Maut,” and the laughter would crest higher and higher until Tremaine’s sides ached with it. He’d forgotten about those nights, though he hadn’t forgotten the hard ground or the cold mornings.
He rapped on Lady Nita’s door, quietly, despite a light shining from beneath it. Somebody murmured something which he took for permission to enter.
“Mr. St. Michael?”
Tremaine stepped into her ladyship’s room, closed the door behind him, and locked it, which brought the total of his impossibly forward behaviors to several thousand.
“Your ladyship expected a sister or a maid with a pail of coal?”
“I wasn’t expecting you.” Lady Nita sat near the hearth in a blue velvet dressing gown. The wool stockings on her feet were thick enough to make a drover covetous. “Are you unwell, Mr. St. Michael?”
“You are not pleased to see me.” Did she think illness the only reason somebody would seek her out?
She set aside some pamphlet, a medical treatise, no doubt. No vapid novels for Lady Nita.
“I was not expecting you, sir.”
“You were not expecting me to discuss marriage with you earlier. I wasn’t expecting the topic to come up in a casual fashion either. May I sit?”
Tremaine was egregiously presuming, but he had earned significant coin by seizing opportunities, and Lady Nita had very much the feel of an opportunity.
She waved an elegant hand at the other chair flanking the hearth. Tremaine settled in, trying to gather his thoughts while the firelight turned Lady Nita’s braid into a rope of burnished gold.
“You are pretty.” Brilliant place to start. The words had come out, heavily burred, something of an ongoing revelation.
“I am tall and blond,” she retorted, twitching at the folds of her robe. “I have the usual assortment of parts. What did you come here to discuss?”
Lady Nita was right in a sense. Her beauty was not of the ballroom variety but rather an illumination of her features by characteristics unseen. She fretted over new babies, cut up potatoes like any crofter’s wife, and worried for her sisters. These attributes interested Tremaine. Her Madonna-with-a-secret smile, keen intellect, and longing for laughter attracted him.
Even her medical preoccupation, in its place, had some utility as well.
“Will you marry me?”
More brilliance. Where had his wits gone? George Haddonfield had graciously pointed out that Nita needed repose and laughter, and Tremaine was offering her the hand of the most restless and un-silly man in the realm.
The lady somehow contained her incredulity, staring at her stockings. “You want to discuss marriage?”
“I believe I did just open that topic. Allow me to elaborate on my thesis: Lady Bernita Haddonfield, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife? I think we would suit, and I can promise you would know no want in my care.”
A proper swain would have been on his damn bended knee, the lady’s hand in his. Lady Nita would probably laugh herself to tears if Tremaine attempted that nonsense. He’d seen her laugh that hard earlier in the evening, over Lady Kirsten’s rendition of the parson’s sermon on women keeping silent in the church.
Lady Nita picked up her pamphlet, which Tremaine could now see was written in German.
“Why, Mr. St. Michael?”
“I beg your pardon?” Tremaine was about to pitch the damned pamphlet in the fire, until he recalled that Nita Haddonfield excelled at obscuring her stronger emotions.
“Why should you marry me, Tremaine St. Michael? Why should I marry you? I’ve had other offers; you’ve made other offers. You haven’t known me long enough to form an opinion of my character beyond the superficial.”
This ability to take a situation apart, into causes, effects, symptoms, and prognosis, was part of the reason she was successful as a healer. Tremaine applied the same skills to commercial situations, thus he didn’t dismiss her questions as dithering or manipulation.
Neither was she rejecting him.
“My appraisal of your character goes beyond the superficial, my dear. You can be shy, but you haven’t a coy bone in your body,” he said, propping his feet beside hers on the brass fender. “Your heart is inconveniently tender, but you are so fierce and so disciplined, few suspect this about you. I do not pretend my offer is that of a passionate young swain for a lady he has long loved, but I will guard your heart with my life, my lady.”
She folded the pamphlet but didn’t set it aside. “Will you entrust your heart into my keeping?”
Did Tremaine even have a heart to entrust? His parents had shown him the folly of allowing that organ to overstep its biological functions, and yet he liked Nita Haddonfield, he desired her, and her regard for him mattered very much.
“I will entrust my he
art to no other.” Tremaine could give her that assurance. He sealed his promise with a kiss to her knuckles and kept her hand in his.
“Interesting reply, Mr. St. Michael. I’m happy with my life as it is, though. Marriage has always struck me as a poor bargain for the lady. She ceases to enjoy any sort of independence and must endure her husband’s pawings and beatings without recourse to the church or the law. She risks her life in childbirth, repeatedly, and should her husband die, she’s best advised to get another as soon as possible.”
Lady Nita’s objection was to marriage in theory, not to Tremaine personally. He took courage from that.
“You are slow to trust,” he said. “I’m not exactly atremble with confidence in the institution myself. Marriage means my wife’s entire health, happiness, and safety lie exclusively in my hands, and all my wit, my meager store of charm, my plowman’s poetry, and my coin may be inadequate to keep her safe from the foxes and wolves.”
Tremaine should probably not have likened a husband’s responsibilities to those of a shepherd, but the sentiments were similar. Nita would be his exclusively, her welfare his responsibility.
“I like kissing you,” she said, regarding their joined hands. “Will you come to bed with me?”
Tremaine’s breeding organs offered an immediate, unequivocal yes. The stakes were too high to indulge in such folly, however.
“Why, my lady? Are you anticipating vows with me?”
“I’m making up my mind,” she said. “I like you, Mr. St. Michael, but I would not be a biddable or easy wife any more than you’ll be a biddable or doting husband. We both must be very sure of this decision.”
Lady Nita would be a loyal wife, one who never compromised Tremaine’s interests or countermanded his decisions—not the important ones. As for the doting, a man could learn new skills when sufficiently motivated.
Tremaine had ever enjoyed a worthy challenge, after all.
“Would it help to know I’ll happily purchase a house here in Kent?” he asked, a bid in the direction of doting such as he understood it. “There are several possibilities in this vicinity—I’ve inquired—and I’d happily make our Kent property an addition to your dowry portion.”
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