Beware the perceptive younger sibling.
“Just because it’s a tragedy doesn’t mean it’s bad literature,” Susannah retorted. “Life can’t be all ginger biscuits and chocolate.”
Though not a single biscuit remained on the tray and the pot was empty. Susannah laid the blame for her overindulgence at Edward Nash’s booted feet.
“But Titus Andronicus, Suze? I can never remember who’s killing or despoiling whom, or cutting off which body part, in revenge for what upon whom. And all for the privilege of ruling some hot, dusty old empire. Have you heard from Edward lately?”
Oh, spite! Oh, hell! Oh, dratted baby sister!
“In this weather?”
Della put Titus on the mantel, a bit of a stretch for the only petite Haddonfield in captivity.
“It’s simply winter,” Della said, returning to the settee and tucking one slippered foot up under her skirts. “Not everybody finds imaginary characters sufficiently cheering company. Some of us pay calls and look in on each other. Even Kirsten has been known to leave the house in search of exercise and fresh air.”
“Is that what she was about?” Susannah replied. “Accompanying Nita this morning, getting some fresh air? I shouldn’t think a sickroom an ideal place for such an undertaking.”
Titus Andronicus, which Susannah could practically recite, called to her from across the room. She wanted to hold the book in her hands, the way a child held a favorite doll.
Which was also Edward’s blighted fault. Susannah esteemed him greatly, so greatly she’d have to kill him if he didn’t propose prior to the assembly.
“You are not in good spirits, Susannah. Is the assembly making you nervous? Edward should have proposed by now, shouldn’t he?”
“He’s the kind who thinks things through,” Susannah said, for one must practice mendacious loyalty if one wanted to be successful in the role of wife. “Deliberation is a sign of maturity and sincere regard, I think.”
“Deliberation is a sign of indecisiveness,” Della said. “I was up late last night and went to the kitchen for a last cup of chocolate when I caught a glimpse of Mr. St. Michael stealing from Nita’s room.” Della picked up her hoop and stabbed the needle into the throat of a pink rose. “His hair was in disarray.”
Abruptly, Titus became less riveting.
“His hair? What has hair to do with—?” Mr. St. Michael’s thick, dark hair, which had a tendency to wave and curl. “From Nita’s room? Our Nita?”
“Bernita Christina Mayflower Haddonfield had a late-night caller. I’m jealous.”
“You’re scandalous,” Susannah muttered. “I’m jealous too. He’s quite good-looking.” Also wealthy, and he had a marvelous accent for declaiming Mr. Burns’s poetry. Nita would like that he was a healthy sort too.
There was rather a lot of Mr. St. Michael though, and he was said to racket about more than he stayed put.
Susannah much preferred to stay put.
“It’s not fair,” Della said, winding golden thread around her needle. “You’re the soul of domestic tranquillity, sweet, soft-spoken, literary, and demure, and Edward can’t bother to travel two miles to pay a call. Nita ignores her own wardrobe, reads only German medical treatises, and spends her days tending those whom Dr. Horton has quacked, and she gets the late-night caller.”
“Hush, Della.” For Edward’s deliberation was related to Nicholas’s blasted sheep and Nita’s benighted Mr. St. Michael. Kirsten had overhead Nicholas discussing the matter and had told Susannah of Edward’s desire for the sheep to be included in the marriage settlement.
Sheep, of all the smelly, helpless, dim-witted creatures.
A man of Edward’s standing could expect a bride to bring some assets to the marriage. There was no insult in that—even to an earl’s daughter who should have been well dowered.
Della stabbed the fabric again. “Do you fancy a French-Scottish sheep nabob for a brother-in-law? He made Nita laugh at whist. I rather like him.”
Susannah snatched up a pillow and swatted her sister with it. “You are horrid to go on about this. If it weren’t for Nita, I wouldn’t know what to expect on my wedding night, and I won’t tell you unless you hush.”
Of course, Edward had provided a bit of enlightenment on that topic as well. On several occasions.
Truly, Susannah would kill him if he didn’t propose on bended knee, ring in hand, and sheep be damned.
Della tossed the pillow to the floor. “I already know about the wedding night. Nita told me too. Sounds very odd to me. Very personal. The kissing part might be interesting.”
The whole business was part of being a wife, which Susannah would endure. Edward’s kisses tasted like his pipe, those few kisses she’d chanced upon. Kisses led to babies though, indirectly and eventually. One could read stories to babies.
One could hold babies and love them too.
“Why the sigh?” Della asked. “You sound like one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s heroines by page 287.”
“They aren’t heroines if they always need some fellow to get them out of scrapes,” Susannah said. Her own mother had pointed that out. A woman must seize her fate with both hands, else she’d end up a lonely old maid surrounded by books and cats.
Of course, she must not be seen seizing her fate, and perhaps she ought not to have seized her fate prior to seizing a marriage proposal.
“This snow looks like it means business,” Susannah said. Already the bushes and trees wore a fresh dusting of white, though Susannah meant business too. The next assembly was a good three months off, and she was nearly at the end of her Shakespeare binge. “Perhaps we should get some fresh air. Pay a call on Mrs. Nash now rather than wait to cross paths with her at the assembly.”
Della wound her thread for another golden French knot. “But it’s cold out, and poor, one-handed Titus will pine for you terribly, and George will eat all the chocolate biscuits, and—”
Settees came with an abundance of pillows because some siblings needed an abundance of thrashing.
“I’m going,” Susannah said, smiting her sister stoutly. “If I have to bribe Kirsten into going with me, I’m going. I feel a compelling need to pay a call on Ed—I mean, Elsie Nash.”
Della stopped laughing long enough to put her hoop aside. “Bribing Kirsten never ends well. She charges interest of her own devising. I might, for example, have to dance with your Mr. Nash, and his breath is not exactly pleasant when he’s been at his pipe—meaning no offense to your swain.”
“I cannot wait for you to leave for London this spring. You are a plague on my nerves, Della Haddonfield. For your impertinence, you will indulge me in a short visit to the lending library when we’ve paid our call.”
Della rose and stretched, a small, pretty, comfortable, and truly dear young lady. “Lay on, Macduff, and damned be him that first cries, ‘Books enough!’”
Susannah spared Titus a final glance—an awful story about awful, greedy, violent people—and parted ways with Della at the foot of the stairs. For a call on Edward, the sweet, soft-spoken, literary, and demure soul of domestic tranquillity needed to fit herself out with all the planning and subtle cunning of a Roman general bent on victory.
* * *
As a very young man, Tremaine’s fascination with, and devotion to, the gratification of his breeding organs had bordered on an obsession. Life had been a procession of frustrated urges, fantasies, frequent occasions of self-gratification, and the rare, much-anticipated interlude with a willing female who knew what she was about.
Such females became more readily available as Tremaine’s circumstances improved, while his preoccupation with erotic gratification had curiously ebbed.
And thus the first of many adult insights had befallen him: he excelled at wanting what he could not have, and the roots of that dubious talent twisted around childhood memories best left unexamined.
Those roots yet held life, apparently, for as Tremaine assisted Nita to dismount outside the sheep byre, he wanted to
swive her all over again, but more than that, he wanted her acceptance of his marriage proposal.
“We shouldn’t linger,” she said, her hands remaining on his shoulders. “We’re apparently in for some weather.”
Nita was lovely, with the snow dusting her scarf and lashes, when by rights she should be chin deep in a hot, scented bath. Instead, she was paying a call with Tremaine on a flock of woolly beldames.
I love you. The words sounded in his mind—only in his mind, thank God—as startling as they were heartfelt.
“Let me take the horses around back,” he said, “out of the wind. Go inside. You’ll be warmer.”
He kissed her on the lips, George having had the great good sense to look in on Kinser. A capital fellow, George, if somewhat given to scolds. Tremaine tied the horses to the rowan growing at the back of the byre and sent a prayer skyward that the damned snow let up.
So he and his lady could linger.
“How do you tell the sheep apart?” Nita asked when Tremaine joined her inside the byre. While not cozy, the little stone structure was appreciably warmer than the out-of-doors and full of fat, milling sheep. Some reclined on the straw, chewing their cud, some sniffed at Lady Nita’s hems, two were nursing lambs, and one napped with a lamb—Tremaine’s little ram—curled at her side.
“You tell them apart the same way you do people,” Tremaine said. “By their facial expressions, their general appearance, their voices, the way they move. Shall we say hello to our friend?”
As they approached the sleeping pair, the ewe awoke but remained curled in the straw.
“I’m glad I wore my old habit now,” Lady Nita said, drawing off her gloves and kneeling. “He’s painfully dear.”
She meant that, meant that the sight of the lamb cuddled against his mama made her heart ache. Tremaine’s damned heart ached too, at the sight of Nita petting the little fellow and blinking hard.
“Will wee Annie be well?” he asked.
Nita used her gloves to swipe at her eyes. “She should be. Croup is common and needn’t be serious. Shall we give him a name? Something gallant and brave?”
How brave did a fellow have to be to curl up against a warm female and drift into dreams?
“Call him anything you like, my lady. He’ll be honored among all the other rams of the herd to have been given a name.”
Marry me. Let me give you my name.
The ewe was a tolerant sort, or perhaps she recalled the scent of the humans intruding on her afternoon’s slumbers. She sniffed at Nita’s hand, then gave her baby a few licks around his ears.
“Don’t wake him,” Nita told the ewe. “Little ones need their rest.”
Tremaine drew Nita to her feet and straight into his arms. She went willingly and the simple feel of her against him, even through layers of winter clothes, settled his nerves a sorely needed degree.
“Have you considered my proposal?”
Nita nodded against his shoulder and remained right where she was. Not well done of him, to raise the topic here, among the beasts, with the scents of straw and livestock thick in the air.
And yet the location was appropriate too. Tremaine had first noticed Nita—truly noticed her—when she’d been so concerned with a newborn lamb shivering on the frozen earth.
“I want to be sensible,” she said.
“You’ve been sensible until you’re sick with it,” Tremaine said, though ironically, Nita’s selfless, tireless, pragmatic medical skills made others well.
He could spare her that paradox and would, gladly.
“Not sick with it,” Nita said, “but lonely, certainly. With you, I need not pretend to be someone I’m not.”
George Haddonfield might have been able to decipher the emotions those words were intended to convey. Tremaine heard only a nascent acceptance in Nita’s observation.
“I do not contort myself for the sake of social niceties,” Tremaine said, stroking a hand over Nita’s hair. “And I protect those entrusted to my care. My wife will not be allowed to scamper off to a war-torn country while I have breath in my body, Nita Haddonfield. Consider yourself warned.”
Nita could do with protecting. Her family had given up that cause years ago, and Tremaine looked forward to remedying their lapse. He’d even entertained the notion that Nita was marrying him in part to allow her to withdraw from her medical folly gracefully.
When Nita drew back, Tremaine let her go, though it pained him.
“Such dramatics. I have no intention of frequenting any battlefields, Mr. St. Michael. The sheep seem healthy,” she said, holding her glove out for a ewe to sniff. “They all seem wonderfully healthy despite the wretched weather. This makes me happy.”
There was that smile, the one Tremaine was learning to watch for.
“Good health makes them happy too, to the extent sheep trouble themselves over finer sentiments. Will you make me happy, Bernita Haddonfield?”
It was a day for unintended questions, apparently.
Nita studied Tremaine for an interminable moment, her smile hovering shy of full bloom. Outside the byre, some old ewe bleated, suggesting George Haddonfield might be heading in their direction.
“One cannot make another person happy, Mr. St. Michael, any more than one can make another healthy.”
Tremaine could not fathom where Nita’s hesitance came from, though she was imbued with more natural caution and intellectual thoroughness than many ladies of her station.
“Last night you made me something,” Tremaine said. “If not happy, then very close to it. I hope the sentiments were shared, and I hope we can share them again, soon and often.”
Last night, for all his caution, he might have made them both parents. The notion pleased when it ought to alarm.
“Last night was…lovely,” Nita said. “I felt lovely. I should feel naughty and upset with myself, and guilty of course, but I cannot. I’ve tried, and all I can feel is…lovely.”
For a time in Tremaine’s arms, Nita had esteemed herself, to use George’s word, and some of that sense lingered in her bearing, in her pleased, private smile. Victory whispered to Tremaine from the shadowy, aromatic depths of the sheep byre.
“Nita Haddonfield, if you don’t know by now that you are lovely”—also dear, kind, smart, brave, and well worth protecting—“I will consider it my greatest honor to spend the rest of my life convincing you of it.”
Flowery speeches did not impress her, though neither did they chase away that naughty smile. She pulled on her gloves.
“You are lovely too, Mr. St. Michael.”
He was besotted. “Tremaine, if we’re to be lovely together.”
A ewe butted him gently above the knees, another warning that George approached.
“You allowed that we could bide in Haddondale?” Lady Nita asked.
Just like that, in the dead of winter, spring arrived to Tremaine St. Michael’s heart, to his entire life.
“We can. My business interests require that I travel, but I have good stewards and factors, and you’ll want to be near family.” Particularly as the babies arrived, which Tremaine had every confidence they would.
“At the assembly then,” she said, whipping the tail of her scarf over her shoulder—no fluttering for his Lady Nita. “Nicholas can make the announcement, but let’s save discussion of the details for later, Mr. St. Michael. The weather is worsening, and I’ve yet to have my soaking bath.”
Nita swept out of the sheep byre before Tremaine could even kiss her. In her wake, two of the lambs went dancing across the straw, leaping and bouncing for no reason and inspiring the third lamb to totter to his feet.
“Your name is Lucky,” Tremaine said, picking up the tup and kissing his wee woolly head. “Your name is Lucky, and you’re for the breeding herd, my friend. Lucky St. Michael, that’s you.”
He set the lamb down to play with its fellows and marched out into the winter weather, which was, indeed, worsening by the moment.
* * *
Back in the sheep byre, Nita had stifled the urge to tackle Mr. St. Michael, smother him with kisses, and announce to the livestock that she’d become engaged to a man she could esteem very greatly indeed.
Her intended had been by turns abrupt, bashful, endearing, and confident, but he’d given her two assurances she’d needed.
First, they could dwell in Haddondale, where her family and her patients were, and second, she need not become some indolent domestic ornament to please anybody’s sense of the appearances—no contorting herself to appease “social niceties.”
What a splendid man Tremaine St. Michael was.
Also passionate. Nita particularly liked that about him, and if she had lingering misgivings about undertaking holy matrimony with a man she’d only recently met, well, that was to be expected.
They’d have a lifetime to get to know each other better.
“I do believe our younger sisters are in the stable yard,” George said as the horses trudged up the increasingly snowy lane. “Perhaps the Second Coming is imminent.”
Susannah and Della sat side by side on the ladies’ mounting block, apparently waiting for horses to be brought out.
“They’re going for a hack in this weather?” Mr. St. Michael asked.
Nita didn’t dare think of him as Tremaine, lest she slip before her siblings, but he was Tremaine. Her Tremaine.
“Looks like they’re headed somewhere,” George said, “though I suspect their errand is in the direction of Stonebridge. Nothing less compelling could tear Susannah from her books, but I refuse to provide an escort. My arse is frozen.”
Brothers. Nita trotted ahead, for she was riding Susannah’s mare. “Halloo! Shall you take your mare, Suze? She was a perfect lady for the duration, and I’ve warmed up the saddle.”
“I’ll take her if Susannah won’t,” Della said.
“My saddle won’t fit you,” Susannah rejoined. “Though it fits Nita well enough. Was the library open?”
Mr. St. Michael drew rein and swung off his horse. “It was, though I must warn your ladyships, the lanes are snowy, the temperature is dropping, and I doubt the earl would approve of a protracted outing in such weather.”
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