by Erica Ridley
She would cease to be the specter in the castle. She’d be as demonstrably useful in her domain as the exalted bird expert would be to the castle aviary. She wouldn’t just have something important. She would be important.
That was, if Virginia could manage the non-animal aspects of operating a sanatorium. There would be so many people to talk to. So many ways it could go wrong.
She would need an appropriate venue. To negotiate terms. Sign a contract. Commission furnishings. She would either need to seek out animals in need on her own time or solicit business from other residents. From strangers.
Oh, who was she bamming? She would never leave the castle. The fragrant basket in her arms seemed heavier than ever.
Swinton answered her knock.
“Don’t announce me yet,” she whispered. “This is for my patient, although he needn’t know it is from me.”
Swinton ushered her into the entryway and closed the door. “What have you brought?”
“Ingredients.” She lifted the lid to allow him a peek. “Mr. T adores chestnut soup and pupton of apples. He should have it as a reward for dogged perseverance.”
“You could have provided us with a menu and saved yourself time and money,” Swinton chided her as he accepted the basket.
She could have, yes, but Virginia had enjoyed shopping for Theodore’s favorite foods. Spending her pin money on ingredients was a distant second to hand-preparing a home-cooked meal, but for a moment it allowed her to believe she could offer something special.
Swinton bowed. “I’ll take this to the kitchen.”
Virginia crossed to the corridor and paused. Swinton had not mentioned where to find her patient. Theodore could be in the front parlor, in his private drawing room, anywhere at all.
Self-consciously, she tiptoed into the primary drawing room.
She hoped Swinton would warn her if the Duke of Azureford were also at home, but all the same, it was best not to go barging about like a herd of elephants.
After having determined that Theodore was not at the front of the cottage, she headed toward the rear.
Near the guest quarters, voices spilled from an open door. She froze just out of view. Did Theodore have company? Should she leave, rather than intrude?
“I would not have dreamed it, sir,” came a male voice she did not recognize. “I’d come to think of you and that chair as nigh inseparable.”
“That’s because you’ve feathers for brains,” came the warm, familiar growl that heated Virginia to her toes. “Miss Underwood never doubted. You could learn a thing or two from someone as wise as her.”
Virginia’s breath caught. He thought her wise?
“Am I to join you on her visits?” the young male voice asked.
“You are not,” came Theodore’s laconic reply. “Mind yourself. And watch out for the—”
“Is that devil-cat hiding right behind me?” The words tumbled forth in a rush. “Is Duke going to—”
A loud hiss rent the air.
Virginia grinned.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the lad babbled. “You said never to say ‘duke’ and now I’ve gone and said ‘duke’ and—”
Another hiss from her clever cat.
Virginia’s smile wobbled. Perhaps she was the only one who understood Duke’s charms. Perhaps Theodore would rather—
“Don’t apologize,” came his voice. “If that abhorrent creature hadn’t infiltrated the cottage, I wouldn’t have Miss Underwood.”
Her heart melted. She owed Duke a lifetime of treats for that trick.
“But, sir, you said you didn’t wish to talk to anyone at all.”
“I don’t want to talk to anyone but her,” came the terse reply. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”
Eek! Virginia backed away double-time. She made a point of letting her feet fall in heavy steps as she neared the open door once more.
“She’s here!” came the lad’s excited whisper.
“I have ears,” Theodore replied.
Virginia stepped into the doorway as if she’d overheard nothing. “Good afternoon! I’ve—”
Her jaw fell open. Theodore was on his crutches!
She rushed into the room, her hands clasped together in delight. “You’re doing it!”
“Of course I’m doing it,” he growled. “It was your idea and is therefore your fault.”
“This is marvelous,” she told him. “You are marvelous.”
“You’re marvelous,” he countered, and immediately pulled a face. “Lad, are you still here?”
The boy dashed from the room.
“My valet,” Theodore said. “I can’t tell if he wants to be my protégé or my mother.”
She came closer. “How long have you been using the crutches?”
“About an hour.” He gave a crooked smile. “There’s a partridge expecting me in the outbuilding. I thought I’d take my afternoon constitutional on foot today.”
“Take it slow,” she warned him. “It might be best if your first steps on crutches don’t involve uneven terrain and patches of ice.”
His jaw tightened. “I don’t want to take it slow. I want to be better.”
“Every day I’ve visited, you’ve been better than the last,” she pointed out. “You’ll be yourself again in no time.”
It was bittersweet. Theodore improved every single day. And the moment he was well enough to leave her… He would.
“I’m proud of you,” she said, despite the lump in her throat. “This isn’t just one of the steps in the process to recovery. It’s one of the last big obstacles.”
He brightened. “Did you bring ice cream to celebrate?”
“I didn’t know I’d find you on your feet.” She hesitated, then opened her reticule. “I brought you this instead.”
He accepted the slim volume from her. “A book?”
Her heart sank. “Is it a stupid gift?”
“I love books.” Theodore flipped the volume over to inspect it. “And I have never read… The Naturalist’s Miscellany or Coloured Figures of Natural Objects; Drawn and Described Immediately From Nature.”
“It’s from the castle library,” she admitted. “You’ll have to return it before you go.”
He clutched it to his chest. “When the time comes, I shall summon the personal fortitude required to part with it.”
She nodded. “Although sketched illustrations are a feeble representation of the wonders of life, sometimes pen and ink are more than enough to transport us from our own life into another.”
He tilted his head. “Are you always so poetic?”
“Poetic?” she stammered in confusion.
Odd was how most people described her. Eccentric. Random. Awkward. Peculiar.
“I like how you see the world,” he said. “I want to think in clever metaphors, but the talent eludes me. You have a gift.”
Talent.
He thought her gifted.
Virginia swayed, so foreign were the compliments he was firing her way. No one had ever taken her strangeness as an advantage before, least of all Virginia.
“I…” The idea that anyone could consider any of her traits to be an enviable talent had completely robbed the breath from her lungs.
Theodore wasn’t embarrassed by her. He didn’t want her to change the way her mind worked. He thought she was just… Virginia. And liked her that way.
“Sit,” she commanded.
Not because he was unsteady on his feet, but because her legs were trembling.
“I obey no one’s orders but my own,” he said as he eased into his wheeled chair and handed her the crutches. “I happen to be done with those anyway.”
“Do not overdo it,” she reminded him as she leaned the crutches against the wall. “You’ll do more harm than good and be back in that chair for even longer.”
“I cannot wait to be done with this chair,” he muttered.
Virginia swallowed. She didn’t just hope to see him healed; she wanted to be the o
ne who helped him. To be useful, special. To have made a difference in someone’s life.
But when she managed all that—if she managed all that—she would hate to see him go.
“How is your knee?” She knelt at his feet and ran her hands over the muscles of his injured leg.
He scowled down at her. “How does it feel?”
Good. Warm. Strong. The muscles of his leg were more familiar than her own. She could close her eyes at night and imagine every inch beneath her palms. To do so made her wish she knew the rest of him as intimately. For her fingers to explore not just the contours of his leg, but the breadth of his shoulders, the muscles of his chest, the strength in his arms.
“Are you comfortable?” he asked quietly.
Ever since the carolers had come to call, her patient’s habitual high-handed arrogance had become peppered with soft inquiries into how she felt, what she needed. Because she doubted he noticed he was doing so, each offhand question melted her heart.
Until Theodore, no one had ever asked how she would prefer the lighting or the temperature or the noise or anything at all. Everyone else either presumed they knew best or assumed her wishes exactly matched theirs.
Theodore didn’t just treat her like a person. He went beyond his normal comfort and behavior in order to ensure she would not have to. It was the headiest sensation Virginia had ever experienced.
What did she want? Him, blast it all.
She let her hands fall.
His head jerked up. “You aren’t going to massage me?”
“The swelling is gone.” She bit her lip. “You don’t need me to massage your knee.”
He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “I’d want you to massage me even if I were healthy.”
She started to push to her feet.
He held out a hand to help her.
She didn’t need help. She took his hand anyway.
After she rose to her feet, she shook the wrinkles from her skirts. “Shall we feed Dancer?”
He narrowed his eyes. “I thought you said I must sojourn to my one-bird aviary alone.”
She laughed. “I don’t count.”
“You count very much.” He wheeled not toward the front door, but toward the servants’ exit at the rear, where planks of wood had been placed just outside the door.
With a practiced movement, he launched his chair up and over the first hump and sailed down the ramp toward the outbuilding.
She smiled to herself. Theodore might not see it, but he was as capable now as he ever was. “Do you regret going to war?”
“I wish I hadn’t been injured, if that’s what you mean.” He turned his chair around to wheel into the outbuilding backward in order to hold the door for her. “I’m not sorry I went. Helping people in need is always the right decision.”
Her chest tightened. “I agree.”
“If only everyone did,” he muttered.
She stepped inside the outbuilding and shut the door before Dancer could escape. “Did someone say that helping people was not the right choice?”
“Everyone I know,” he said flatly. “Although not in those words. Only my father put it quite so baldly. My sole responsibility is to stay alive to ensure the family home doesn’t go to some country cousin.”
“You haven’t any brothers?” she asked.
“No siblings at all.” He pulled the bag of feed to his lap and began tossing seeds near the partridge. “How about you? Are you an only child?”
She shook her head.
His eyebrows shot up. “You’re not? Where’s your family? Why am I just hearing about this?”
“They’re not here,” she said vaguely. “And you’re the first one to ask.”
She wished he hadn’t. She was not fond of Vera, Viveca, and Valeria. And she knew good and well they were not fond of her. It was not a story she planned to share.
“You were brave to go against your parents’ wishes,” Virginia said instead.
“My first rebellion against Father and Society.” He gestured at the chair. “Look how it turned out.”
“You’re alive,” she said simply. “It turned out quite favorably indeed.”
“It could be worse,” he admitted.
She tilted her head. “You do not seem the sort who allows life to just happen.”
The corner of his mouth twisted into a smile.
“I am the sort to charge in,” he agreed. “The Army suited me in that regard. A cause to fight for, troops to lead. It may sound silly, but it was quite vindicating to be powerful and needed.”
“Not silly at all,” she whispered.
He tossed the bag of seed back to the ground and watched as Dancer clucked through her bounty in delight.
“Do you miss the war?” she asked.
“Never give up and never give in,” he answered. “This injury robbed me of the choice. I did not give up and I did not give in, but I was carried from the battlefield anyway.”
“With broken bones and bullet wounds,” she reminded him.
“I had so much more to give.” He turned to look at her. “As a respected officer, not as my father’s shadow.”
Virginia’s heart twisted. Her case was different, but she understood the sentiment all too well. She had longed her entire life to be accepted for who she was, not rejected for who she was not.
She would run away to the war, too, if it could give her a chance to belong.
Theodore turned toward the exit of the outbuilding and pulled open the door.
When he made no move to precede her into the afternoon sun, Virginia thanked him and slipped outside.
Together, they headed back to the planks at the rear of the cottage. As she reached out to open the servants’ door, his fingers brushed her free hand.
“Step to the side,” he murmured. “Or he’ll get you.”
She pulled the handle. “Who will—”
Duke streaked through the crack in the door and barreled right at them.
Thanks to Theodore’s suggestion, Virginia was not in his path. Duke continued past her, took two laps about Theodore’s wheeled chair, and disappeared back inside.
“Ignore him,” Theodore said with a sigh. “He does that.”
It was all Virginia could do to keep a grin from overtaking her face.
Whether her patient realized it or not, Duke had adopted Theodore. They had a routine now. A secret handshake. A private jest only the two of them shared.
“I’m glad you get on with Duke,” she said as Theodore wheeled himself inside.
“Does anyone get on with that ill-tempered beast?” he said. “I’ve no idea why you keep him around.”
“Because he keeps coming back,” she answered.
Theodore rolled to his crutches and pulled himself to his feet. “Is that why you think I keep you around?”
She pushed the chair out of his way. Their toes were nearly touching. He was now almost close enough to kiss.
“Why do you?” she asked softly.
It was a dangerous question.
He was so much larger outside of his chair. The crutches did not make him look weak, but invincible. Bullets could not stop him. Horse hooves could not stop him. Twelve scant inches of space afforded her no protection at all.
She was not trying to defend her mouth from plunder, but her heart from growing attached. All wild creatures must return where they belonged.
He reached for her and cupped her cheek with one hand.
His fingers were not the unblemished softness of an idle lord. The calluses from riding and weaponry had faded, but his touch was still rough and uneven.
Virginia loved it. She could feel his presence. Feel that it was him.
He dragged the pad of his thumb across her lower lip. “I want…”
A clatter rent the air as a wooden crutch banged to the ground.
He jerked upright with comical alacrity, hopping on his good foot for balance.
She swept the fallen crutch from th
e floor and back into his arms without meeting his eyes. Temptation had almost got the best of them. It was better not to know what might have happened if his lips had touched hers.
She would lie awake tonight wondering all the same.
“I apologize,” he said. “I—”
She stepped back. “I should be helping you walk, not standing in your way. You’ve a grand entrance with the ton to look forward to.”
“Grander than I’d like.” He pulled a face. “I’m to waltz with Lady Beatrice until tongues wag, then announce our betrothal.”
Her stomach curdled with nausea. He needed back on his feet not just to walk again, but to dance with his future bride.
It sounded lovely. No one had ever stood up with Virginia. She tried not to be jealous of Lady Beatrice for having it. For having him.
“How romantic,” she whispered.
“Tactical strategy,” he corrected. “Lady Beatrice intends to use our betrothal as both armor and artillery.”
Virginia swallowed. “And you?”
“I intend to do the same,” he said. “We both know what we’re getting. Improved positioning in Society is more than worth the price of a waltz.” He rolled his eyes. “Ask my father.”
Virginia did not need to. The imperative to improve one’s perceived status at all costs had been drilled into her from the moment she could speak. It was why her parents had abandoned her to a madhouse. She was worse than useless. She was a barnacle. A mistake in need of correction.
It was not just her inability to make friends or attract suitors. Virginia had stood in her sisters’ way. She tarnished their reputations with her mere existence.
Just as she would tarnish Theodore’s if they were ever spotted together outside of these walls.
After quitting Theodore’s temporary residence, Virginia did not head straight back to the castle. No one awaited her there.
Duke was with Theodore. Mr. Marlowe was dead. Her friend Noelle had married and gone. No other permanent residents remained. Yet Virginia did not feel like being alone.
She headed instead to her friend Gloria’s cottage and rapped the knocker. Gloria had fallen in love and the banns were underway, but the ceremony had not yet happened. She would still be home.
Virginia’s shoulders relaxed. Unlike the others, Gloria would always be home. She rarely left her house, and never traveled farther than the castle. Gloria was as integral to their village as the rolling hills or the snow-frosted evergreens.
