He kissed her cheek, absolved by her words, because she had the right of it. Still, offering her his arm and returning her to the safety of the crowd took effort, when he wanted to remain in the garden shadows, holding her close and cherishing her with yet more kisses.
Chapter Five
“Dance with me, Avie love.” Fenwick’s voice crooned low in Avis’s ear, startling her with his proximity.
“How many times have I asked you to not to sneak up on me like that, Ashton Fenwick?”
“I wasn’t sneaking,” he said, looking genuinely contrite. “You were so distracted watching yonder vicar prancing about with Miss Primness, you didn’t hear me.”
“They are a handsome couple.” Both Lily and Hadrian sported the blond, blue-eyed coloring and lean grace of the British aristocrat.
“You and I are a handsome couple too, and Bothwell’s back is shot, so he’s moving poorly.”
“Your back is in fine fettle?”
Fenwick bowed with a flourish. “With you in my arms, I have the back of a mere lad.” He tugged her onto the dance floor when the music ended, while Hadrian accompanied Lily to the punch bowl.
The Almighty was punishing her for kissing Hadrian, surely. “Had I known it was a waltz, Fen, I would have fled to York.”
“Had I known it was a waltz,”—Fenwick positioned her in his arms—“I would have bribed old Sully to make it a half hour long.”
“You’ll be asleep on your feet before too much longer.” God willing.
She and Fenwick had never danced the waltz before. He was surprisingly graceful and had the knack of being a secure partner without hauling her around the floor like a sack of wheat.
“You hush, Avie Portmaine.” He drew her closer, to within an inch of what propriety forbid. “Let me lead for once and just enjoy yourself.”
Having small-talked herself out for the evening, Avis did as he suggested, enjoying the music and her partner’s skill. Fen smelled good, of something meadowy and fresh, and he exuded a bodily competence borne of both his size and his strength.
And yet, he wasn’t Hadrian.
When Hadrian had tucked his jacket around her, she’d had an abrupt, intense sense of déjà vu. Once before, his citrus and clove scent had enveloped her. Once before he’d offered his coat warm from his body to keep the chill away. Once before his voice had found her when she’d been trapped in her own thoughts.
Hadrian was kind, and he was braver than most, for all his manners and warnings.
“You’ve gone away,” Fenwick observed as the music slowed. “I feel like I’m holding air, Avie.”
“You told me to enjoy myself. The silence was lovely.”
“I saw you giving old Bothwell back his jacket.” Fenwick kept his voice down.
“I suppose Lily will lecture me on that tomorrow at breakfast, and Hadrian might be no older than you, Ashton.”
“Bugger Lily,” Fenwick muttered. “You listen to me, Avie. If Bothwell casts lures, and you’re inclined, you give the man a chance.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Bothwell is a thoroughgoing gentleman. I know you consider him a friend, but Bothwell is both gentleman and man.”
“The two are often found in conjunction.”
“No, my lady, they are not,” Fenwick replied too softly to be overheard. “You’ve rusticated for too long here at Blessings without any flirting or courting, and it’s time you rejoined the living.”
“You’re presuming a great deal here, Mr. Fenwick,” Avis said, her tone as chilly as she could make it, but predictably, her scold had no effect on her steward.
“I know all about your unfortunate past, Avie. That was twelve years ago, and you’re too lovely a woman to go to waste here when there’s a worthy fellow whom you could put to the plough with a little effort.”
“Put to the plough?”
“I can be more graphic. I am not a gentleman.” A circumstance Fen delighted in. “What would Vim and Benjamin think of you for encouraging me to further ruin?” Avis asked in an outraged whisper.
“Vim and Ben would double my salary were I to report that you’d discreetly allowed Bothwell some liberties. Me, Bothwell, Young Deal, just about anybody you took a fancy to, and they’d be happy for you.”
“You?”
“You’ve spent too much time around Miss Prejudice,” Fenwick said as he led Avis through a slow turn. “Of course me, though I know you’d never trifle with the help.”
“Now you’re the help?”
“I can be whatever you need me to be, my lady, but the sparks aren’t there between us, and you know it.”
“Ashton, when did you become so ungallantly blunt?” Though when Hadrian had been blunt, she’d liked him for it.
“When did you become blind to the way a handsome man looks at you?”
“You consider yourself handsome?”
“In the eyes of some, yes,” he countered with an odd gravity. “I was referring to Bothwell, Avie. Bothwell, who stole you off to the gardens for a protracted stroll; Bothwell, whose jacket appeared around your shoulders that he might show off his manly physique in waistcoat and shirt-sleeves. Bothwell, who’s probably cozening your secrets out of Lily Prunish even as we speak.”
“Prunish?”
“I knew I could get you to smile.”
He was worse than both of her brothers put together. “You can, though my situation is complicated, Ashton, and while I know you mean well, there are facets of it you can’t understand.”
“I understand being lonely, Avie, and having needs that go unmet for too long and for no good reason.”
The music came to a close, so Avis stopped casting around for a flippant reply, went up on her toes, and kissed Fen’s cheek. “You are a good friend, Ashton Fenwick.”
“And a better steward,” he rejoined, leading her off the dance floor. “You’ll think about what I said?”
“Not the prunish part,” she said airily, “but the rest of it…”
“Hadrian Bothwell is good folk, Avie, and he’ll treat you well.”
Hadrian Bothwell kissed divinely. “He’d castigate you sorely for attempting to cause this mischief.”
“For form’s sake, he might,” Fenwick allowed as Gran Carruthers bore down on him. “But only for form’s sake.”
* * *
“One forgets the blessed quiet in the wake of shearing,” Lily remarked at breakfast.
“I get so I don’t even hearing the bleating,” Avis replied, passing the teapot down the table. “After handling all the lambs, at least one’s hands are soft.”
“And reeking.” Lily—who had handled not one single lamb—wrinkled her nose.
“At least we don’t have to wrestle the grown beasts about. I’m not sure Sully will be willing to heft the shears next year.”
Lily poured herself a cup of tea rather than reply, and Avis knew the same sinking sensation she felt every time she casually offended her companion’s sensibilities. The situation would have been unbearable, except Lily was devoted to smoothing off Avis’s rough edges, and incorrigible in her hope that Avis’s past could someday be overcome.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” Avis said on a sigh. “But Sully dropped like a stone when he was kicked in the—when he was kicked, and for once, the other fellows weren’t laughing.”
“You shouldn’t have seen that.” Lily set her tea cup down silently. “You should have been with the other ladies, dandling their babies, asking after their daughters, and pouring cold tea.”
Lily hadn’t dandled any babies. Avis kept that observation to herself, just as she didn’t point out that many of the ladies could deliver a social blow as stout as what Sully had endured.
“I did not remark what happened to Sully anywhere, save at my own breakfast table, but you’re right. The subject is indelicate. Will you join me when the mercer comes by later today?”
Lily gamely launched into a monologue about the fabrics best suited to drapery in
the dower house. Her sermon regarding velvet’s tendency to fade was interrupted by a footman bearing a salver with a very small folded document on it.
“Good morning, my lady, miss. A birdie has come, but the note is addressed to Master Hay—to Mr. Bothwell, over to Landover.”
“Thank you, Denver. We’ll see he gets it.” Avis took the note and slipped it into a pocket. “I’ll tend to this message, Lily, and join you in the dower house by eleven.”
Avis left the manor house with a sense of relief. The milestones in the agricultural year—lambing, shearing, planting, haying, grain harvest, apple harvest and so on—left her exhausted and pleased, but cast down as well. The earth was fruitful, the horses, geese, cows, and goats, and God knew the sheep were fruitful.
But not Avis Portmaine.
Each season, each accomplishment for the estate of Blessings, was a reminder that Avis was denied children, and a family, and the life she’d been raised to want.
“Bad thoughts,” she muttered to herself. “No more bad thoughts, Avis, my girl.” The morning was lovely, and Hadrian would be pleased to have word from Harold.
Assuming this was word from Harold.
Avis waved off the grooms and climbed aboard her horse. The message might be from Benjamin or Vim, or some mercantile connection they’d made. Both men took a goodly number of birds off with them when they departed Blessings after periodic visits.
Forty-five minutes later, Avis was shown into the Landover library, a masculine preserve saved from somberness by a row of tall windows, and by paintings of gamboling puppies and wide-eyed foals.
Everywhere, new life, but not for Avis Portmaine.
Another bad thought.
“Lady Avis.” Hadrian rose from his desk, shirt-sleeves turned back. “A very great pleasure and a lovely start to my otherwise boring day.” He didn’t merely bow, he kissed her cheek, which had Avis’s insides lifting happily.
“I hope I come bearing good news. Fenwick worked you nigh to death, didn’t he?”
“I worked myself.” He seemed happy about that. “Shall I ring for tea?”
“Please.” She pulled off her gloves and withdrew the message from her pocket. “This came for you this morning.”
He took the paper from her, carefully, as if it might bite him. “Do you mind if I read it?”
“Of course not.” She busied herself at the door, requesting tea and some sustenance from a footman, and when she turned back to Hadrian, he was already refolding the message.
“Harold took on some cargo in Calais, dropped off some last-minute passengers in Amsterdam, and is probably making landfall at Copenhagen as we speak.”
“Isn’t that like him? A recitation of facts, but no real information.”
“He says the sailing is wonderful, and he can’t recall when he enjoyed himself so much.”
“Then your sacrifice is worthwhile?”
Hadrian’s answer mattered, because nothing stood in the way of him hiring a senior steward and taking himself off to London or back to Yorkshire, or even to Copenhagen, for that matter.
In which case Avis would miss him. All over again, worse than ever, she’d miss him. She excelled at missing people she cared for.
“I’m no longer convinced it’s a sacrifice,” Hadrian said. “The weather is turning beautiful, the company is delightful, and the work gratifying.”
“Is that why your hands look like Gran Carruthers’s this morning?” Avis had watched his hands as he’d folded the note. They were heavily blistered across his palms, the right worse than the left.
Hadrian frowned at his paws as if he hadn’t a clue what had befallen them. “Using the shears is so repetitive, one blisters even through the gloves.”
“Does one? And yet, here you are, without gloves, probably scratching away at some correspondence rather than giving your hands a chance to heal.”
Hadrian stuffed his hands into his pockets, like a schoolboy. “I neglected my ledgers and letters while I played at shearing.”
He’d worked as hard as Fen, which was very hard. “Are you pleased to hear from Harold?” Avis asked.
“Am I over my pout, do you mean?” His tone confirmed he wasn’t quite, but his smile suggested progress.
“You judge yourself too harshly, Hadrian. Harold is sailing the waves, and you’re here,”—she took his hands—“ignoring your blisters.”
He led her to a long comfortably worn sofa that faced a set of sparkling windows. “Do you know how long it has been since I’ve had blisters?”
Did he know how long it had been since Avis had taken a man’s hands in hers? “I do not.”
“When I was a boy, learning to ride,” he said, seating her in the middle and coming down beside her. “I acquired those calluses caused by contact with the reins. I was proud of them.”
“These.” Avis touched his hand with her index finger, gliding over the calluses he referred to.
“You have them too,” Hadrian observed, tracing the side of her fourth finger and leaving tendrils of pleasure in his wake.
So wicked of her. “Calluses are only one of my many infractions against the code of ladylike behavior.”
He drew back, and Avis waited for the moment to degenerate into awkwardness, but Hadrian simply rose and admitted two footmen, each bearing a tray.
“First, tea, then we see to your hands, Hadrian.”
He gave the appropriate direction to his staff and submitted with good grace, seeming to welcome both the company and the chance to take a break from his desk work. Avis forced a pair of buttered scones on him, and then set her teacup aside.
“Rue used to scold me for forgetting to eat,” Hadrian said as Avis unscrewed a jar of comfrey salve. “I’d get to toiling away on a sermon, or looking up this or that text, and next thing I knew, she’d be standing over me, demanding my presence in the kitchen.”
“You miss her.” Avis put his left hand on her thigh, the better to wrap a strip of linen around an abused index finger.
“I miss the company, but there are times, too, when I can’t clearly recall her features.”
He sounded bewildered by that, by not knowing whether to be grateful or upset by the fading of memory.
“Forgetting can be a mercy,” Avis said, smoothing unguent over his palm. “Though you need somebody to scold you if this is how you treat yourself. I imagine Fenwick is in the same condition.”
“Probably not quite as bad. He had less to prove than I did.”
Avis spread salve over his knuckles. “You were being men.”
“Guilty as charged,” Hadrian said, sounding smug. “Though on that topic, I am particularly glad to see you.”
“Other hand,” Avis said, giving back the left and reaching for the right.
“I am glad to see you,” Hadrian said, his voice dropping into a register that had Avis’s insides fluttering happily again. “Because I wanted very much to be assured that my conduct in the garden did not, upon sober reflection, offend you.”
She went to work on his right hand, taking particular care, for he’d wrecked it thoroughly. “Offend me?”
“I took liberties, Avie.”
“Then I took them too,” she replied over the butterfly wings beating in her belly. “I threw myself at a sober, upright man, a man good enough for the church, one who couldn’t possibly withstand the wicked advances of a woman like me.”
“You’re so wicked.”
“Are you laughing at me?”
“I am laughing at your perceptions of our respective wickedness,” Hadrian said, his hand still curled in hers. “Do you know, Avis, I am on a first-name basis with at least three soiled doves in the city of York?”
“You’re a man.”
“A grown man, and you’re a grown woman. I kissed you, Avis. You didn’t jump out of the bushes, beat me over the head, and then have your wicked way with me as I lay half-insensate among the flowers.”
She liked that image, of having her wicked way with him a
mong the bobbing tulips. Roses would be a bit tricky, but oh, the fragrance.
“It’s different for women. You didn’t get to know those ladies in York while Rue was alive.”
“I did not. Nor did I engage in any great, salacious adventure, Avis. It was simple pleasure, offered for simple coin. At university, I consumed such pleasure on at least four occasions that I can recall.”
How did he hold the two parts of himself, the human and saintly, in such easy balance? “We should not discuss this.”
“Shouldn’t a useless concept when we’re already discussing it. One of them was Mavis, another Elfrida, and the third—”
“So we’ll change the subject,” she suggested, but at some point, Hadrian had started rubbing his thumb over her palm, a slow, sweet slide made more sensuous by the salve and the fresh, grassy scent of comfrey.
He kissed her cheek, lingering for a moment, his nose near her temple. “There was only the one. I forget her name. I think she had red hair, or possibly a mousy brown. She called me Henry.”
Avis didn’t know whether to strike him or kiss him back. “Wretch. What was that kiss for?”
His smile was crooked when he drew away. “Courage, I suppose. I am glad to see you, Avie, and I’ll not be going back to York.”
He wasn’t ashamed of that trip to York, but it had proved whatever he’d needed it to prove.
Henry, indeed .
“I’m glad you’ve heard from Harold,” she said, slipping her fingers from his. “I must leave you, though. I’ve an appointment with the mercer in the dower house, and Lily will be disappointed if I am late.”
“You’re truly set on removing from the manor proper?”
“It’s time,” she said, rising. Hadrian was on his feet as well, putting her hand on his arm as he escorted her to the door.
“Has somebody signed a writ of ejectment, that you must remove from the only home you’ve known?”
“Benjamin needs to take a bride,” Avis said. “His countess will have an easier time settling in if I’m not underfoot, ordering the servants about, reviewing menus, and getting in the way.”
“Oh, right. Leave the poor dear to stumble around, with Benjamin’s tender guidance to see her through—Benjamin, who forgets that butter goes with scones, if I recall aright. You’re running away from home, Avis.”
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