The Country House Courtship

by Linore Rose Burkard

  “Well done,” Beatrice breathed.

  The candle was lit, and he held it out so they could see a little more of their surroundings. The cottage showed no evidence of recent occupation; there were no personal effects or small things such as would be about if someone lived there. But there was furniture and a candle lamp, and he went and lit that also. The fireplace was swept clean and empty, but Mr. O’Brien said, “Thanks be to God!” and he knelt down and began shoveling coal from a bin beside the fireplace, and began forming a pile in the grate. “Unfortunately, it will take some time to get good and hot,” he said, as he came to his full height and started looking for something to help get the coals to accept a flame.

  “Here,” said Beatrice. She had seen a vase that was empty on a window sill, and, chancing to peer down it, discovered that it was full of small twigs and cloth scraps, and lint.

  “Perfect!” he exclaimed. In a few more minutes she could smell that the coals were beginning to burn, and she drew a wooden chair closer to the fireplace and sat down upon it.

  Mr. O’Brien pulled up a wing chair, cushioned, and placed it beside hers. “Sit here,” he said.

  “Is there one for you?” she asked. She was embarrassed, for some reason, by his kindness.

  “How are your feet?” he merely asked, in response.

  “They are hurting,” she admitted, feeling as foolish as a child.

  “How are they hurting? Describe what you are feeling.”

  “They’re quite heavy! I do not think that walking briskly was sufficient to keep them warm, after all!”

  “Is there pain?” He was trying to calculate how far they had walked, and guessed about a mile.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s as though I am being stabbed by many pins.” Her voice was calm, but she was beginning to feel a dread that she might have injured herself.

  “Pain is a good sign,” he breathed, but he pulled the other chair up close enough so that when he sat in it, he could pick up her foot. Which she tried, at first, to resist.

  “Mr. O’Brien!”

  “Miss Forsythe,” he said, his eyes large and innocent, “you must allow me to help you. And every minute right now is important to your welfare.”

  That shut her up abruptly. She lifted her left foot and gave it to him. He received it gently and began removing her half-boot.

  “It’s getting hot,” she said.

  He halted, and looked at her. “Do you mean just your foot?”

  “Yes; both my feet. They still hurt and now they’re burning!” She felt frightened. “Why are they burning, Mr. O’Brien, do you know?”

  “Yes,” he said, but his head was bent over her boot, which he now pulled off her foot. He quickly took her limb between his two hands and started rubbing hard and fast, as though trying to warm it up. Beatrice gasped from the barrage of pain and heat, and she automatically tried to draw her foot away from his reach, but Mr. O’Brien was strong, and retained his hold on her.

  “Do not,” he said. “I’m afraid this is necessary.” He continued rubbing and kneading her foot with his hands. The feeling of being a pin cushion grew stronger than ever. “Does my foot feel hot to you?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Oh, it is burning to me!”

  He put her foot down softly, and then took her right leg, and began removing the boot. Despite working quickly, he was actually very gentle. It was only the rubbing and kneading that caused her pain, and that, she knew, could not be helped. She watched him; he stopped to throw off his overcoat and went right back to the work; and she felt helpless and unworthy.

  Here he was, rubbing her feet back to life, while she had been filled with the worst sort of thoughts regarding him, earlier.

  She had told herself she would not speak to him at all on the walk; he was too “holy” for her, too much a sermonizer, boring, no fun at all, and more such things. She knew that the biggest resentment she felt was based really upon the fact that she found him—underneath it all—utterly likeable, thoughtful, interesting, and handsome—but poor! He was now less poor than he had been, having Warwickdon, but she did not aspire to be a parson’s wife! She did not want to live upon the lesser tithes and a glebe! Even if he were a rector, it would mean the greater tithes, but that varied by church in its amount, and promised no reassurance of being substantial.

  He dropped her second foot and returned his efforts to the first. “How do you do, Miss Left Foot?” he asked, with an attempt at humour.

  “I think the burning is going away!” she said, as surprised as she was relieved.

  “Excellent,” he said, and he began to ease up on his administrations to her foot, now using his thumbs to gently keep the blood flowing.

  “What makes them burn?” she asked. She knew the answer but needed something to say. The silence only magnified her unease.

  “Frostbite,” he said, simply. “It does that.” He went back to her right foot, and using his thumbs, pressed firmly but gently, and with much less urgency than before. He did her toes, and then the sole and top of her foot. Now and then he added a little more vigour; now her right foot, now her left. Meanwhile, the radiating little fingers of needlelike pricks had slowly been abating, and now ceased altogether. Instead, his hands felt warm and soothing, causing a new sort of burning—in her cheeks!

  She had allowed a gentleman to remove her boots; she was alone with him in an unknown cottage, with no one aware of their whereabouts. It should have been frightening, or at least shocking. But she wasn’t frightened, and she wasn’t shocked; she was rather mortified, but it was more a sense of humility for what he had needed to do for her, than mortification for his handling of her stockinged feet.

  How well did she know this gentleman, really? And that is what he was—a gentle man. Their past acquaintance was so long ago to her now; she had only been a child, then. And yet, she trusted him at this moment as fully as if he had been a brother.

  Finally, he fell back upon his knees, but he took his coat and, lifting her feet, wrapped them both up in it. It was not soft enough to really swath her limbs, however, so he removed it and asked for her muff, which answered the purpose much better. He laid his coat over the muff where her feet were nestled inside, and rested her legs upon the wooden chair. He then turned to stir the fire. Beatrice watched him and felt a sadness rise up within her, as well as gratitude.

  She did not know how to thank him. “How is it that you are so skilled in treating frozen feet?”

  He kept facing the grate while carefully turning the coals to nurse them into a real source of heat, but he said, “That’s what comes of serving in St. Pancras.” He turned to face her. “You can’t pass a single winter without some poor, frozen souls casting themselves upon your doorstep.” He picked up her muffled feet, and sat himself down before placing them back, gently, upon his lap, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Beatrice stared at her legs for a moment, trying to comprehend that she was resting her feet on this man’s lap. She searched his face for a sign that he, too, found it strange, but there was none. He was talking on as though he were likely to place a young lady’s feet upon his lap at any given moment.

  “I had a neighbour by name of Mrs. Clotham who taught me how to help in these cases.” There was a pause while he sat, remembering. “We had a man who ended up losing both legs.”

  Beatrice gasped. “Losing his legs! On account of their freezing? Like my feet?”

  “No, he was much worse! I never discovered him until the morning, and it was too late for him by then. I spent the whole time waiting for the doctor in rubbing his legs, and a parishioner joined me, but it was no good. He never felt a thing, and his legs were grey as death. Your feet were already turning rosy, so you’ll be perfectly fine, I assure you.”

  She quieted down, but after a moment, asked, “Did the man live?”

  He turned thoughtful eyes upon hers. She could not see their colour by this light, but she could see that they were sympathetic. Gent
le. “You do not truly wish to know the answer to that question, do you?”

  She averted her gaze. Goodness! She had been fortunate never to have suffered having her feet freeze during her winter walks at home! And now, how providential to have Mr. O’Brien with her when such a thing should occur!

  “Mr. O’Brien,” she ventured. “My feet are growing hot. May I remove them from the muff?” He took off the covering of his coat, and smiled, but he put one hand protectively upon the muff, inside of which were her beleaguered limbs.

  “Not yet.”

  Fourteen

  Ithink we must go after them,” Ariana said.

  “I agree.” Her husband rose and spoke to the footmen who were standing against the walls in the dining room, as footmen usually did when not needed at the moment. “Tell Freddy and Fotch to join me, as well as two or three of you who can ride.”

  “I can ride, sir!” His tone was eager as footmen did not often get to ride.

  “As can I, sir,” said the other, firmly.

  “Send a man to the stables quickly so that the horses can be readied. And let’s to it, gentlemen!” He paused, and then added, “Dress warmly.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  In minutes a group of men were following their master to the stable yard, where a groom and a stable hand were leading out horses for them, all harnessed and ready for a rider.

  Mr. Mornay stopped to pat the head of his own horse, named Tornado. It was a sixteen-hand black stallion, bred in his own stables, and never ridden by anyone but him. He spoke softly to it while the others began mounting, and then in another minute he was astride as well. He turned his horse to face the men, and quickly gave orders. Fotch would ride with him; the others were to go off in various different directions on the grounds, all in search of the missing couple. Each man was given a weapon and was to fire off a shot in the air if he found them, alerting the others.

  When they trotted off, Fotch said, “It’s hard to believe that yesterday was so fair, sir! This weather has taken a nasty turn!”

  “Indeed. I’m afraid it may have caught them by surprise. Let us hope we do not find them stuck somewhere.”

  “How might they be stuck, sir, if I might ask?” asked Fotch, who had no imagination for such things.

  “Supposing Miss Forsythe was to get hurt; I can easily imagine her keeping Mr. O’Brien with her, for fear of being alone. And he might just be pigeon-headed enough to think it the right thing to do.”

  “Aye, sir, I see what you mean,” the valet nodded. He started looking around more carefully, as they entered the path that wound through the woods going southeast.

  Mr. Mornay kept his pace at a steady trot, slowing down when the woods grew dense, stopping now and again to listen.

  “Give a yell,” he said, now and again. Fotch would take one hand from the reins, cup his mouth, and shout, with all his might: “Mis-ter O-Briiiiiien!” Not a sound. “Miss For-syyyyythe!” Nothing.

  They continued on.

  Ariana was impatiently looking out the south windows of the grounds, but continued to see nothing of her sister or Mr. O’Brien.

  “I cannot account for so long an absence in this cold,” she said. “Our property is not dangerous; there is a ravine, but that is on the far side of the land, and I do not think they could have possibly walked that distance!”

  “A ravine!” exclaimed Mrs. Forsythe. She was obligingly playing at wooden soldiers with Nigel but looked up in alarm.

  “No, Mama, I should not have mentioned it; they could not have reached it with less than a day’s walk.”

  “Oh.” The lady returned to the game, now picking up all the fallen soldiers that Nigel had mercilessly murdered with his toy black cannon. “You win again!” she exclaimed, to his delight.

  “I beat the Frenchmen, Mama!” he cried happily. He had actually turned his cannon upon the men in the Regent’s colours, but Mrs. Forsythe wasn’t about to ruin his joy with the facts.

  Ariana paused to congratulate her son, opening her arms and giving him, when he arrived at her legs breathlessly, an earnest kiss upon the head. “Well done, sir!” she cried. “Your father will be proud.”

  “Yes, Mama!” But he stopped and yawned, and Ariana looked at Mrs. Perler.

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said, instantly getting up and coming toward the child. “It is high time for Master Nigel’s nap, to be sure.”

  “Not my nap!” he cried. “Please, Mama, make Mrs. Perler leave me be! I do not wish for a nap!”

  Ariana bent to one knee to speak to the boy at eye level. “When you get to the nursery,” she said, in a conspiratorial whisper, “you may pretend to nap. Take a toy with you into your bed and play. Mrs. Perler will never know.” This was a little game Ariana used to get her son to sleep. He would take the toy with him, ostensibly to avoid his nap, but inevitably fall asleep.

  “Lately, ma’am, Master Nigel refuses to get into his bed for his nap.”

  “He will fall asleep at playing, and you can put him to bed, then.” She went and bent over her sleeping baby, as Miranda had already been fed and changed, and she said, after planting a soft kiss on the infant’s head, “Call for me when she awakes and will not go back to sleep. Not until then.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The lady curtsied, and, after picking up Miranda, took a sad looking Nigel by the hand, and made her way from the room.

  Ariana was instantly all briskness. “Mama, I am too restless to sit here and wait. I wish to go walking myself; I should have had Mr. Mornay take me with him.”

  “Well, there is no sense in my staying put, then.”

  “Mrs. Royleforst will be happy of your company, I am certain.”

  “I have seen neither hide nor hair of that lady today, nor her little Miss Bluford! I daresay Mrs. Royleforst is having one of her topsy-turvy days.”

  Ariana nodded; she was familiar with her aunt’s “tospy-turvy” days. It meant that when Mrs.Royleforst tried to get out of bed in the morning, she was struck with a heavy feeling in her head (top-heavy, she called it); if she persisted, she got light-headed. Hence, it was a topsy-turvy day. Miss Bluford came in very handy for such days, as the regular servants would have been put out to do so much for a guest. Knowing Phillip’s relation was being tended to, Ariana therefore said, “Let us go!” and the two ladies left the room in quick succession.

  Beatrice sighed and sat back, enjoying the warmth that was emanating from the grate. Mr. O’Brien, right from his chair, was tending the fire now and again as though Beatrice’s legs weren’t still resting upon him, ending with a giant muff that he had to duck around as he aimed his poker at the coals.

  “Mr. O’Brien,” she said, drawing her feet away from him, “my feet are better. They are not hot nor cold, nor prickling with a thousand pins.” She held the muff and extracted her stockinged feet, trying not to feel silly. “You have been excellent, and I am much obliged to you. But surely my sister and my mother must be growing perplexed at our absence.”

  “I have had much the same thought,” he said, nodding, and rising from his seat, “but I did not wish to distress you with it.”

  “Thank you,” she said, looking at him appreciatively.

  “I must put out the fire,” he said. “I don’t like to leave an empty house with something burning in it. Wait a minute, if you please. Warm your muff and boots close to it before we must leave.”

  In truth he was concerned about the return journey. One mile on a nice day would have been nothing, but in the cold, and for feet that had already suffered a frost, he knew they would easily succumb to the same problem again. He was near the front door, thinking of finding some source of water outside such as a running brook, when he had a new thought.

  “Miss Forsythe—I think it best if I leave you here with the fire, while I return to the house and get you a mount.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes large as she considered his words. “Oh, I do not think it necessary,” she answered, standing up. She had been warming her
boots obediently, and now went to put them on. She sat back down and inserted one foot, saying, “Oh! I have warmed it too well!”

  “It will cool soon enough,” he murmured, watching. “In fact, I do think our best course is to avoid your having to walk any distance in this weather. I promise you, I will make haste. You can lock the door behind me.” He started preparing to leave, putting on his greatcoat.

  “No!” she cried, and then was embarrassed by her own fear. In a lower voice, she said, “We do not even know for certain that this is the parsonage. What if we are…trespassing?”

  “This is certainly Mr. Mornay’s land, and you are a member of the family; I do not think you can be accused of anything; particularly when your reason for coming in was so dire.”

  She looked around and although the cottage had lost none of its rustic charm, she did not want to be left alone there. She looked to him and said, “It’s no good; I cannot stay alone.”

  His face softened, but he said, “There is a bar for the door which you may close once I leave. You’ll be safe here, I’m certain.”

  “I’ll be miserable and worrying the whole time.”

  “That’s better than to be frostbitten again.” He wrapped himself in his scarf and put on his gloves. She tied her boots and stood, and hurried over before he could leave. She got right in front of him. “I’m afraid that, where you go, I go.” Belatedly she realized that the allusion of that statement came from the book of Ruth, implying a “til death do us part” sort of commitment, and she blushed faintly. Oh, fie, he couldn’t think I meant anything by that!

  And, though his clear blue eyes were fastened on hers, and may even have twinkled, being the good and sensible man that Mr. O’Brien was, he made absolutely no remark or joke, or anything to make her suspect that he did. How kind! Mr. O’Brien was a gentleman—he cared about her sensibilities.

  “Miss Forsythe; I insist that you stay. Your sister will never forgive me were I to allow any harm to come to you; I was already remiss in letting us walk so far as we did. I cannot make that mistake again.”