Starling

by Virginia Taylor

  He helped with a little twisting, and she freed her foot, but putting both feet on the ground didn’t help. “I can’t stand,” she muttered. “My legs won’t work. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to put my knees together again.”

  “Now, wouldn’t that be a shame?” When she glanced at him, he grinned. “It’d be an advantage for a girl like you.”

  “It’d be an advantage for a man like you.”

  “Perhaps I should take advantage of it while I can.”

  “My arms still work.”

  “Hit me and I won’t help you into the shade.”

  “You deserve to be hit.”

  “I’m all talk, Starling. You know I won’t touch you. You do know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I know.” She heaved a sigh as she clung to his offered arm. “It’s just that you never give up on trying to convince me I want to be touched.”

  “It’s my job. I’m a man. Come on. A few more steps and you can sit down. Play your cards right and I’ll give you a leg massage.”

  She groaned as she sank to the ground beneath a shady gum. “Would it help?”

  “What? Playing your cards right or a leg massage? Both would help.”

  “How do I play my cards right?”

  “Smile and relax. I said relax,” he said, kneeling between her legs, which he moved apart. Using both hands, he kneaded her calf. “I can’t do this under your skirt. Lift it a little, will you?”

  She lifted the fabric and pulled the bulk between her knees, challenging him with her gaze. He took no notice and, chastened, she dropped her hands to her sides. Her head lolled back as he continued to work at her lower leg until he’d eased the stiffness. Then his hands moved to her knee, and he pushed her skirt to her thigh. She re-covered her knee. He leaned back on his heels. “I’ve seen your underclothes before. I bought your drawers and your stockings, remember? If you want me to help, you can’t afford to be coy.”

  “I don’t feel very comfortable when you’re between my legs.”

  “That’s not something I hear very often,” he said, his expression a little too smug.

  He put one hand on her inner thigh where the skin burned and the other on the opposing side. She couldn’t concentrate on either her tender skin or her aching muscles because his touch not only warmed through the fabric of her undergarments but also tingled the juncture between her legs. Trying to breathe evenly, she closed her eyes.

  He began to work on her other leg, lower and then upper. The tingle happened again when he massaged her thigh, so she breathed through her mouth. He worked with one hand on each leg, starting firmly and growing more careful as he reached her upper thighs. Each circling made her more conscious of being a woman than someone with aching muscles.

  “How does that feel?”

  She needed to swallow before answering. “Much better.”

  His thumbs moved and her already heightened awareness turned to an excited throb.

  Pulse thudding, her belly contracted.

  “How does that feel?”

  “Alasdair,” she whispered. “You know what you’re doing, don’t you?”

  “I’m far more conscious of what I’m not doing.” His eyes looked shivery and the dark edge emphasized his pale irises.

  He rose onto his knees, letting his arms drop by his sides. She couldn’t fail to see the rodlike shape beneath his buckskins. She gave a shaky laugh because she couldn’t speak; she shut her eyes briefly to the knowledge that she liked seeing him this way, liked seeing his desire for her. The man had looks, money, and—if she didn’t keep her head—her. “You ought to stop doing this.”

  “You like it as much as I do.” He lifted a hand to her hair.

  Very slowly she relaxed her jaw. His thumb caressed her cheek.

  “I told you....” she began shakily, and although he didn’t interrupt, she didn’t continue. However, she lifted one hand to his front, tracing lightly over the fly of his trousers.

  His hand tugged at her hair. “This is unseemly, Mrs. Seymour.”

  She rested her hot cheek on his hip.

  “Not here. Not like this.”

  “But you’re the one—”

  “I can’t. I couldn’t.”

  “Not by the look of you.”

  “I’m in two minds.” His expression tight, he pulled back from her. “My thinking mind says that I shouldn’t accept favors from a girl like you.”

  “And what is a girl like me?”

  “One who perhaps needs a little more than a quick fuck behind a tree?”

  She blushed. Whether her embarrassment was caused by the fact that she certainly wanted more than the word he said or by the fact that he’d been the one to stop the whole thing, she couldn’t say. She didn’t know what type of girl she was, but she suspected that she differed very little from others. Once aroused, she couldn’t be sensible. Too many times she’d forgotten his plan to send her off after this next week. Too many times she’d forgotten her plan to help her fellow orphans.

  He rose to his feet, extending a hand. “Do you think you can bear to get back on the horse?”

  “Perhaps walking will ease this stiffness.”

  “Yours, maybe, but not mine.”

  She didn’t waste time blushing again. She simply let the first blush grow hotter as she tested her legs. “I suspect a hot bath will help.”

  “You don’t feel much better, do you?”

  “The massage helped. I might walk like a broken peg, but at least I can walk.”

  He gathered the grazing horse, swung into the saddle, and rode to a fallen tree stump. New leaves sprouted from the base. “If you sit sidesaddle in front of me, I can take you back in relative comfort. For your next riding lesson, we’ll use a ladies’ saddle.”

  Because the prospect of walking the distance daunted her, she did as he asked. The horse walked back in the hot bright sun, but Starling felt no discomfort. The side of her body brushed against Alasdair’s front. Once or twice his hands covered hers, but she heard nothing but the clop of hooves, a pair of scything wings in the air above, and the beating of his heart.

  Along the river, beside the back gate to his house, he pulled up the horse. “I suspect this will be the longest day of my life,” he said.

  She glanced at him and his mouth dropped over hers. Because she couldn’t bear to do otherwise, she responded. During a gloriously long, deep kiss, his hand covered her rib cage, perilously close to her breast.

  The kitchen door banged in the distance. His arm dropped and her hand moved to her lap.

  Starling cleared her throat. “I’ll go inside,” she said, sliding off the horse.

  “I’ll stable the horse.” Alasdair reined in a half circle and waited while Starling opened the back gate.

  Starling saw Ellen swish rapidly through the vegetable garden with the kitchen knife in her hand. “Oh, there you are, Mrs. Seymour. Mrs. Brighton was wantin’ you. Soon as I pick the spinach for Cook, I’ll tell her you’re back.”

  With an embarrassed nod, Starling headed toward the side terrace entrance, noticing her boots had picked up clumps of dirt and grass. She stopped before the first step, using the tread as a boot scraper.

  “Why aren’t you talkin’ to me?” she heard a male voice say. She turned and saw the gardener speaking to Ellen.

  “Get out of my way,” Ellen said.

  “No. I want to know what I done.”

  Starling subsided on the top step so that she could wipe her boots against the grass. She ought to have taken the kitchen route instead.

  “S’pose you know that better than I do.”

  “I ain’t done nothin’, Ellen.”

  “It might be nothing to you, but it’s not to me. Let me go!”

  Starling had never been placed in such an awkward position. An embarrassed eavesdropper, she decided to remove her boots instead of trying for a quick clean, but the laces held tight. If she couldn’t le
ave the area within a few seconds, she would keep hearing a conversation not meant for her ears. She could only imagine the couple was not aware of her presence.

  “You don’t want to listen to a pack of lies.”

  “But I do every time you open your mouth, Derry. This time I saw you. I saw you take Mrs. Frost to the potting shed.”

  “I showed her the camellia cuttins. There’s nothin’ wrong with that.”

  “Oh, I think you showed her far more than the camellia cuttings. I take care of her clothes, you see. She had your potting mix under her petticoats. I know what you did. You can’t keep your tool out of—”

  With one boot off, Starling hopped to the doors and wrenched at the door handles. She stepped into the house and sat on the carpet in the billiard room, tugging at her other boot. When she had removed both, she glanced at the couple through the glass panes, assuming she hadn’t been noticed. With her boots in one hand, she passed the kitchen.

  The back door slammed. “What’s the matter?” she heard Mrs. Trelevan say.

  “Here’s your blinkin’ spinach. I’m done with the garden, and I’m done with Derry,” Ellen answered in a high-pitched tone. “I’ve had enough of his whoring and his lies. If he wants that painted doll, he can have her with my good wishes.”

  “Now, now,” Mrs. Trelevan said.

  Starling crept to the main hallway hoping now that the staff knew of Lavender’s escapades, they would be kind enough to keep their information from the master of the house. She wished she didn’t care, but strangely, she did.

  Although Alasdair knew Lavender’s moral code, he would still be shocked and hurt that the woman he loved would betray him with another man.

  Chapter 15

  Starling ate luncheon with the others, all of whom had decided to shop in Rundle Street in the afternoon. Not again prepared to risk her position by leaving the house, she mentioned important tasks she needed to do and took her time refreshing the flowers. Then she inspected the rooms, wishing she were the mistress. She saw that Alasdair used the library rather than his study for most of his work at home and realized the light in the room was possibly the draw. The morning sun made the space very appealing. A good housewife would combine the two rooms and leave the study at the back of the house for a nice quiet conservatory because of the view over the garden and the afternoon sun.

  She sighed, knowing she could not change a thing, not about the house nor about her relationship with Alasdair, as demonstrated by her uncharacteristic behavior with him this morning. Despite the fact that he would offer her no more than the odd caress, she kept testing, craving his attention, and needing his smile. Even when she didn’t see him for an hour she thought of him.

  Finally, more to occupy her mind than her hands, she went to the kitchen. “It’s hot outside,” she said to Mrs. Trelevan, who was kneading pastry on the table. “Though not as hot as last year.”

  The cook smiled. “Hot in Ballarat, last year, was it?”

  Starling looked elsewhere and nodded.

  “Did you get much rain in winter?”

  Starling smiled and shrugged.

  Mrs. Trelevan pursed her lips. “At least it doesn’t get too cold in Ballarat.”

  “It’s inland. No sea breezes.”

  Mrs. Trelevan laughed. “I come from Ballarat, meself. The frosts are real bad and the winters are almost like back home in England.”

  Starling sighed with regret and stared at the floor. “It was a silly story anyway. I don’t know why he couldn’t admit he met me here.”

  “He wanted to give you a reason not to have all your luggage with you. Stands to reason that if you married him on the day he brung you here, you would have packed your things beforehand. I surmise he married you a week or two before when he disappeared for a few days. I don’t know why he had to keep you a secret from us. We woulda been thrilled. I don’t understand why he wouldn’t let you bring your things, though. Even if he wanted to buy you everything new, he might have known you would need some of your old gowns.”

  “He wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  Mrs. Trelevan shook her head. “Good to see, when he’s normally so smart. The right woman will turn any man’s head.”

  “Did you meet him when he was setting up his emporium in Ballarat?” Starling asked, desperate to change the subject.

  The cook’s eyes met hers. “I first met Mr. Seymour in Ballarat, yes.” She rolled her pastry into an oblong shape almost thin enough to see through.

  Starling pulled a chair from under the pine table where Mrs. Trelevan worked. She began to grease the dish the cook had placed by her right elbow. “He went there trying to forget Mrs. Frost, I believe.”

  Mrs. Trelevan shook her head. “He didn’t appear to have a problem forgetting her. Course, he was busy workin’, but when he took time off, he took it with a certain female what kept him occupied. I always used to think how clever he was about everything but women. That one, she were too hard for him, and I reckon Mrs. Frost is, too. But men can’t be blind all their lives, and by marryin’ you, he made a very smart choice.”

  “How well did you know him in Ballarat?”

  “At first just to look at. He’s a fine-looking man. Even someone my age notices fine-looking men. Then he started to get a reputation. There was lots of hard workers in Ballarat, but he was lucky, too.” Mrs. Trelevan dropped the pastry into the greased dish.

  “Well, it was a smart move to set up a shop in the gold fields.”

  The cook cut her pastry to fit the pie dish without speaking.

  “He was fortunate not to have to mine gold like the other men.”

  The cook eyed her, as if mulling her answer. “My husband was a ratter.”

  “A ratter?”

  “When he heard tell of a strike, he used to bide his time, and when he thought the coast was clear, he’d crawl in and nick what he could, just enough to keep me and Bobby, that’s our son, in food. After some while a certain lucky miner started putting on a guard at night.... Well, what happened to Joe weren’t Mr. Seymour’s fault.”

  “What happened to Joe?”

  “He and Bobby got caught. The miner said he wouldn’t press charges, but no one cared about that. Caught is guilty and justice is quick. The other miners strung Joe up and they was going to string up Bobby, too. Mr. Seymour said the boy didn’t know nothin’ about the stealing and he’d only been in the mine because he was helping out there.” The cook cleared her throat. “Mr. Seymour had an interest in the mine. I don’t know if anyone believed him, but they let Bobby off. To make the story true, Mr. Seymour gave Bobby a job. Now there’s not a story of Mr. Seymour’s I wouldn’t go along with, not a one. Love me boy, I do.”

  “I’m sorry about your husband,” Starling said softly, mulling over the word interest. Alasdair’s tale of making his fortune without dirtying his hands was most likely another Ballarat story concocted for his own convenience to hide from the respectable the fact that he had made his fortune working as a miner.

  “Me, too. Loved him as well. He weren’t a bad man, only weak. Without him, Bobby had a chance to grow up respectable, but we both miss him.”

  “Where is Bobby now?”

  “Turned sixteen last year. Worked here in the stables until then. Mr. Seymour found him a ’prenticeship as a carpenter, and he works and lives over Norwood way. See him every Sunday.” Mrs. Trelevan began chopping chunks of meat into neat squares. “All of us here have reason to be grateful to Mr. Seymour. He bought Mrs. Brighton from her husband.”

  Starling blinked. “He bought her?”

  Mrs. Trelevan shrugged. “She thought she ought to work off the price, but Mr. Seymour said it weren’t her debt.”

  “I didn’t know that we were allowed to buy and sell people.”

  “Men do what they like. Mr. Brighton sold her at public auction. Said she were a good worker but too old for him. She wasn’t sorry to leave that man, no, not at all. ’Bout the
most humiliating thing a man can do, what her husband done to her. Mr. Seymour didn’t expect nothin’ for his money, and he pays Mrs. Brighton a regular wage, but between you and me, I reckon she’d rather work in one of his shops. She can as soon as you’re settled in.”

  Starling glanced away, knowing she wouldn’t be settled in, ever. That would be Lavender’s place. “Freda told me what he did for her and Ellen,” she said, her voice slightly gruff.

  “He collects strays.” Mrs. Trelevan lumped the meat into a pile and began to chop two large onions. “Reckon he found you somewhere that does him no credit and that’s why he’s giving us the story about Ballarat. Not one of us would judge a thing he does, not one. He don’t seem to realize that, but for him we’d be on the scrapheap. That’s where me and Freda put the underwear you came here in, and that’s where we’d put anyone who said a word against you or him. Tell a lot about a person by their underwear, you can.”

  Starling pressed her hands to her cheeks. “I wish I hadn’t begun this lie.”

  “Owning cheap and darned underclothing’s not shaming. It’s shaming when it’s dirty or not darned, and your underwear had more darning than calico in some places. Now, Mrs. Frost! Real expensive her stuff is, but treated as she treats people. Throws it away as soon as it don’t flatter her.”

  “Would you like me to scrape these carrots?”

  “No. You’re the mistress, and you shouldn’t be helping the cook. I’d like you to grease up your hands. Almost right now, your skin is, and you shouldn’t let any opportunity slip. Was you a kitchen worker?”

  “Laundering made this mess of my hands.”

  “Well, now. Where would Mr. Seymour find a laundress, I’d like to know?”

  “Right under his nose in his Adelaide store. Can I do the table setting?”

  “Bless you. You don’t need to ask what you can do in your own home.”

  Starling took her time arranging the table. When she finished, she decorated an ornate epergne with piled-high fruit and trailing ivy leaves. After that, she collected a stack of mending from the laundry and worked in the sitting room. When the light began to fade, she left to bathe and change for dinner.