Daniel's True Desire

by Grace Burrowes

  “To commit bigamy.”

  “Olivia is dead.” A fervent wish, not a certainty. What was wrong with him? “If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to enlist your aid in procuring a special license.”

  For now, the need to marry Kirsten had become urgent, the position in the north a new promised land.

  Fairly looked like he wanted to argue, but the ladies rejoined them, with Letty occupying the spot beneath the dratted bird.

  “He’s back,” Kirsten said, scowling at the bird. “I’d move, your ladyship. That bird, or one very like him, was most disrespectful of Daniel’s altar.”

  Letty stepped over to her husband’s side, just as the bird again let loose, then flew off across the green.

  * * *

  “The banns! The banns! They’ve read the banns!” Olivia crowed.

  Bertrand had anticipated that the news would please her, but Olivia was not merely pleased. She was in transports, delighted, as suffused with glee as a mama whose daughter had just received a marriage proposal from a young, handsome, wealthy duke.

  “They’re not wed yet, Olivia,” Bertrand said, coming around his desk to snatch back the missive that had come from Bertrand’s eyes and ears in Haddondale.

  Olivia appropriated Bertrand’s seat behind the desk. “But they will be married soon, and then what choice will Daniel have? He either delivers a fat sum into my hands or he goes to prison for bigamy. Daniel would do quite well in a monk’s cell, but he’ll not bring scandal to the boy or give up his vocation.”

  Rather than take a seat before the desk like a supplicant, Bertrand pretended to peruse a volume on economics by the late Adam Smith.

  “For a woman who hasn’t seen her husband in nearly a year, you profess to know Banks quite well.”

  Bertrand opened his tome to a random page: Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor…

  Mr. Smith had never encountered the likes of Olivia Banks, to whom even celestial law had no significance.

  “I lived in that wretched vicarage for years with Daniel Banks,” Olivia shot back, taking a quill from the silver standish. She waved the end of the feather across her chin, back and forth, back and forth.

  She was developing a bit of excess around that chin.

  “Daniel treasures nothing and no one as much as he does his calling,” Olivia went on, “and he’ll beggar himself to keep it. Without the boy, the church is all he has.”

  Banks more or less had the boy. Bertrand had kept that information, contained in an earlier epistle, to himself. Young Danny was being raised not by the wealthy viscount, but by the lowly vicar, and was apparently happier for it.

  “Olivia, you underestimate the allies Banks is gathering in Kent,” Bertrand said, more for the pleasure of twisting Olivia’s tail than anything else. “He’s marrying the sister of an earl, and earls take a dim view of fraud, blackmail, and bigamy.”

  Bertrand tucked the note from Haddondale between leaves of the book and put Mr. Smith back on the shelf, for the man’s prose was enough to muddle a mostly honest merchant on a fine, sunny morning.

  “The Quality cannot abide scandal,” Olivia said with great certainty for one who’d never shared a ballroom with the gossiping, romping, naughty Quality. “But they’ll never know what I’m about. Daniel wouldn’t ask for help from any but his precious, everlasting God, and look where that’s landed him. No wife, no son, another village church that smells of mud, manure, and despair.”

  Olivia had to be the meanest person Bertrand had ever encountered, to take such glee in another’s suffering. Woe unto Bertrand, though, that meanness had the power to fascinate, particularly when he held her in his arms and let a little of his own base nature free.

  Bertrand drew Olivia to her feet. “So you’ll let Banks march up the aisle, take a bride, and engage in felonies for the sake of your own material gain?”

  “I’ll strew rose petals in his path,” Olivia said, “and bellow the recessional hymn from the rafters. I’ve waited too long for this, Bertrand.”

  Bertrand used his superior height and strength to back Olivia against the desk. “I’ve waited too long too, Olivia. It’s the servants’ half day, and we have privacy, and I’m done waiting.”

  She could fume, pout, and carry on like a thespian, but Bertrand was certain Olivia liked the intimacies they shared. She liked the pleasure, of which, to be fair, she’d known little, but she also fancied that he sought only her for his satisfaction, that his desire was uniquely for her.

  Bertrand did not disabuse Olivia of the notion, though she was in error. The rosy-cheeked dairymaid who came around every other day could be persuaded to step over to the mews and provide a service in addition to the milk she brought. The housemaid was a lusty little baggage, and when Bertrand went out of an evening, he enjoyed the entertainments available to any gentleman of means.

  “Why do you wear so many skirts?” he muttered, shoving Olivia back to perch on his desk. “I buy you enough nightgowns and night robes that you need never dress at all.”

  “I like my pretty skirts,” she said. “I do not like you when you’re in rut.”

  “Yes, you do, but you abhor that I can give you pleasure you can’t give yourself.” Because, village lass that she was at heart, Olivia had never guessed that women could commit a version of the sin of Onan as easily as men could.

  “Any man—”

  He kissed her, though the silence wouldn’t last long enough for him to get his falls undone. Arguing with Olivia was stimulating—to them both.

  “Not any man,” Bertrand said, shoving her skirts aside and wedging himself between her pale, dimpled knees. “Do you know what I like? I like that Banks can’t have you and I can. Marry me, Olivia, and we’ll move to the north.”

  He joined his body to hers none too gently, which she also seemed to both crave and resent.

  “Marriage is for fools,” Olivia hissed, vising her legs around his flanks. “Marriage is for women with no ambition, no—”

  He silenced her with hard, steady thrusting, though she would return to her vitriol and scheming before her skirts were back over her ankles. Olivia was relentlessly self-interested, devious, and in her venery, both pathetic and magnificent.

  “You like this,” Bertrand rasped. “Say it.”

  “Go to hell.”

  The stupid, tenderhearted village lad offered her no more argument, for while they fornicated on the hard surface of his desk, that boy longed to make love to this woman. Longed to give her his name and undo all the hurt and meanness life had thrown at her too hard and too early.

  Olivia was flint-hearted and desperate for independent means because life had made her that way. As she clawed at Bertrand’s back and the desk creaked beneath her weight, a last, troubling thought battled its way past his rising desire:

  If Olivia would jeopardize the happiness of a child and of a vicar of spotless moral character, what would she do to that besotted village lad, should she realize his infatuation had never died?

  * * *

  Kirsten sat in the back of the classroom, watching Daniel explain the Acts of Union to six rapt little boys. He made the joining of Scotland and England into one nation a colorful tale of heroes and villains, clever boys turned into clever men, and battles fought for motivations both base and noble.

  “So Scotland couldn’t trade with the colonies or Canada or India or anywhere?” Matthias asked.

  “The English ports were closed to the Scots,” Daniel said, “and yet Scotland needed desperately to trade with the larger world. Rather than fight for that privilege, the Scots who had the power to agree accepted the Acts of Union.”

  This was a somewhat nontraditional view of the matter, though Kirsten suspected Daniel’s rendering was more honest than the v
ersion she’d been given.

  Frank raised a hand. “That’s like when Thomas sits on somebody. He’s not beating us, so we can’t say he’s been fighting, but it is fighting without fists.”

  “Danny, what do you think?” Daniel asked.

  “If I were Scotland, I wouldn’t like this Union, and if I were England, I wouldn’t trust it.”

  A concise summary of much of British history. Daniel stopped pacing the front of the room as his focus lit on Kirsten. She’d slipped in, not wanting to disturb the magic that happened when Daniel was among his scholars.

  “Gentlemen, we have a visitor,” Daniel said.

  The boys followed his gaze and rose as one. “Good day, Lady Kirsten.” They bowed like a patrol on maneuvers from the school of good manners.

  Kirsten curtsied back, as gracefully as if she were in the presence of six little dukes.

  “Gentlemen, good day. I’m impressed by your grasp of British history. In the tradition of true scholarship, you seem to be enjoying your lessons.”

  They beamed at one another self-consciously. Thomas’s ears turned red, and Daniel looked a little bashful too.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” Kirsten went on, “but might I borrow Mr. Banks for a few moments? I left some biscuits in the kitchen, and it’s nearly time for your snack.”

  Not a boy moved. They remained facing Kirsten, six juvenile pillars of longing and self-restraint.

  “Off you go, gentlemen,” Daniel said. “Don’t forget to wash your hands and give thanks.”

  To their credit, the boys’ decorum endured until they reached the door, at which point the jostling began, and once they gained the corridor, their footsteps beat a galloping tattoo in the direction of the kitchen.

  “They’re hungry,” Kirsten said as Daniel sauntered to the back of the room.

  “They’re always hungry,” he replied, lashes lowering. “I’m hungry too.” He kissed Kirsten’s cheek lingeringly and just like that, desire pooled low in her belly.

  “I’m starving,” she said, lashing her arms around him and seizing his mouth. Some idiot had declared a moratorium on anticipating the vows, but Kirsten felt exactly like that horde of little boys—self-restraint barely winning the fight against instinct.

  Daniel smiled against her lips. “You’ve been missing me?”

  She smacked his chest, then let her hand slide south. “Rotten man. Of course I’ve been missing you. I cannot wait for the time when I can sleep beside you through the night, though I doubt we’ll get much rest.”

  She had news, news a stronger woman might keep to herself, though Kirsten was too happy to strive for reticence. All the biscuits in the world had been stuffed in her pockets, and the best pony in the barn was hers forever.

  Now that she and Daniel had privacy, though, all her blunt, forthright speech deserted her.

  “I long for those nights as well,” Daniel said, his arms slipping from her waist. “Reimer will be down from Town the day after tomorrow. Your brothers Nicholas, Beckman, and Ethan will accompany him.”

  Leah had conveyed the same information in a recent epistle. In a flurry of letters, Kirsten had excused her sisters from attending the wedding, and Della at least had expressed her thanks.

  “And on Saturday we’ll be married,” Kirsten said.

  When Daniel ought to have kissed her in agreement, he instead wandered off to the front of the room and picked up the felt cloth used to erase the large slate positioned where a portrait of the old earl had once hung.

  “And on Saturday,” Daniel said, scrubbing away at the Acts of Union, “we’ll be married.”

  His words held a distance, the same distance he’d maintained when he and Kirsten had first met. Polite, kind, mannerly, but fundamentally cool.

  Kirsten had watched the boys’ riding lesson on Tuesday and captained a cricket team yesterday. In another hour and a half, she’d join the boys for tea while Daniel put the finishing touches on the Sunday sermon.

  For all Daniel had been at her side at both the stable and the cricket pitch, he had in some regard already accepted a position in the far, chilly north.

  “What’s wrong?” Kirsten asked, striding after him.

  His felt paused before the U in Union. “Nothing is wrong. I’m looking forward to marriage, the same as you are.” Union was obliterated with a vigorous pass of Daniel’s hand.

  Alarms went off in Kirsten’s heart, the same alarms she’d been trying to ignore since Daniel had returned from Town.

  “Daniel Banks, look at me.”

  He did, after a moment’s stillness facing the blank slate. He set aside the cloth, dusted his hands, put them behind his back, and turned.

  His eyes held the old bleakness, the old misery and forbearance.

  “If marrying me is an exercise in martyrdom, Daniel, you may have your ring back.” Kirsten spoke from fear, also from the certainty that something was terribly amiss and Daniel would bear it alone unless she knocked the problem loose from his grasp.

  “Does one procure a special license in anticipation of martyrdom?” Daniel asked. The question was civil, not enraged, not even quietly affronted.

  “You are not being honest with me,” Kirsten said, taking up the felt and beating it against the side of Daniel’s desk. Dust flew in all directions, much like the particles of Kirsten’s happiness.

  “I love you,” Daniel said, taking the cloth from her hand. “That is the truth. That will always be the truth. I love you and want only to be by your side for the rest of my life. In sickness and in health, in good times and bad, forsaking all others, as long as we both shall live.”

  “You mean that.” The truth was in his eyes, in the gravity of his expression. “Then tell me the rest of it, Daniel Banks, because I’m nearly certain that we’re the recipients of a miracle. If you do not look forward to becoming a papa as much as I look forward to bearing your children, I fear it’s too late to register a complaint now.”

  Hardly the declaration Kirsten had meant to make, but she’d got his attention.

  He took both her hands in a firm grip. “What are you saying?”

  Now they were to deal in truths. An encouraging development.

  “I strongly suspect, and the midwife has confirmed, I’m carrying a child, Daniel. Our child.”

  For a moment, he had no reaction, not even a blink. He merely regarded her. “You would never dissemble about such a thing.”

  A statement of the obvious. Kirsten waited, disappointment gnawing at her, for Daniel evinced no jubilation, no thanksgiving.

  No joy.

  “Daniel, if you do not right this minute tell me what’s wrong, I will prevail on Beckman or Ethan to make a place for me in their households. Ethan has in-laws far to the north and properties on the Continent. Beckman knows people all over the world. You and I are either marrying, or we’re not.”

  Sending Kirsten’s previous fiancés on their way had been a mere inconvenience compared to the terror Kirsten battled now. Daniel Banks was the man she loved, the man she’d given her heart to.

  Daniel sank slowly before her, until he was kneeling at her feet, his cheek pressed against her middle. “There’s to be a child?”

  Finally. “It’s very early days, and I may not carry well, but yes. The signs point in that direction.” She, who had cast-iron digestion, was frequently queasy. She was drowsy at odd moments, she was…two weeks late. “I might well have already conceived.”

  A word Kirsten had barely been able to wrap her mind around. A beautiful word, a miracle, and yet, for all the awe in his voice, Daniel was not rejoicing.

  He stroked a hand over her belly. “Merciful everlasting Powers, a child. A child of ours. Unto us, a child is born.”

  Kirsten’s mind seized on three thoughts. First, the boys would be back in a few minutes; second, Daniel was glad, but he
was troubled too. Third…

  “You mentioned a special license, Daniel. Shall we discuss that?”

  He rose in one lithe movement, his expression impossible to read. “Yes, we must discuss that at the very least. Though, my lady, I fear the discussion will not be at all happy.”

  Seventeen

  “Mattie, don’t you want your biscuits?” Danny asked.

  They sat around their table, the one in the kitchen where breakfast, lunch, and snacks were consumed. At night they had to eat upstairs, and manners were expected. Downstairs was exclusively for appeasing hunger, though Digby tried at all times to use his manners.

  “You lot can have my biscuits,” Mattie said, swiping at his milk mustache with his sleeve. “What’s Lady Kirsten doing here early?”

  Frank paused halfway through a ginger biscuit. “She’s come by to blow—”

  Thomas snatched the uneaten part of the biscuit. “If you say the word ground-sills, I will sit on you until it’s time to up the swans.”

  Digby interceded, which seemed to be his lot lately. “I looked it up. A ground-sill is like a windowsill, but it’s the bottom timber of a house’s foundation. Perhaps blowing the ground-sills has to do with housecleaning.”

  Papa had explained that it had nothing whatsoever to do with housecleaning, proving once again that the right papa was a handy fellow to have about.

  “Lady Kirsten sets a lot of store by her housekeeping,” Frank conceded.

  That she did. A few more biscuits disappeared. Cook came by with the pitcher of milk and topped up everybody’s glass.

  “They’re soon to be married,” Fred said. “Lady Kirsten has been fixing up the vicarage, and we’ll all live together there. They’ve even built on to the stable to have room for our ponies.”

  “The vicarage used to stink,” Digby said. “Old Vicar smoked pipes and had gas.”

  Which, of course, provoked snickers from the other boys, and a disapproving glower from Cook.