A Lady Awakened

by Cecilia Grant

  She dragged it between two fingers, wordlessly, end to end. Then back the other way.

  Now this was more the thing. Next time he’d direct all his efforts at charming the children, and like as not win their parents’ approbation into the bargain. “You might use it to decorate your pig, if she ever mends her ways enough to deserve such a treat.” He nudged the animal with his boot. “It would look rather handsome in a bow about her tail, wouldn’t it?”

  A dimple appeared in the girl’s cheek, and she shook her head.

  “I must defer to your judgment. But here is paper, too, as I mentioned.” He drew out a little sheaf of it. “It’s wallpaper, actually, so it’s all patterned. Flowers, birds, leaves, whatnot.” He riffled the papers to show her. “And they’re heavy. They’ll keep a crease well, if you wish to fold them. If you wish to make a fan, for example. Have you ever made a fan?”

  She shook her head again, eyes fast on the paper.

  “I’ll show you. It’s not at all difficult, else I’m sure I wouldn’t know how.” He took a sheet of paper and handed her the rest. “It’s best to use a tabletop or some other flat place if you can,” he said, setting down his bag and putting a foot up on the trough, “but one can make do.” She watched as he started to fold the paper on the makeshift work-surface of his thigh. “Fold an inch or so from one end; now turn it over and fold back another inch. That makes a pleat, do you see? Just keep turning the paper over and folding back another inch until it’s pleated all the way to the end.” No telling whether she fully grasped this, but it had been the easiest thing he could think of to fold.

  “Pinch it close at one end when you’ve finished, and open out the other, and you have a fan.” He held it up and fanned himself, causing her to dimple again. “If you like, you can even punch a hole here, where it’s pinched together, and tie it with a string. My sisters used to run ribbons through and wear them on their wrists.” With this, undoubtedly, he had exhausted the subject, so he closed up the pleats and held it out to her.

  She examined the pleats, then pinched one end and fanned herself experimentally.

  “Just so, yes.” Well, that had come off as it ought. Now to make the best of his meeting with the other Weavers—but before he could begin, the girl drew a second piece of paper from the sheaf and pushed it toward him. “Would you like me to make another?” he asked.

  She nodded, and moved a step closer to watch.

  He was two pleats into it when he heard the cottage door open and Mrs. Weaver cry, in a terrible voice, “Christine, come here now!”

  The girl scrambled away and he understood, in an instant, what her mother had seen: his back turned to the cottage, her daughter too near him, and both their heads bowed to watch his hands doing something in the vicinity of his lap.

  Good God. Could she really think—Good God. He held up the paper and groped for words that could explain—but the woman didn’t even look at him now. She was talking rapidly to her daughter, who a minute later hurried back to him, or rather to just within arm’s length, the ribbon and the rest of the paper in her outstretched hand, her face turned aside. He could only take it all from her and watch her run away again.

  Sick, febrile heat roiled through him, flooding his face with guilty color. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Why had he not stopped to think of how this might look? And yet how should it have occurred to him? Never in his life had anyone thought him capable of such infamy.

  The longer he stood red-faced and wordless, the more culpable he would appear. Also, the greater the chance he would cast up there before them. Mechanically, he took up his bag and forced himself across the yard to where Mrs. Weaver stood, her baby’s rageful howls the only mitigation to a dense, choking silence.

  “I’m sorry for any offense.” His hat felt huge and ungainly as he took it off; his head felt horribly exposed. “I’ve been calling on the families today, and brought things such as I thought they might be able to use.” Her gray eyes, now he was near enough to see them, betrayed no evidence of sympathy or any other human sentiment. “I noticed your daughter folding paper when I was here before, and I had some lying about at the house. I was showing her how to fold a fan.” Even the truth sounded like some nefarious trick to lure a child. “May I give the paper to you instead? And you might give her a piece when you wish?”

  “Christine, go into the house now,” she said without turning, and the girl obeyed. “Mr. Mirkwood.” Her tone was flat and forbidding; her stare would do a basilisk proud. “We’ve no need of your paper. Christine don’t want gifts of any kind.”

  “As you think best, of course.” He put it back in his bag and found the meat and tea. “I’ll just give you these,” he said, drawing them out, “same as I brought to the other families.”

  “No.” She moved the baby from one shoulder to the other. “Thank you, no.”

  He ought to be angry. He had every right to be. He’d come here with honorable intentions, and indeed, he could feel the first sparks of anger struck within him—but they were promptly smothered by thick, poisonous shame. What man could stand under Mrs. Weaver’s awful gaze and not suspect a monster lurked deep inside him after all? God in Heaven, never had any person looked at him so.

  As briefly as possible he wished the woman good day and started back to the house, his stomach curdling every step of the way, his leftover presents shifting about in the bag that should have been empty by now.

  So much for good intentions. The panic in her voice, when she’d flung open the door and called her daughter away from him! Don’t think of it. He stopped and screwed his eyes shut, and his stomach pitched and reeled like an unmanned vessel on a stormy sea. Think of something else. He opened his eyes and walked on. But no innocuous subject could hold his thoughts: back they slipped again and again to the scene he would have escaped, and finally he gave in and was ill, helplessly, shamefully ill at the border of his own back garden.

  MR. FARRIS said you weren’t planning to enroll your girls in our class for young ladies.” Martha pinched a weed from among a stand of parsley plants and stretched out her arm to drop it in the pail.

  Across the row of herbs, Jane Farris nodded once. That the mistress insisted on helping with some chore whenever she called was probably trying enough to a tenant-wife. To introduce this conversation, in place of their usual minimal pleasantries, must make a further imposition on the woman.

  So be it. Mr. Mirkwood was due to arrive in an hour, and if she sat about waiting she would surely run mad. “I was sorry to hear it. I confess I had your Laura and Adelaide in mind, when I suggested to Mr. Atkins that he make some provision for the older girls. They’re both so bright.”

  “They both read already, though. Lizzie will go to school with her brothers. Do you see any yellow in the parsley there?”

  “No, it all looks quite fresh still.” She tossed in another few weeds and moved on to the peppermint, where she paused to lean in and breathe its crisp scent. “The very purpose of the class, as I saw it, was to prevent a girl’s education from stopping with mere letters and numbers.” Another breath of peppermint. Wonderfully clarifying to one’s thoughts. “We live in a time of such great change, don’t we?” She picked up the one handspade and set to extracting a tenacious weed. “I’m sure Mr. Atkins isn’t the only country curate who’s taken note of the trends, and seen the use of more schooling for our boys. One can’t help worrying, though, for girls who grow up with the expectation of marrying a farmer, only to find so many farm-boys gone into trades, and educated so far beyond them.”

  Aha. She’d scored a hit. The tilt of Mrs. Farris’s bonnet hid whatever expression was in her eyes, but her mouth had drawn itself into a thinking frown.

  Now to press the advantage. “It’s not like a generation ago, when a husband and wife might both have had a few years in infant-school, and the rest of their education on the land. I expect a young tradesman might be inclined to look to some merchant’s daughter, with a bit of schooling, when he goes to take a bri
de.” Emphatically she threw her weed in the bucket and gave back the spade. “And if he does choose a barely literate farm-girl, he will be deliberately making an unequal marriage.”

  “No good ever comes of that.” From side to side the woman’s bonnet swayed.

  “No, never.” She dusted her hands and moved along to the fresh-laundry fragrance of lavender. “I shouldn’t like to see it happen to any of our Seton Park girls.” From under the funnel of her own bonnet, she stole a glance at Mrs. Farris. “It is only for an hour, the class. And only on Sundays, and I expect Mr. Atkins will build many of his lessons on spiritual topics. Geography of the Holy Land, and so forth.” Now she was spinning thread out of air. She really had no idea what lessons Mr. Atkins would make. “At all events I hope you’ll consider it.”

  “So I shall.” Mrs. Farris picked up the pail and plunked it down farther along the row. “I don’t want any man to think he’s marrying beneath him, in taking one of my daughters. I’ll think on all you’ve said.”

  Martha dug her fingers silently into the soil. Had she just managed some successful persuasion, after all? Indeed she seemed to have done. She might make this same case to more tenant wives, given time—if only she would have that time. If she had not already thrown away her chance.

  She brushed at a dirty patch on her skirt. She’d best be gone soon, to allow time for changing into her second set of mourning before he came. Though perhaps he wouldn’t notice. Perhaps he wouldn’t come. She might change into her clean gown and sit on that chair all afternoon with no one to see it, with no company at all but the memory of her every mistake.

  HOW DID they do it, those men who did such things? Theo trudged up the wooded path that would take him to the side entrance of Mrs. Russell’s house. Right and wrong aside, how could they even forge ahead where they were not wanted? The widow’s indifference had been enough to kill his own appetite and render him wholly ineffectual. How on earth did a man scrounge up lust in the face of terror and perhaps even frantic resistance?

  Scrounging up lust. He stopped to lean his weight on a pathside tree. Within minutes he was going to have to find a way to do just that. How, though? The memory of Mrs. Weaver’s cold stare; the girl’s guilty confusion as she gave back the presents, might pollute his every carnal impulse for the rest of his days. Certainly for as many days as he must contend with a lover—the very word mocked him—who offered none of that warm welcome that could make a man’s appetites feel wholesome and right.

  He pushed away from the tree and walked on. One dogged foot and then the other, through the copse, across the bit of lawn, and before he knew it he was opening the door to that sitting room, hat in one hand, heart unhopeful.

  The climb upstairs hadn’t been quite long enough to accustom him to the indoor dim, and he blinked stupidly for several seconds as he cast about the room in search of her. His gaze lit upon her at last, and he blinked more stupidly still.

  Small wonder he’d missed her. He’d been looking for the usual black shape, in her usual striped chair. But today she sat on the sofa, facing him, and she wasn’t wearing black. She wasn’t wearing … very much of anything at all. No cap, to begin with: her hair fell loose about her shoulders, dark gold rippling against the pale pink of a dressing-gown that skimmed over her form, apparently with no other garment between.

  Definitely with no garment between; that became clear as she rose from the sofa. The fabric shifted here, clung there. His hat slipped from his fingers and tumbled to the floor. The gown’s sash, he saw, was not even fastened—only her clutched hands kept her covered—and he went very still and began silently to pray, the kind of prayers to land a man who-knew-where in the hereafter.

  She took one step forward. She swallowed. For a small eternity she hovered where she was, on the verge of doing something, and he could only wait, and pray harder.

  Slow as a spring thaw, slow as a tide, slow as clouds scudding across the calmest of skies, her hands glided up the gown’s two edges and drew them back, over her shoulders, baring her to his sight. The garment caught for one scant second at her elbows, then it slipped all the way off and she left it behind, walking toward him.

  Hell and all its devils. Everything else in the room just dissolved, until only the sight of her remained. He’d seen her naked before, of course, but … no, scratch that, he’d never seen her naked before. Not like this. Dimly he recognized that she was trying—that this was exactly what he’d told her he did not want—and he knew, as his mouth went dry and his short hairs stood on end, how utterly hollow his own words had been.

  She moved deliberately, with an excruciating slowness that made the scene feel as if it were playing out underwater, or in a dream. Her shoulders sat square, her head upright. He raised his eyes to hers and saw a jittery, almost sickly expression. Like a French aristocrat doing her best to be brave on the way to the guillotine.

  Stop. You don’t have to do this. Somewhere on the way from his brain to his tongue the words expired. He could envision, with perfect clarity, crossing the room to catch up her discarded gown and draping it gently, reassuringly, over her shoulders, but envisioning was as far as he could go. Well enough. Kindly, caretaking impulses had got him precious little of late.

  And fear or no fear, on she came, and he willed her, with everything he had, to keep coming. You can do it, Mrs. Russell. Just four more paces now … and three … He could help her, of course. He could take a step toward her, and reduce the distance she had to cover, but it seemed important she finish what she’d begun.

  Now two paces … now one … His right hand rose of its own accord and fitted itself to her breast as she reached him. The nipple lay soft, as always, in the palm of his glove, but no matter. She’d planned this. She’d spent time thinking of what he would want. She’d probably chosen the dressing-gown she supposed he would like best, and she’d put it off immediately because she knew he would like that even better. She’d felt fear and gone ahead anyway, and this kind of effort, a man could live with. He could live with a great deal of it.

  She had no idea what to do next—he could feel that—so he sent his other hand round to the small of her back, and gathered her in. Her body was relaxing in the shelter he made, letting go the tension that had so tightly strung her, and she felt … Oh, but she felt splendid against him, naked where he was clothed. Thighs against his trousers. Chest against his coat. Breast curved neatly in his palm. Neither of them had spoken since his entrance into the room, but he suddenly had something important to say.

  “I’m not going to make it to the bed. Do you mind the floor very much?”

  She shook her head and he bore them both down to the carpet, one hand already working his trouser-buttons free. For a moment she looked vulnerable as a butterfly, pinned to the floor underneath him, wide-eyed, uncertain, exposed. Her bare toes brushed against his boots and then he was in her, the freed buttons pressing marks into her flesh with each thrust. There would be marks on her back, too, rasped in by the rug—he ought to prevent those; ought to take some care; maybe cradle her up off the floor just enough to—but she slipped her hands under his coat, trying again, and then—oh, God—hitched up her legs and locked them round his hips.

  And he was lost. He gripped her shoulders and ravished, hard and quick, half expecting her to cry out in protest, but she only seized his shirt in handfuls and wound her legs tighter.

  Yes. Take it. Take it all. Don’t refuse me. Take every last foul bit. He plunged, again and again, into a frenzy of lust and shame and blessed, blessed relief. She didn’t refuse. She didn’t recoil. She kept his shirt tight in her fists and stayed with him as he gave her everything, everything he had to give from every bright and dark place in his soul, until nothing remained to give but the seed, and he gave it, and sank down, and lay still.

  * * *

  WELL. SHE hadn’t expected that. She hadn’t really known what to expect, but … Well.

  He appeared a bit stunned by it himself. He lay as though lifel
ess on top of her, his head sunk heavy past her shoulder. “Forgive me,” he muttered stiffly after a minute or two.

  “There’s nothing to forgive.” If he knew how she had feared this act wouldn’t happen again, he would surely laugh.

  “Yes, there is.” He rolled off her, onto his side, and fumbled at his trousers, putting his parts away. “I’m sure I’ve left you raw in more places than one.” His eyes sank from hers for a moment, to find the first few buttons, and when he looked up again he must have seen her confusion. “If your back doesn’t sting already, it will soon.”

  Her back. That seemed unlikely. But who was she to question?—undoubtedly he was better versed in these things than she would ever be.

  “I’m truly sorry.” His voice softened and slowed. His eyes looked stricken. “I’m not like that, usually.”

  “I didn’t mind it. It went quickly.”

  His head dropped back to the floor and he sighed. “No, I pride myself, usually, on leaving a lady with something more to delight in than the brevity of my attentions.”

  Delight was a strong word. But admittedly one might have use, in certain hours, for the memory of his quick, furious surrender. The desperate need with which he’d come to her, almost as though he were seeking some carnal salvation. One might fold these qualities in with one’s collection of vague imagined scenes for reviewing in private, and one might find some pleasure there.

  No need to say so to him. She bent her knees up to tilt her hips. “Can I trouble you to fetch a pillow before you go?”

  “I’ve no intention of leaving you stunned and naked on your sitting-room floor.” The suggestion brought him out of his pensive manner: he hauled himself to his knees.

  “I’m not stunned,” she began, but before she could get further he was bent over her, and then one of his arms was cradling up her shoulders, and one hooking under her knees, and the carpet receded beneath her as he rose to his feet. Without comment, as though he frequently managed women this way, he carried her to the bed and used one knee to pull back the covers. Then he set her down, arranged the pillow, and drew the covers over her.