SHE WOKE the next morning to a half-empty bed. He was up already, moving about in the sluggish gray predawn. “Did I wake you?” he said, coming in from her dressing room. He must have gone to splash his face. He certainly hadn’t gone to dress: he wore not a stitch. In this light his body looked like something chiseled out of marble. Somebody’s statue come to life and now reaching for clothes, weary of its naked state. So different from the candlelit nakedness to which she’d grown accustomed. By candlelight he was nothing like a statue, his skin warm and vivid under that lambent illumination, and all alive with appetite as well.
“You didn’t wake me.” She rubbed a fist over her eyes. Thoughts were not coming quite coherently. “You do, usually, though.”
“Miss that, do you?” He tossed his shirt and trousers onto the armchair and stepped into his drawers. “Then I’ll be sure to not omit it tomorrow.”
Of course I don’t miss it. She didn’t have to say that. He knew, and was only teasing.
She watched him dress. Gradually he covered his chiseled self, sitting in the armchair at last to pull on his boots. When that was done he came to the bedside and sank all the way down on his knees. His arms folded atop the mattress. His chin sank onto his arms. He looked at her, wordlessly.
His eyes wore the raw marks of too little sleep. His hair bent in odd directions. He needed to shave. Her hand, without awaiting her permission, strayed from the mattress and settled against his cheek, to know what that texture was like.
He turned his head and pressed his lips into her palm. Soft, unutterably soft, his kiss, where her skin tingled from the coarse touch of his tiny beard-bristles. Eyes closed, he stayed just so for several seconds, as though breathing in her hand’s particular scent. “Are you at liberty this afternoon?” he then said. He caught her hand in his and laid her palm once more against his cheek.
“I expect so. Unless you’ve recruited more callers.”
“Not yet.” His cheek rasped pleasantly over her hand as he angled his head to and fro. “And today I’d like you to come pay a call with me. I’ve wanted you to meet another of my laborers. An older man with some expertise in dairy farming.”
“Mr. Barrow. You’ve mentioned him before.”
“Indeed.” His fingers laced with hers as though he meant to keep her hand against his face forever. “He ought to be at home during the dinner hour. We might make a short visit.”
“I’d like that.”
“Very good then. I’ll call for you.” He turned her hand over and kissed her knuckles one by one. And she found she was sorry when he came to the last.
IF SOMEONE had told him, that first day in church, the course things would take between himself and the woman across the aisle, he should have roared with laughter until he slid right out of his pew and was ejected from the premises. If he’d been told to anticipate seduction, he should have imagined himself the seducer, gradually coaxing her to loosen her stays and let down her hair and learn to give over to pleasure.
“Is he a widower, Mr. Barrow?” She marched beside him, asking such questions, methodically preparing herself to make a good impression. He knew her habits by now.
“Never married and no family living nearby. All the more reason to call.” With one finger he crushed the painstaking folds of his cravat to bare his neck to the breeze on that side. A month ago his cravat was sacrosanct.
August had finally drawn to a close, and the air brought promise of cooler fall weather. He might not see much of it. The more he undertook to better things at Pencarragh, the higher he would rise in Granville’s estimation and the sooner he would be deemed worthy of a return to London. That had been his goal, not so very long since.
At Mr. Barrow’s cottage the geese and pig had some sort of commotion going, from their separate pens, and the volume increased as he and Mrs. Russell passed through the gate. Uneasiness glanced up his spine, like a skipping-stone over the surface of a lake. “Is something wrong with the animals?” the widow said. Another stone, skipping in the tracks of the first.
He knocked at the door, to no answer. “He may have brought dinner with him to the field,” he said. “He can’t come home and find it waiting, after all.” This explanation had everything of reason to it. Nevertheless his hand closed round the knob and he gave it a turn.
The door opened onto a stench so overpowering that he had to step back and put a hand to his nose. Beside him the widow gasped aloud and his arm, independent of thought, swung out like an iron bar in front of her to prevent her going any farther. God. The animals. How long since they’d been fed? “Feed the stock,” he said to her in a voice he didn’t recognize.
“Later, for Heaven’s sake. We have to go in and find out—”
“No.” She shrank from his tone, and so would he most likely have done, had he been able to hear it through the blood now pounding in his ears. “I’ll go. Wait here.”
She nodded once, folding her arms across her chest. Pale and rigid, she stepped aside and left him to proceed.
He breathed with his mouth, through the six strides that took him across the kitchen to the bedroom doorway, sparing himself the smell but tasting rank air all the same. He’d never been in the presence of death. He’d never breathed its scent. And maybe … the thought stood firm through the haze of panic … maybe this was not that scent. Some lower part of his brain was beginning to unplait it into more than one strand. Several scents, fetid sickroom scents, mingled together.
He stepped into the bedroom. Mr. Barrow lay unmoving, a crumpled bit of refuse under a fouled sheet. Theo looked reflexively away—what man would want to be seen in this state?—before willing his eyes back with the reminder that the man might be beyond such cares, forever. He went to the bed.
He’d been ill, Mr. Barrow had, in every way possible for a man to be ill. Too weak, apparently, to reach the chamberpot. Mother of God, how long had he lain here, unmissed and unattended? Had no fieldworker noticed his absence and thought to look in on him?
One unsteady hand went to the frail throat, feeling through papery skin for a pulse, and … Yes. Undeniable. He lurched suddenly to the wall to lean there, and then bent forward, hands on knees. Relief had a weight all its own, staggering as worry but infinitely more welcome.
“Theo?” She didn’t sound like herself either, now he thought of it. Fearful. Tentative. Faint. Everything the widow was not.
“Stay where you are,” he called. “It’s not the worst—not yet, at all events. But don’t come in.”
Mr. Barrow stirred at his voice. Theo dropped to his knees by the bedside. The old man’s lips moved, and moved again, and on the third time he finally made out the word: water.
For God’s sake, of course. The man needed something to drink. How could he be so stupid as to need telling at all, let alone three times? He shoved to his feet and made for the kitchen. Where would a cottager keep his ale? And would ale be safe, in his condition? Perhaps cider would be gentler on a weakened constitution. Devil if he knew.
But the question was moot. There was no bottle of anything in the larder, and in the kitchen he found only an empty jug. He’d fetch water from the stream, then, and … boil it, or something, to make it safe to drink. So people did with tea, didn’t they? Yes. He must do that.
No fire in the stove. He’d have to make one. God. He must lay a fire, go to the stream, bring back water, find some vessel in which to boil it … and then how long would it take to boil, and how long after that to cool to a temperature fit to drink? He must probably strain it as well, and with what? Despair reared up like a tidal wave, and he set down the jug and put a hand to his forehead.
No. Forget about the water. He’d find a doctor. Devil take him, why had he wasted even three seconds trifling about water when he ought to have gone for a doctor at once? Curse his useless, impractical soul. He was unequal to this in every way.
THEO.” THE longer he stayed in there, the tighter panic gripped. “Please tell me what I can do to help.”
“I do.” At last, a way to be useful! “I know where to get more than one.”
“Good. Run and find a boy. Tell him to go to the stable and send someone on a horse to fetch a doctor as quick as can be.” He paused for breath, and she could see the effort with which he kept calm. “If any of the cottagers have cider, or very mild ale, we need some. Tell the boy to have it sent.”
“Shall I instruct them to tell the doctor you’ll pay? Sometimes a doctor won’t come to a poor man’s house.”
He swore, and put his fist to his forehead, half turning away. “Have the doctor sent to my house. There can be no doubt, then. I’ll move Mr. Barrow there. He ought to be removed from that room anyway.”
“I’ll tell the boy to have the stable send a cart.” She started off.
“No.” His voice stopped her like a hard curb on a horse. “I don’t want him jounced. I’ll carry him. I’ll clean him up as best I can, and carry him to the house.”
Are you mad? That must be nearly a mile. Only to herself did she say these words, and she was already running as she said them. As she’d never run in all her years, she ran, skirts caught up in both fists and boots pounding over the uneven terrain. She found a boy, a lad of twelve or so, and gave him her commission, drink and doctor both. When he’d lit out with a boy’s blessed fleetness, she hurried back to the Barrow cottage, the pain of exertion biting into her side.
Mr. Mirkwood was adamant in his refusal to let her in. “He wouldn’t want a lady to see him this way,” he said, and that was that. But she could tend to the animals, at least. Poor hungry clamorous things. She might pick a few vegetables from the garden, and perhaps there would be bread in the kitchen, suitable for throwing in crumbs to the geese. Water to begin, though. Round back was a pail, and Mr. Mirkwood was able to tell the way to the stream. Water, vegetables, bread: to shape a plan, even one so small, and put it into execution had its usual fortifying effect. She would conquer this crisis, a task at a time.
Mrs. Weaver, apparently, would conquer it with her, for here she was scattering bread to the geese when Martha came back lugging water. “I’d be of more use in the house,” the woman said in lieu of a greeting. “I’m sure he doesn’t know the first thing about a sickbed, but he came and took the cider from me and insisted I stay out.”
Of all the moments to finally find a speck of kinship. “He said the same to me. As though modesty would matter at a time like this. Can you keep the geese away while I pour their water?”
They worked with a comforting efficiency, getting geese and pig watered, choosing the poorest stuff in the garden to toss into the trough, until Mr. Mirkwood appeared at the door. “I’ve got him in a clean nightshirt and I’ll take him to the house.” His hat was missing, his hair half on end as though he’d been running anxious fingers through it. “I think we must burn all the bedclothes and the mattress, and open any windows we can. Is there firewood enough?”
Mrs. Weaver shook her head. “Better to launder the things. I’ll look them over and see what can be salvaged.”
“No.” His eyes were the eyes of a stranger, resolute and terrible. “Burn them. Burn them all.”
“I doubt he’s got more than the one set of sheets.” Resolute and terrible didn’t daunt Mrs. Weaver. “I know for certain he hasn’t got another mattress. Where is he to sleep if we burn everything?”
His face contorted. “I’ll bring him a blasted mattress from my own blasted house.” He leaned a forearm into the door frame, and his brow against his forearm. She recognized the posture from that awful day on which he’d called her a corpse. “Please just burn everything. Or if you cannot, tell me, and I’ll delegate the task elsewhere.”
“We can do it. I can.” What was she saying? She’d never built a bonfire in her life.
“Thank you, Mrs. Russell,” he said, weary and grateful, and he vanished into the house.
Well, where to begin? Somewhere downwind, and far enough from the house that sparks couldn’t jump to the thatch. She must get firewood, and some tinderbox or other fire-starting tool. If luck was with her, Mrs. Weaver would take pity and join in. If not, she would manage by herself, just the way she always—
Movement in the doorway interrupted her thoughts, and then thought scattered altogether and she stood as though staked to the spot.
Mr. Mirkwood with a sick man in his arms. She had known to expect this sight. But to expect, and to see, proved two vastly different things. Expectation did not prepare one for the details. For the ashen color of the old man’s face. For his arms, slack as a baby’s, laid across his chest. For the sad fluttering hem of his nightshirt. For the dreadful ease with which the younger man carried him, as though he were nothing but bones in a bag.
So had Father looked in his last months. For all that he must have been twenty years younger, he’d had this same poor diminished weight. Diminished color. Perhaps Mr. Russell, too, had worn a similar aspect, his limbs hanging limp when a farmer found him and gathered up his broken body.
Something … shifted … in her. Something sheared away, thunderous as a shelf of ice in a spring thaw. She sucked in a tremulous lungful of air and felt tears coursing down her cheeks.
Mr. Mirkwood heaved a half-step forward. “Martha.” Oh, he sounded as though someone had his entrails in a clenched fist! And he made an awful mistake, using her Christian name before an onlooker. She scrubbed at her cheeks with the back of one hand, turning her face from him.
“She’ll be fine.” An unexpected hand on her shoulder. “It’s just the shock catching up, and alarm at the sight.” An unexpectedly calming, strengthening voice. “Go on. I’ll help her with the fire, and she’ll be fine.”
She stole a glance. He nodded at Mrs. Weaver, his face reddening—too late, he’d caught the mistake—and strode off with his burden.
Dear Lord. What to say now? “I’m sorry.” She pressed fists against both her eyes. “It was alarm at the sight, just as you said, and then I was put in mind of my father before he died.”
“It will pass.” The hand fell from her shoulder. “I’ll go see what firewood we have.”
“Mrs. Weaver.” What in Heaven’s name was she doing? She saw the words she was going to say, like stones bouncing down a steep hill, farther and farther beyond her reach as she chased after them. “I know what happened to you at Seton Park. Or rather, what was done to you. What Mr. James Russell did.” With titanic effort she forced her face to pivot ninety degrees, and let her fists drop.
Mrs. Weaver stood hard and expressionless. She didn’t speak.
“I’m sorry, so sorry for it.”
“It’s nothing to do with you.” Her eyes flickered away, to the pen where the pig had finished its meal and now scratched its back along the fence.
“I mean to make you amends one day. And to prevent Mr. James Russell from ever inheriting, and coming back into this neighborhood. I will do whatever I must to prevent that.”
Mrs. Weaver glared through the pig now, her brow contracting and the corners of her mouth working as she cast and recast Martha’s words. Or, perhaps, as she revisited scenes from sixteen years past. “It’s none of my concern, what you do,” she said finally. “And as to amends, I don’t know what form they could take. We’d better start the fire.”
They didn’t speak again of that subject, but worked in brisk concert, building the fire and dragging every grim artifact of Mr. Barrow’s illness out from the house. After an hour or six of this—could she recall ever being so tired?—Mr. Mirkwood returned, more rumpled than before, to say the doctor had been and gone, and pronounced Mr. Barrow out of danger. “I didn’t know whether you’d still be here,” he said, “but I saw the smoke. I wanted to tell you, and to thank you both for your help and forbearance.” He held out a hand to Mrs. Weaver.
She took it, eyes averted, and let it go after one brief shake. “Next time he m
isses even a day of work I’ll send one of my boys to look in on him.”
“We’ll get up a system. The burden won’t be entirely on your family.” He turned then, to face her, and his eyes brimmed with a hundred things he couldn’t say in front of Mrs. Weaver. “You’re feeling better, I hope, Mrs. Russell?”
As though Mrs. Weaver would forget how he’d addressed her before. Absurdity tugged at the corners of her mouth and she brought a hand up to mask it. “Much better, thank you, Mr. Mirkwood. I hope I shall be able to meet Mr. Barrow another day.”
“By all means.” His eyes went to the ground between them and he was briefly silent, like a young man who’d encountered a lady he fancied and was wracking his brains for conversation. “Shall I have someone drive you home? I’d offer my own services but I think I’d best go bathe before I’m in company with anyone.”
“Of course. No, I’ll walk, thank you.” Now she looked at the ground as well.
Bathe. If she were his wife—Heaven above, where had that thought come from?—but if she were his wife, they would go to his house together and she would attend him in his bath. On the tile or marble floor she would kneel, taking the soap from his unresisting hand, and she would scrub him while he bent his head forward, all the burdens of the day floating off. With her thumbs she would knead away every knot that care had worked into the muscles of his back. His breaths would grow looser, telling her without words what comfort she brought. And her hands would tell him how proud she was, how very proud, of all he’d done and been today.
Nothing to the purpose. She would never be his wife. Even should she come to wish for that, and he to wish it too, it could not be. The safety of Seton Park depended on her child—however she procured one—being known as Mr. Russell’s heir. Other men in their baths did not bear thinking of.
And yet one did think of it. On shaking his hand good-bye, on the long walk home, and for great swaths of the afternoon one imagined him sinking into warm water and turning lazily this way and that. His soap would be scented. Citrus, probably, or one of those musk-like smells men favored. His hair would curl more than usual in the steamy air. In water he would be naked yet a different way. Not like marble, nor warmed by flame, but subtle and obscured. Leaving parts to the imagination. One would admire the vague sum of him, and wait for the moment when he must rise into plain air.
A Lady Awakened Page 22
