by Anne Gracie
Mr. Rider lay back on the bed and did his best to look undisturbed.
A moment later Maddy came flying into the cottage. She stuck her head between the bed curtains and said in an urgent voice, “No matter what you hear, or what is said, or done, do not wake up! Do you hear me? It is of the utmost importance that you appear to remain unconscious at all times. Don’t move a muscle!” She twitched the bed curtains closed, and before he could ask what on earth was going on, he heard a knock at the door.
“Oh, Mr. Matheson, what a pleasant surprise,” Maddy said in apparent surprise.
“My dear Miss Woodford.” The speaker had a deep, fruity voice of the sort normally heard from pulpits. “I thought it incumbent that I call on you in your hour of need.”
“My hour of need?”
The fruity voice lowered, retaining its dramatic flair. “Your Unwelcome Imposition.”
“My unwe—oh, you mean the injured stranger. He’s not really an imposition.”
Little liar, the imposition thought.
“But of course he is,” the Reverend Fruit-bowl declared. “An unmarried young lady, forced to give shelter to an Unknown Man! And a man—I may add, without sullying your Tender Ears—of Unsavory Habits!”
Unsavory habits? The imposition was tempted to demand an explanation, but aware of his hostess’s instructions, lay indignantly feigning unconsciousness. What the devil did this prosy windbag know, to accuse him of unsavory habits?
“So you know him?” she asked calmly.
“Know him? I thank the Lord I do not. But I know of His Kind.”
“What kind is that?”
“It would not be proper for me to explain, but suffice it to say—”
“You mean the kind that travels without a nightshirt?” There was a faint gobbling sound, but she went on undisturbed. “The doctor told me of your concerns, dear Mr. Matheson, but truly there is nothing to worry about. We managed to get him into the nightshirt you sent—”
“We?” the fruit-bowl declared ominously.
“The doctor and John, of course,” she said smoothly.
Oh, she was good. The doctor and John had been nowhere in sight when she’d wrestled him into the blasted thing. No wonder the nightshirt swam on him. The Reverend Fruit-bowl was obviously as rounded as his vowels.
“I should hope so, too! And Miss Woodford, I beg of you, there is no further need for you to refer to an Intimate Masculine Garment. I realize it must be Distressing for a Lady.”
And what would you think, good Rev. Windbag, if you knew she’d stripped me of every stitch of clothing and then put me in her bed, stark naked. And then joined me there, albeit chastely. He muffled a snort of laughter.
“What was that?” the windbag asked.
“Nothing,” she said hurriedly. “And intimate masculine garments don’t offend me in the least. I wash the boys’ smalls each week. Now can I offer you a cup of tea? There is only peppermint tea with honey, I’m afraid, but—”
“No, no, I thank you. My good lady will have tea waiting when I return, but I’m sure I heard . . .”
“No doubt it was one of the children playing. They often make the most ridiculous sounds, and oddly, it sounds quite clo—Rev. Matheson, I beg you, do not disturb—”
The faded red bed curtains were flung open.
There was a long silence as he feigned unconsciousness under the close stare of the vicar. He could hear the man breathing as he leaned over to scrutinize him closely. His breath smelt of port and caraway seeds.
He attempted to look pale and at death’s door. How deeply did one breathe when unconscious? he wondered. And did one let one’s mouth fall open or not? Not, he decided. It was not an attractive look, and he was sure she was standing by the vicar, watching him for any sign of awareness.
“A vicious-looking Ruffian,” the vicar declared. “A Veritable Pirate.”
“That’s because of the bruises and bandage, and because he hasn’t shaved for a few days.”
So she thought he looked like a pirate, too, did she?
“He’s like this most of the time,” she told the vicar. “Day or night, he never moves, so you can see, I’m in no danger.” She was defending him. Interesting.
The vicar huffed. “Dr. Thompson said he was conscious earlier today.”
“He was, that’s true, but he was so exhausted by the doctor’s ministrations he lapsed back into unconsciousness almost immediately and hasn’t moved a muscle since.”
Without warning, a finger poked him sharply in the side, right on the site of one of his more tender injuries. He made an angry exclamation but managed to turn it into a groan. He hoped it was convincing. It hurt like the very devil.
“I don’t like it, I don’t like it at all,” the vicar said.
And I don’t like you poking me, he thought.
“He’s harmless, Rev. Matheson, so please, come away. The doctor said his recovery will be quicker if he’s not disturbed.” She pulled the curtains closed and he was able to relax.
“I was going to offer to take him in at the vicarage. It’s not right that a young, single lady be burdened with such a one as he.”
“The doctor said he wasn’t to be moved until his head injury shows sign of healing.”
“He said the same to me,” the vicar said testily. “But when will that be?”
“It’s in God’s hands,” she said, and he had to stifle a laugh at the way she’d stolen the vicar’s line.
“Then until this Happy Event takes place, perhaps my Good Lady should come and stay with you, as Chaperone.”
She laughed, a sparkling sound. “Do not suggest such a thing, I beg you. Poor Mrs. Matheson. She would hate to be in such a small, stuffy cottage, shut in with five noisy children.”
“She is very fond of children—”
“I know, and she’s been more than kind to us. But there would be nowhere for her to sleep.”
There was a short, tense pause.
“And where, may I ask, do you sleep, Miss Woodford? I happen to know there are but the two bedrooms upstairs, with two beds—”
“I made my bed the last two nights on the floor in front of the fire.”
She’s good, he thought. It was not, after all, a lie. She had made the bed on the floor. He’d seen her rolling it up in the morning. She’d simply left out the part where she’d slept with him. And the thing she called Hadrian’s Wall.
“But—”
“And tonight I will do the same,” she said with quiet assurance.
Not if I can help it, he thought.
“I don’t like it—”
“It’s very kind of you to worry about me, Mr. Matheson, but there’s not the least need. I need no protection from this feeble, injured creature. And I am hardly a young ingenue, after all; I’ve been supporting myself and my brothers and sisters without assistance for some time now.”
“Yes, but—”
“And with five little chaperones, I don’t need another, so please, don’t worry about me or the stranger. Most of the time he’s unconscious and, when awake, he seems a very gentlemanly sort. Besides, I’m sure he’ll recover his memory soon and be off.”
He heard the front door being opened.
“But I don’t like it,” the vicar said unhappily. “Not one little bit.”
A few minutes later she returned. “He’s gone, you can relax now.” She opened the curtains and looked in.
“Prosy old windbag,” he said.
“He’s a very kind man,” she told him. “He and his wife have been more than good to the children and me, and I won’t have you mock him. He’s concerned for my reputation and safety, that’s all.”
“Then why on earth did you tell me to feign insensibility? I could have reassured him that I was a gentleman and—”
“And that would have been a disaster.”
He frowned. “Why?”
She seemed about to say something, then stopped. “Take it from me, it just would.”
“In what way
?” he persisted.
“Very well, if you must know, I think that if he knew you were a gentleman and unmarried, he would attempt to force us to marry.”
He laughed. “You cannot be serious. Nobody, vicar or otherwise, could force me into anything I did not want. Why would he even consider such a thing?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Because he thinks it a scandal that you’re in my bed, that’s why.”
“Yes, but nothing’s happened. And even if it had, I’ve been in dozens of—” he broke off, noticing her expression. “At least I’m sure I must have been . . . Probably.”
“He was right to remind me that I don’t know anything about you.”
“I don’t know anything about me, either,” he reminded her. “But even I can tell that a marriage between us would be prepos—” He broke off.
“Yes?” she said with a sweetness that didn’t deceive him in the least.
He tried to retrieve his position. “You don’t want a marriage of that sort, either, or you wouldn’t have gone out of your way to assure him I was—how did you put it?—oh, yes, ‘this feeble, injured creature.’” It rankled. Injured, yes, but a feeble creature? As if he were of no account. “Why did you do that, eh? So that he wouldn’t think me any danger to your reputation at all?”
“Exactly so!” she flashed. “I have no wish to be yoked in marriage to any man, let alone a man I know nothing about, who just happened to ride past one day and fall off his horse at my feet.”
“I did not fall off, I was thrown when my horse slipped! And if you didn’t want to be compromised, why didn’t you accept his offer to take me to his house?”
“Because, you fool, despite growing evidence that you have the thickest skull in creation, the doctor said it could cause you serious damage to be moved!” And with that she snapped the bed curtains shut and stormed from the cottage, slamming the door with a bang.
Six
Maddy stomped into the garden. Wretched man. So the idea of marrying her was preposterous, was it? As if Mr. Nameless—who couldn’t even sit up without getting dizzy, and needed to be fed like a baby—were some enormous catch, and she a person of no consequence!
She knew she wasn’t any man’s idea of a desirable bride, but did he have to laugh? She dashed an angry tear away.
She was probably better born than him anyway. Her mother’s ancestors were of the haute nobilite—even if they had fallen from grace for a generation or two.
She glanced across to where the children were playing some sort of game over by the wall. Knights and maidens it looked like, with Susan and Lucy playing the maidens and Jane playing the dragon. Poor Jane. Never the glamorous role. Perhaps she should . . . No. Jane was enjoying herself, she saw, giving her brothers a very hard time as the dragon, roaring and hurling imaginary bolts of fire at them, and pretending to eat up their reed swords when they got too close.
The children were perfectly happy. She was fed up with talking to children and impossible men. She needed to talk to the bees. She’d talked to the bees ever since she was a little girl. Grand-mère had taught her: One must always talk to the bees, confide in them your thoughts, tell them the news, who has been born and who has died. Do this and the bees will never let you down.
She wended her way through the densely packed vegetable beds, past the chicken house to the line of fruit trees parallel to the wall that they called the orchard.
Set into the wall were arched recesses, and in those recesses sat her pride and joy, her bee hives. The recesses had been constructed with the ancient wall, built specifically for bee hives. It pleased Maddy to be part of a continuing tradition.
The bad weather was in the past, she saw as she drew closer; the little creatures were busily flying to and fro. Bees were wonderful predictors of weather. Taking care to stay out of their direct flight path, she made her way to her favorite seat, a simple slab of thick slate set on top of two stones against the wall, with hives to the left and right of her.
A dozen bees buzzed around her curiously. She stayed calm, and deciding she was harmless, they flew off.
“Oh, bees, I’m so cross and out of sorts,” she began. She told them all about her stranger with no memory, for you should always tell the bees about any newcomer.
“And as for being forced into marriage to avoid scandal, who in their right mind would want that? I can’t imagine anything worse than to be tied in marriage to a man who’d resent you for the rest of his life. Don’t you agree?”
They did, she could tell. Bees were sensible creatures.
Maddy knew what it was like to live with a resentful man. Papa had come to resent Mama, and theirs had begun as a love match—or so Mama said.
Maddy was not so sure it was love at all. Papa had been dazzled by Mama’s beauty, her noble family, and her fortune. But his love cooled as he slowly realized Mama’s family and fortune would never be returned, and Mama’s beauty had faded as she failed, time and time again, to give Papa the heir he craved . . .
Poor Mama, grieving endlessly for her lost babies, blamed so bitterly for what she could not help, for what tore her apart.
To live with such resentment . . . Maddy would wish that on no woman, least of all herself.
She went on to tell the bees of the more serious problem of Sir Jasper letting her down, and the problem of the rent on the cottage that was no longer payable in honey.
“I’ve insisted on an audience with this heir—when he gets back to England, if ever—and will try to oblige him to honor Sir Jasper’s word, but I fear he will . . . No, you’re right, it’s not sensible to dwell on fears for the future. One must work and take care of the children and hope for the best, I know.”
The bees buzzed back and forth. She knew they listened. Probably it was the queen who lived in the center of the hive who wanted the news, making babies her entire life and never getting out, poor thing. Like Mama.
Grand-mère was right. Talking to the bees always brought a sense of peace and comfort. Maddy felt better for getting her worries off her chest, and now there was weeding to be done.
She loved this garden, with its neat rows and ordered squares. She’d made it herself, wresting it, with the help of the children, from a tangle of weeds.
She knelt by a patch of yellowing leeks and began to pull them out. There were still potatoes and onions left, but she needed to get the summer vegetables planted. The period after winter and before the new growth was harvestable was the hungry time in the garden, the same as for the bees.
Ironic to reflect that she’d hated this garden at first, furious and resentful that she was forced to grow vegetables or let the children starve, furious that Papa had been such a careless spendthrift that his children were left with nothing—worse than nothing: there were debts.
Mr. Hulme had saved them from debtor’s prison, at least.
And if she wasn’t sufficiently grateful to repay him in the way he wanted, well, that was Papa’s fault, too. He should never have put her in that position in the first place.
She hoed vigorously between the rows, taking satisfaction from the destruction of the new weeds poking their impudent noses through the soil, stealing the goodness from her tender new seedlings.
He lay back against the pillows, pricked by guilt. He shouldn’t have laughed. Of course she was upset. Nobody liked to be laughed at.
But the idea of the vicar forcing a marriage between himself and Miss Woodford had struck him as so unlikely. Even without knowing anything about himself, he could see at a glance that they came from very different backgrounds.
She lived in a laborer’s cottage. He was pretty sure he’d never even been in a house so small and cramped. His fascination with it told him as much. So tiny and yet six people lived here. Seven, counting himself.
And so tidily organized, everything in its place and not a single thing that he could see that did not have some practical function. No items of beauty or culture, just workaday necessities.
There
were anomalies, however—her accent, for one. And the children’s. They spoke as he did, properly, without strong regional inflections.
Perhaps she was a gentleman’s daughter, fallen on hard times. It made the question of marriage between them no less unlikely, but if she were gently born, he could understand why she’d been offended by his laughter.
When people of once-good family lost their position in society, it made them all the touchier about being shown respect. Hewould apologize when she returned to the cottage.
He dozed for a while but woke when he heard her returning.
“Could I have some hot water, please?” he asked, struggling to sit up. He closed his eyes to stop the spinning, and when he opened them, she was standing beside the bed, framed by the faded red curtains, as lovely a sight as any he could imagine, her face flushed and a little rosy from her time outdoors.
She watched him gravely, a cup of steaming liquid in her hand.
“I’m sorry for what I said before,” he began. “About it being prepo—”
“There’s nothing to apologize for,” she said quickly, with a look that indicated she had no intention of discussing it further. She held out the cup. “Here, take this.”
He took it and caught a whiff that made him glance at the contents. It was some kind of browny liquid. He wrinkled his nose. “What is this?”
“Willow-bark tea. It will help with the headache. And ginger which will help with the nausea.”
He handed it back to her untouched. “Thank you, but no. I want hot water for a shave.” He ran a hand over his rough chin and gave her a rueful smile. “I have it on good authority that I look like a vicious ruffian, some kind of pirate.”
She smiled. “You mustn’t mind Rev. Matheson. His bark is worse than his bite. I’ll get you some hot water, but first you need to drink this.” She held the cup out again.
He made no move to take it. He didn’t want any medicine. The last lot of stuff she gave him had given him lurid dreams. “No, thank you.”
“I’ve been steeping it all night.” She added in a coaxing voice, “And I’ve sweetened it with honey to help with the bitter taste.”
