May Mistakes

by Merry Farmer

  “A gentleman would never disgrace a lady in that way,” he bit back with every ounce of the nobility that had been bred into him through generations of earls claiming the Waltham title. Crimpley’s eyes shot wide, and he stared at Basil as though seeing a whole new person.

  As quickly as Basil had assumed the demeanor of his former life, he let it drop. He stuffed the letter from Malcolm into his jacket pocket, then marched forward through the crowd to where Elaine was still attempting to speak.

  “…not just the vote. Women should be allowed to attend university and to study any subject they choose. To hold them back simply because of their gender—” She stopped and her eyes brightened as Basil cut through the front row of the crowd to stand in front of her. “Mr. Wall, don’t you agree?” she asked in a loud voice.

  “Of course, I do,” Basil said as he grasped her around the waist, lifting her down from the crate.

  His gesture was met by a round of cheers and lascivious jeers from the men who had begun to close in on her. Dr. Newsome sent Basil a grateful look of relief as he took Elaine’s hand and led her off to the side of the crowd.

  “Do you see what kind of madness ensues when God’s natural order is upended?” Mr. Balliwick shouted from his crate.

  Basil shook with anger at the venomous laughter that followed. Perhaps Malcolm was right. He and his friends had been fighting for the rights of women in Parliament before he’d executed his disappearing act, and despite his self-imposed exile, Basil had kept abreast of everything they were doing. Perhaps, for Elaine’s sake, he should return to London to take up the fight.

  If only that wouldn’t mean leaving her, as well as exposing everything he’d held back from her.

  “Why did you stop me?” she demanded, as fired up as a boiling kettle, once they reached the far edge of the square. “I was just getting started.”

  “I know, my dear,” he said, turning her and gripping her upper arms. “But you were in more danger than I think you were aware of.”

  She pursed her lips and huffed through her nose. “I was fully aware of the danger I was in. Those men are barbarians, and they would have torn me limb from limb if given half a chance.”

  Basil jerked straight, brow shooting up in surprise. “Then why continue to speak like that in front of them?”

  In a flash, her expression turned sad and weary, and she looked more like her thirty years than the innocent child she so often appeared to be. “Because no one will give you anything in life. Because unless you stand up and fight for the things that you want, the world you want, nothing will change. And I’m not willing to be quiet and put myself in a cage simply to make other people feel comfortable. I’m not a starling, I’m a woman.”

  Basil’s heart swelled with love so potent that it made every part of him ache. Between Elaine’s beautiful words and the depth of sadness and frustration radiating from her, he could hardly think. She was everything that his former life was not, everything he’d longed to find by fleeing his old life. He would drop to one knee and pledge his heart and his life to her forever if he thought for one moment she could return his love, or that she could forgive him after learning the truth of who he was. But two years was too long to lie to someone about something so fundamental, and if she did reject him for his lies, he didn’t think he could bear it.

  “Mr. Wall, are you quite all right?” she asked, suddenly more curious than impassioned.

  “Am I….” He couldn’t manage to form a coherent thought, let alone a sentence.

  “It’s just that you’ve gone all splotchy and your eyes are a bit glassy.”

  Her concern slapped sense back into him, and he straightened, letting her go. “I’m quite well.”

  “Was it that letter Mr. Marcus gave you?” she asked, her emotions shifting once again, to compassion and caring this time. “Let me see it.” She reached for his pocket.

  “No!” He jumped back, his heart thundering against his ribs. One peek at Malcolm’s letter and it would all be over.

  Elaine let out a sharp breath and planted her fists on her hips. “Really, Mr. Wall. What has gotten into you today? First you refuse to let me read those new books and now you refuse to let me read a letter? What’s next? Will I be relegated to reading only nursery rhymes?”

  The sparkle of teasing in her eyes threatened to undo him entirely. God, how he loved her! And there wasn’t a single, bloody thing he could do about it.

  “It’s just that—”

  “Wall!”

  Grateful beyond measure that his explanation had been cut short, Basil turned to find Lord Ramsey striding toward him from the edge of the crowd. Crimpley scurried along behind him, far too much delight in his eyes for Basil’s comfort.

  “Lord Ramsey.” Basil turned and bowed with all the respect a viscount of Ramsey’s standing was entitled to, even though, in reality, Basil out-ranked him.

  By the time he straightened, Ramsey and Crimpley were standing shoulder to shoulder—or rather, Lord Ramsey was standing at attention and Crimpley was imitating his posture and expression—staring at Basil and Elaine. “I’d like to invite you to supper at Burton Manor,” Ramsey said.

  Basil blinked in surprise. Invitations to dinner from a viscount were a daily occurrence in his old life, but no one of Ramsey’s standing would have stooped to invite a humble bookseller to a formal supper. “Uh, thank you, my lord,” he replied, unable to keep the bafflement out of his voice.

  “Tuesday,” Ramsey said. “I can send a carriage to fetch you and Miss Bond, if you’d like.”

  “And Miss Bond?” Elaine said her eyes round, brimming with curiosity and excitement.

  “Yes. The invitation is for both of you,” Ramsey said with a quick nod for Elaine. “Now that that’s settled, I bid you good day, and I look forward to your presence on Tuesday.”

  Without another word, in a manner that would have been considered rude even by the loftier set in London, Ramsey turned on his heel and marched away. Crimpley shot a quick, triumphant glance to Basil, then scurried after Ramsey, whispering something to him. The whole encounter left Basil with a knot of dread in his gut.

  “Well,” Elaine exclaimed. “It would seem that my enthusiasm for the cause of women’s rights has not gone unnoticed after all.”

  Basil pivoted to stare warily at her, but he was unwilling to dent her sudden happiness by sharing his suspicions that the two of them would be targets of some sort of plot to suppress her and not honored guests whose opinions mattered.

  “I wonder what I should wear?” she went on, looping her hand through his arm as though they were still on their daily, meandering walk and nothing out of the ordinary had happened. “I suppose one must dress impeccably if she is to be the guest of a viscount. Of course, my dear Papa was on the periphery of the gentry, even though we never had much money to speak of, so this sort of event should be in my blood, shouldn’t it?”

  “Of course,” Basil said, walking a little closer to her than was strictly proper. A letter from Malcolm. An invitation to a suspicious supper at the house of a viscount. Crimpley’s involvement. He’d lived too many years to believe that his life as he’d known it for the last two years wasn’t about to be blown to pieces.

  Chapter 3

  “It’s a tragic state of affairs, really,” Elaine said to her dear friend, Rose Newsome, Tuesday afternoon as she prepared for supper at Burton Manor.

  “Being invited to a grand supper at the country house of a viscount is a tragic state of affairs?” Rose asked, baffled, from her seat on Elaine’s bed. She held darling baby Alberta against her half-exposed chest, brushing the dear one’s downy head as she fed. “I would think it a magnificent thing to be invited to such a feast.”

  Elaine laughed, glancing at her friend through the full-length mirror, where she stood straightening her fanciest gown. “You’re sounding so British these days that no one would suspect you lived out in the wild, American west.”

  Rose chuckled and shook her head. �
��They still know every time I speak. I love it here in Brynthwaite, but I don’t know that I’ll ever truly fit in.”

  Elaine let out a breath of sympathy. She felt the same way, and she’d been born and raised in England. And yet, for all her good breeding and proper diction, she didn’t feel part of anything.

  “Perhaps I was born at the wrong time,” she continued her thought aloud, turning this way and that to study her medieval dress in the mirror. It was a new creation. The hand-dyed fabric of the outer dress had turned out a lovely rose pink. She’d spent most of the winter embroidering the bodice and long, open sleeves, though her skill with an embroidery needle left something to be desired. The under dress was a deeper shade of maroon. She’d cheated a bit by purchasing chemically-dyed fabric for that part of the ensemble, which was strictly against the code of the Artistic Dress movement, but it wasn’t as though anyone from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood would hunt her down and take her to task for it.

  “You weren’t born in the wrong time,” Rose said, adjusting Alberta in her arms as she finished her supper. “You’re just….”

  Elaine turned to her, one eyebrow raised. “Eccentric? Strange? Socially unacceptable? Scandalous?” She turned back to the mirror, smoothing her hands over her uncorseted sides. “I’ve been called all of those things and more. Including words I don’t know the meaning of.” Basil did know what those words meant, though. Every time someone hurled one in her direction, he turned as red and explosive as a volcano about to blow. It was a true sign of the strength of his character that he didn’t turn violent on those men.

  She smiled in spite of herself. She might not fit anywhere, she might have been born in the wrong time, and she might be an aberration, but Basil Wall was still her friend.

  “Are you certain,” Rose began, pausing to bite her lip. She stood, holding Alberta to her shoulder and rubbing her back. “Are you certain you don’t want to wear something, well, more…more normal for this supper?”

  Elaine turned to face her once again, her hands planted on her hips.

  “I’m not criticizing your choice of dress,” Rose went on in a rush. “Only that, because this is such a momentous occasion at such a grand house, standard dress might be more appropriate.”

  A burst of sadness filled Elaine’s chest—sadness that made her feel far older than she wanted to feel. “And what would that accomplish but to make everyone else feel more comfortable?” she asked.

  Rose’s face pinched with a combination of regret and sympathy. “Is it so bad to make others comfortable?”

  “It is when it means that I am miserable in my own skin.” Elaine stepped to the side, snatching her hairbrush from the small vanity near the window. She began brushing her long hair with vigorous strokes. “I chose to dress this way after reading about alternative theories of dress and attitude because it seems more natural to me than prancing about in cages made of metal or whale bone.”

  “Yes, there is a certain logic to it,” Rose conceded, her expression still anxious. “But until the rest of society catches on….”

  “Why should I wait for something that may never happen?” Elaine asked, flipping her hair over her shoulder and switching sides. “Besides, I was never considered acceptable, even when I was wearing all the proscribed fashions. I’ve always been a motherless child raised by an indulgent father. You know I loved my dear Papa—”

  “I loved him too,” Rose added.

  “—but he raised me to be myself, not to conform.” She finished brushing her hair with a weary sigh. “It’s too late for me now. You should see the letters I get from my Uncle Daniel, my mother’s brother. He lectures me on all the ways I should behave, but neither he nor the rest of the world understands.”

  “Understands what?” Rose asked softly.

  Elaine’s shoulders dropped, and her gaze focused on the back of Alberta’s head as she nestled safely against her mother’s neck. “That I’m damned no matter what I do,” she answered. “If I stay true to myself, the rest of the world condemns me. But if I conform to their standards, I would lose everything inside me that makes me get up in the morning and face a new day.”

  Only one person, aside from her father, had ever seemed to understand, and Elaine lived in dread of what Basil would think if she suddenly dressed and acted like every other woman in England. He’d be so disappointed, and that would be even harder to live with than self-loathing.

  And yet, as she watched Alberta squirming against Rose’s shoulder, something visceral pulled at the deepest part of her. She adored babies, and, truth be told, she wanted some of her own. But at age thirty, time was swiftly ticking away. And who would marry a wild eccentric like her?

  Basil. Basil would marry her in a heartbeat, she was certain. The thought sent ripples of excitement through her, some of which landed in tantalizing places. But she wouldn’t do that to the poor man. They were just friends. Good friends, but friends all the same. She was a child compared to him, though she didn’t always feel that way. He couldn’t possibly see himself as more than her teacher and protector. And every time she mused on seeing him as more than her companion and champion, she was met with feelings that were as frightening as they were powerful.

  Her increasingly disturbing thoughts were interrupted by a rousing burp from Alberta. In an instant, the walls of seriousness that had been closing in on her crumbled, and she let out a laugh.

  “That’s right, Alberta. Who invented these silly social rules anyhow? I would like to give them a piece of my mind.”

  A knock sounded from the door downstairs, followed by a creak and Basil’s call of, “Hello?”

  Elaine skipped forward, kissing Alberta’s cheek. “I promise that I will do my utmost to make this world a better, more accepting place for you, my darling, so that you don’t have to endure the torment I’ve been through.”

  She kissed Alberta once more, then straightened with a smile. That smile faltered slightly at the tearful way Rose was studying her. “I’m sorry life has been so cruel to you,” Rose said.

  Elaine blinked in surprise. “Oh dear. If a woman who lifted herself out of the nightmarish situation you did feels sorry for me, I must be pitiable indeed.”

  She didn’t give Rose time to reply before whirling away and darting out of her bedroom. She danced happily down the stairs to the front hall, determined to be happy and to enjoy herself at Burton Manor, no matter how desperate the emotions roiling under the surface of her smile were. There simply wasn’t any point in being unconventional if one couldn’t enjoy the little things in life.

  “Mr. Wall, are you—”

  She stopped dead as she reached the hall. Basil had wandered into the front parlor and turned to face her as she spoke. Framed perfectly in the arched entrance to the parlor, he was the most handsome man she’d ever seen. His suit was fashionable and expertly tailored. His long, formal evening coat was unbuttoned to reveal a black brocade waistcoat. Style dictated he should wear a black ascot tie as well, but his was a deep blue that set off his blue eyes. And what eyes! They shone with affection as he studied her. His smile was warm and gentle. He’d just shaved, and his silver hair was bushed into as tidy a style as his curls would allow. But it was something in the way he stood, in the breadth of his shoulders, the way he held his top hat, and the straightness of his back that had Elaine’s heart thundering in her chest. When had Basil Wall become so magnificent?

  “You look beautiful,” he said, coming to join her in the hall. “Is that a new dress?”

  A rush of butterflies swarmed in Elaine’s gut as he drew near. He smelled delicious too, like lemons and spice.

  “Yes,” she croaked, finding her voice at last. She cleared her throat, because of course she was being ridiculous. Basil wasn’t a man. At least, not like that. He was her dearest friend, and she was a ninny if she entertained any other idea. “I spent all winter on the embroidery,” she went on, forcing herself to be casual. It was much easier to look at her sleeves than him anyhow. �
��Although I’m not what I would call a brilliant seamstress.”

  “It’s lovely,” he said, fingering her work on her right sleeve.

  Elaine flat-out refused to acknowledge the zip of electricity that shot up her arm from the spot he touched. She laughed and rolled her eyes at herself. “I tried to make it look like ivy, but if you ask me, it looks more like great, green blobs on a crooked chain stitch.”

  “No, it’s perfect,” he insisted.

  She peeked up at him. It was a terrible idea. The tenderness in his expression pushed her too close to all the things that scared her about their closeness. She simply wasn’t ready to feel those things.

  “Good evening, Mr. Wall.” Rose dissolved the tension of the moment as she descended the stairs, Alberta in her arms. “You’re looking quite dapper this evening.” She wore an over-bright smile that filled her face with mirth.

  Elaine was on the verge of calling her friend out for whatever silly thoughts she must have been having when there was another knock at the door. Basil cleared his throat and went to open it, greeting the driver of the carriage that had come to fetch them from Burton Manor.

  “Good luck,” Rose whispered as Basil informed the driver that yes, they were ready to depart.

  “Good luck?” Elaine questioned with a confused purse of her lips.

  “With supper,” Rose said, though it was clear she had something else in mind entirely.

  “Miss Bond?” Elaine turned to Basil. He stood waiting, his arm crooked and ready for her to tuck her hand into his elbow.

  She did so without questioning the flutter in her stomach or the slippery feeling in other places. They were going to Burton Manor to discuss politics and the rights of women, nothing more.

  Yet, as Basil helped her into the carriage and settled beside her, as the footman closed the door, sealing the two of them alone in the close space, a host of impudent thoughts vied for Elaine’s attention.