The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton

by Miranda Neville

  “Grasp the heel with both hands, and pull.”

  He hadn’t thought to inform her he would be playing an active part in the proceedings. It came as a nasty shock when his other booted foot pushed against her rump. She shrieked. Seconds later she found herself on the ground, on her knees, clinging to one free boot.

  She glared back at him. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

  “I thought you might not agree.”

  “I most certainly would not.”

  “It did the trick,” he said with unbecoming smugness. “Now for the other.”

  “Very well,” she said. “You are going to owe me a huge favor for this. Stretch out the other leg.”

  Just her luck that this one didn’t come off as smoothly. It truly did seem molded to his limb. She tugged away, all the time aware of his stockinged foot braced against the small of her back, warm through the linen of her chemise. As she pulled she couldn’t help but raise his leg so that it sawed between her thighs, giving her a funny feeling in her private parts.

  “It’s coming.” She panted, whether from exertion or some other cause she’d rather not examine.

  “Harder,” he said.

  With a groan she stiffened her spine, leaned against his thrusting foot, and put all her strength into one more effort. The boot released his ankle with a jolt and slid down the length of his calf.

  Expecting the force of the release this time, she managed to land with a degree of grace. She pivoted and stood before him, offering the boot with a nod of the head and a curtsey. The dignity of the gesture was marred when her makeshift skirt loosed its shaky moorings and descended to the ground in a heap. He sat back and stared at her legs with unabashed interest.

  Gritting her teeth, she pulled up the blanket and in her haste the hairpins, which had performed sterling work under adverse conditions, gave up and her hair descended around her shoulders. “Don’t you dare laugh,” she ground out.

  It took some effort to comply, she could tell, but he managed. “I wouldn’t dream of it. I promise you look no more absurd than I do, garbed like a yokel. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go down to the stream now.”

  He lined the boots up neatly next to the boulder and, not forgetting the tin cup, sauntered down the grassy slope. When he reached the water he stripped off his stockings then discarded the linen smock. Quickly she turned away, then twisted her head for another look at the well-sculpted back. Embarrassed curiosity turned to fascinated mortification when he undid the buttons of his breeches. As the garment descended she whisked herself around. She needed to take care of her own needs during his absence.

  After a quick trip behind a nearby bush, she returned to their oak tree and did her best to arrange her clothes and hair. Thriftily she retrieved every hairpin and stowed them in the seed bag. The sound of splashing told her Mr. Compton was occupied. A quick glance at the little book she’d picked up revealed no signature or other mark of ownership. The name of the so-called “celebrated author” Peter Aretin was unknown to her, but the title The Genuine Amours suggested a novel and a love story. She tucked her legs under her and began to read the tale, narrated in autobiographical fashion, of one Francis Featherbrain.

  “Where did you get the book?” She hadn’t even noticed his return. He must have bathed thoroughly. Damp hair clung to his scalp and he’d donned his smock over his wet torso. The cloth clung a little.

  “It was on the ground near where I found you. If it was yours, the robber must have left it.”

  “Perhaps he isn’t a lover of literature. What is it?”

  “Only a novel. I just started it but it’s quite dull so far. About a boy of fourteen, an only child, living in the country with his parents. Judging by his name he’s not very intelligent.”

  “May I see?” She handed it over. A very odd expression crossed his face as he opened the volume to the title page.

  “Do you recognize it?”

  “No. I doubt it was mine.”

  His remark struck her as strange. If he couldn’t remember his own name, why would he expect to recall possession of a book? She had the impression he was withholding something. “Give it back then.”

  “You promised to tell me about India,” he said hastily.

  “Very well. It’s almost too dark to read, anyway. We may as well try to get comfortable.”

  Chapter 5

  Things always seem better in the morning. Unless there’s nothing for breakfast.

  Getting comfortable on rock-strewn Yorkshire soil proved difficult. Northern England was enjoying a rare, brief period of uninterrupted heat so Celia could dismiss her compunction at not offering to share her blanket. It occurred to her that as her betrothed husband, Mr. Compton, or rather Terence, might feel the urge to kiss her goodnight. Largely to her relief he made no such offer. While not actively repulsed by the idea, it made her shy. Spending the night alone with a man was contrary to anything she’d been taught of the proper conduct of an English lady.

  Instead they lay in the deepening gloom, a few feet apart, and she told him the story of her life. The mostly truthful but carefully edited story. Mr. Baldwin remained her employer and never progressed to fiancé. And her childhood and youth in India, as the daughter of an East India Company officer, were described with much local color of a largely unsensational nature.

  Fortunately Mr. Compton showed some curiosity about Indian life while asking not a single question about her widowed father’s household. She’d become quite adept at skirting the issue since she arrived in England.

  “My mother’s sister married a gentleman from Lincolnshire,” she explained. “After my father’s death I sailed for England and arrived to discover my aunt had been dead a year. But my uncle, Mr. Twistleton, welcomed me. He sent me to London to come out under the wing of Lady Trumper.”

  He showed more interest than she would have liked in her truncated London season. She confined her account to public entertaients such as plays, the opera, and Hyde Park. Of particular private balls, a certain rude dandy, or his aunt the Duchess of Amesbury she said not one word.

  “You mentioned you attended Almack’s, so you moved in circles of high ton.”

  “My uncle was a man of influence and connection. He also implied I was to be his heiress. A respectable fortune, you know, will open many doors.”

  “How then did you end up a governess? Did you not receive offers?”

  “There was a gentleman who showed interest, but it came to nothing.” She feared she sounded like a sad spinster who’d lost her one chance at marriage. Because, she added silently, a certain busybody of a dandy took it into his head to call me a cauliflower. All her resentment returned in force.

  Only to be disarmed by his gallant reply. “What a fool. But I suppose his hesitation was my good fortune.”

  How could this possibly be the same man?

  She concluded the sad story of her brief, inglorious history as an heiress. “Soon afterward my uncle died and I was called home, before the season was over. He never changed his will and his entire fortune went to a cousin who had no connection to me. All I had was my London clothing. I sold most of it and looked for a post as governess.”

  He lay on his back and gazed at the stars, listening to the soft murmurs of the night on a cool breeze. Hunger, chill, and the hard ground weren’t all that kept him awake. A few feet away lay his supposed betrothed wife, the quiet rhythm of her breathing letting him know she slept. Why not? She apparently had nothing to disturb her conscience.

  His own doubts wouldn’t allow his body and mind the rest they needed to recover from the demands of the day. Over and over he went through Celia Seaton’s story, a sad tale narrated without a trace of self-pity. He couldn’t help but be affected by the hardships and setbacks she’d endured, culminating in her apparently pointless disgrace and kidnapping. Tomorrow they might have to face the forces that threatened her.

  But what most exercised his mind was the account of their meeting and courtship, which h
e distrusted with every fiber of his heart. A young, innocent girl, disappointed in love, would so easily believe the protestations of a man who claimed to have become enamored in a single glance across a country ballroom. He knew better. Men, he thought cynically, didn’t think like that. Lust at first sight, perhaps; love, never. And neither was at all likely with this girl. True, her features were tolerable and her figure pleasing: breasts small but firm, a narrow waist and rather wide hips, but not ungracefully so, and those wonderful long legs. But she wasn’t handsome enough to tempt Terence Fish.

  Or whatever his name was.

  Some things he’d seen or discussed seemed familiar, others not. Cornwall, for example, meant nothing to him. Yorkshire, he knew. The rugged landscape felt recognizable and somehow comfortable. Not surprising if he’d lived nearby for some months. But London he knew even better. There wasn’t a site in the capital Celia had mentioned that failed to arouse a mental image. Even Almack’s. It was strange enough that he had recognized the name of the assembly rooms, odder still that he knew them to be highly exclusive and he envisioned their appearance, inside and out.

  Cornwall, however, was a blank. He could not believe he’d ever visited the place. Then this notion that he’d ever studied to be a parson was patently absurd. He shuddered at the thought of clerical dress and laughed at sermonizing. Not to mention his apparent taste for indecent novels. Celia might not recognize the name of Aretino but he did. If he had any scruples, he’d remove that volume from the bag and hide it, before she read some very shocking stories.

  Scruples were something he feared he lacked. Judging by his behavior he suspected that he was an adventurer, winning Celia’s confidence with an assumed name and false history. Why a female so lacking in worldly advantage would attract an adventurer was a mystery. But he couldn’t ignore the fact that someone else was interested in her, someone who’d gone to considerable trouble to disgrace her in the eyes of her employer and kidnap her.

  In his state of forgetfulness, his instinct was to assist and protect her from those who wished her ill. Once he recovered his identity, he would likely find himself their rival in infamy.

  As he drifted off to sleep a deep memory emerged. Someone had once told him things, no matter how bad, would seem better in the morning. He didn’t know who. His mother? A nurse? Was his mother alive? He’d have to ask Celia and hope he had told her the truth. He felt alienated enough with so much of his mind a blank. The fact that the one person who knew him, the one person he could cling to for sanity, might not know the truth of his identity, frightened and depressed him. Supposing he never regained his memory and spent the rest of his life living a lie?

  It didn’t matter who had voiced such optimism about the beneficial effects of a new day. It was the kind of folksy adage he instinctively dismissed.

  And yet, roused from a few hours’ sleep by an unharmonious concert of birdsong, his spirits lifted. It was a spectacular early dawn, all blue and green and pale misty sunlight, promising another scorching day. His head no longer ached and he felt at home.

  How odd. Last night he would have sworn he was a Londoner.

  He checked his memory. Nothing else had changed. Knowledge of anything personal remained shrouded in a mist thicker than that rising off the nearby brook. Celia, one cheek on the ground between outstretched arms and her hair spread about her, slept on despite the avian chorus. He wondered if she could be deaf in one ear.

  Leaving her to rest, he went down to the stream to look for something edible. Was any wild fruit in season? He didn’t know. Walking a few hundred feet along the bank he observed bubbles in the water, heard the splash of a jumping fish.

  Fish. He might not be called Fish but he had no objection to eating them. Too bad he lacked rod and tackle. Then another memory, of the same vintage as the nursery platitude, sparked in his brain. Some yards farther on, the brook widened to a pool. The perfect spot.

  On hands and knees he approached the tarn in dead silence, eyes searching the sun-dappled water. Brown shadows swayed in the depths. Trout. In a minute he found what he sought: a shallow rocky outcrop at the edge of the water, ideal for a drowsing fish; a telltale tail barely protruding.

  It had been a long time, but he remembered.

  Balanced on one elbow, he slipped his hand, fingers turned up, into the water and under the rock until he felt the firm kick of the fish’s tail. Then he began to tickle with his forefinger, gradually running his hand along the fish’s belly further and further toward the head. The trout basked in the attention, dozing its way to doom. When his hand reached the gills, his fist closed like a trap, grasping the struggling creature, wrenching it out of its element.

  Poor fish. It flapped helplessly on the grassy bank for a moment or two before he dashed its head on a rock and ended its happy life and brief misery.

  Terence Fish, if that was indeed his name, spared it no pity. Whoever he was, he had been revealed as very useful sort of fellow. A man capable of providing breakfast for his sweetheart.

  Celia wasn’t appreciating the beauty of the morning. Finding herself alone, she panicked. Either Mr. Compton had recovered his memory and had abandoned her in a snit. Or worse (and she acknowledged it was worse) wandered off in a mindless haze and fallen over a precipice.

  Her relief at his reappearance turned to rapture when she saw what he carried. She hadn’t forgiven Tarquin Compton for comparing her to a large vegetable. Terence Fish was a man she could fall in love with.

  And, if she said it herself, so aptly named.

  “Breakfast,” he announced.

  “I always knew you were brilliant, Terence.”

  “Do you have to call me that?”

  “It’s your name.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “I could just call you Mr. Fish. Or Fishy.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Terry?”

  “Instead of amusing yourself with variations on my name, why don’t you help me gather wood for a fire?” He faltered. “Do you know how to build a fire? I’m not sure I do.”

  “What do you think? I’m a governess.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Yes. And put that fish somewhere safe. What a tragedy if some passing fox or weasel should steal it.”

  They took opposite directions along the bank and in short order collected the makings of a fire. Blessing the hot, rainless week, Celia gathered dry grass and struck the tinderbox. While she nursed the spark and blew carefully on a burgeoning flame, Mr. Compton contemplated the next step.

  “Can you cook?”

  “I’m a governess.”

  “I take it you mean yes again.”

  “Unfortunately this time I mean no. Governesses don’t cook. In fact I’ve barely set foot in a kitchen in all my life.”

  “I thought young ladies were taught housewifely arts.”

  “Not in India. There’s no shortage of servants there. Even the poorest English can afford them.”

  “That’s a pity. Shall we eat the fish raw?”

  She shuddered. “I’d much, much rather not.”

  “Nor me. Let’s think about this.”

  “We can’t just lay the fish in the fire. It would get all ashy, or burn.”

  “Hmm.”

  She looked up from her task of delicately feeding ever larger twigs to the flame. “Do you have an idea?”

  “I’ve seen food cooked on a gridiron.”

  “Of course. How foolish of me not to think of that. And how lucky that we have a gridiron with us.”

  “There’s no need for sarcasm. I’ll see if I can cobble something together. Don’t we have a knife?”

  “In the bag.”

  Fifteen minutes later he returned with a very respectable gridiron, woven from the thick green stems of bulrushes. “It’ll burn eventually but let’s hope the trout will cook in the meantime. It is, unfortunately, not a very large fish. I wish for our sake it were a salmon.”

  “I could eat a whale
.”

  “How’s the fire?”

  “A few more minutes and it’ll be nice and hot.”

  Cross-legged on either side of the fire, they sat in companionable silence. Mr. Compton, it emerged, was a man who liked to think things through. With narrowed eyes he stared at his catch, laid out on the rush trellis. “I am envisioning a cooked fish on a plate,” he said. “There’s always a cavity in the bottom part.” He pointed at the place. “There.”

  “You are right. I wonder why.”

  “Sometimes it’s stuffed with something, but not always. Even when there’s no stuffing, the hole is still there.” He made thinking noises. “Entrails. We need to remove the guts.”

  Despite acute hunger, Celia felt a little queasy. “We?” she asked. Was fish-gutting a woman’s job? She’d made the fire but, to be fair, he’d caught the fish and worked out how to cook it. Should she offer?

  “I’ll do it by the stream so I can wash off the smell afterward,” he said. Fishy or not, she would gladly have kissed him.

  He poked it carefully with the point of the knife and found it white and flaky. “I do believe it’s ready.”

  “I’ve never smelled anything so delicious in my whole life,” she said.

  “I cannot of course remember my whole life, but if I did I venture to guess I’d feel the same way. How shall we do this?”

  Celia jumped up and plucked a couple of shiny dock leaves, shaking off pearls of dew. Despite their busy morning it was still very early. “Here are the plates. Will you do the honors?”

  As though he were a jeweler cutting a precious diamond, he sliced into the humble trout, parting the flesh from the bones and dividing it evenly between the two green “plates,” careful not to lose so much as a sliver.

  Despite his hunger, he hesitated, seeking suitable words to mark the occasion. They were a couple betrothed to be married and this was the presumably the first time they’d shared breakfast, the most intimate of meals, à deux. To him at least it felt momentous, an irrational sentiment given his doubts about his own sincerity.