A Lady Awakened (14 page)

“A man may be young, and conduct himself in a seemly way.” She spoke up over the pounding of his hammer. “You have not used youth as an excuse for careless living.” And they must be nearly of an age, Mr. Mirkwood and Mr. Atkins.

“Well, the Church will make a man serious, even where other things have not already made him so.” He stepped down from his chair and when he looked up at her his eyes were lit with something not serious at all. “As to Mr. Mirkwood, I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. Did you see he stayed awake for my entire sermon yesterday?”

“To sleep through it would have been shocking. We can all profit, I’m sure, by the lesson of that foolish man and his new barns.”

“Next week I think I’ll be addressing
Train up a child in the way wherein he should go
. I’ve been meditating on that verse, for obvious reasons, and reading over John Wesley’s sermon on the same subject. I cannot agree with his conviction that a child naturally inclines toward wickedness. So I must compose my rebuttal.” He set the tacks back in his mouth and picked up his chair, moving it from her left side to her right.

What a generous man he was, with charitable thoughts for everyone, and how sorry she would be to lose his good opinion if her duplicity was ever made known. She watched him step up, spit out the tacks, and hammer in another. He held his head back on an angle, looking down his long nose at the work of his hands, and she knew from months of watching him at various industries that this was to thwart a lock of hair that always wanted to fall into his eyes.

“There’s that one done,” he said with a last tap. “Does it look straight to you?”

“Surely you ought to have asked that before you pounded in the tacks!”

“Surely, yes.” He stepped down, and so did she, and they both considered the map from several paces away.

Like the slates and pencils, it had come secondhand and a bit shabby. He’d pressed out the creases as well as he could, with a warm iron—that had been her idea—and inked over where the print had faded, but nothing could be done about the exuberant scrawl of some schoolboy’s name, STEPEN, across the south Pacific. Probably it was meant to be Stephen. He ought to at least have learned to spell, before despoiling property in that way.

“My brother and I had a map like this when we were boys.” He set his hands against his back, elbows bent behind him. “Nowhere near this size, but all the same countries and oceans, as you may imagine. We learned all the names.”

“Including Stepen?”

“Stepen excepted. John Wesley would have strong words for that boy, I’m sure.” He smiled absently, still gazing at the map and no doubt savoring memories of the first time he’d traced the long coast of Africa with a finger, or seen how Italy took the shape of a high-heeled boot. Now he would help other boys—and girls—to those same discoveries.

She lied, and that was wicked. She lay down with Mr. Mirkwood, and that was a terrible sin. She sought to cheat a man of his inheritance, and that was probably a jailable offense. But watching Mr. Atkins, his face alight with the pleasure of good work to be done, she could not feel sorry in the least.

*  *  *

S
TAND AND
deliver, Mrs. Russell. I’ve had the devil’s own erection this past hour at least.” Mr. Mirkwood shut the door behind him and used that same hand to toss his hat into a corner. His other arm was full of books.

“What have you got, there?” Most certainly she did not stand.

“Erection. I’ve just told you.”

“Those books, I mean.” Really. “That rolled-up document.”

“Afterward.” Four long strides brought him to the sofa, where he unceremoniously dumped his armload and began on his coat buttons. “Why are you still dressed? I was hoping that business of yesterday might become a regular arrangement.”

And so it went. With quick sure hands he undressed them both, moving nearer the bed with each discarded garment until they were naked, and settled in the sheets.

He took his pleasure carefully today, as though to atone for yesterday’s loss of self-command. His eyes stayed fixed to hers, watching, she felt sure, for any symptoms of discomfort. Even when she closed her eyes to escape his gaze, she could feel him watching. It felt … strange. Different. Mr. Russell had never taken such care. Not even the first time, which had been uncomfortable indeed, nor the second, when she’d still been feeling the effects of the first.
I’m sorry
, he’d said, but he’d exercised his right nevertheless. So husbands did.

“Go on,” she said, eyes still shut. “Truly, it doesn’t hurt.” Doubtless there were better answers to make to a man’s tender restraint. But she no more knew how to make them than she knew how to speak Portuguese, and besides they had no place in this bargain. She only set her hands at his shoulders, because he liked to be touched, and she heard in his breath the moment when he left her behind to go to his crisis, just as she wanted him to do.

Afterward, he explained the books. “They’re all about aspects of agriculture. Crop rotation. Yields and prices. I’m meant to study them, but I find they can’t command my interest. However I’ve had an idea.” He was lying on his stomach; now he raised up onto his elbows. “You might read them, since you do like these matters, and then make reports to me. In particular if you find yourself having insights, write them down. Tell me how a serious person ought to respond to this material, that I may make that response for Mr. Granville.”

One hardly knew whether to laugh, or to rap him across the knuckles. Neither, perhaps. People rise or sink to meet your expectations, Mr. Atkins had said. What if she expected better from him? “I would like to read those books. You’re very good to remember my interest. But I think you’d do better to read with me than to rely on my reports. Perhaps we could spend an hour or so in study each afternoon, after we’ve conducted the other business.”

T
HE OTHER
business
. Three days later, the words still lodged with him. She received him politely now, with none of that awful disapproving resistance, but plainly the arrangement was indeed mere business to her. If she had carnal appetites at all, they slumbered soundly.

He yawned and stretched his arms, and felt his shoulder blades indent the carpet. She’d unrolled his enclosure map on the sitting-room floor today, a vase, a saucer, and two books serving as paperweights, and to join her at that level had seemed the companionable thing to do. This study-hour routine had proven quite restful, actually, as most days he reclined on the sofa, half-dozing to the music of her crisp modulations as she read aloud.

She glanced up at his movement, and glanced down again. “One of these outlined patches appears to be between your land and mine, if I’m interpreting the drawing correctly. I’m not entirely sure where to imagine the boundaries of Seton Park. But if it’s the place I’m picturing, I believe some of my tenants pasture their sheep there.” She frowned thoughtfully, and didn’t look to him for any reply.

Theo pushed a hand through his hair. The carpet was not nearly as conducive to rest as the sofa had been, though it did vary one’s view of the room. Rather a fine bit of plasterwork about the ceiling’s border. Italianate, if he didn’t mistake. Scrolling and so forth. He yawned once more, fist at his mouth. “Do you know what we ought to do?”

“No.” She spoke straight down into the map. “We did that already today. We’re supposed to be studying now. Surely you can curb your appetites until tomorrow.”

“What a wicked, wanton mind you have.” He rolled onto his side and propped his head on his hand. Her stern schoolmistress manner provoked him in more agreeable ways, now he was used to it. “I didn’t mean any such thing. But now you’ve put it in my head, haven’t you?”

“Then you must put it out again. May I suggest a brisk walk.” This, too, was delivered to the map, with unruffled authority. Almost certainly she was beginning to derive some little enjoyment from this routine, some satisfaction in strictly correcting his errant wanderings. More satisfaction might follow in time.

“You’re in luck, then. A walk was precisely what I meant to suggest.” Her chin came sharply up, but he wouldn’t let her dissuade him. “We’ll take the map, and see these parcels for ourselves.” One after another, he shoved the paperweights aside. “I’ll go round and call at your front door, and we’ll undertake to find this bit of land that lies between your property and mine. What could be more respectable?”

She hesitated. The mantelpiece clock ticked, and the map creaked and whispered as he rolled it up. “You’ll conduct yourself with absolute discretion if we encounter anyone?”

“Discretion such as you can scarcely imagine. I shouldn’t be half so popular among the married ladies of London without I possessed that skill.” He winked at the reprimand gathering in her countenance, and got to his feet. “The fresh air will do us good, I promise you. Do you know we’ve been acquainted eleven days, and only seen each other indoors? I’m sure that’s not healthy, and besides I should like to see how you look under sunlight. Give me fifteen minutes to go round and come up your drive.”

F
IFTEEN AND
some minutes later they were outdoors, and—well, he still could not say how she looked in the sun. She wore a black bonnet that swallowed her features whole. He should have had to lean down to peer in and see her, first stopping her for the purpose as she was marching beside him, across her great lawn and toward some slopes to the east.

Their paces matched up surprisingly well, considering how ill-matched they were in every other respect. She walked with a determined, mile-eating step that kept her even with his longer, more leisurely stride. Together they might walk to the ends of the earth, though conversation would falter long before they got there.

“Do you look forward to being a baronet?” she said after several minutes of silence.

“Not in the least.” He took the map from under his elbow and switched it to his other side.

“No?” The bonnet’s funnel swiveled his way; he could see her chin and lower lip preparing to judge him.

“No, dear. I’ll have more responsibility then, with no appreciable gain in privilege.”

“Perhaps you’ll find yourself equal to the responsibility, when it comes.”

“A man may be equal to all manner of things, and prefer not to undertake them.” Yes, there went the thin straight mouth of disapprobation. “But I spoke flippantly. Responsibility or no, the fact is I cannot contemplate with any eagerness the event that will make me a baronet, so I cannot look forward to my baronetcy.” Suddenly she was no longer at his side, and he craned about to find her stock-still behind him, her chin lifted to finally show all her face. “Please tell me you’re not astonished by that sentiment,” he said.

Even in the shade of her bonnet he could see her cheeks coloring. “Not astonished. A bit surprised, perhaps. You mean to say you love your father.”

“Not necessarily. There’s a great stretch of ground between loving a man, and wishing for his demise.” He walked on and heard her follow, a step or two behind as though she were wanting to study him, and fit this new bit of knowledge in with the picture she’d already made. “But I suppose I am rather fond of him.” Now he’d confuse her further still. “I made up my mind to be so, and he hasn’t succeeded in dissuading me yet.”

“Not even by banishing you for something so small as a snuffbox?”

“It wasn’t just the snuffbox, you know.” He bent to pluck up a long blade of grass, and to avoid her eyes. Had he just heard her take his part against his father’s? “I’ve been a bit of a wastrel all round. Not good for much.” He’d always owned up to the fact readily. It was good for a laugh at White’s. But for some reason it didn’t sound nearly so amusing out here in the country. “I do intend to be better, eventually.” He twirled the grass-blade between thumb and forefinger. “To be upstanding and respectable and so forth. Certainly by the time I’m a baronet.”

“If you know you can be better, why not be better now?” Ah, here came the lecture. So much for taking his part.

“Think a minute, darling. What would it profit you if I were to reform now?” He bent his head to flash her a smile, and knew she took his meaning by the way her bonnet tipped down and her conversation ceased.

Well enough. He tossed away the grass-blade and they went on. With or without talk, it was a beautiful day to be walking with a woman. Some overnight rain had left a fresh scent in the air, and woke a few languid late-summer flowers that dotted the grass, white and yellow and purple punctuation on a great page of green. Birds swooped down and up again, calling to one another in a regional dialect unlike the birdcalls one heard in Lincolnshire. At the top of the nearest hill he could see how a breeze stirred the grass as though some large invisible hand were going through it with a comb.

“We want to go up and over that hill.” She pointed, her black glove stark against the blue, blue sky. “The place I have in mind is just on the other side.”

They climbed slowly—what perverse devil had decreed that widows must wear so much black, even in weather like this?—and reached the hilltop to look down on a minor kind of valley, green and studded everywhere with sheep. A dog barked at the sight of them and raced up the opposite hill to where a girl sat in the shade of some trees. “That’s one of my tenants,” Mrs. Russell said. “One of the Everett daughters, I think.” She put another step of distance between them. “And a little way beyond those trees is your hedge.”

So this land could be his, perhaps, if he chose. Though it didn’t look very promising for wheat or any other crop. And the girl would lose a grazing place with the advantage of a shady overlook. He put the map away under his arm. “Why do you suppose your husband didn’t enclose this himself?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t any idea. Mr. Russell didn’t often speak about that sort of thing.” She turned her head to face him, and looked for a moment as though she would say more. But after a short pause, she only proposed crossing the valley and greeting the shepherdess.