22. Shock of the Season

22

Shock of the Season

Miss Primrose? Here? In the spawn of Satan’s very own abode?

What manner of hell was this?

He’d not heard a thing over the mocking growl of the Canine Terror that had trotted after a snail-paced Warrick into his room—and proceeded to snap jaws around his drawers.

Through the ensuing tug and snarl, unwilling to relinquish his only clean, dry clothing, Warrick had traded balance for dignity and lost. The dog and its gleeful, material-brimming snout bumping their way past the partially open door. Giving chase (a total misnomer, given how unsteady and laboriously slow he was), wishing for the thousandth time he had his trusty chair, Warrick knocked into a painting hard enough it had fallen and cracked the frame—and somehow, he had wound up here .

Legs locked against tired, trembling, bare toes curved in a despairing bid to grip the solid floor. Desperate fingers clasping the doorway edges as his previously reliant vision played evil tricks upon his beleaguered brain.

Aphrodite. Only paces away…

Yet an impossible distance, all the same.

“Should not virility be in the eye of the beholder?” his apparition inquired with a saucy tilt of a bonneted head.

Virility? His?

What manner of nonsensical reality was this?

Miss Prim, complimenting him? And after having already referred to penises and parsons?

He had to be dreaming. Suffering delusions the toil of the last week had wrought.

“Clarify, if you would,” he rasped, still doubting he was awake.

If you slumbered, ’twould not take nearly so much effort to remain upright.

“Why? So you can continue basking in your illicitly inappropriate posture?”

“Mayhap so I can bask in yours.”

Though her face and the pale skin betwixt her chin and loosely wrapped scarf flushed peony, her attention remained impressively centered in the vicinity of his loins. “You wish me to clarify how one can find another…virile even when?—”

“Aye. Even when.” His voice rumbled through his chest before meeting his ears. So…if he could feel the vibration, he must be awake? “Especially as we both know your eyes do not discern anything virile before you now.”

“Ah. Um.” Upon her cheeks, those peonies bloomed anew. Her lips made a single smacking noise, then revealed with admirable certainty, “Because erect or not, you impress more than others I have beheld.”

“Others? Be held ?” He could no more have stifled his chuckled disbelief than he could have stopped the sun from marching forth on its unwelcome journey to end his delightful roam to the Land of Nod. For sure, the moment it reached its goal, his slumber would stop. Dreams destroyed. But for the meanwhile…might as well savor the angelic vision visiting his sleep. “Why, Miss Aphrodite Primrose, you astonish me. Beholding penises and all.”

“Books,” she clamored. “Statuary!”

Before he could inquire as to her intriguing literary tastes, she straightened her shoulders and stiffened her spine (girding her loins?) and braved, “Assuredly so, you impress. Both in, ah, erm, length and breadth, if I am to be blunt.”

Dream Prim thought his flaccid penis impressive? Both length and circumference? Strength surged through his trembly muscles.

“By all means, be blunt.” Please.

“Proportionally speaking, that is. If one were to compare what is there ”—she waved toward his lengthy, breadthy appendage, the one he wished would rise up and wave its own welcome—“with the rest of your…notable frame…”

An odd satisfaction soothed the wounds in his male pride that had pierced like thorns for years. He could not help but glance down, to endeavor to see himself as she did. Things still looked much the same as they had for months. But damn, if he didn’t feel bigger.

Blast it all! He was dreaming.

Would that not explain the odd turn of events these last scant moments?

Moments that comprised a fraction of the hours and days he had spent in Bath, looking after himself in ways previously foreign, since rolling across the threshold mere days before Christmas…

But only after laborious travel and exhausted efforts seeing not only to the twins’ happiness, but also ensuring the girls were settled, secure and content ahead of his journey?

A Sennight Prior

After navigating the narrow walkway that led from the road to the front door, his cumbersome chair bumping and lurching over the paving stones and trodden-down grass, Warrick had gotten inside the neat cottage with the help of his groom and coachman. Actually, Lord Redford’s groom and coachman who had come with his friend’s lush traveling coach, Warrick’s own having been rendered unserviceable once he sold it.

“Take it, man,” Ed had insisted when Warrick protested. His friend had given him no choice, arriving on horseback, carriage and servants in tow, a couple days before his planned journey. “With Anne and our guests to look after”—guests now descending upon Redford Manor for the holiday party Warrick had bowed out of—“I’m going nowhere for the month of December. If I have any need of a carriage, think you there will not be surplus at my disposal? If he can bring his surly carcass as promised, Frost’s will be available should I have need of one.

“And the groom? He’s a young man who loves horses, though his father is a valet, so he can assist you there as well.”

It had been easier to accede than argue.

But that meant the servants with him had little allegiance when faced with Arbuckle’s insistence—and unexpected bribery.

The doctor had been swift to dismiss Warrick’s “staff”, practically before Warrick had wheeled about to face the three, telling both men to enjoy themselves the next weeks, that he would take care of Lord Warrick. The two servants were to see the horses and carriage cared for, find lodgings or frolic about. To Warrick’s tolerant surprisal—at the time—the surgeon had handed each man a small pouch of coins. When they looked to him for confirmation, what could he do but nod? If the doctor wanted to indulge the servants, and spoil Warrick with those here, who was he to protest?

“Good, good,” Arbuckle muttered, practically shoving them out the door. “Return in three weeks.”

“ Two weeks,” Warrick emphasized, pleased when each man nodded before scurrying off toward the waiting horses.

“Three!” sing-songed Arbuckle. “Three shall suffice!”

“Two,” Warrick growled at the frustratingly persistent man. What did you expect? That his argumentative, trampling nature would transform into naught but clouds and bunnies during the holiday season?

Bah. Of course he knew better.

Wondered where Arbuckle’s servants had gone off to when the surgeon himself started dragging Warrick’s heavy trunk past the open doors on either side down through a small hallway that led to a larger drawing-type room, then on past the kitchen, down another corridor and into the room pronounced as: “Yours, for the duration of your stay, Lord Warrick.”

A tiny grunt of thanks, especially when his host offered to procure a repast, if Warrick would like to rest.

Over the next couple of hours, seeing himself washed and changed out of his somewhat travel-wearied clothing into the clean, half-dress he thought appropriate to the coming days of body and muscle work, of seeing the plain-but-filling fare quickly consumed, of seeing his tired body hauled from the confines of his ambulatory chair and onto the bed…

Of feeling not only his muscles, but his mind relax for the first time in memory…

’Twas to be expected, perhaps, that his thoughts, just before sleep stole his ability to think, might dwell upon the strange coincidences of circumstances that resulted in his presence in Bath…

How coming to be here proved a miracle of itself. Renting out his townhouse this past summer and moving Shieldings and wife to the estate proved near genius. Who knew the childless Mrs. Shieldings’ sister lived not an hour away? And with grandchildren of her own—near his sisters’ age?

When he learned a holiday family gathering had been planned for one and all—Shieldings extending the invitation to Warrick with a bit of a red face, indicating he did his wife’s bidding, and at the behest of her sister’s grandchildren who thought Julia and Sophia “smashing great fun”, he had consulted both and received a nod (from Julia) and a Whoop! (from Sophia) and agreed they would attend.

Only to shortly after receive a note from King and Knight, telling him (not asking) that they were spending their school holiday with a mate in Birmingham and would not be home at all for the winter break between terms. Well…

When a stalwart Shieldings approached him again, the very night he’d received the twins’ proclamation, betwixt a bout of perspiration and pain (seemed doing 200 seat-to-stands twice daily—without consulting Arbuckle—had not been the wisest decision). Regardless, his valet-turned-Tyrant-in-Training, remarked, “My lord, appears my sister-in-law’s family are celebrating another birth and want the missus and I to come early. Not the sort of thing one asks of his employer, I know, but?—”

“But nothing,” Warrick pffted on a hard breath as Shieldings near hammered the muscles in his thighs with his beefy fives after the mere 120 they’d agreed upon. Didn’t much matter what the soldier, more than two decades older than Warrick, might ask for; he would deliver it. Was the least he could do.

“When you indulged my selfish whims in eighteen twelve and beyond…” During the drink-filled, wallowing months following his injury.

“When you moved here and took up not only helping with this…” Warrick tried to kick one foot out; he got half a toe wiggle but naught else.

“When you, good sir,” he told the servant with all heartfelt sincerity, “mucked out my stable and helped butcher those two hogs while Jenken was down on his back?” And had done it all without complaint, even when Warrick’s own behavior had warranted it? Well then, “You, Shieldings, may talk to me any damn way you want. About anything on your mind.”

Finished with pummeling the slightly more muscular flesh (Warrick thought. Hoped. Desperately prayed…) of one leg, the valued servant turned his attention to the other. The man inhaled—for courage? “Well, Lord Warrick, ’tis like this. There’s more younglings at Millie’s sister’s than you can shake a stick at. Now they are planning a play. A theatrical performance. Two, in fact. Some nativity for Christmas services. But more than, some comedic farce the urchins are insisting on doing ‘in secret’ and performing for all the adults the last night of the gathering. January sixth or eighth or some such.”

There was more. More uncharacteristic babble from Shieldings. More not-quite-bruising of his tired limbs, until finally, Shieldings pulled back with a heavy sigh. “Sir. The heart of it is thus: Lords Bertram and Beaufort are seen to. Millie and I can guard Lady Sophia and Lady Julia with our lives. I believe they both want to go, and stay. Plan and participate with the other younglings. Lady Sophia told my Millie ’twas so. Seems to me that you have a fortuitous opportunity to heed your doctor’s urging. Travel to Bath. Take the waters. Get these feet of yours up and walking.”

Lords Bertram and Beaufort.

Ladies Julia and Sophia.

None of them were due any sort of honorific, not given their father’s status as a baronet. But since coming to the estate, Shieldings treated his siblings as though they deserved every courtesy that could be bestowed. He and his wife treated both Warrick himself and the rest of his family with warmth and respect.

And by damn, if Sophia and Julia did want to spend days with their young friends—which he would confirm with them each—then mayhap he should go to Bath. Use the unexpected opportunity circumstances and serendipity dropped in his not-quite always unfeeling lap and acquiesce to Arbuckle’s thinly veiled demands (and scrounge some coins to pay something toward his mounting bills) and travel to Bath…

Ergo, how he had come to be here. And at his continued silence, the tacit agreement he’d given that his borrowed servants could enjoy the boon of unexpected coins and time, Arbuckle spread his arms wide and damn near gloated. “After all, is it not the season of joy and generosity?”

Now that Warrick’s travel companions had beat a hasty retreat, leaving Warrick, his traveling trunk—just the one, mind—and his finer Merlin’s chair lolling in the entry, he was ready to begin. Begin the torture. Hopefully the promised, faster healing.

“What time do we start on the morrow?” Though fatigued, now that he had arrived, part of him perked at the idea of the upcoming physical exertion. His gaze slid to the energetic dog snuffling wet nose and tongue spit over every inch of his trunk alongside him and the surgeon. “When do we leave for the waters? Is that a daily occurrence?”

“It’s not the waters I brought you here for,” Arbuckle informed him, gloating gone. Stern expression back in place. “It’s more that away from the bustle of home, a man’s mind as well as his body tends to have more time to rejuvenate.”

What? “So if I’m not here to take the waters”— why in blazes did I travel this far? —“what will I be doing all day?”

“You shall be . Take time to breathe. Watch a butterfly flit?—”

“Butterflies? ’Tis December. Frost upon the ground many a morning.”

“Watch a snowflake drift downward until it melts. See the sun rise?—”

“I sleep till ten. Oftentimes till noon.” Not really. Never, in fact. Not since the girls had come to live with him.

“Watch the sun set and the stars rise ,” Arbuckle said on an impatient huff at the continued interruptions. “Add in the exercises you have learned. The motions we have gone over both in person and in letters. Do them twice a day. Three times if you are of a mind. But not the same ones every day. Alternate. Change things up from one day to the next. Keep a reconciliation. At the end of three weeks, I daresay you will see as much or more progress as you have experienced the past three months.”

“That’s all ?” Any anticipation that had invigored him since his arrival burst like an armour of fish bladder or sheep gut, bloated by breath and twisted until it popped . “What a bunch of drivel.”

Part of him wanted to get angry, but the rest of him was too travel-tired to do more than protest by rote.

“It’s more than you had two and a half months ago.”

“No. I mean that’s all I journeyed days for? Moonrise and exercise?”

The doctor chuckled. “That’s quite good, Lord Warrick. You could try your hand at poetry, while you are here. Write a few sonnets or an ode?—”

“An ode to my odious doctor?” He leaned forward and nudged the dog away from where it persisted in sniffing his foot, sat back and craned his neck to look into the larger room they had yet to enter. “Your house is not even decorated.” Not that he cared. But at this moment, he was determined to nettle the man every bit as much as his unexpected pronouncement rankled Warrick. “You will land me here, in December for the holiday season ”— without my family, by damn —“without anything? No Yule log? No greenery? No?—”

The surgeon’s palm thrusting toward his face brought the words to an abrupt halt. “I am a busy man, Lord Warrick. A man of my means and station has few-to-no servants. If you want your surroundings decorated, please be at ease to make the effort and see to it yourself.”

Hang it all!

The decorations didn’t mean nix to him, but he should be back home, overseeing the girls’ efforts. Arguing with the twins. Not here, alone. With naught but the aggravating doctor for company. No waters? Why in blazes had he come to Bath? And why did the evil healer continue to insist on three weeks, instead of the two they’d agreed upon, mentioned in letters?

Gah. A fortnight? One that suddenly loomed like insurmountable challenge of scaling Egyptian pyramids in his wheeled chair.

“Follow me now,” the surgeon said, bending toward his trunk. Gah again. Where were Arbuckle’s own people? Had he sent them off with bags of coins as well? “I will see you settled for the evening.”

Beyond exhausted from the long days of arduous travel, ’twas easier to retreat, marshal his forces and strength overnight (servants or no), and confront The Tyrant come morning.

Only morning brought more unwelcome revelations than the stark and glaring sunlight blustering into his eyes shortly after dawn, due to the uncurtained window in the bedroom he’d been given at the back of the two-story cottage.