38. The Bewigged Hermit

38

The Bewigged Hermit

“Thank you for being insistent,” Aphrodite said after the groomsman handed her up and she nodded for the servant to stow away the steps and secure the door, “about us riding together.”

“My pleasure.” His words were simple; the glittering promise in his eyes was anything but as she untied her bonnet and removed it, too exhausted to care for proprieties. To feel anything but relief at how hungrily he stared at her, as though the past hours had starved him as well.

The moment the carriage was off, she flew into his open arms, no further persuasion necessary. For the miles without him had proved wretched; the news Uncle imparted so unexpected. Distressing, really.

“Your embrace.” His heat warmed as the chilled breath she’d been holding through the past two posting stops and even before shuddered from her lungs. Richard’s strength, his very presence, soothed the flayed edges so recently exposed. “This is what I have n-needed.”

“Tears, sweet Prim? The bastard made you cry.”

She pulled back, brushed gloved fingers beneath her eyes as a tremulous smile greeted that accusation. “You ought not curse Uncle so. He gave…” But then her lips trembled anew. Eyes fair swam. “Gave me a home—his love—when I had no right to either.”

“Ah, Aphrodite. You had, have every right to both. And a whole new family who wants you as well, aye? Not just me.

“Before I apply myself convincing you I am the better bargain, which we both know to be false, tell me of Verdell? The rot he spewed. What maggot crawled into his garret?”

Now wasn’t the time to ask but Warrick could not bear her sadness a moment more. Would rather see her ire. Toward Verdell and how the knave spoke of her or toward him for making such a spectacle at the pump-house, he cared not which.

“Verdell,” spat as though the name soured her tongue. But it also stiffened her posture, prompted her to ease from his hold and regain the seat across from him. “Aye, you deserve to know. It is not true, what he said about light fingers.”

As if there were any doubt. “Of course not. You worked for him? As governess?”

“I did, to his two daughters. At first all was well. Then his wife became pregnant and his eyes started to wander. Then his hands. Until one night, after she grew heavy with the babe, I awoke…awoke…” Panic suffused her features. Before he could tell her to halt, she finished in a rush. “Awoke-to-find-him-on-top-of-me-forcing-his-tongue-and-grabbing-breasts?—”

“Shh now.” He pulled her unresisting form back over, tugged her against his chest, brought her legs up beside him on the bench and stroked his palm over her head.

“The lamp. Next to the bed. I hit him with it. Ran screaming from the room while he roared. He was incensed, shouted to everyone we awoke how I’d stolen from his wife. A ring or something.”

Did she realize how fretful her fingers had become? How she’d yanked off gloves, now wound her hands in his neckcloth?

“The other female servants? They knew the truth. I could see it before they looked away. Scuttled off. But the damage had been done. He put rumors about the next day, I learned, that I had been dismissed and without character, but it mattered not because I had left during the night. Sought refuge with a friend and then Uncle until finding another position, closer to his London practice.”

“Tate?”

A nod beneath his chin, those hands mangling the knot he’d taken pains to fashion to impeccable precision before they’d left the cottage so, so many happenings ago. “And Lord Paulson’s brother as well. Both proved unpalatable. It wasn’t until an instructor from the improving academy, upon hearing that I was back home in Bath, wrote telling me of Lady Harriet and the Larchmonts’ desperate need for a governess who would not cry off due to their youngest daughter’s exuberance and excitability that I found my place among those I could respect.”

“I hope you did damage to his noggin. Verdell’s. Bashed him hard enough with that lamp that his crown ached for a month.”

“Doubtful.” A sniffled laugh. A light kiss to the skin of his neck, unearthed by her industrious fingers. “You did that for me. Today.” Another kiss, one that lingered. “Thank you.”

“My vast pleasure.” His arms tightened about her. “What wasn’t my pleasure was those first two hours confined with Arbuckle. He tried to convince me to withdraw my suit now that you have greater options to further your future. He likes me not.”

She pulled back to frown at him. “You have been vocal about the same.”

“Deservedly so.”

“How did you respond?” she asked with serious intent, no more plying fingers or playful kisses.

“About letting you go? Rescinding my offer?”

A nod.

You still have not, with any sincerity, offered for her.

“Told him to stubble it. That I was the best man you could hope for—thought he might challenge me to swords at dawn over that. Truth told, Prim? I remain selfish in the extreme.

“Were I a better man, I would tell you to run. To lift up your skirts and race like the wind as far away from me and mine as you can go. Grant yourself some semblance of the future you deserve.

“Yet the thought of you turning from me and bounding off? Fills my chest with a nagging sort of sadness I doubt I would ever be able to dispense with, no matter how many other Latin-speaking, blushing, audacious governesses stumble across my halting path…”

“Richard, please. Do not belittle yourself.”

“Why would you ever, ever agree to wed me now?” He spoke over her protest. “When the news shared by Arbuckle, your new-found startlings give rise to options beyond compare? Especially when I cannot offer you anything but a broken body and beggared estate?”

“Meekness does not suit you, my lord,” she mocked, her frown growing. “You know better than to disparage your worth, walking or wealthy or neither.

“We both know trials exist ahead. Challenges I fear you may not have considered,” she said, the frown now reaching her eyes. “Regardless of what Lady Redford may think, I doubt that her son and Lady Anne will be so quick to accept me, not as anything other than Harri’s governess. I would hate to come between you and such a close friend.”

“I believe they may surprise you.” He soothed her agitation with the press of his fingers feathering over her lips. “But for good or ill, I care not. As close as we are, as much as I would never forsake him, I can live without Ed by my side. You? Not even for my next breath.

“Will you have me, despite the plentiful reasons not to?” Her lips opened and her tongue teased his fingers until he withdrew his touch and coiled his hand by his side. Courage, Rich. “Will you bind your life with mine and what, who comes with—my sisters and brothers? Will you live with me and our dearth of servants, in a rambling, somewhat desolate abode that needs your light and laughter above all else?

“I lay myself bare before you. I adore you, Aphrodite Primrose. Your sunset hair. Your enlivening nature. Your intellect. Your heart.” His now thumped faster than a runaway team. “I know not what the future holds. I know not whether I will ever walk with ease. But I do not want to take steps if you are not by my side.”

“I cannot imagine not being there, for steps. For hopes. For laughter. Cannot imagine the misery of being apart from you. And after those last sentences? Did my uncle and Lady Redford not travel so near, I would remove my dress and fan my skin, for I feel well-warmed indeed.”

But he could not smile along with her, not yet. “I am no longer certain I can save the estate. Were it just myself? I would take to wearing a wig and hide from debt collectors.” He heaved a sigh of regret. “’Tis really not the most well-conceived notion, to tie your future with mine.”

“You goosecap.” She tilted her head, evaluating him as though he were a featherhead in truth. “Should you keep blathering, I doubt you will manage to shove me aside, especially after those touching avowals of admiration I have no intention of forgetting. So cease making an idiot of yourself, hmm?

“I do not want the easy way of things. Did I, doubtless I would have fled your presence the moment you made me hither from the woods. Richard, part of me still baffles that we are here, now. The other part of me? Just wants to wrap hands about your shoulders, climb fingers up the back of your head to tug on those silky black strands and bring your mouth to mine. Put it to better use than all that buffoonery, trying to make me doubt. A useless endeavor, that.”

Daylight waned as evening approached. At the last horse change, he had lit the lantern. Now, he chose to turn it down, for with less light came more privacy.

“Everything I have or that may come to me,” she said, the moment he finished, “however much it might be, I want it to be yours.”

His forehead pinched in a scowl. “So many ways that is wrong.”

“Then use what you need to keep the creditors at bay. The rest? If there is enough, we shall maintain what we can of the estate, your birthright, keep the roof over our head, mayhap furnish dowries for the girls…”

His hands found their way to her hips, clenched tight. “And if I fail? If the debts cannot be appeased sufficiently that I avoid debtors’ prison?—”

“ We will not fail.” Her faith staggered him.

“But if the worst does happen, will you guard the children? Visit me in?—”

“Oh, pish and poh! Do you hear yourself? Debtors’ prison is out of the question! Nay, from what you have shared, Sophia and the twins would no doubt plan a jailbreaking and then where would Julia and I be? We shall order you that wig, a long beard as well. That and a grey cloak, let you hide away in the hermitage before we allow you to be taken from us,” said as though she were a general commanding troops.

Her words, her very insistence snaffled his wits. “I…I… The estate doesn’t have a hermitage, I do not think.” He’d been absent for so many years, who knew anymore?

“And you call yourself an Englishman ? An earl ?” How appalling she made both sound. And once again, in her presence, he was fighting not hopelessness but laughter. “That should be our highest priority, then,” she asserted, “once you are reunited with your siblings?—”

“And you with your family.”

She beamed at that but did not let it stop her. “We shall build?—”

“You mean dig out, I believe. Are not hermitages dug out from rock, from the earth? Certainly nothing so fanciful to be built above ground.”

Despite his interruptions, his gentle needling, nothing dampened her enthusiasm for the project she had just conceived. Nay, she blasted any hesitations, any concerns he might have dared voice and continued planning out his life. His entire family’s life, and with every word shared, every idea described, he fell more and more in love.

“Shall we have Sophia supervise?” Aphrodite pondered aloud. “From what you have shared of her, she would relish putting the twins to work. Part of their punishment, mayhap?”

“She would thrive in that role. And they would chafe.”

“Wonderful choices all around, then.”

“Looking wonderfully satisfied with yourself, Prim. And Julia? What part shall she have in building?—”

“You mean digging?”

“This hermitage of yours?”

“Mine? Perish the thought! Do not expect me to join you there, not without warm water but instead addled by insects? Nay, I shall maintain my happiness within walls —ones that are built ; you may visit me at night, every night if you please. But only after you bathe.”

“Of a certainty. When I am not hiding from creditors.”

“Exactly! As to Julia…” So easily did she include his fragile youngest sister. Included her in a way that touched him anew. “I shall work with her on the recordation of it all. That will give us time to evaluate her vocabulary, spelling, penmanship and even math. But without any sort of formal schooling. She and I, with Sophia’s assistance I am sure, will monitor and record the hours spent, tools used, mayhap add drawings and lists… We shall communicate without requiring spoken sentences until she is ready for more. She will not be left out.”

“I adore you, Prim. Love you more than you can fathom.”

“Grand. So no more annoying talk of foisting me off on unknown family?”

“None.”

“No more ridiculous notions of not using whatever monies might come my way to help your estate? No more preposterous consideration of debtors’ prisons?”

“Mmmm.” He could not help but dither, knowing the possibility, however distasteful, existed.

“Only notions of wigs and hermitages?” she proposed, all saucy determination again.

“Aye. I concur. I shall be your bewigged hermit and you shall see to running the household.”

“Brilliant. I concur as well.”

“And…” He allowed his voice to become as deep and low as he could make it. “You shall sit upon my lap. Starting now?”

“You really are a bufflehead.”

“Is that any way to speak to your lord and master?”

The sound of her hilarity rang loud and true—until he convinced her to put her mouth to better use.

So, all through the night, the carriage creaked, harnesses jingled as the wheels sped onward, taking both of them into a future that neither would have envisioned even two weeks ago, much less two years, but a future that now tantalized, beckoned more with every breath and heartbeat shared between them.

And the following day, when the two carriages diverged, one heading off to Redford Manor and the other traveling toward where Shieldings and his missus had taken the girls? The disobedient twins (currently taking up every second of their brother’s new steward’s time—and patience) unknowingly received a reprieve. Because their brother, and his wife-to-be, arrived just in time for the Epiphany-day play. The second of two theatrical performances; and the one a previously mulish but suddenly agreeable Sophia deigned to participate in.

For the bartering had commenced.

In exchange for her cooperation that evening and the next while they resided within the burgeoning walls of the extended Shieldings’ family’s home, even though she had vowed to behave for a sennight, Warry concurred that she could ease from her vigilant perfection after five days. She had haggled for four but relaxed her stance when she saw how much difficulty he had maintaining his—physically, that was.

When the curiously pretty Aphrodite (what a burdensome name!) knelt and whispered to Sophia how vastly worried he had been, said something about another injury, Sophia decided to be the bigger personage. See if she didn’t! (Because if Warry could take the blushing, freckly, orange-haired governess to wife? If someone found Aphrodite appealing, then mayhap there existed hope for Sophia, too. With her thick brows and commanding nose, her even more commanding manner…)

And that evening, after tears had been dried (Julia could still be such a baby at times) and applause suitably rendered?

While looking out over the crowd of gathered, cheering adults, Sophia took more satisfaction than she might have expected upon spying a sleeping Julia, coiled tight in Warry’s arms, head on his shoulder, her baby arm outstretched and clinging to some of that fascinatingly ugly hair of the smiling woman by his side.

A step-mama? Hmm. Another adult to bargain with?

One more “parent” to punish King and Knight once they returned home two days hence?

For, aye, Sophia had overheard plenty about her brothers’ antics since Warry arrived. She chuckled. The twins were going to be in so much trouble!

She couldn’t wait.