Chapter 11

I ndeed, Gwendolyn had not heard the last from her brother.

It was midafternoon on Gwen’s second full day in residence at Frogcroft Cottage, where she had settled along with Mariah, who had not been eager to continue in her brother’s employ. She was out in the garden, tending to her aunt’s bee boles, when little Timmy Michaelson, who lived down the lane, came running up to the house.

“Miss Gwendolyn! Miss Gwendolyn!” Timmy shouted, banging on the door.

Gwen had encouraged everyone in Merstham to call her by her first name, rather than Mrs. Simpkins. Perhaps someday she would grow used to using Maurice’s last name, but right now, hearing it dredged up unhappy memories.

She rose from her stool and came to look over the hedge. “I’m back here, Timmy. What’s the matter?”

Timmy ran over, and Gwen opened the gate for him. “It’s your brother!”

A chill swept through Gwendolyn in spite of the warm August sun. “My brother?” She swallowed the thick lump that had risen in her throat. “He’s… he’s here?”

“Not anymore,” Timmy said between pants. “Mr. Cutler ran him off.”

Timmy told her the whole story over a glass of milk and a slice of bread thick with honey. “He stopped at the Feathers to water his horses,” Timmy explained around a mouthful of crumbs. “Mr. Cutler had just finished making his daily delivery and spotted him. He gave a great bellow, pulled his cleaver from his apron pocket, and charged!” Timmy raised a fist to demonstrate, bumping his mug in the process.

Gwendolyn grabbed the tea towel and mopped the resulting ring of milk from Aunt Agatha’s old oak table. Gracious . She knew Aunt Agatha had loaned Mr. Cutler the money to open his butcher’s shop years ago. But she never would have expected him to chase her brother out of town with a cleaver! “What happened next?”

“Yer brother squealed like a piglet, that’s what happened.” Timmy took a slurp of his milk. “He ran back into the inn yard, just like this.” Timmy stood and did an imitation of a high-kneed, gangly gait that Gwen had seen Joseph use some fifteen summers ago while being chased by a dog.

“He scrambled back into his carriage,” Timmy continued, “shouted to his coachman to climb back up, and last I saw, they was leaving town at a pretty good clip.”

“Gracious,” Gwendolyn said, sitting back in her ladderback chair. “I will make a point of thanking Mr. Cutler.”

Timmy wiped his chin, which was sticky with a smear of honey. “I sure hope that’s the last we see of him.”

It was not. The following week, Joseph returned. Unfortunately for him, for many years Aunt Agatha had supplied one of her tinctures to the tollbooth keeper, Mr. Collins, to help ease his dyspepsia. Mr. Collins was therefore keeping a sharp eye out for Joseph’s carriage and turned him away when he tried to enter town. But the following week, he returned on horseback, hat drawn low, and managed to slip past Mr. Collins.

It was the blacksmith’s fifteen-year-old son, Robert Jenkins, who spotted him that time. It turned out that Aunt Agatha had once financed the repair of a significant leak in the roof of his father’s shop. Robert raised the alarm, and half the town rallied to run Joseph out of town.

The final time Joseph tried to bother her was the first week of September. By now, he had figured out that the townspeople were protective of Aunt Agatha’s beloved niece. He therefore waited until night had fallen to attempt to slink into town.

Unfortunately for him, that happened to be the evening of the weekly meeting of the local Women’s Assistance League. Gwendolyn was in attendance, along with a dozen of the town’s most prominent female citizens.

Mrs. Smithers, the magistrate’s wife, spotted him as they stepped out of the Feathers Hotel. “Is that your brother?”

Gwen squinted into the darkness. “Joseph?” she gasped. “What are you doing here?”

He surged forward, grabbing Gwen’s arm. “Taking back what is mine!”

Gwen was frozen in shock.

But not her companions.

Jane Reynolds, the wife of Aunt Agatha’s solicitor, charged up to Joseph. “Let her go, you villain!” she cried, rearing back and swinging her reticule at his head.

She missed his temple, only managing to clip his jaw. But the reticule struck with a heavy, metallic clank . Gwen gaped at Mrs. Reynolds as Joseph’s hand on her wrist slackened. Gracious, what did she keep in that reticule?

Mrs. Hervey, the choirmaster’s wife, who had a passion for Gothic novels, kicked him in the shin hard enough to make him grunt in spite of his top boots. “Begone, foul despoiler! For though we be weak in body, we are mighty in spirit, and we shall not leave our friend unaided in this, her hour of woe!”

Joseph’s jaw hung slack. Whether he was baffled by Mrs. Hervey’s speech, or this was a lingering effect of Mrs. Reynolds’s reticule, Gwen could not say. But he shook his head and tightened his grip on Gwen’s wrist. She cried out as he twisted her arm, and she felt a pang of panic, certain that it was too late.

It was not too late . Because at that moment, Miss Mercy Charbonnel, the pampered daughter of the richest man in town, who was fifteen years old and all of five foot two, defied her name by pulling the hat pin out of her bonnet and stabbing Joseph right in the bum.

Joseph screeched in an octave that was usually the dominion of sopranos and released Gwen’s wrist so he could grab his posterior.

Miss Mercy’s perfect blonde ringlets trembled as she brandished her hatpin, which glinted red in the faint light emanating from the tavern. “You leave Miss Gwendolyn alone!” she cried in her sweet, melodic voice. “You had best get on your horse and ride for home, because next time, I will aim for the throat !”

Joseph stumbled back, clutching his backside. “This… This isn’t over!”

From behind her, a woman bellowed, “Oh, yes, it is!” Gwen turned in astonishment to see Mrs. Pritchard, the vicar’s wife, brandishing a pitchfork. Giving a battle cry worthy of Boadicea herself, she charged.

It was a shuffling sort of charge, truth be told. Mrs. Pritchard had celebrated her sixty-third birthday the previous week, after all. But, thanks to Miss Mercy, Joseph wasn’t moving so well himself, and he did not seem keen to discover what other sharp implements Gwendolyn’s friends might be harboring upon their persons. He fled into the darkness, a decided hitch in his gait.

Two stable hands who worked at the Feathers, Roger and William, jogged out of the alleyway. “Did Mrs. Pritchard come this way?” Roger asked.

“It was the strangest thing,” William said. “She came bustling into the stables, grabbed the pitchfork, shouted that she’d be right back, and ran off into the darkness.”

Mrs. Reynolds pointed down High Street. “She went that way.”

Miss Mercy’s cheeks were flushed a becoming shade of rose. “It was Mr. Brocklesby. He tried to snatch Miss Gwendolyn!”

Roger’s face darkened. “Right. We’ll take care of it.”

The two stable hands disappeared into the darkness. A moment later, Mrs. Pritchard returned sans pitchfork.

Gwendolyn’s friends insisted on waiting, clustered around her in the darkness. They chattered about the nerve of Joseph to show his face in Merstham. But Gwen did not join the conversation. Her lower lip was quivering, and she suspected that if she attempted to speak, only a faint burble would emerge. Who would have thought that after so many years of being disdained by her own parents and brother, that she would find such wonderful friends?

Five minutes later, Roger and William returned. Gwendolyn was relieved to see that the pitchfork’s tines were not glinting red. “He’s gone, ma’am,” Roger said.

“I warrant he’ll think twice about coming back here,” William added darkly.

“Thank you,” Gwen said, voice trembling. “Truly, thank you so much.”

They all walked her back to Frogcroft Cottage, and Mrs. Hervey insisted on spending the night in Gwen’s spare room, just in case. But Joseph did not return, and Gwendolyn did not hear from him in the weeks and months that followed.

Another person she did not hear from was Tom Talbot—not that she had really expected to. Their acquaintance had always been of a limited nature. Two months after their night together, she had sent him a letter advising him that she had not found herself in the family way. She did not receive a reply.

But she found herself hoping he might come strolling down the lane, and her pulse always sped up a notch when she flipped through the post on the off chance she might find a letter in an unfamiliar hand.

She even took to reading the sports column of the local paper, something that had never interested her before. She was rewarded one October morning when there was a snippet on the latest heavyweight bout. Tom Talbot, it declared, had retained his title, fighting off challenger Bruno Jervis, an up-and-comer seven years his junior whom the author seemed to believe was destined to hold the title one day. The article described how they fought seventeen rounds. Tom was bleeding from the nose, and they were both listing on their feet. Jervis had just knocked Tom to the ground, and everyone thought the fight was over. But Tom somehow managed to get up and fell his opponent with his famous right hook—the Stinger, the reporter called it. The article said the crowd had roared, but it made Gwen feel ill to think of Tom lying on the ground, bleeding and disoriented. She knew boxing was a brutal sport, knew this was what he did. But she could not help but worry for him.

That was not the only time she thought of Tom. She had known little of physical desire before their night together. But now, when she lay in her bed at night, she found herself picturing his broad chest, heavy with muscles. She found herself recalling the feeling of his weight, pressing her down into the mattress. And she could hear his voice, dark with desire, saying, “ You cannot imagine the things I would show you if you were my girl .”

And, just as it had happened when they were together, she would find herself growing warm and slick between her thighs.

The first time, it had happened by accident. She’d been having a dream. Tom had been on top of her, saying the most wicked things as he pounded into her. He found his release, but hers remained frustratingly out of reach.

In her dream, he slid down her body, hands caressing as they went, and then buried his face between her thighs.

When Gwen woke, gasping for breath and clammy with sweat, it was her hand that was between her thighs, her fingers working desperately at that little nubbin Tom had titillated to such good effect. And she knew that what she was doing was a sin, knew it was the worst sort of wickedness to touch herself there.

But it felt so good . She didn’t stop that night. Or the night after, or the night after that. It became a part of her bedtime routine, thinking of Tom and touching herself between her legs.

And sometimes, her morning routine or her mid-afternoon routine, when she’d been thinking about him all day and was craving a release.

And so, there were many changes to Gwendolyn’s life. As the days grew short and the threat of Joseph seemed to recede, she settled into a peaceful life in Frogcroft Cottage. She had friends in town, friends who would look out for her. She was a part of the community. She had her independence and her bees to look after. She was happy, happier than she had ever been in her life up to that point. Which perhaps wasn’t saying much. But she knew how lucky she was.

And yet… when she was alone in her cottage at night, when Mariah went to the Feathers Hotel to flirt with the half-dozen men who were sweet on her, she couldn’t help but wonder if this was all her life would ever be. She found herself dreaming more and more about having a family, about having children of her own. But having children required a husband, and when Gwen tried to picture herself performing the marital act with someone other than Tom, her brain seemed to balk. This was what she got for making love with the most attractive man in all of England. It was no wonder nobody else could compare!

But even leaving aside the more intimate elements of a potential union, she couldn’t picture herself marrying any of the farmhands or other working men who lived in the village, and indeed, they seemed to regard her as beyond their reach. But nor could she picture herself with any of the more genteel men of her acquaintance. She was the odd bluestocking who spent her days outside, working with her hands, tending her bees. There were a couple of gentlemen who made halting attempts to court her. A cousin of Miss Mercy’s, the youngest son of a youngest son, whose father had exhausted what little influence he had securing livings for his first five sons and had not been able to find even a curacy for his youngest. Their conversation was stilted, and Gwendolyn could tell he would not have given her a second glance had she not been in possession of Aunt Agatha’s fortune.

There were two other gentlemen of a similar vein. All had eventually concluded that the prospect was hopeless and moved on. But not before Gwen saw the way they wrinkled their noses at the plain clothes she wore when they came to call upon her at Frogcroft Cottage and found her out back working amongst her bee boles.

She was too educated to marry a groom and too unrefined to marry a gentleman.

She fit in, and yet she didn’t.

She probably needed to accept that this was the best she could hope for, the way it would always be.