A Heart's Treasure (13 page)

Xavier looked over his shoulder for a moment, then shrugged, resuming his morning’s shave. “Perhaps it needs be an old man’s spittle.”

“Gad! I always thought he used champagne, or some wax or other. I wonder if I shall be able to bear wearing the things, now I know they have an octogenarian’s antique spittle on them…?” Haddy mused, holding both up for further inspection. “I’ve only got my pumps with me otherwise, and they would never do for racing across the countryside, so I guess it makes no never mind.” He pulled the boots on, only grunting a little, for his muscular arms had the strength to pull the calf-tight boots on without assistance. For himself, Xavier had brought his old, looser boots, knowing he’d be forced to dress himself.

Haddy stood, assured himself from a distance (in the half mirror Xavier used to shave by) that he was adequately put together this morning. He touched a finger to his brow in a salute. “I’m off to see about horses. I think we might need a new right leader, as I wasn’t pleased with the fellow’s hoof when we arrived last night. Bruised, I think. I’ll tell anyone I see of our party that we’re leaving in twenty minutes, if you’d be so kind as to do the same.”

“That means you’re most likely leaving me to rap on the ladies’ doors,” Xavier accused good-naturedly, lifting a cloth to wipe the blade of his razor.

“They’re in the first two rooms to the left at the head of the stairs,” Haddy supplied as he slipped out of the room.

Xavier shook his head, yet smiling, as he finished shaving his neck. He looked into the mirror then and uttered a small oath; he’d gotten shaving soap on his eye patch.

He reached up and pulled the black patch from his eye, taking the cloth and wiping at the soapy marking. That only made the problem worse, so he opted to drop the eye patch in the bowl of still lukewarm water he’d filled from a ewer a footman had brought up with their breakfast trays. He swished the fabric in the water for a moment, then decided it was adequately cleaned. He pressed it flat between his two hands, wringing whatever water he could from it. At home he would have hung it on a peg on his mirror to dry, but he didn’t have that option in a posting inn. Instead he crossed the room and slipped it into his coat pocket, making a mental note to hang it up tonight when they were at whatever inn they found. He crossed back to the stand with the mirror, retrieving his razor. He thought about throwing the used water out the window, but then opted to leave it for the servants to clean up. He half stepped back, reviewing the stand to be sure he’d not left his watch or monies or any such items behind, and then looked up, catching his own reflection in the mirror.

He winced, as he always did when he saw himself without the eye patch. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The rough scar was bad enough, but the eye itself was no congenial sight. The lid permanently drooped, more than half closed all the time. He could force it open with his fingers if he chose to, which he seldom did. He seldom even touched it. He couldn’t like the way the lid hung limp, flat, almost concave, reminding him that the ball underneath had lost half its size, its viscous contents lost as a result of the injury. He couldn’t like its cloudy color, the way what remained there looked like an old man’s eye overgrown with cataracts. Unpatched, it ruined the symmetry of his face, this drooping, sightless, atrophied organ.

He reached into his waistcoat pocket, pulling out the spare patch he always carried with him. He’d been caught out before without a spare, once, at age seven. When he was just getting used to the bedamned thing, the thong that tied around his head had snapped unexpectedly, there in church, in front of God and everyone. A little girl in a neighboring box had actually screamed and pointed at his bared wound. His mother had taken him home, not staying for the end of the service, and he’d walked the whole way with his head hanging and his hand carefully covering the left side of his face.

Since that tender age, he’d never been caught out without a spare patch. Which wasn’t to say that was an end to his trials. More than once, the patch had been wrested off of him and lost in the midst of either a game or fisticuffs, sometimes by design, sometimes by accident. His mates had either reacted to those unplanned revealings by finding the sight of his injury engrossing, or, more often, they reacted with cries of disgust that reflected how startling the sight of it was. He’d quickly learned to press his own face into the ground or pull his arm across his face, securing his patch or its spare before he rose, denying the lads the further chance to stare, or mock, or sneer in repugnance.

And…then there had been the ladies. Always, upon first meeting him, the sideways glance from the ladies.

The result: keeping his eye hidden was ever in Xavier’s mind, He’d reach to feel the patch a dozen times a day, or move his cheek so that he might feel the reassuring rub of the fabric on the left side of his face.

Now he crossed to his traveling case, removing another patch, replenishing a spare into his waistcoat’s pocket. The one still in his hand was lifted and tied about his head, fixed in place with the smoothness of long practice where it needed to lie to hide his disparity from the world. He moved back to the mirror and evaluated his altered reflection, still and silent as a bird that suspects it’s become some other creature’s prey. He stared into the singular gray eye, but saw only a reflection, not a magnification of the soul or a clarifier of muddled dreams, and so he turned away from his own too-familiar visage, no lighter in spirit.

* * *

“Ladies?” Xavier said, the sound of his knock echoing faintly in the narrow hallway. “Haddy has ordered the horses ready for—” He pulled his watch from the waistcoat pocket opposite his spare patch pocket, lifted the lid with his thumb, and read the time— “ten minutes from now. Will you be ready?”

The door cracked open; Summer stood there, her hair plaited but not yet pinned up. “Ten minutes?” she echoed. She turned back into the room, making a soft inquiry. He heard Genevieve’s voice responding, though the words were unclear. Summer turned back to him and nodded. “Yes. We will. I think. I’ve nearly got my last portmanteaux ready.”

Xavier heard more commentary from Genevieve. “What did she say?”

Summer shrugged. “She said
‘festina lente,’
whatever that means.”

“Ah. ‘Make haste slowly,’ actually,” Xavier supplied, smiling. “Sage advice.”

“If you say so. Although I vow I still don’t know what that means,” Summer said as she gave him a quick smile, a nod, and closed the door.

He proceeded down the hallway to the next door, and repeated the procedure. Penelope said they were ready, and Laura murmured agreement from where she was sitting at the room’s vanity, making an entry in a small journal.

Xavier went below to summon someone to retrieve the ladies’ bags.

That was a problem. It seemed they were not the only guests who had chosen to leave at the relatively late hour of half past nine. There were at least six carriages waiting in the yard, and each of those was aswarm with ostlers, grooms, and various other servants who’d been pressed into service for the morning’s exodus. Someone’s pet, a small dog of uncertain breeding, harried a flock of chickens that had wandered into the bedlam, until its owner—an elderly woman who deigned to call the creature “lovey”—scooped it up and carried it like a baby into one of the waiting carriages. Haddy was standing, arms akimbo and face reddened with ire, arguing some point or other of horsemanship with a groom; perhaps there was no extra horse for hire to replace the one with the possibly bruised foot.

Xavier turned, his head pivoting as he reentered the inn, but he only came across one servant, a kitchen maid of diminutive size. She would hardly do to carry out baggage, especially the two rather awkward trunks some of the ladies had esteemed absolutely necessary for this stop. He mounted the stairs, knocking again at Lady Summer’s room.

This time Genevieve opened the door, her hair twisted up in a clever knot atop her head. She was just finishing tucking into it the ends of a pale blue ribbon matching her gown.

She’d obviously anticipated a servant, and it was equally obvious she wasn’t sure how to react to Xavier after last night—a night in which he’d watched her go through a handful of mercurial moods.

This morning she settled on brisk friendliness. “Xavier. I thought you were a man come for our bags.”

“And so I am,” he replied, shrugging his left shoulder to begin the removal of his jacket. He strove for a light tone, the one he’d mastered because it always worked well in social settings. “Or so I am today at any rate. You’ve none but myself to take your baggage below. Would you be so kind as to hold my coat?”

“Of course,” she said, stepping back to open the door fully and allow him to enter. Summer was seated at a table with a mirror affixed, just placing the last few pins in her hair. She caught Xavier’s eye in the mirror, and stood at once, blushing a little to have a man in her room, even one of such old acquaintance.

At least neither of these ladies had had a trunk brought up. “Not to worry. I’ll take these two larger bags for now, and fetch the rest on a second trip, shall I?”

“Not at all,” Genevieve said firmly. “I’ll take this small one now, and you may take those two, and then we’ll be done with it, for Summer can certainly contrive to bring down her portmanteaux herself.”

“Of course I can,” Summer agreed at once.

Genevieve cast her friend a quick glance, leaving Xavier to wonder what was behind her moment of vexation. He moved into the room, took up the bags, and motioned with a little swing of his arm that Genevieve should go first out of the room.

As he followed her into the narrow passageway, he considered she looked as well today in blue as she had yesterday in yellow. She was lucky in her coloring, with that peachy skin, and her brown eyes. Her eyes, how had he ever found them anything other than enchanting? They invited you in, especially when she gave that bubbly laugh of hers…

Xavier’s heart did a jig in his chest. He recalled how it felt to touch her hair, how it had been yesterday to move that stray piece back into place; how it had felt to hold her small hands in his while they danced; how she struck sparks off his steely heart when she filled his ears with impossibly kind words.

Don’t think like that. Don’t ruin what’s good.

Solid advice—but how to enact it? Xavier sighed, recommitting himself to what he knew he must do, because he’d done a lesser version of it since he’d first realized women’s stares followed him. He would take what he could of Genevieve, little things: smiles, laughter, dances, kind words. And if the medicine was bittersweet, was she to blame for the disease? Of course not. He’d only himself to blame. Only look at her now, smiling over her shoulder at him, doing all she could to be charming, helpful, and generous with her friendly affection, however idle that affection might be.

He put on a crooked smile. “There’s happy news, I believe. It oughtn’t be as warm today,” he babbled as he followed her down the stairs.

* * *

“That is welcome news indeed. I think the warmth has been difficult for Summer.” As soon as she said the words, Genevieve wished them back. Late last night, just as she was finally falling asleep, Genevieve had made the decision to keep Xavier and Summer apart while they were on this journey. So why bring the girl into the conversation at all?

“I was a bit sorry to have a tray brought up this morning. I rather enjoyed eating breakfast
en masse
yesterday,” she said the first non-Summer thing that came to mind.

He murmured agreement as he settled the bags he’d carried into the coach, then accepted hers to do the same. He dusted his hands and reached for his coat, which she’d carried along, thrown over the arm that had carried the lighter of her two bags. As she surrendered it to him, he laid it atop the bags and gave her a succinct little nod. “When we stop this evening, we should inform the innkeeper if the
en masse
style is our preference for the morning.”

He looked well in shirtsleeves only. Very well.

“I’d like that,” she tried to sound firm and unaffected.

A smile slowly spread across his face. “So would I.”

I am increasingly struck dumb in this man’s presence of late,
Genevieve noted, almost amused by her own behavior—for she would swear that, yet again, he ever so gently flirted with her.
Me? Summer? Next I’ll believe he’s flirting with the innkeeper’s wife.

She didn’t break their shared gaze, aware she might just have to learn to tolerate any flirting, or lack thereof, or having it pointed at others, or this swirling confusion about it at all, in order to complete her task of keeping him away from Summer.

“Good luck getting Penelope’s and Laura’s trunks down those stairs by yourself,” she said with a bit of a tart smile, a punishment for making her feel unsure.

He surprised her by laughing, and she turned away to find the other coach so he couldn’t catch the blush of pleasure his laughter brought her.

Chapter 9

This is the monstrosity in love, lady, that the will is infinite, and the execution confined;

that the desire is boundless, and the act a slave to limit.

—Shakespeare,

Troilus and Cresida

“Let us have a Little Riddle!” Laura commanded her brother after their picnicked luncheon that afternoon.

“Yes, give us a Little Riddle,” Michael echoed, although around a yawn. He was stretched out on the luncheon cloth, prepared to nap for the second day in a row.

It was testimony to the day’s lesser temperature that the ladies had brought forth needles, thread, and scissors, and conspired to work with the lace their brothers had gifted them with in High Wycombe. They worked to make a set of four shawls, one for each. There was even a light breeze that suggested shawls might actually be necessary this evening. However, their work was now set aside, awaiting them within the carriage for when they returned to the day’s travel.