Edith Layton (16 page)

A different woman, this one plain and serious, served them the rest of their meal. This time Ewen scowled. He glared at the woman as she left their table.

“What’s the matter?” Bridget asked. “Is there something wrong with the food?”

“With the service,” he growled. “I think I’ll have to have a word with the innkeeper.”

T
he service
? Bridget saw nothing wrong; the woman wasn’t very friendly, but she was neat and quick. The only thing Bridget could think of that might have upset Ewen made her so nervous she had to joke about it. “Oh, so you miss the blonde already?”

“This one has no manners,” Ewen said grimly.

Bridget frowned, too—until she realized what he meant. She’d been aware of it in an absent sort of way because she was so used to it. “Oh! You mean because she keeps staring at me—or rather, at my scar? At least she looked at me,” she laughed. “Your blond beauty didn’t even see me, I think.”

He didn’t smile. She put her hand on his. “Don’t make a fuss,” she whispered. “I’m sure she doesn’t mean anything by it. It takes some people that way. They can’t look away. I don’t mind.”

“You should,” he snarled.

“Why? It’s not intentional. Nor is it any worse than people who look at it and then look away, as if they’ve just seen a carriage accident and can’t bear to see more. The landlord did just that, you know. I’ve become accustomed. In fact,” she said sadly, “it’s your reaction I can’t understand.”

“Mine?”

“You said you don’t mind it.”

“I said it enhances you. Get my words right, if you please. Ah, Bridget, how shall I deal with you in this?” His hand closed over hers, his voice so low she had to lean forward to hear him. “I have a confession,” he said. “Sometimes I yearn to kiss that scar, did you know that? Yes, look shocked. I’ve wanted to put my lips on it—trace it with my tongue, even—to acknowledge it, for you and for me. I’ve been tempted to do that so many times but was afraid of what you’d think. It’s not because I’m perverse—or
that
perverse.” He grinned. “Or because I feel sorry for you, or because I’m trying to heal the hurt, or any of that muck. But because if it weren’t for that scar, we’d never have met. Have you ever thought of that?”

“No!” she said, tilting her head to the side as she considered it. “That’s the nicest compliment you’ve ever paid me, I think.”

“Then I’ll have to do better in the future,” he said, and went back to his beef.

They finished their meal and sat looking through the small window. Not many people were walking by. “I suppose if you want to meet the immediate world, we’ll have to stroll,” Ewen finally said.

They walked up to the church and then down to the carriage again. By that time Ewen’s face was thunderous. They’d met few people, and those they did hadn’t
been friendly. The vicar was polite but distant. The smith greeted them but carefully avoided looking at Bridget when he was introduced, and an elderly man touched his cap to Ewen and frankly stared at her.

“Half of them are dolts, the other half think I’m the very devil. My reputation has preceded you,” Ewen muttered angrily as he helped her back into the carriage. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” she said as merrily as she could. “Your reputation kept all the nice young women away from you, didn’t it? Your reputation—my scar. How lucky we both are.” It didn’t sound as funny as she’d thought it would.

Ewen drove back quickly, saying it was going to rain. They talked about the weather on the way home, but all Bridget could do was worry about whether she’d embarrassed him after all.

She was edgy and uncomfortable for the rest of the afternoon. He wrote a note to his father. She wrote a letter to her mother and then tore it up, realizing how it would look to send two letters in a day on her honeymoon. She put down her pen and sighed, realizing the honeymoon was probably over.

Ewen didn’t think so. She was still sitting at her desk, brooding, when she felt his lips touch the back of her neck.

“Let’s make it a spectacularly good night, to offset the day,” he whispered against her throat. “I think we need a delicious dinner lit by many candles, and then perhaps we can think of a way to pass the rest of the evening brilliantly as well. I’ll go change now, in my dressing room. We’ll meet in the dining room at seven.”

“As though we weren’t married at all? Why so formal?”

“Because I think I have to woo you back to me again,”
he said, and kissed her so thoroughly she knew he was joking. Surely he could tell she was his completely. She clung to him so long that he whispered, “Perhaps we should…no.” He stepped back from her. “It was a good idea. It will make it all the better later. A game, yes. But a honeymoon is a fine time for games. You’ll see.”

When he left, her mood stayed uneasy.
Ungrateful chit
! she told herself as she went to bathe and dress.
Rolling in clover and complaining
. W
hat is the matter with you
?

She found out what the matter was when she went to the convenience. Then she worried more.

He said he was courting, and he came to dinner like a man who was. He had dressed in black, so that the white of his linen was dazzling. His dark curling hair was brushed back, and his eyes were bright against the deepening golden tan the country sun had brushed his face with. He looked leonine, proud, incredibly elegant. He took her hand and kissed it when she came into the room. She wanted to cry. One of his dark brows went up in inquiry.

“Ewen,” she said, and paused, because the footmen were serving dinner.

When the footmen left, he served her himself, putting ham, beef, and fowl on her plate. Every time he offered her something, she nodded. He finally stopped.

“More and we’ll need another plate, though I swear you don’t look hungry. Though you do look lovely. What’s amiss, my dear?”

“Oh, Ewen,” she said with a broken sigh, “I hardly know how to tell you….”

“What is it?” he asked, alarm springing to his eyes.

“Well, it’s foolish, but I just don’t…Ewen,” she said in a whispered rush, “you wanted tonight to be so special
and romantic. But—well—it’s my time of the month.”

He frowned for a split second, then threw back his head and laughed long and loud until he saw her face. He stopped, biting back a smile.

“It’s not funny,” she said crossly. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do—with you, I mean—when that happens. Oh, heavens! I don’t even know how to
talk
about it with you.”

“The way you’d talk about anything else. My dear, we’ve been intimate in all else, you know.”

“I know,” she said fiercely, embarrassed pleasure coloring her cheeks as she remembered the all else. “But we can’t now. Or can we? Is there anything I can do for you? Or should we go ahead and…?”

“Bridget,” he said with sympathy, though laughter still lurked in his eyes, “we should only do what’s pleasurable for both of us to do. I imagine you feel like you’ve been punched in the stomach?”

She nodded quickly.

“Aching?”

She nodded again.

“Then it’s not precisely an ideal time to make love, is it? Even though there are certainly other things we could do, if we wished. We just haven’t come to that yet, and now is not the time to begin. Do you think I’m such a hedonist I can’t go a night without love?”

“Well, it might be three—or even four—nights more,” she said, wanting to be completely honest with him.

“So long? My God! How shall I survive?” Then the laughter left his eyes. “Thank you so much for your high estimate of me,” he said grimly. Before she could protest, he murmured, “Still, how can I blame you? I courted you with passion, for passion’s sake, and I’ve treated you to little else
since, haven’t I? But listen. There are other things to share beside our bodies. We’re together, we have the rest of our lives for the rest of our pleasures. Be easy.”

She was, for the rest of the evening. He made sure of it. They strolled after dinner. He played the piano for her, she sang a few old songs for him. They went to bed. She lay there stiffly, wondering how he really felt—until she felt his strong arm hook around her waist. He pulled her close, tucking her rear into the warmth of his abdomen, putting his big hand on her aching stomach. But good as it felt, she couldn’t relax.

“Go to sleep and stop worrying,” he whispered. “I’m tired. And it’s too far into town, so I won’t nip off while you’re sleeping. Besides, how do I know that the lovely blonde from the inn isn’t in the same condition as you are tonight?”

She thumped him with her pillow as he lay laughing like a madman. Then she curled back against him and slept, satisfied that for the moment, at least, he wanted her for more than passion.

But in the morning he told her he was leaving.

He sat at the breakfast table, and the early sunlight showed nothing but dismay in his eyes. It was nothing to what he saw in her face when he told her he’d gotten a message and had to go at once.

“No, it’s not my father, thank God,” he reassured her quickly. “It’s from London—from the office I worked with when I was on the Continent. I can’t tell you all. But I can tell you they’re having a problem. There are stirrings—rumors from Elba. The man they have in my place now doesn’t know whom to trust. But I do. They need me there.”

“In
France
?” Bridget gasped.

“No, no, my purposes are too well known now. Not only would I not be safe, my presence would endanger anyone we had there. They need me to speak to the man they’re sending out in my stead, and they want me to answer some questions that have been sent back from abroad. I won’t be long. A day to get there, a day there, and a day to get back. Three days, four at the most. But I must go now.”

“I’ll go see to the packing of my things,” Bridget said, jumping up from her seat.

He took her hand to stop her. “No. There’s no reason for you to go. You can’t, in fact. I can’t travel by carriage. Too slow. I’m riding, taking nothing but my saddlebags. My valet’s coming with me, but only so he can pick up the rest of your wardrobe while he’s in London. You’ll be more comfortable here, I’ll be back before you miss me.”

“Impossible,” she whispered.

She was in control as she said good-bye to him, though it was clear to him she found it difficult. They stood in the drive. His valet sat on his horse, waiting for his master. Ewen’s horse was saddled, waiting, too.

“Don’t fret so,” he said, his eyes steady and sober, holding her gaze as he held her two hands in his. “It’s only for a few days.”

“I know. It’s only that I don’t want you to go. Foolish, I know. But now that you’re going, I realize there are so many more things I wanted to ask you.” She had to stop to swallow the tears that threatened. But it was only for a few days, and he thought her state of mind was influenced by the state of her body now. Even so, he too
had the idea that this was an important, dangerous parting, but he didn’t know why, so he brushed off the feeling.

“I wanted to ask you some things, too,” he said, “and there was something I meant to tell you as well.” He paused, considering each word before he spoke it. It made his voice more hesitant, slower and more deliberate. “It’s a thing I never thought I’d want to tell you. But then, I didn’t know how it would be with me and you.”

What he said was so true he couldn’t go on speaking. He paused, shocked at himself. Something significant was happening. He’d said good-bye to dozens of women in his time. He hadn’t known it would hurt so much to leave her now. He wouldn’t have believed it so much as a week ago.

But there was nothing more he could say—at least not here and not now. Or rather, there was too much he wanted to say, and he had to think about it before he did. He wasn’t a man to act on impulse, except in matters of the flesh. He wasn’t used to listening to his heart and didn’t trust it.

He lowered his head and kissed her gently instead. Muttering something under his breath, he took her in his arms and kissed her hard. Then, utterly beguiled, he kissed her tenderly. Her mouth was warm, quivering with desire and sorrow. It was very difficult to let her go. But he couldn’t let her see that.

When they parted he could see her eyes glistening with tears. Her scar stood out in bold relief on her ashen face. It hurt him to see it, and he had to stop himself from brushing his lips against it.

“How theatrical we are become, my dear,” he said lightly as he dropped her hands. Laughing, he swung up
on his horse. “I hope my welcome home will be as ardent as my leave-taking is. Fare thee well, my lovely Bridget. Keep thinking of me—I won’t forget you.”

That too was new to him, surprising and true. He raised a hand, turned his horse, and rode away. He yeamed to look back, but didn’t dare.

“O
h, but you’re crushing it!” Betsy cried.

“An iron will set it right when I unpack,” Bridget told her little helper through gritted teeth. She dared to pick up the trunk’s lid and look at all the clothes she’d squashed inside. She sighed. Betsy sat on Bridget’s high bed watching her, making a steady commentary on the mess she was making of her packing.

“I meant the hat,” Betsy said, looking sad as she saw what had become of a once perky bonnet.

“I know,” Bridget snapped, “but I’m sure I can have it blocked when I get to London.”

Betsy sat still, her blue eyes wide. Bridget’s voice had held impatience and threat. And what she said was nonsense; they both knew it.

“I’m sorry,” Bridget said quickly. “You’re right, of course. But I never liked that bonnet anyway.”

Betsy’s eyes got wider. She knew it was Bridget’s favorite. And Bridget never lied.

Bridget was having trouble getting her clothes neatly stowed. She’d always done it for herself. But it had been easy before, because before she’d met Ewen she’d never had much to pack. His valet had made swift, neat work of packing her new wardrobe when they’d left town, but he hadn’t come back from London. Neither had Ewen. That was why Bridget was packing.

The promised three days had come, another three had gone, and Bridget was packing to leave because she didn’t know what else to do. At least packing was doing
something
. The only other thing she’d done since he’d left was to wait. She was tired of it.

She’d missed him with painful intensity for two days, and then looked for him to return all day on the third. She went to sleep that night with her eyes half open, ears straining to hear the slightest sound of his arrival. She’d heard nothing but crickets and frogs, and no matter how often they called her name, she could only think of him.

The fourth and fifth and sixth days had been unbearable, so now she was going, too. O
r at least
, she confessed to herself,
getting ready to go
. She flung a shawl from her wardrobe onto the bed.

“Shawls are easy,” Betsy said happily, catching it and laying it down on the bed so she could fold it.

“Indeed they are, shawls and sheets. Roman ladies had nothing but sheets to pack, or at least their gowns looked like sheets and they wore them wrapped around themselves.”

The child needed tutoring, Bridget thought, so why
not make a task into a learning game? She enjoyed Betsy’s company. The girl had stared at her scar the day they’d met, and never again. Children were that way. A person could have a tulip growing out of their nose, Bridget thought, and a child would stare once and then get over it. She never had trouble with children.

Betsy was an eager helper, too, and Bridget could use a little company. Betsy had become the darling of the household, but Bridget wasn’t. The servants at Ewen’s hideaway were polite to her, but only that, and she refused to grovel in order to win a smile from them. Besides, she didn’t think it would work.

If they didn’t exactly dislike her, they seemed determined to ignore her. The butler might have been built with the house, he was that wooden and that old. He treated Bridget with polite distance. Of course, then, so did his staff. Even the gardeners were wary and taciturn with her. Betsy was the only person she’d had to chat with since Ewen had left.

She certainly wouldn’t dare going into Little Newton again. If the village folk had been rude and standoffish when Ewen was there, she hated to think how they’d receive her alone.

He’d sent a message on the fourth day.

A charming note, but it did not inspire confidence. She’d wanted something warmer. What she really wanted was his warm body next to hers, his arms around her, blotting out the real world. A world that probably wondered why an elegant nobleman would marry a scarred spinster without a penny to her unknown name, and in such haste—and then hasten to hide her away. That was what she was wondering now.

So if he didn’t come by the end of the week, she resolved she’d go to him. Or go to his father’s house and meet him there. This place had been her honeymoon heaven. Now it was limbo.

She’d given him her hand, her heart, and her body, all he had said he wanted, as well as her soul. But she wondered about the coincidence of his leaving the moment her body became temporarily unavailable to him. And now that he was in London, and staying there, she couldn’t help thinking of all the other available women who were also there. She
should
be able to help it, she knew that. It was wrong to suspect him simply because she’d never really believed anyone could want her for more than a day. But what was wrong and what was real were two different things.

“My lady?” a maid said at her door. “There’s a message for you.”

Bridget dropped the clothing she was holding and took the boldly scrawled message with trembling hands.

V
ery nice
, Bridget thought. She tried to read it again, but her eyes had filled with tears. F
our
lines? She needed at least a novel from him now. She needed torrents of words to reassure her. Words…

“Is the messenger still here?” she asked the maid.

“Aye. He’s that tired, rode since dawn, he says.”

“Then go tell him to rest a moment longer. I’ve an answer for him to take back to his lordship.”

Why hadn’t she thought of that before? Bridget went to her desk with a smile on her face, drew out a sheet of paper, and dipped her pen into ink. She held it above the paper, trying to decide what to write.

P
lease, please, please come home
. I
love and miss you
. Y
ou’ve become everything to me
. I’
m so lonely, and when you’re gone for so long
I
imagine the worst things
. That was exactly what she wanted to say.

But she didn’t want his pity, or to anger him with her foolish doubts. She had to find a way to tell him everything in her heart, without whining. She had to guard a little corner of her heart, to save that much of herself from his keeping, in case her wildest fears were true. She had to have a little pride. She had to be as witty and succinct as he was, too; men liked that sort of thing. She had to be clever.

“Are you gonna write and ask him when he’s coming home?” Betsy asked, interrupting her thoughts.

“No. because he said he doesn’t know that yet.” Bridget frowned at the empty sheet of paper.

“Are you gonna ask him when we’re going to his father’s house?”

“No, he doesn’t know that either,” Bridget said absently, trying to concentrate.

“Are you gonna ask him to come home ’cause you miss him?”

Bridget looked up at the golden-haired child. She chewed on the end of her pen, thinking furiously. Then she dipped it in ink again and set it to the paper.

“Would you like to go for a stroll?” Bridget asked Betsy three days later.

Cook looked up from her pastry dough when Bridget said that. A maid stared, and the pot boy gaped. Bridget pretended not to notice that all the happy chatter and clatter in the kitchen had ceased when she walked in. It might have been because it was the first time that she had—or because she had at all. She wasn’t even sure if a lady ought to enter her kitchen. But the upstairs maid had said that was where Betsy was, and Bridget was sure that if she didn’t have someone to talk to soon, she’d begin talking to the pictures on the walls. Since they were mostly landscapes, she decided talking to a seven-year-old was much better than chatting up some painted shrubbery.

Nine days now. Eight nights since he’d left her. She sent a message to him every day now. He sent one a day to her. But they needn’t have bothered, she thought.
They kept saying the same things to each other, in one way or another: I
regret
I’
m delayed
, he wrote. I
wish you were here
, she wrote back.

Her trunks were packed and ready, and that somehow comforted her, even though it was hard to live out of a trunk.

“A walk? Wouldn’t I just!” Betsy cried excitedly. She loved the freedom of the countryside, discovering something new and wonderful every day. But then she paused, her little face sobering. “I wanted to finish making pie crust with you, too,” she told Cook solemnly, “but it’s
such
a nice day, ain’t it?”

Cook beamed at her. “Gracious to yer bones, y’are, little ’un,” she told Betsy. “Go along, I’ll do fine by meself now.”

Bridget gave Cook a conspiratorial smile. Her face froze when Cook didn’t so much as lift the corners of her mouth. So she nodded in what she hoped was a gracious lady’s manner, took Betsy’s hand, and left the kitchen with her.

“I thought we’d stroll down to the brook and see if there are any new frogs,” Bridget said.

“Oh, yes!” Betsy said excitedly, because she wasn’t allowed to go there by herself.

They soon were sitting on the banks of the brook, slippers off, letting their toes be tickled by the bubbling water.

“Cook’s teaching me to bake pies,” Betsy told Bridget as she paddled her bare feet in the water, “I like that. Mrs. Morton’s teaching me how to polish up silver. That ain’t so much fun. Mr. Moody lets me help with the horses and that’s prime, but he says I can’t be a groom no matter how good I gets at it. That ain’t fair, is it?”

“I suppose not,” Bridget said, lifting her own leg and watching the frothy water sparkle over her ankle, “but that’s how it goes. But you don’t have to be a cook or a housekeeper. You can learn your letters and be more than that.”

Betsy looked up at her, her blue eyes wise. “What’s better’n that? They gets a good house to live in and all they eats whenever they want. I can’t be a lady, like you. And I don’t want to be no whore, no way, even if they does live high. And Gilly, she says they only live good for a while, anyways. Then they becomes dirty bags in the gutters, like them I ain’t supposed to speak to.”

Bridget blinked. Sometimes she forgot. Betsy knew more about the darker side of life than she did. But she knew a brighter side Betsy did not.

“If you got an education, you could become a schoolmistress or a governess, or a companion,” Bridget said briskly. “With a nice family, of course.”

“Dunno if I could,” Betsy said, “nor if I’d want to neither.”

“Well, you could be a maid or a seamstress or a milliner or…Well, you could marry some nice man.” Bridget’s voice trailed off as she tried to think of decent occupations available to an orphan girl with no breeding.

“Like you done,” Betsy said with satisfaction. “Aye. that’d be prime! The Viscount’s a nice gent, ain’t he? Everybody likes him. Mrs. Morton she says he ain’t got an ounce of mean in him, and if it weren’t for his tomcatting, he’d be a perfect master.”

“How nice,” Bridget said uneasily.

“She says as how she’s tired of him treating the place like a house of convenience, though,” Betsy reported chattily as she splashed her feet. “She says she puts up with it ’cause otherwise he’s fair, but she got to take special care when his women leaves, and that’s hard.
She says after he brings his sport to the house and leaves she gotta put so much lye in the sheets they’re going to fall to bits, they are. But Cook, she told her to hush since he pays so good and treats them so good, and besides he don’t come here much. Then they seen me, and they hushed and acted like they was talking about something else.” Betsy giggled.

“Oh,” Bridget said. There was so much she wanted to ask Betsy. But it was wrong to ask the child to parrot things she shouldn’t have heard in the first place. And besides, she wasn’t sure she could bear hearing it.

When their feet got cold they put their slippers back on and went for a walk, picking wildflowers, watching bees competing with the butterflies in the flowery meadow, and taking care to stay out of the bees’ way. Betsy chatted about innocent things. Bridget half listened, only absently correcting particularly awful grammar now and then. She was still subdued and thoughtful as they turned back toward the house.

Then she saw the elegant traveling carriage standing in the drive. It was a glossy black coach with trunks on top, outriders on fine horses standing beside it.

She dropped her armload of wild blooms and began to run. It was a long way down from the high meadow to the circular drive in front of the house, but it had been a long time since she’d seen Ewen. Her bonnet flew back and bounced on its strings at the nape of her neck as she ran. She held a hand to her chest as her slippers flew over the grass, because she was jiggling so much she thought she might bounce out of her low-necked gown. She held up her skirt with her other hand so she wouldn’t trip and go sprawling. But she kept running. It was Ewen, come home, and she wanted to run right into his arms.