Lady of the Butterflies (10 page)

I took the place directly opposite Edmund and tried not to gaze at him and act the mute ninny I had been before. It was not easy. For he was just as I had remembered him after all, and more. He had filled out in the intervening years, lost any trace of boyish lankiness, so that he seemed even taller and broader-shouldered and more imposing than ever. But his gray eyes were just as merry, and in the light from the candles in the wall sconces his wavy copper hair rippled and shone luxuriantly. If I touched it, I wondered, would it be soft as kitten fur or prickly as a bulrush?

As he helped himself to a slice of cold beef off the pewter platter, I stared at the flurry of pale freckles and red-gold hairs scattered across the back of his hand. I reached out for a slice and my fingers brushed his and made every fiber of my body start to tingle. Solicitously, he moved the platter nearer to me, but I found that I was not in the least hungry, despite the fact that I had been too excited to eat all day. I did not think I could manage one bite. There was no room in my belly anyway. With my corset laced up tight, there was hardly room to take air into my lungs, not that I was complaining. With my hair piled on my head and ringlets coiling down to my shoulders, I had never felt so grown-up or so elegant.

I watched Edmund cut his meat as if I had never seen a person use a knife before. Then he stopped cutting and his hands were quite still. I looked up and our eyes met. He gave me one of his gloriously sunlit smiles and my heart skipped.

“Eat up, girl,” Mr. Merrick scolded. “What’s the matter with you today?”

“Yes, do eat, Miss Goodricke,” Edmund said, and the little apple in his neck bobbed up and down as he swallowed. “I have never tasted beef this good.”

“We’ve killed the fatted calf for you, my boy,” Mr. Merrick said heartily. “Mind you, if this land were to be drained and reclaimed like your father’s, we’d have no end of fatted cows. These pastures would breed the fattest, most succulent calves in all of England, isn’t that so?”

So that was why Mr. Merrick was so keen on marrying me off to Edmund, I realized with sickening dismay. I should have guessed. I should have known. If I tried to eat the beef now, I thought, I might very well choke on it.

Edmund must have been looking at me closely enough to notice the color drain from my face. “Reclaimed land may breed fat cattle, but wetlands draw and breed good, fat wild geese,” he said supportively. Astonishingly he must have even noticed the faintest flicker of disagreement in my eyes, for he added quietly: “Or don’t you think so, Miss Goodricke?”

I parted my lips to speak, hesitated.

“Please, do go on,” he said, encouragingly. “You had something to say, I think.”

“The girl always has something to say,” Mr. Merrick said through gritted teeth, his eyes like daggers intended to pierce my tongue and hold it still.

I gave a small shake of my head, my eyes downcast. “It was nothing.”

“But I should like to hear it all the same,” Edmund persisted gently.

I set down my knife and fork as if throwing down armor and relinquishing weapons. I looked up defiantly. It was absurd to try to pretend to be what I was not, especially since every thought I had seemed to show on my face. If Edmund Ashfield did not like the fact that I was educated, that I took an interest in the natural world and so-called masculine concerns, then so be it. I might as well know sooner rather than later. I had always been proud of my learning, too proud maybe, but I could not, would not, consider it a shameful thing that must be concealed. I had not read the conduct book Mr. Merrick had given to me, nor had any intention of ever doing so, but I had glanced at sufficient pages to know that I could never be the kind of modest and maidenly girl it set out to create. I would never be content with a life of needlework and gossip. If Edmund wanted such a girl, then I would never be happy with him, did not want him at all, no matter how handsome he was, no matter how his smile made me feel all warm inside and aware of my body in a way I never had been before.

I gulped down my wine, swallowed, handed the glass to Jack Jennings to be refilled. Edmund was still looking at me expectantly.

“It is just that . . . well, the wild geese never breed here,” I said.

Mr. Merrick snorted derisively. “Miss Goodricke is a proper little know-it-all, I am afraid,” he said grimly. “Though I imagine much of what she says is nonsense. How can anyone possibly know a thing like that?”

I flushed hot with embarrassment and anger. “All the wild geese have flown away by spring,” I countered with quiet confidence. “Long before the mallard ducklings and the heron chicks are born. I have watched them.” Overcome suddenly with a need to make mischief, I turned my head slightly, flicked my eyes sideways at Edmund as I had seen Bess do to Ned, the stable boy, whom she had married a year ago. “I’ve never once seen wild geese climbing on each other’s backs like the cock does to the hens.”

Mr. Merrick spluttered as if the succulent beef was poisoned. This was followed by a deathly hush. I hardly dared even glance at Edmund Ashfield. But when I did I saw with enormous relief that he was grinning from ear to ear as if I had said the most amusing and delightful thing he had ever heard. I could not help but grin back at him. I had not meant to test him, not really, and yet it had been a kind of a test and my heart sang at how completely he had passed it.

“This is not a conversation for the supper table,” Mr. Merrick said when he had recovered. “Indeed it is hardly fit conversation for any young lady in any situation.”

“My father taught me that it is a godly duty to take a keen interest in the world,” I said with a pert smile.

“You take rather too keen an interest in worldly things,” Mr. Merrick grunted. “I ask you! How the deuce do you even know that the behavior you so eagerly describe results in the begetting of offspring?”

“Oh, I’ve thought about it a lot,” I said, so happy and so emboldened by how much Edmund Ashfield seemed to be enjoying the conversation that I felt almost invincible. “You couldn’t live amongst livestock for long and not work it out.”

“It’s true, Merrick,” Edmund said supportively. “You merchants and town-dwellers are shielded from the basic facts of life in a way that those of us who work the land and live in proximity to beasts and birds can never be. I’d say there was nothing at all amiss with having an earthy approach to life.”

“You may be nineteen years old, Eleanor,” Mr. Merrick said. “But I’ve a mind to send you to your chamber at once, supper or no. You are too forward by half.”

I hated my guardian then. I hated him for making me appear like a child when I was trying so very hard not to be one. But again Edmund Ashfield leapt to my rescue.

“Oh, don’t send her away, William,” he said in his affable tone. “I beg of you. She’s such delightful company and we would be so dull without her. And I have to say, I don’t think she’s too forward at all.”

Actually, until that day, I’d considered myself rather backward when it came to the intriguing subject of mating. Though when I thought of Edmund when I was out riding it made me shift restlessly in the saddle, I’d been quite disturbed at the idea of men and women doing together what I had watched the bull doing to the cows. But now I did not think I should mind it so very much at all, so long as it could be Edmund Ashfield who was doing it to me.

“Are you on your way back from London,” I asked him, “as you were when last you came to Tickenham?”

“Fancy you remembering that after all this time,” he said.

I blushed, feeling I had given away the secrets of my heart too freely and he would know now that I had been half in love with him since I had been a little girl. That might perhaps be a grave mistake. But then I saw the way he was looking at me, almost wonderingly, and I knew I need not be concerned. He would never use such knowledge against me, never do anything to hurt me. He seemed very straightforward, not the kind of person to appreciate dissembling at all. I did not care if I had inadvertently declared my feelings. In fact, I was glad that I had.

He looked at me as if he could hardly believe I had been that little girl in the drab dress he had first met all those years ago. “I am on my way to rather than from London this time,” he replied.

“And are you going to meet your friend again?” I asked.

“Richard Glanville, yes.”

“I wonder, does young Glanville ever spend any time at Elmsett?” Mr. Merrick asked disparagingly.

“He doesn’t like to,” Edmund said with a glance down the table at the other man. For just a moment the merriment dimmed in his eyes. “You can surely sympathize with him on that score, sir.”

“Or is it just that he prefers the attractions of London?” Mr. Merrick blundered on. “The theaters and coffeehouses?”

“The taverns more like.” Edmund smiled with such fondness and familiarity that I was almost jealous of his friend, for the fact that Edmund clearly had such affection for him. “Though he loves horses and weapons every bit as much as he does canary wine and tobacco. He is an extraordinary young horseman and swordsman.”

“And does he still like to swim?” Mr. Merrick asked.

“Oh, aye. He’s set on teaching me, did his utmost to get me into the Thames with him.”

“Would it be safe for you to learn to swim in the Thames, sir?” I was dismayed by the depth of fear I felt for him, the fact that already he meant so much to me the idea of him coming to harm was intolerable. That too must have been written all over my face, but I saw that it delighted Edmund to know that I was so concerned for him.

“I promise you, I will take good care of myself,” he said.

WHEN IT WAS TIME for the gentlemen to go to the parlor to drink their port and smoke their clay pipes, I went to my chamber, where the candles and the fire had been lit, and waited impatiently for Bess to come to get me ready for bed. I rushed at her and grabbed her hands as soon as she came into the room. “Bess, tell me honestly, do you not think Edmund Ashfield very pleasing?”

“Passable,” she said wryly, taking the candle from the stand and holding it up to examine my excited face by its light. Her almond eyes missed nothing. She sighed and smiled, revealing the large gap between her two front teeth. “Oh my, here we go. It is my guess that you still find Mr. Ashfield as pleasing as you did when you were a child. And I know what you’re like when you fix on a thing. You can never do anything by half measures, can you? So I suppose that’s all I’m going to hear from now on. Edmund. Edmund. Edmund. But then it makes a change from butterflies and caterpillars, I suppose. Or—what was it before? Tadpoles?”

“Bess, he’s the finest gentleman I’ve ever met.”

“Not that that is saying much. I can count the number of gentlemen you’ve had contact with on the fingers of my one hand. Or is it just the one finger? It’s no wonder you’re in such a stew, poor lamb.”

“I feel as if I’m floating.”

“Well, how about you float into your nightshift?” I lifted my arms obediently and she slipped the cool linen over my head, fastened the ties under my chin, then pressed me onto a stool beside the fire. “Now, sit and I’ll brush your hair.”

Bess took out the pins, let my hair tumble down my back and started work with the ivory comb, long, luxuriant strokes that normally made me feel pleasantly drowsy, but not this time. “I shall never be able to sleep,” I sighed. “I couldn’t eat my supper.”

“Well, that’ll not do you much good. There’s nothing of you as it is, and if you don’t eat you’ll disappear entirely and he’ll not even notice you.”

“He noticed me tonight, I think.”

“Oh, he most certainly did.” When I swiveled round to face her, nearly jerking the comb from her hand, she gave me a knowing look. “I happened to hear him.”

Bess was as inquisitive about people as I was about the natural world, and her friendliness and fondness for chatter meant that she received the confidences of all the servants. There was not much she didn’t happen to hear, either through their ears or her own. “What did he say?” I asked, not entirely sure I wanted to know.

“He was talking about you when I went to knock on the parlor door to take in the Bristol milk. I felt obliged to wait until he’d done before entering.”

“But what did he
say
, Bess?”

She shrugged nonchalantly. “Oh, just some nonsensical prattle about you not being nearly so bold as Mr. Merrick suggested, but how there was a refreshing sweetness and honesty about you that brightened his day.”

“Did he really say I brightened his day?”

“I’d be hardly likely to invent such silly mooning, now, would I?”

“I can’t believe he’d talk like that about me to Mr. Merrick, of all people.”

“Oh, your guardian seemed more than pleased to encourage the praise.”

I turned away. “I do not doubt it,” I said with a stab of unease that I did my best to ignore.

“So what was it that you liked so much about
him
anyway?” Bess asked cheerfully.

“Oh, every part of him.” I closed my eyes and tilted my head back as the strokes of the comb sent delicious tingles down my spine. “His hair,” I began. “And his smile. His hands, his lips.”