Again, My Lord: A Twist Series Novel (20 page)

Tacitus set the full breakfast tray
on the kitchen counter and gave the screw of paper to the innkeeper.

“This was lodged in the door.”

Mrs. Whittle read aloud the words scribbled on a blank page torn from a book: “‘To Mrs. Whittle, Molly, and Anyone Else It Concerns: I know about the flood. I do not wish to be disturbed today by anyone. Do not knock. Do not call through the door. Do not bring me food or drink. Please leave me alone until tomorrow. Thank you. Sincerely, Calista Chance Holland.’ Good gracious, milord,” the innkeeper said. “Did you knock?”

“I did not.”

“What am I to make of it?”

“That Lady Holland prefers not to be disturbed today, it seems.” He took the paper from Mrs. Whittle and stared at it again. Even in pencil, Calista’s hand was firm and graceful, with a certain daring flare. It suited her. Rather, it suited the girl he had known six years ago. The words, however, were more suited to the terse, sharp woman he had encountered the night before when he had arrived at the Jolly Cockerel, the woman who wanted nothing to do with him. Again.

“She was …” He should not share his concern with strangers. But the innkeeper’s face was flushed with worry. “She was distressed over her son’s departure last night, I believe. Perhaps she needs time alone to come to terms with it.”

“The poor dear.”

Dropping the note on the counter, he returned to the taproom and the men waiting for him to play cards.

So much for hoping to extend an olive branch to her after so many years. If he were honest with himself, so much for wanting to fill his senses with her again—his senses that remembered her so acutely, richly, as though his memories of her laughter had been made only yesterday, as though the dream of her that had woken him at dawn was real.

Memories and dreams. Irrational fancies for a grown man to act upon. But some men, he supposed, never learned.

~o0o~

The cat mewled.

“If you want to go out, then go out,” she mumbled, turning over in bed and pulling the covers over her head to block out the sound of the rain. “But don’t scratch on the door demanding to be let back in again immediately. Today I shan’t oblige.”

It mewled again. And continued mewling.

Behind the mewl, Calista heard footsteps in the corridor.

She opened her eyes and stared at the window. Climbing out of bed, she moved on wobbly knees to it, threw up the sash, and let the rain patter onto the floor and the hem of her nightgown.

“Five days?” she said to the cat. “Six, perhaps?” She looked over at it sitting by the door on its haunches. “Can you count?” She pivoted to the statue. “Can you?”

Every day she heard the footsteps. Sometimes they were his. Sometimes they were Molly’s or Mrs. Whittle’s. Sometimes they were other guests’. No one ever knocked. The note she stuffed into her door hinge every morning at seven o’clock was serving its purpose.

Leaving the window open to fill the already cold room with icy air, she went to the bed and fell upon it. She did not bother drawing up the coverlet.

In the morning when she awoke, the window was closed.

Calista intended to time her return
from the stable to the inn so that she would not encounter anyone in the foyer. But Jackson lingered especially long over dictating the letter to his son because of the unusual diversion he had taken in telling his story. This morning she had asked about his wife.

She didn’t know why she had. Perhaps because after a sennight alone in her bedchamber with a cat she craved human conversation. Perhaps because she felt guilty for having left her coachman to his bottle for so many days; never mind that he didn’t know she had. Perhaps because she wanted to understand how a man could give his heart so thoroughly to a woman that even years after her death he still loved her. Perhaps it was simply because the cat wanted feeding and after accomplishing that she could not think of anyplace else to go.

For ill or good, she had risen, dressed, and sped past the taproom to come here to the stable. Now, eyes alight, her coachman filled her ears with praise of his Bess.

It made her late in returning inside. Old Mary had tolled ten o’clock long ago. Lord Dare would be in the foyer now, becoming acquainted with the Smythes. He would invite Alan to make up a fourth at the card table. But George would keep them chatting in the foyer for at least a quarter hour while Mrs. Smythe grumbled over the lack of milk and chastised Penelope for no apparent reason.

She could not avoid encountering them.
Him
. Even if she tried to evade him, he would seek her out. He always did.

If she had known weeks ago that he would not leave her alone even when she tried to stay away from him, she might have proceeded through the first of her endless days differently. But she had not known it weeks ago.

Now all she wanted was to forget him, forget how his arms felt around her, how his hot skin and hers came together, how he had carried her along into pleasure even when he had lost control. She wanted to forget how easily he laughed with her, smiled at her, and forgave her.

She wanted to escape.

But there was no escape from her fate. She understood this now.

She understood.

She paused in the middle of the inn yard shrouded in mist, and abruptly her head felt perfectly clear. Clearer than it had in days. Brilliantly clear.

There was no escape
. Not from her pain. But she was not the only soul in Swinly suffering. Glancing back at the stable where she had left her grieving coachman in better spirits than she’d found him, she counted her quickening heartbeats.

She knew what she had to do.

Making her way down the street to the alley between the bakery and Elena Cooke’s shop, she crossed the soggy path to the sheep field where the gate stood open. Closing the gate and latching it, she walked along the fence until she came to the first farm. A broad-chested man with a thick ginger beard was leading a draft horse out of the barn toward a pasture surrounded by a fence.

“Good day, Mr. Dewey.”

He peered at her. “Good day, miss. Can I help you?”

“I understand that you once owned a herd of dairy cows.”

His chest puffed out. “Best girls any man ever had.”

“I have no doubt.” She smiled. “I wonder, could you teach me how to milk a cow?”

He gave her cloak and bonnet a perusal. “You’d be wanting to milk? Yourself?”

“Yes. I know of a cow that needs to be milked today, and I would like to be able to do so, but I don’t know how.”

He offered her a skeptical eye.

“Is it very difficult?” she asked.

“Not for most folks.” He lowered his bushy red brows. “Are you certain, miss?”

“Quite. In return, I will tell you the trick my housekeeper uses to wash coffee stains from wool. After that spill this morning in the taproom at the Jolly Cockerel, your wife will be thrilled to know it, I’m sure.”

The eyebrows jerked straight up now.

“I will be glad to wait here until you have the time to teach me,” she said with another smile.

“No one ever said Ned Dewey kept a pretty lady waiting.” He unstrapped the horse’s halter, released it into the pasture, and came toward her. “Lead on to the cow, miss.”

~o0o~

She was milking a cow.

Tacitus stood at the window of his bedchamber and looked down into the inn’s rear yard as the man perched at the beast’s udder gave up his stool to the lady and she settled into the task. Occasionally the man interjected a word, and several times he pointed. But from where Tacitus watched it seemed that she was doing a remarkably good job of it.

He had never in his wildest imaginings imagined Calista Chance milking a cow.

But she was no longer Calista Chance. In six years anything could happen to change a person.

Taking up an umbrella, he headed for the byre. By the time he approached, the milk pail was nearly full. Tacitus recognized the fellow as the farmer who had been doused with coffee at breakfast in the taproom that morning.

“That’s it,” the farmer was saying with a smile as proud as a new father. “You’ve done a good morning’s work there, miss.”

She looked up, and the smile faded from her lips.

“Lord Dare,” she said, her eyes retreating, but then her shoulders seemed to square. “You have come just in time to carry this pail into Mrs. Whittle’s kitchen, for I’m certain Mr. Dewey must finally be about his own work again.” Wiping her hands on her skirt, she stood. “Thank you, Mr. Dewey. You are an excellent teacher.”

Dewey blushed ten shades of crimson, right to the roots of his red hair.

“You’re a fine pupil, miss. A fine, fine pupil. The best I’ve seen in some time.” He grinned at Tacitus like he’d taken the fox at the hunt. “Good day, my lord.” With a jaunty step he went from the yard.

“Have you become a lady farmer since last we met?”

“This morning I have.” She laid a slender palm on the cow’s hide and stroked it, and Tacitus practically felt it on his skin. He had always admired her hands, and most everything else about her. And he fully suspected that if she smiled at him like she had at Dewey, he would turn into a blithering idiot too. He always had.

“But I cannot carry that.” She stepped back from the animal. “So you must. I know you are strong enough to do so.”

“How do you know that?” He handed her the umbrella and bent to heft the pail. “I might be suffering from a wounded arm or a hernia or some likewise debilitating injury.”

“But you are not.”

“Perhaps I don’t wish to spill milk on my boots.”

“You don’t care about that. Come now, my lord. Mrs. Smythe is demanding milk for her tea.” She preceded him through the rain into the inn, not bothering to open the umbrella, and raindrops settled on her hair like tiny diamonds.

In the kitchen she greeted the innkeeper with a brilliant smile and he nearly dropped the pail. At close range, she still slayed him.

“Mrs. Whittle, we have brought milk,” she declared.

“Good gracious, milord!” Mrs. Whittle’s cheeks were round and flushed as she stirred a pot on the stove. “Don’t tell me you’ve milked Nell?”

“Lady Holland did the honors,” he said. “I merely watched in awe.”

“Well, I’ve never! The two of you are the most peculiar Quality I’ve ever seen. Now, milady, you’ve got to change out of that pretty gown that’s all stained with milk and dirt, and I’ll have Molly clean it up for you.”

“Oh, well, I cannot change out of it. It is the only gown I have. But I will visit Mrs. Cooke and beg to borrow another for the day, so this one can be cleaned. Thank you, Mrs. Whittle.” She glanced at him. “And you, my lord.” She moved into the foyer.

“It seems you know this village well,” he said as she took a plain brown cloak from a peg and drew it over her shoulders.

“Does it?”

“Mr. Dewey, the cow, and the dress shop. Have you come through this village often?”

“Only today.” She buttoned the clasp.

Alan Smythe came into the foyer from the taproom.

“Good day,” he said with a quick, keen eye at the lady. “Aha, you must be an adventurer, ma’am, to set out in the rain during a deluge.”

“It has abated. And as I am not sugar, I shan’t melt.” She nodded to Tacitus and went out.

“Sugar indeed,” Smythe murmured. “Lovely girl.” He looked at Tacitus and his face went abruptly slack. “Is—is she your wife, my lord?”

“No.” He could not even give the coxcomb a set down; his throat was too tight for more words.

He grabbed his coat and went after her.

“May I walk with you, my lady?”

“If you wish,” she said, pausing to allow him to catch up to her. Then she set off along the edge of the muddy street and he fell into step beside her. Before they had gone three yards she said, “I am sorry for speaking of you as I did to my son last night. Please forgive me.”

“You are forgiven, if you will forgive me for nearly running him over.”

“It was an accident. You did not intend it.”

“True. But I should not have been racing.”

“I have no doubt it was Lord Mallory’s idea. You were only being a friend to him to go along with it.”

“There is some truth in that, at least the part about Mallory.” He grinned. “You must know him well.”

“I don’t know him at all. But I know you.” She halted and faced him. “I know you well. I know that you are principled and honest and generous. I know that you have an innate need to protect and help others. I know that your first concern is never for yourself and that you are truly a noble man, not only in title but in character.”

“One might say that of any of the men of my rank.” His mouth was insensibly dry. “It comes with the inheritance, you know.”

“I doubt it. It certainly did not come with my father’s inheritance.” Her jaw was resolute, her eyes shining. “Anyway, you embody it. I know this from personal experience.”

“People change,” he said. “I am not the same man I was six years ago.”

“You are right. You are a better man than you were then.”

“You cannot know that.”

“In fact I can. I …” She bit her lips together and started off again along the street. Almost immediately she stopped and turned to him. Across the expanse of puddles now glimmering in a ray of reluctant sunshine, she fisted her hands at her sides. “You …” She seemed to struggle to speak. “You like to read.”

“Yes.” He tilted his head. “I do.”

“You like to read modern writers. Novels mostly, but also political treatises and agricultural journals because you wish to keep abreast of innovations.” Her nostrils flared. “But your favorite authors are the ancients. You prefer the Greeks to the Latins, though you never admitted that to your parents because they preferred the latter, as evidenced by your name. Your favorite is Plato, and although you are reluctant to say so, you are particularly fond of his
Symposium,
especially the bit about lovers being like the two halves of a fish split down the center that must find each other to be whole again.”

“How— How do you
know
that?”

“You will drink whiskey with Lord Mallory, but you prefer brandy. You liked school, you truly enjoyed university, and you occasionally nod off during lengthy speeches in Parliament, although never during Lord Ashford’s passionate abolitionist arguments even though he is too darkly dramatic for your tastes. You always wished for sisters and brothers but never resented your parents for not providing you with them because your mother’s health and their happiness was your greatest wish. The holiday that you took with them to the River Wye when you were fourteen is one of your fondest memories.

“You give your servants five fortnight-long holidays over the year, including Christmas Eve through Twelfth Night, because you believe they deserve it and because you are perfectly capable of taking care of yourself. You made a cabinet of walnut and cherry woods for your housekeeper that she won’t use because she says it’s too fine for her. Your valet, Claude, however, gladly uses the jewelry case you made for him in which he stores his collection of cravat pins. You rarely travel with him, which distresses him to no end, but you like your privacy. You have three saddle horses, Pilate, who is very naughty, and Herod and Melchior, who are excellent. But you only keep one pair of carriage horses and a single carriage because you would much rather ride than drive and anyway you rarely go to London anymore.

“After you discovered that Mr. Whittle had not returned last night, you offered Mrs. Whittle your assistance this morning, which is of course the first time a titled lord has ever been in her kitchen. You are suspicious of Alan Smythe’s interest in me. Indeed, you are worried about me, about my parting with my son last night, and you still find me attractive—rather, desirable—and you want to kiss me.” She blinked several times. “I know these things about you, my lord, and more. So … There you have it.”

“How did you do that?”
It wasn’t possible
. “How were you able to tell me all of that?”

“I am living the same day again and again. I have lived this day with you, with everyone in this village, dozens of times.”

“Right.” He drew himself up. “I don’t know how you learned those things about me. And I don’t think I want to know. But this—” He gestured to her. “This teasing … I am not a fool. At least in that one manner I have in fact changed in six years.”

She came toward him.

“I am not teasing you. I am telling you the truth. I am living the same day, repeatedly. This day. In this village. Everyone else is trapped here by the flood, but I am trapped here by an endless cycle of the same exact day. Think me mad if you will, but it is the truth.” Her face was earnest.

“If you are trying to wrest something from me, it won’t happen.”

“What would I wish to wrest from you?”

“Money. Information.” That sounded idiotic. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t want money or information. I want to not be
alone
in this day one moment longer.” Anguish sounded in her voice now, and panic. Her gaze darted aside. She grasped his sleeve and drew him toward a shop.

“Here is the dress shop.” She opened the door and pulled him inside. “Good day, Mrs. Cooke. My lord, this is Elena Cooke. Like me, she is a widow, but her husband perished at Waterloo. After her husband’s death, she had no funds so she came here, to the house he had inherited from his godfather, to make a new start of it. But her fashions are far too fine for a little provincial village like this one, and she is languishing, barely able to set dinner on her table each night. She would never complain, though. She is elegant and somewhat reserved and determined to succeed. She is considering moving to a city, but lacks the capital to make the change. And she sings beautifully.”