Jayne Fresina (17 page)

“But my daughter Madolyn got her comeuppance,” Mistress Carver continued. “Her eldest daughter, Catherine, is twice as bad as she ever was, so I hear. Quite a handful. It does my heart good to know she finally understands what a trial it is to raise a troublesome daughter.”

Lucy smiled distantly, concentrating on her game.

“You have no nieces and nephews? No married sisters, dear?” Mistress Carver asked nonchalantly.

“A brother. Not married.” Too caught up in her game, she’d answered the lady’s questions without thinking and now John sat up, his interest captured.

“A brother? Where’s he then?”

“I…don’t know.” It was true; she didn’t know where he was exactly. Lance might be in London. He might be anywhere. As the Earl of Swafford’s bodyguard, he was always traveling.

“Why aren’t you with him then? Is your father still alive?”

In her peripheral vision, she caught Mistress Carver gesturing at her son to stop asking questions.

“If you were my sister,” he exclaimed, “you wouldn’t be living in sin with men old enough to be your father. Obviously he doesn’t care about you.”

“Not true,” she replied heatedly. “He cares very much.” A few months ago she would never have said it aloud. In her family showing one’s feelings was not done and they certainly never spoke about them to others.

“Then he must not know what you’ve been up to. When was the last time you saw this brother of yours?”

“Enough, John,” his mother intervened, blotting her letter with a sound thump. “Lucy is not required to answer your inquisition.”

“Why?” He stood, throwing his bulky shadow across the hearth. Vince whimpered, raising his head from Lucy’s knee. “She lives in my house. Why shouldn’t I ask her questions?” Leaning over, he snatched the ace of hearts out of her hand. “Besides, she cheats!”

“I do not!”

“You do! I just saw you with my own two eyes. Will you lie about that now too?”

Lucy would gladly have gouged those blue eyes out with her fingernails. She gathered up the cards and shuffled them with dexterity, proving how many hours she’d spent doing it. After a pause, he let the disputed card flutter into her lap. “You wouldn’t cheat if I played with you.”

“Wouldn’t I?”

“Nothing gets by me.” He gestured to his eyes. “And these. I see everything”

Hubris, she thought scornfully. Pride comes before a fall.

Making a bored, weary face, she dealt her cards for another game of solitaire. “Unfortunate for whatsername…Alice Croft?” When she looked up, his sun-browned face was several shades darker, those supposedly all-seeing, all-knowing eyes narrowed beneath thick, black lashes.

“Why should it be? She’s a pure, sweet, trustworthy girl. And faithful. If I play with her, I don’t have to worry, do I? Alice Croft doesn’t use men, doesn’t whore herself out–”

“John!” his mother exclaimed.

“And she doesn’t cheat,” he finished firmly.

Lucy shrugged. “If you say so.”

“I do.”

“Good for you, then.”

“Yes,” he shouted, finger thrust into his chest, “good for me!”

“As I said, didn’t I?”

After a quivering moment of silent rage, he dropped back in his chair and Vince trotted over to sit with him, panting.

“As long as you don’t cheat, either,” Lucy murmured, smiling at her cards, “I’m sure she’ll be very happy. When you finally do decide to play with her and put aside your other games.”

Victory. He petted his dog, sitting stiffly in his chair as if he might bolt out of it and strike her.

“But you’re such an honest, pious fellow, now you’re reformed and so very righteous. I’m sure you don’t cheat either. Alice has no reason to suspect you play with anything but an honest hand, does she?”

She pushed her luck, she knew it, but simply couldn’t stop herself.

“There’s no truer man than my son,” Mistress Carver interrupted from her corner, only partially listening to their quarrel. She sealed her letter with a drip of wax. “Any woman who gets John for a husband will be lucky indeed. Like his father–a rarity, a good husband.” She sighed heavily. “It took Will Carver long enough to pin me down, but once he had me he never looked at another, nor did I.”

Lucy smiled benignly at the old lady’s fondness for her departed husband. John looked at her as if to say “see?” But she knew he wasn’t faithful to his precious Alice. He certainly hadn’t been two months ago, had he? Probably wasn’t the first time he’d been distracted from his “pure, sweet, trustworthy” Alice either, or he would have married her by now.

Solid, he’d called the poor girl. The thought still made Lucy chuckle, but she swallowed it quickly, ashamed. It was hardly Alice’s fault. The luckless girl wasn’t to know what he’d been up to in Norwich, when he thought no one would find out. Like all men, he got away with whatever he could. Looking the way he did, a wicked devil in the guise of an angel, John Carver made more mischief than most.

“That reminds me, mother.” He stretched languidly in his chair. “I must go to Norwich market next Wednesday. Forgot to mention it.”

His mother did not, apparently, wonder why thoughts of a trip to Norwich should flow naturally out of a conversation regarding faithfulness to Alice Croft.

Lucy, however, felt her heart slow, her blood cool. He was going to Norwich again. To spread more wild oats at Mistress Comfort’s? Faithful indeed!

“I won’t be back ’til late,” he said casually, one hand scratching his chest through the opened laces of his shirt.

“Perhaps you should stay the night and come back in the morning, like you did last time,” his mother suggested. “I don’t like you traveling in the dark so far.”

He lurched forward, catching the cards as they slipped from Lucy’s hands. “Yes. I suppose it would be best.”

She snatched the cards out of his clutches. “Do you go to Norwich often?”

“Often enough.”

“For the market?”

“For things I need and can’t get here.” Falling back again, he put his arms behind his head, stretching out his legs in a familiar pose. Smug. Watchful. It flashed through her mind:
“Take ’em off for me, wench.”
Oh, he’d enjoyed himself, making her beg, making her say “please.”

She tucked another loose lock of hair back under her cap. “Things for the farm?”

“Sometimes.” He ran his tongue along his lower lip, as it curved in a thoughtful, distant smile. “There’s not much to be had around here. Sometimes a man has to go all the way to Norwich to get what he needs. Find what he’s looking for.”

Clearly Alice didn’t advance him any favors then. Smart girl.

Well, whatever he did whenever he went to Norwich, she knew he was not a regular at Mistress Comfort’s. Unless, of course, the proprietress had lied to be discreet. More than likely.

Feeling sick now, she set down her cards. “I think I’ll go up to bed.”

“Why not take Lucy to Norwich with you?” his mother said. “She might like a day out. She’s worked so hard.”

There was a pause.

“No, thank you,” she said. “I’d rather stay here.” She never wanted to go back there again, never wanted to be anywhere near Lord Winton’s house.

Stooping to light a candle in the fire, she was aware of John’s gaze, raking over her with intense vigor. “Sure?” he asked silkily. “I’ll take you with me, if you promise to behave and do as I say.” He played the benevolent master now, deigning to grant her a day off, with conditions. He was also inequitably handsome in the burnished gold and bronze ripple of firelight.

“No,” she said again.

“You might change your mind by then and want to ride with me. I thought you enjoyed yourself, the last time we rode together.”

Passing his chair, stepping over his untidy legs again, she whispered, “I wouldn’t go as far as the next village with you in that cart, unless I was laid out stiff as a board.” She raised her voice then and smiled sweetly. “Good night.” She took her candle up the stairs to bed.

* * * *

The next day he decreed Lucy would go with them to chapel in Sydney Dovedale. She balked, but he insisted.

“You live under my roof, you’ll go to chapel like every other good soul in this village.”

“It didn’t worry you last Sunday when you and your mother went without me.”

“Well, it bothers me now,” he muttered.

There was no way around it. He was apparently ready to face the inevitable gossip at last.

Mistress Carver had not expected her son’s sudden turnabout either and she fretted that there wasn’t enough time to sew Lucy a plainer gown. She advised her to wear a cloak over her flamboyant frock and try not to pay heed to any of the looks they were bound to get. They seldom had strangers in the village, she explained, and John had given no explanation for her presence in his house. The village gossips, left to their imaginations, would doubtless let them run wild.

On this sunny day, sweltering under her cloak, Lucy quickly discovered John Sydney Carver was the most sought after bachelor in Sydney Dovedale and the surrounding villages. Not only hard-working and respectably prosperous, he was, of course, exceedingly pleasant to look upon. Being a supposedly reformed rogue made him doubly irresistible. Every woman, unmarried or not, eagerly watched him enter the church and subsequently took note of her trailing along behind.

Immediately she felt their suspicion and distrust. Surely, if she were in their shoes, she would react the same. But her empathy was wasted. It won her no points with them and, in fact, the more sorrowfully apologetic she made her expression, the deeper their frowns. To make matters worse, when she stumbled over a chipped floor tile, John put his hand on her arm and never let go again until she was safely seated at his side. The audible, anguished sighs drifting over the heads of the congregation raised the temperature to an uncomfortable degree.

Two women watched her closely. One was a brunette, lushly curvaceous and bordering on blousy. The other was fair, rather prim and very upright. Later she learned the fair-headed creature was Alice Croft, long considered the front runner in pursuit of John Carver. Her bosomy friend was Bridget Frye. Lucy attempted a friendly smile, only to be rebuffed at once by both young women. They turned their backs, their heads instantly bent together as they whispered.

John seemed oblivious to it all, his gaze on the parson, hands on his knees, tapping lightly with his fingers, no doubt impatient to be busy again. On his other side, his mother sat with her eyes closed, as if asleep. No one dared reprimand her. At her age, as she’d said to Lucy, she got away with a great deal more than most.

Sitting quietly, hands in her lap, Lucy paid only scant attention to the sermon, taking everything in: the dusty floor tiles, the damp, stately stonework and the bejeweled sunlight winking through the stained glass window above the pulpit. How many generations of Sydneys had sat their proud posteriors in that chapel, she wondered, remembering the man beside her was a direct descendent of Norman knights and barons. Her own family history was nothing compared to his, for her father, despite his wealth, was a mere parvenu, always striving to better his place in life, using his children to make alliances with old nobility.

John brushed the folds of her skirt and she knew his leg must have moved closer. Whether or not it was an involuntary motion, she wasn’t sure. There was nowhere to move away–a stone pillar blocked her left side. And then his knuckle moved very slightly, stroking her thigh through layers of skirt and petticoat, but he kept his gaze fixed ahead, feigning innocence and dutiful attention to the parson.

Again his finger moved, slower this time, more definite so she couldn’t possibly mistake it for any sort of accident.

Squeezing her legs together, she moved as far as possible against the stone pillar. Now his brows knotted, his jaw twitched. He slid just half an inch after her, pretending to stretch out a cramp in his knee, then his shoulder.

It was much too hot in that cloak. She might faint, and what would be worse? To faint in the chapel and possibly cause John Carver to carry her out in his strong arms, or be stared at with disdain, as she was already? Her choice made swiftly and in some desperation, she slid the cloak from her shoulders as carefully as she might to avoid any additional attention. John ceased tapping his knee. At least now he’d stopped touching her, but she cringed under the sharp, envious gaze of several young ladies, whose lips were quickly pursed in agreement about her. It was truly astounding how much trouble a little bosom might cause, even when doing nothing spectacular, only sitting precisely where God had put it. Even the parson momentarily lost his place, mopping his eyes with a kerchief before he found the use of them again.

In his raised pew at the front of the chapel, Lord Mortimer Oakham, recently returned from London, actually went so far as to open the little iron fretwork window separating his person from the unwashed mob, and peered out slyly. When he caught Lucy looking back at him, he quickly shut his window, only to re-open it a few moments later.

“Best steer clear of him,” Mistress Carver whispered a warning from the corner of her lips, leaning across his son. “They say he has an eye for the ladies and an appetite for trouble.”

Lucy caught John Carver’s steely-eyed gaze fixed upon her, particularly on the parts of her revealed by the dropping of her cloak.

Apparently Lord Oakham wasn’t the only soul with such an appetite.

* * * *

“Had to show off, did you?” John hurried her along toward the gate after church. Another angry gaze directed at her gown explained further, just in case she might have failed to understand his meaning.

“I was hot,” she protested, heartily sick of his pious expression.

“Hot indeed! If you’re looking for a new protector in Sydney Dovedale, you’d best think again. No one here has the coin to keep a strumpet like you, so you may as well put all that away.”

They were interrupted by the arrival of Alice and her father, who approached the gate at the same time.

“Mistress Carver,” Alice exclaimed with a note of forced cheerfulness, “I’m glad to see you recovered. I didn’t think you’d be out today and I was on my way to bring you calves foot jelly, a great restorative for the blood.”