Rakes and Radishes (3 page)

He stood there, his arms dangling about his body, feeling as useless as when he was a small boy trying to comfort his mother as she cried over some cruel thing his father had done. Kesseley hated feeling this way, hated it all the way down to his soul. He enclosed her shoulder in his hand. She felt as delicate as baby chick feathers.

“Henrietta?” he said softly.

“I was w-wondering if I might t-talk to you?” She looked at Simmons’s wide backside leaning over an ewe. “Perhaps somewhere else.”

“Yes, of course!” Kesseley reached for her books but she held them tight, taking his arm instead. He led her along the old path they had run along every day as children, over the wooden fence and into the thicket of trees surrounding the banks of the River Ouse. Samuel scurried behind, sniffing mole holes and suspicious clumps on the path.

The afternoon sun was low, illuminating the majestic oak growing along the shores of the river. They had always met here—until that Wednesday last year in early autumn.

The oak leaves had finished their fiery show and begun to fall from the branches. He and Samuel were walking out to the fields after a morning meeting with a stonemason concerning repairs to Wrenthorpe. They came upon Henrietta sitting by the banks, bundled in a brown cape, her hands around her knees. He restrained his hound and observed her from behind the oak, letting her beauty fill him. He had not seen her since last Sunday at church, which was unusual, for they seldom went that many days without speaking.

Then as if she could sense him, or smell Samuel, she turned her head. “Were you watching me?” she asked, a little stitch appearing between her brows.

He felt stupid being caught red-handed and tried to play it off as a joke. “Yes, I’m spying on you.”

Her face remained solemn.

“Do you mind if I sit down?” he asked.

She paused, then smiled the beautiful smile that caused his heart to palpitate. “Please,” she said.

He sat beside her, so close their shoulders touched. Samuel lay at his feet, scratching his neck with his hind paw.

After the normal exchange of “how are yous”, she became quiet, watching the orange and yellow fallen leaves drifting on the river’s surface. The cool, breezy weather had reddened her lips and cheeks, and sunlight reflecting off the water made her eyes sparkle like deep amber. He had been working on the words he would tell her in the coming spring. About how he had finally rescued Wrenthorpe from his father’s suffocating mountain of mortgages, and that he expected his harvest to increase even more when he began a new crop rotation technique. He believed he could properly support a wife and family. But as he gazed at her face, he realized he couldn’t wait those few months. The winter loomed too long when he could keep her warm in his arms…his bed.

“I—I want to ask you a question.” A drop of perspiration rolled down his forehead.

She smiled and raised her brow. “Yes?”

“I…that is, would you…” His mouth went dry. He couldn’t form words, he was so nervous.

In frustration, he slid his hand up the back of her neck, feeling her silken curls on his skin. Her eyes widened as he drew her to him. He reassuringly stroked her cheek with his fingers and careful to be gentle even though his body seemed to be exploding under his skin, he placed his lips on hers. She remained still, not responding to his tentative caresses. He panicked. Did she not feel anything? But then she sighed, low and soft. Her fingers tightened about his biceps and she pulled him close. Her lips returned his kisses with a growing hunger as she pressed the peaks of her breasts against his chest. “Henrietta,” he murmured, then sunk his tongue into her mouth, tasting her, plundering her. But she let out a small cry and slid away from his arms.

She stared at him with large eyes. Her breasts rose and fell with each rapid breath.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.” He reached to take her back to his heart. “I love y—”

“Oh God!” She bolted up and began scrubbing her mouth with the back of her hand as if to eradicate the memory of his touch from her skin. “What have I done?” she cried. “And with
you.
”

Samuel began whimpering.

“Please, Kesseley, I thought we were friends.”

“But I felt…that is,” he began. “I thought you liked my kiss. I thought—”

“No.” She shook her head. “Edward and I are in love. We’re going to London together after his book is published.”

“What?” he cried, hearing the roar of his own blood rushing in his veins. “You love him? When did this happen?”

“For a while now.” She swallowed and gazed out at the horizon. “I—I just couldn’t tell you. I’m sorry.”

Since that day, he felt as if they were in a play of sorts where they pretended to be friends, as if nothing had changed. They still spoke the same lines, had the same smiles, but some cold, invisible fingers held them each at an emotional distance.

He wasn’t as good as Henrietta at pretending that all was well. In his dreams she came to him and they would lie under this oak. The waters would flow by as he unlaced each stay, one by one until she was free, her body moving under him like the current, his lips sunk into the soft valley between her neck and shoulder blade, the rise of her nipples against his chest, his thighs sinking—
Whoa there, Kesseley. Easy!

She seemed so delicate as she stood before him now, her arms wrapped about her, staring out at the water.

“Would you like to talk about it, Henrietta?” His voice cracked like that of the awkward adolescent he still felt like inside.

She stepped into him, leaned her head onto his chest and wept. He closed his eyes and put his arms around her, shielding her, pulling her closer as if to squeeze out her sadness.
Oh, my dearest love.
But again, she stepped away.

She pulled out a small, torn piece of paper from her sleeve and gave it to him. “This was in
Town and Country.
”

His fists balled with anger as he read the words. How could Edward so easily toss away everything Kesseley had ever wanted? “I’m sorry,” he said gently, handing the paper back. It slipped from her fingers and sailed over the water and away.

“All that time, I thought—oh, Kesseley, it was supposed to be me. Why couldn’t it be me?” She looked at him expectantly, as if he could say something to make it all better. Nothing could take away the pain of being unwanted. Even now, when Henrietta, who told him she could never return his feelings, came crying, all he could do was take her into his arms. This was the closest he’d ever come to having her.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered again.

She continued. “It isn’t fair. He shouldn’t be marrying her. She’s a duke’s daughter. It’s an unequal match! Neither partner will be happy after the first shine of love is gone. She can never understand his spirit, his passionate heart, like I can.” She clenched her hand by her heart. “She should—and I thought this quite randomly—she should marry an earl like you. And then I realized, she should marry
you.
”

“Pardon?”

“I said, she should marry you.”

Her hopeful eyes gazed at him unfazed, oblivious to her slide into madness. He ran his finger under the edge of his cravat. “Henrietta, I believe you are a little distraught.”

“No, it’s true! I have thought about it, and I am convinced it is a just solution.”

“You can’t make two people fall in love just because you think it’s a good idea.”

She shook her head. “But she is beautiful! All the journals rave about her radiance, charm and accomplishments. My friend Charlotte is married to Lady Sara’s cousin Nigel and assures me Lady Sara is the most ravishing creature she has ever beheld. How could you not love her?”

“Because I’ve never met her.”

“But you will in London.”

He flung out his arms. “She loves another.”

That didn’t faze Henrietta. “It’s a temporary infatuation. Despite his brilliant poetry, Edward is just a plain mister. You must remind her of her station, her noble duty. You must—” Henrietta’s eyes narrowed, “
—steal
her.”

“Absolutely not!” That was
de trop
even for crazy Henrietta.

“Fine! What if you steal her just long enough for Edward to come back to his senses? Then you won’t have to marry her.”

“But Edward never had any sense to begin with, so I don’t see how he could come back to it.”

She paused, then the edge of her lip drew up in a coy smile. “Oh, I see,” she said. “You don’t think you can take her from Edward?”

“That’s not fair!” he warned, backing away. “How can you use my feelings—”

“You could be handsome. Very handsome and—and dashing, if you tried. Just look— look at you.” Her nose wrinkled as if he were a rotting cabbage.

He looked down. What was wrong? A few mud smears on his trousers. He twisted around to inspect his coat tails. Maybe something was peculiar there? A few grass stains, nothing to cause such evident offense. “What?”

“You’re so provincial! When you get to London, go to Schweitzer and Davidson. They’re all the crack, I’ve heard. Go and tell them you’re hopeless.”

Kesseley thought of his father’s closets, filled with hundreds of cravats, gold and diamond pins and shining shoes—never mind the tenants’ homes falling in or the barren fields. “You don’t know what you are talking about.”

“I do! Charlotte says her cousin Nigel said that Lady Sara’s mother heard from Lady Sara’s lady’s maid that Lady Sara hides
The Mysterious Lord Blackraven
under her mattress. So it’s very easy—you must become dashing and handsome like her hero, Lord Blackraven.”

“Henrietta, you’re a little upset, and you’re not being rational.”

“But you can be Lord Blackraven! You’re so clever. It will be easy for you. You just have to turn your mind to it. I mean, look what you’ve done getting Wrenthorpe set to rights.”

He wasn’t going to argue that last point.

She pulled a leather volume from her pile. “So, in
The Mysterious Lord Blackraven,
Lord Blackraven is dark and brooding, just like you were when all those weevils ate your peas that year. He saves Arabellina’s life only to find out she is engaged to his half brother. Lord Blackraven tries to avoid Arabellina, but his passion grows. She resists him because he has a terrible reputation, and she feels honor bound to marry his half brother who everyone thinks is good, but who is really evil. So, Lord Blackraven kills his half brother. It’s not murder though—”

“Please stop. Where did you get these?”

She drew up tall, jutting her chin out. “They’re mine. I read
novels.
”

“This Lord Blackbird, you really admire him?”

“Lord Blackraven,” she corrected. “He is romantic, I suppose.” She looked beyond the river, over the patchwork of fields stretching to the horizon. “He lets me escape, feel passion, be me—the real me—not the lady trapped in this village, listening to the same boring gossip over and over. I thought my life would be so much more than it is. I refuse to believe
this—
” she motioned about her, “—is all it will ever be.”

Kesseley studied the weeping willow branches dipping into the water, and the silver minnows darting about the shores. Then his gaze moved beyond the tranquil river to his fields. When he had inherited his estate, the fields hadn’t been plowed in three decades and a hoe could barely break the hard, eroded surface. Now neat rows, sprouting with tender green wheat stretched to the horizon. He couldn’t understand Henrietta, that she would sacrifice this paradise. He examined her face, blotched and stained with tears. What would make this woman happy?

He took the volumes from her hands. “I will read them,” he said quietly.

Henrietta’s face brightened. “So you will help me?”

“No.”

“Give me my books! I should have known. You’re so uncaring. Edward will marry Lady Sara, and I will be stuck in this awful place for the rest of my life with all these sheep and chickens and nothingness.” She buried her head in his chest, drawing her arms around his neck, and clung to him, weeping. “It hurts so much. How could he do this?”

Just walk away. This is not a good idea.

He tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “Now, if I read these books and happen to become dashing and mysterious, and Lady Sara naturally falls in love with me without any effort on my part, then I am absolved of any guilt.”

She raised her head. The smile that wavered on her trembling lips as tears still streamed her cheeks was like the sun coming through the rain.

You pathetic fool. You’re going to let her break your heart again.

A chilly wind blew over the flat, crop-lined fields. Henrietta snuggled against Kesseley’s side to shield herself from it. He was as big as a mountain and just as strong. He never seemed to mind cold or wind or rain. Instead he walked about, head tilted to the sky with an exhilarated smile while the elements battered his face. He covered her hand in his large, roughened one, his warmth spilling into her body like a tide of relief. Kesseley always made everything well.

Always.

Ugh!
Remorse knotted in her belly as the realization sunk in—she was using him again. She didn’t mean to. Truly. It had just seemed like such a good idea an hour ago.

And why was he always so willing? In a small way, she wished he had said no, a true, resounding, unequivocal “no” that she couldn’t wiggle away from. She might, well, respect him more if he didn’t always crumble to her wishes. Hot shame ran through her. She missed her step, stumbling slightly, but Kesseley held her up, keeping her from falling.

“Are you well?” he asked, his eyes filled with genuine concern.

She shouldn’t be doing this. She was a horrid person to abuse his feelings. Poor, loyal Kesseley.

She would tell him she’d changed her mind.

Yes, she would.

Right now.

She opened her mouth, and breath rose from the back of her throat, but no words formed. His eyes searched her face with the same seriousness he reserved for examining worm-infested crops or sick sheep, checking for the smallest detail to cause alarm.

“I’m fine, thank you, just a rock,” she murmured. A ring of hazel circled his pupils, blending to gray on the edges. Had they always been that way?

He nodded, trusting her explanation.

You’re a horrid person, Henrietta.

They didn’t take the nicely paved road. Instead, he tromped with her through the muddy footpaths and drainage ditches running along his fields while Samuel followed behind, sticking his nose under the hem of her gown. Kesseley swept his arms in broad motions over the land, explaining that here he would grow wheat and there, clover. Henrietta smiled, which encouraged him to expound upon his grain production theories and the mixture he would feed his cattle. This led to the design of the new outbuildings he was going to construct to better compost the animal manure and refuse. He had the same passion for farming that Edward had for poetry. And that she had for Edward.

How could she be so cruel? How could she abuse his affections?

Wait!
Why should she feel miserable because she
might
be using Kesseley? What if, by sharpening him up, giving him a little town bronze, he won a beautiful wife to love him like he desired and deserved. He would make an excellent husband and father, so caring and attentive. Thinking in this light, Lady Sara or some yet unknown lady’s future happiness depended upon Henrietta. And in the end, Kesseley would thank Henrietta, else he would have never met his perfect wife.

She looked up at Kesseley. He raised a suspicious brow.

“Why are you smiling?” he asked.

“Because you are a wonderful man. Kind and patient and—”

“Gullible.”

“I was going to say intelligent.”

“You can stop now. I said I would read your novel.”

“And Lady Sara?”

“She may love me if it is her inclination.”

“Don’t forget about Schweitzer and Davidson.”

“Now you’re doing it a bit too brown.”

Was she? His jaw clenched, but the edge of his lips trembled, trying to smile. The knot of guilt around her heart eased. She cuddled closer to him. The setting sun shot long rays of light, casting gold and pink shadows on the clouds. Before them, the land gently rolled to the horizon, dotted with white sheep, like a pastoral scene woven in a tapestry. Lovely, but it wasn’t enough.

***

The sun had set before they came to Henrietta’s home. Kesseley could see the distant towers of Ely Cathedral rising over the gables of Rose House, black against darker hues of dusk. The golden light of candles and fires spilled from the windows into a garden filled with rose shrubs dormant with winter. For as much as she complained about her drafty antique home—forever asking his opinion of this paint, this pillow, whether to put this strange bauble on the mantel or on the round marble table—he liked it as it was. Kesseley felt comfortable here, for the most enjoyable times of his youth were spent inside Rose House’s crooked walls, away from his raging father and the despair engulfing his mother. He never spoke of the horrors inside his own home, wanting to pretend they didn’t exist as he and Henrietta sat together in Rose House’s dark paneled parlor. They would spread a copy of
Tristram Shandy
across their laps, their legs touching and their small feet dangling off the sofa’s edge, both of them covered in biscuit crumbs. After his father’s death, his mother insisted everyone, including Henrietta, call him Lord Kesseley, but back then he was still just Tommie to her. It was so natural and easy between them. And in those dark years before his father’s passing, everything else in his life had seemed so hard.

“Oh, I forgot to tell Mrs. Potts to set a special table,” Henrietta said, banging her hand on her forehead. “Mr. Van Heerlen wanted to celebrate. I hope I have not angered him.”

“I thought he had left.”

“No, he keeps putting it off and now he and Papa were granted an appointment at the Royal Observatory. I wouldn’t be surprised if I find Papa has invited him to live with us. Though I doubt Mr. Van Heerlen would accept. I would live in Amsterdam or Brussels a thousand times over boring old England.”

Kesseley didn’t agree with her. He was sure Van Heerlen was quite willing to remain in boring old England. “Is he bothering you?”

“Yes, he is quite annoying, but I can’t tell Papa because his success depends on Mr. Van Heerlen’s approval.”

He grabbed Henrietta’s hands. “Ask me to dinner,” he ordered.

She gasped. Kesseley assumed it was in response to his chivalry until she said, “Wait! Lower the edges of your mouth a bit more. It’s more demonic, like Lord Blackraven. I wish you could see yourself.”

“What? Who’s Lord Blackraven?”

“Lord Blackraven…the book you’re supposed to read…Lady Sara. Oh, never mind.” She shook away the thought. “Very well, please come to dinner. Just be delicate. Mr. Van Heerlen could really help my father and that means everything to me.”

“I’m delicate. I mean, I can be delicate.”

“And don’t talk of birthing bovines like last time.”

***

Henrietta left the gentlemen downstairs in stiff, awkward conversation. She told them she needed to change. Now fifteen minutes after her maid had left, she still sat at her commode, dreading having to go downstairs and play the charming hostess.

She wore her new gown in honor of her father’s good news. The dress was lower than any in the village, exposing a generous amount of her breasts. This was supposed to be for Edward. For the man she loved. As she’d hemmed it a week ago, she had imagined the skirt’s ivory shimmer cast in candlelight, sweeping over the floors of Edward’s London home as they welcomed their literary guests to some party or such. She would have hung on his arm, saying so casually, “Have you read my husband’s latest volume?” or “Did you not read my husband’s reviews in the newspapers?”

My husband.

Hot tears formed in her eyes. She rubbed her mother’s ruby pendant.

Oh, Mama, just get me through this evening without breaking down.

***

Downstairs, Henrietta surveyed dinner—a sad meal for a celebration. Boiled lamb floated in a muddy sauce of limp celery. What looked like herrings hid under thick mustard butter. Greasy duck. A soggy head of cauliflower and a bowl of quince pudding. She wished she had remembered to tell Mrs. Potts to prepare something fancy. They must look like flats to the eloquent, continental Mr. Van Heerlen.

Mr. Van Heerlen waved off the footman and drew out Henrietta’s chair.

“I’m sorry. I’m sure you are accustomed to finer food in your travels,” she said, trying to point out that while their table was not so elegant, at least she perceived the difference.

“It is not the food I enjoy, but the company.” Mr. Van Heerlen’s cheek brushed her ear. His skin felt soft, as if he had just shaved.

He took the seat to Henrietta’s left, while Kesseley unceremoniously dumped his large frame in the seat to her right. Samuel curled up at his feet.

The footmen brought forth the vinegary red wine and poured it into everyone’s glasses. How Henrietta wished she could have sent the servant back for a prized Spanish red or such. But they never had anything so impressive, just the wine available at the merchant’s in Ely.

“Mr. Watson, may I be so presumptuous as to give a toast on this momentous evening?” Mr. Van Heerlen appealed to her father.

“Please, consider Rose House as your own home,” her father replied.

Mr. Van Heerlen stood and held his glass before him. “A-a-astronomy,” he began.

“Pardon me, I am a little nervous this evening. Astronomy is the work of envious mortal men, whose eyes are always lifted to the heavens, enchanted by her beauty and mystery. She lures us, seduces us, whispers in our ears that inside her whirling wondrous world is everything we long for, everything we lack. Nothing in this world can hold to the beauty of the stars, no art, poem or music. And we astronomers grow jaded, discontent in our skins, finding this world vulgar and base.”

He paused. Henrietta thought he was finished and started to raise her glass, but he cleared his throat and continued. “At least that is how I felt when I received an invitation to Rose House. For Mr. Watson declared a preposterous thing for a relatively unknown astronomer. He had mathematically proven another planet existed behind Uranus. Of course, this had been speculated for years, but always came to nothing. My first thought—I shamefully admit—was to decline the invitation. But something, I dare not say what, told me to accept. A divine intuition, some would say.”

Kesseley’s chair creaked as he settled deeper into it. He ran the fingers of his free hand under his cravat. He looked at her, his gray eyes appearing black and almost dangerous in the low light. She could see his pulse throb along his neck. Her gaze drifted down his sloppy cravat to his chest. Was it still the skinny flat board of a boy’s? From the rise of his coat, she could only imagine that it bulged with hard muscles. Heat crept up her body as if the door to his bedchamber was cracked open and she accidentally saw inside as he dressed. Her mind wandered into this forbidden chamber, where he waited in only his pantaloons. He let her fingers run up the contours of his naked arm, over his shoulder and down the hard ripples of his chest. Then she rose to her tiptoes to place a light kiss on his lips, his arm reaching around the small of her back, pulling her closer, deepening the kiss like that day by the Ouse when—

What am I doing?

Was I kissing Kesseley in my imagination? And
liking
it? Stop!

Still, that heavy warmth lingered in her most private place, like the afterglow of an extinguished candle. She wished Mr. Van Heerlen would finish the toast. It was dragging on forever, and she needed to wash away these disturbing feelings with some strong vinegar.

She quickly put Edward in Kesseley’s imaginative place. Remembering the feel of his lips, she became lost in her memories. Mr. Van Heerlen’s voice drifted in her brain like music from a far room. Kesseley kicked her foot under the table. She jerked to attention just as Mr. Van Heerlen said her name.

“Miss Watson, this lady with hair and eyes as dark as the heavens and skin as luminescent as the sunlit moon, took the pages from her father’s hand and explained the heavens to me, as if they were her home, like an ancient goddess. As her fingers slid along the diagrams, charting the stars, I admit that after a time, I knew not what she said. My heart ached, bereft of its secret she unwittingly stole. The silent beauty of stars.”

Mr. Van Heerlen looked deeply into Henrietta’s eyes. A question. A silent proposal. Henrietta swallowed down her gasp. Hot crimson blotches broke across her face.

“Mr. Van-Van H-Heerlen,” she stuttered. Dear God, she never once conceived that he might have affection for her! Affections she couldn’t possibly return. Yet, her father’s future depended upon him. “Those are b-beautiful words, but—”

“I don’t understand,” Kesseley said. His face looked comically lopsided with one brow furrowed and the other one raised.

Mr. Van Heerlen cleared his throat. “What do you mean?”

Kesseley pushed his plate up and put his index finger by his glass. “First, you say that no beauty on earth tempts you. Only stars.” He drew an invisible line from his glass to his fork. “Then I get confused, because you claim Miss Watson stole your secret—your love of the stars. Was that a compliment for Miss Watson?”

“I was merely comparing Miss Watson to the beauty of the stars.”

“That is what I thought, but the syllogism is not correct. You see, you have made no true comparison. You should say—‘I love stars, stars are beautiful, Miss Watson is beautiful,’ and by means of the goddess analogy, you could say Miss Watson is a star. Then it would be a logically correct statement that you love Miss Watson. She is everything you lack.” Kesseley neatly charted this on the table linen with his index finger.

Henrietta kicked him so hard the table shook. Samuel yelped.

Mr. Van Heerlen appeared unfazed by the transitive declaration of his love. “Thank you for the lesson, good man. Are you a philosopher?”

“No, just a farmer tilling up this base and vulgar world.”

Seeing Mr. Van Heerlen’s eyes narrow, Henrietta interceded. “Lord Kesseley is a bit of a scientist as well. He had an article in a recent agricultural journal. What was it about, Lord Kesseley?”

“Increasing Turnips Yield by Addition of Ash Constituents,” he replied flatly, then nothing more. Hadn’t he said he would be delicate? Well, this moment would be a perfect time to begin.