Slightly Married (25 page)

“Ah,” he said softly after a few silent moments. “I am sorry, Eve.”

“You need not be,” she said. “It would have complicated things hopelessly, would it not? You would have felt obliged to come here for a visit whenever you were in England on leave, and I would have felt obliged to let you come.”

Another short silence.

“That would not have been desirable,” he said.

“No.”

There was one small cloud floating across the sky—only one. But it found the sun and covered it for a few moments. Eve shivered in the sudden coolness.

“I'll talk to Ned Bateman,” she said when the cloud had moved off. “My steward. About Davy, I mean.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “I'll take Davy around the home farm tomorrow. I would like to see it myself. I know a thing or two about farming.”

“Tomorrow?”

There was another of those brief silences that had punctuated their conversation.

“London at present is a place from which I would rather be absent,” he said. “When Wulf described the dinner we missed at Carlton House, I shuddered. Did you not too? Everyone talking stubbornly in different languages, no one understanding anyone else, the grand duchess, the only person who could have interpreted fully, refraining from doing so out of contempt for the Prince of Wales and a desire for his entertainment to fall flat upon its face, the queen prosing on forever and then killing dead whatever still survived of the evening by forcing everyone to make their formal obeisance to her in the drawing room after dinner, the Czar of Russia flirting indiscriminately with all the ladies and pouting because he was no longer the center of attention. There will only be more of the same to be endured as soon as I return to London. I would rather be here.”

Just for tomorrow? For a few more days? For the rest of his leave?

“Will you mind?” he asked.

“No.” She was not at all sure whether she spoke the truth or lied. “No, not at all.”

The children had come back—they had been squatting on the riverbank for some time. Muffin cuddled down beside Eve and nudged at her hand with his wet nose while Becky went to stand beside Aidan.

“Uncle Aidan,” she said, “I brought you something.”

He sat up, and she set a smooth pebble in his hand, still wet from the riverbed.

“For me?” he said, examining it closely before looking up at her. “I do believe it is the most precious gift I have ever been given. Thank you, sweetheart.”

Eve was startled by the endearment. But Becky had skipped around the blanket to her side.

“And one for you, Aunt Eve,” she said.

It was a gift, Eve realized as she hugged the child, that would live among her most precious treasures for the rest of her life as a reminder of today, one of the happiest of her life.

“I suppose,” Aidan said, “we had better get that horse back to the stable before it bursts from consuming so much grass.”

Becky yawned hugely, and he stooped to scoop her up in one arm while hoisting up the picnic basket with the other hand.

“You can bring the rods and everything else, lad,” he said to Davy. “We'll let Aunt Eve play lady.”

Becky nestled her head on his shoulder and promptly fell asleep.

C
HAPTER XX

A
IDAN HAD NO IDEA HOW LONG HE INTENDED TO
stay. He deliberately did not ask himself the question. He only knew that he did not wish to spend the rest of his leave in London, where life would be as hectic and as much focused upon military matters as it was when he was with his battalion. And Lindsey Hall had lost some of its appeal. It would seem empty and bleak without most of his brothers and sisters there—even Ralf had gone to London, according to Wulf.

And without Eve.

He needed to relax. And England was experiencing a heat wave—day after day of blue skies and sunshine and a heat that soaked through the skin to soothe muscles and offer a warm balm to the soul.

It was difficult to understand his attachment to the children, who at first were his excuse for staying, but who soon became a large part of his reason. Perhaps it was because he knew they were the only children that either he or Eve would ever have. He could never come back once he left. She had made that very clear down at the river. If she had borne a child of theirs, she would have allowed him to visit during leaves, but she had not conceived during the week they had slept together.

The moment was all, then. These few days—as many as his conscience would allow him to steal—were all he would ever have with his wife and his children. Yes, strange thought indeed—his children.
Theirs.

Eve declared a holiday from the schoolroom. Aidan took Davy about with him a few times, and soon the boy became his shadow wherever he went, even if it was just a visit to the stables or a stroll into the village.

They inspected the home farm, with Eve's steward the first time, alone together the next time, and Aidan pointed out to the boy all the different crops that were growing, taking him right into the fields, stooping on his haunches with him so that they could both touch the plants and see and feel the differences among them. They watched the animals grazing, cows in one field, sheep in another. They wandered about the barnyard, helping feed the pigs and chickens, looking inside the barn itself, still partly filled with last year's hay, one of the cows chewing contentedly there, its sickly calf beside it in the hay. He taught Davy how to milk the cow when it was explained to them that the calf was unable to feed without some help. They both tasted a mouthful of the warm, sweet liquid. They watched the smith at work. All the while Aidan breathed in the familiar smells of a working farm and felt the familiar pull of rural life.

The next time Eve and Becky went with them, the dog bobbing along with them on its three good legs, using the fourth as an occasional prop. They did not stay together the whole while. Eve and Becky stepped inside some of the cottages to visit the laborers' wives, and Aidan spotted Becky a short while later playing outside with a few other children. In the barnyard later she lost interest in the larger animals and sat in the grass and dust, playing with the most placid of the barnyard cats while the dog, which appeared to fear cats, pressed close to Eve's skirts.

Both children had grown sun-bronzed, Aidan noticed. So had Eve despite the floppy, shapeless straw hat she wore almost everywhere—the same hat she had worn on that very first day, if he remembered correctly, though now it was trimmed with pink ribbons instead of gray. She was wearing a pale pink muslin dress, which was neither new nor fashionable. She fit her country surroundings to perfection. Aunt Rochester would be horrified if she could see her now. She was purely pretty.

By the time they turned their footsteps homeward—they had walked instead of bringing the gig—they were all looking dusty and somewhat disheveled, especially the children. The day was particularly hot. Becky was up on Aidan's shoulders, clinging to his hair—he had not worn a hat. Another day was winding to its close, he thought regretfully. He could not delay his leaving much longer.

The river came into view to their right.

“Now
that,
” he said, pointing, “used to be the answer to a hot day when I was a lad. We used to go swimming.”

“Oh, did you?” Eve looked at him with bright eyes. “So did we. Percy and I. It was forbidden—our father had a fear of water. We used to go over there, where we were hidden by the trees from the eyes of anyone who might have reported us.” She pointed a little farther along the river. “I used to have to sneak up to my room when we went home in order to hide my wet hair and then pretend to have washed it.”

Aidan looked down at Davy. “Do you swim, lad?”

“No, sir.” The boy shook his head.

“What?” Aidan frowned at him. “You cannot swim? Intolerable! We must set that matter right. And there is no time like the present.” He turned in the direction of the river.

“Aidan!” Eve was laughing. “You cannot teach Davy to swim now. We have no towels.”

“Why would we need towels in this weather?” he asked. “Becky, do we need towels?”

She grasped his hair a little more tightly. “No, Uncle Aidan.”

“But I cannot, sir,” Davy protested. “I would sink. I would drown.”

“I'll teach you not to sink,” Aidan told him. “I'll teach you not to drown.”

Eve came along too, as well as the dog, which bounded along ahead of them to drink. She would not swim herself, Eve protested when they drew close. How could she when she had no suitable clothing with her? But she did take off her shoes and stockings and pulled off Becky's dress so that the child could splash about in the water in her shift. Aidan pulled off his boots, stockings, and shirt, but reluctantly left his pantaloons on. Davy stripped off to his drawers under Aidan's directions. He appeared not at all excited at the idea of learning to swim.

The water was deliciously cool, Aidan discovered when he stepped into it. It reached to his knees, though the river was wide at this point, and he guessed that it was quite a bit deeper farther toward the center. He reached up a hand for Eve.

“Your dress is going to get wet,” he said, noting appreciatively the trimness of her ankles as she drew the fabric up above them. “You might as well take it off. I have seen you in less than your shift, after all.”

She gave him a speaking glance as she tested the water gingerly with one toe and then lowered first one leg in and then the other. Her dress was bunched above her knees, but she must have realized the impossibility of keeping it dry and let go her hold on it. It floated about her on the water as he lifted Becky in and handed the child to her. Becky shrieked with the shock of the coldness. Davy did not, even though he shuddered and looked thin and white-bodied and miserable.

Eve played with a visibly and audibly happy Becky while Aidan set about the task of teaching the boy how to breathe, how not to fear the water, even when his face was fully submerged. Eve was holding Becky while she floated on her back. Aidan did the same with Davy, though the boy was extremely reluctant to lift his feet from the riverbed.

“It is a matter of trust, lad,” Aidan said at last. “You have to trust me to hold you and not let you sink. Will you do that?”

“Yes, sir,” the boy said solemnly.

After that, he floated, Aidan's hands firmly beneath him, feeling the boy gradually relax, gradually trust the water itself to hold him up. Aidan released his hold with one hand and merely kept the other splayed beneath the small of Davy's back for confidence. He looked back at Eve, who was spinning Becky in a slow circle, her dress totally wet and clinging to her slender curves. Even her hair was damp.

And then Davy gasped in horror and scrambled to his feet.

“My drawers, sir,” he said. “They have come off.”

And sure enough, the truant drawers were floating off with the current, already out of the boy's reach when he tried to grab them.

Becky had noticed. “Davy's drawers!” she shrieked.

Aidan waded after them. He could have reached them in a moment, but he slowed down when he realized that the boy was splashing after him and that he was laughing—giggling, rather, with a child's mingled embarrassment and hilarity.

Aidan grasped the drawers just before they would have swirled out to deeper water. He swung them over his head.

“Come and get them,” he said.

Davy had come up to him, still convulsed with mirth, one hand covering his private parts beneath the water, the other reaching up in vain for his drawers.

“I cannot reach, sir,” he said. “They will
see
!”

Aidan dangled them a few inches lower, laughing back at the boy. “Maybe I should get you to swim for them,” he said, threatening to throw them out into deeper water.

“N-n-no, sir. G-g-give them to me.”

It was such a delight to see the boy actually laughing that Aidan was tempted to prolong the teasing. But he would not cause undue embarrassment. Still laughing, he dangled the drawers within reach, and then, when the boy grasped them, caught him in one arm and pulled him half under into the deeper water, mock-wrestling with him before finally setting him down safely on his feet in chest-deep water so that Davy could scramble into his drawers without exposing himself.

It was at that moment that Aidan, glancing back up the river, locked glances with Eve, who was standing quite still in the water, holding Becky in her arms. There was an arrested look on her face. It was only when he noted it that Aidan realized he was still laughing. Being totally undignified, in fact.

He gazed rather sheepishly at Eve, his laughter fading to a mere grin.

Davy was still giggling, safely ensconced in his drawers again.

“Well, lad,” Aidan said, “are you ready for deeper waters? Will you come and swim with me if I promise not to let you go?”

“Yes, sir,” the boy said. But it was not the usual passive obedience he was expressing this time. His eyes shone with eager, boyish excitement. He had forgotten his fears. He was enjoying himself. He was a young child out with an adult he trusted.

Aidan wrapped an arm about him and floated lazily on his back, propelling them along with his feet. He could feel the sun warm on his chest. Eve and Becky, he could see, were no longer in the water. They were in full sunlight on the bank, the dog settled beside them. Eve was pulling the child's dry dress on over her head, presumably having first removed the wet shift. She had no such comfort herself, foolish woman. Her dress clung wetly to her, looking rather like a second skin. She would have looked no less modest swimming in her shift.

Would this all seem like a dream when he was back with his battalion? he wondered. As painless and insubstantial as a dream? He quite fervently hoped so. But what dream would he dream for the rest of his life, to give him the hope all people needed in the future? His dream for the past several years had been a modest one—a home, a wife, a family after he had finally set his career behind him. Even the more recent dream had been hardly less modest—a continuation of his career, Miss Knapp as his wife, sharing his life. He had not loved her, had not expected ever to do so. All he had dreamed of was comfort and contentment. Would there ever be another dream?
Could
there ever be another?

Suddenly the sun felt a little less warm, the water a little colder.

T
HE
R
EVEREND
T
HOMAS
P
UDDLE CAME TO DINNER
that evening, invited by Aunt Mari, who had assured him that Eve would be delighted and would in fact be disappointed if he did not come.

Eve was indeed delighted. While she had been spending more time with Becky and Davy and Aidan, the vicar had been spending more with Thelma and Benjamin, and that very afternoon he had come to the point and offered Thelma marriage.

“I begged him to think again,” Thelma told Eve, “to consider what it would mean to his position, his family, his parishioners, but he would take no for only one reason, he told me, and that was if I truly did not love him and wish to marry him. I could not lie to him, Eve. I adore him with all my heart. So does Benjamin.”

Eve's only response was to hug her.

“But I have given him only a conditional acceptance.” Thelma moved out of Eve's embrace, looking troubled. “You took me in, Eve, when everyone else treated me like some sort of leper. You gave me employment and a home. Becky and Davy still need my services. I would not—”

But Eve silenced her with one raised hand. “There are other governesses,” she said. “I will find one. And if I lose
her
to a good man, I will find another. It will be a treat to visit the vicarage and not be forced to walk in the churchyard for the duration of my visit, no matter what the weather.”

They both laughed.

“I wish
you
such happiness as I am feeling,” Thelma began, but Eve held up her hand again.

“I
am
happy,” she said. “I have my home and my family. I have my children. And I have friends and neighbors.”

“And Colonel Bedwyn?” Thelma asked.

Eve shook her head. “I daresay he will be leaving within the next day or two. He will wish to see his family again before returning from leave.”