Tremaine's True Love (23 page)

George moved with Tremaine into the relative warmth and gloom of the livery, the scents of horses and hay reminding Tremaine of many a winter spent traveling. At a signal from George, the hostler abandoned a stool near a brazier to fetch their mounts.

“Nita is tenacious too,” George said. “I love that about her. She comes to her own conclusions and lets nothing so paltry as convention, public opinion, or the earl’s odd notions sway her.”

George was politely making some damned, fraternal, protective point, which Tremaine hadn’t the patience to decipher. Breakfast had already become a distant memory, and his toes were going numb, though another part of him…

He’d be offering to assist Nita at her bath if he remained in her company much longer.

“While I’m tarrying here, playing the swain, my business goes unattended to,” Tremaine said. “Lady Nita understands that I have responsibilities.”

What Tremaine did
not
have was the fortitude to remain under the same roof as the lady without importuning her for further liberties. The realization was rather like an entire snowball smacked against his bare nape.

“You should tell her that,” George said as his gelding was led from a loose box. “Tell her you’d rather count sheep than remain at her side. Tell her traveling the Home Counties in the dead of winter has more appeal than her company. Tell her you’d rather read contracts than recite those Scottish poems to her. A lady should hear these things before she plights her troth, especially a lady given to tenacity.”

George’s tone was perfectly pleasant, the way he stroked his horse’s neck relaxed. When he tugged up on the girth, though, he did so quite stoutly.

“I care for your sister, Haddonfield.”

“Glad to hear it. I wouldn’t let Nita know that, though. Women get inconveniently sentimental when a man shows them the least degree of trust.”

Tremaine took William’s reins from the hostler, whose expression was carefully uninterested.

“I esteem her greatly,” Tremaine said, taking his girth up the usual two holes, and running his stirrups down their leathers. He esteemed Nita
and
he desired her, a puzzling conundrum of physical and emotional imperatives. “She appears to return my sentiments.”

Tremaine fell silent while the hostler tended to the mare, though George Haddonfield’s reprimand had merit. Tremaine did not want to crowd the lady nor impose his attentions on her, and yet neither did he relish leaving the field.

Or appearing desperate.

Beyond the wide doors of the livery, Lady Nita made her way across the village square, her stride businesslike, a parcel under her arm.

“What Nita needs,” George said, “is to esteem
herself
greatly. If you can give her that, then you have my blessing, not that my blessing matters to anybody.”

George’s blessing likely mattered to Nita a great deal.

“How is it you’re not married, but you grasp the workings of the female mind?” Tremaine asked. Unfair, really, that Haddonfield possessed such insights and stunning good looks too.

“I had a mother until a few years ago. I have sisters, sisters-in-law, cousins, and something else.”

A sense of the dramatic, surely. “And that would be?”

“An appreciation for the courage and fortitude of the average female that you lot seem to lack. Perhaps I should consider marriage after all.” George nudged his horse forward, leaving Tremaine to assist Lady Nita into the saddle.

Who was
you
lot
? George’s tone made Tremaine feel like a member of a tribe of Brobdingnagians, marching heedlessly across a landscape with features too small for Tremaine to see, much less step around.

He assisted Nita onto the mare, tucked her parcel into his saddlebags, and swung into William’s cold saddle.

“Lady Nita, I’ve a mind to look for new lambs at the sheep byre. Would you care to join me?”

“We probably should,” she said as the horses walked out of the stable yard. “This snow looks like it means business, and somebody should make sure the ewes have adequate hay.”

That would be Kinser’s job, of course.

“Precisely my thought,” Tremaine said, resisting the urge to stick his tongue out at George Haddonfield’s retreating back.

“It’s
snowing
.” Della offered this observation as if it hadn’t snowed in five years, as if snow were a great treat, when in fact, Susannah hated snow.

“Nita and Mr. St. Michael will regret their visit to the village if the snow keeps up,” Susannah said. Though they might bring her some new books. She was desperate for new books.

“If we’re to be snowed in,” Della said, holding her embroidery up to the window light, “all the more reason to get some fresh air. What are you reading?”

Susannah peered at her book. “
Titus
Andronicus
.”

Della set her embroidery aside—flowers and butterflies rioting along the hem of a silk chemise—and snatched the book from Susannah’s lap.

“For shame, Suze, polluting your mind with all that violence and revenge. Is something wrong?”

Beware the perceptive younger sibling.

“Just because it’s a tragedy doesn’t mean it’s bad literature,” Susannah retorted. “Life can’t be all ginger biscuits and chocolate.”

Though not a single biscuit remained on the tray and the pot was empty. Susannah laid the blame for her overindulgence at Edward Nash’s booted feet.

“But
Titus
Andronicus
, Suze? I can never remember who’s killing or despoiling whom, or cutting off which body part, in revenge for what upon whom. And all for the privilege of ruling some hot, dusty old empire. Have you heard from Edward lately?”

Oh, spite! Oh, hell! Oh, dratted baby sister!

“In this weather?”

Della put
Titus
on the mantel, a bit of a stretch for the only petite Haddonfield in captivity.

“It’s simply winter,” Della said, returning to the settee and tucking one slippered foot up under her skirts. “Not everybody finds imaginary characters sufficiently cheering company. Some of us pay calls and look in on each other. Even Kirsten has been known to leave the house in search of exercise and fresh air.”

“Is that what she was about?” Susannah replied. “Accompanying Nita this morning, getting some fresh air? I shouldn’t think a sickroom an ideal place for such an undertaking.”

Titus
Andronicus
, which Susannah could practically recite, called to her from across the room. She wanted to hold the book in her hands, the way a child held a favorite doll.

Which was also Edward’s blighted fault. Susannah esteemed him greatly, so greatly she’d have to kill him if he didn’t propose prior to the assembly.

“You are not in good spirits, Susannah. Is the assembly making you nervous? Edward should have proposed by now, shouldn’t he?”

“He’s the kind who thinks things through,” Susannah said, for one must practice mendacious loyalty if one wanted to be successful in the role of wife. “Deliberation is a sign of maturity and sincere regard, I think.”

“Deliberation is a sign of indecisiveness,” Della said. “I was up late last night and went to the kitchen for a last cup of chocolate when I caught a glimpse of Mr. St. Michael stealing from Nita’s room.” Della picked up her hoop and stabbed the needle into the throat of a pink rose. “His hair was in disarray.”

Abruptly,
Titus
became less riveting.

“His hair? What has hair to do with—?” Mr. St. Michael’s thick, dark hair, which had a tendency to wave and curl. “From
Nita’s
room? Our Nita?”

“Bernita Christina Mayflower Haddonfield had a late-night caller. I’m jealous.”

“You’re scandalous,” Susannah muttered. “I’m jealous too. He’s quite good-looking.” Also wealthy, and he had a marvelous accent for declaiming Mr. Burns’s poetry. Nita would like that he was a healthy sort too.

There was rather a lot of Mr. St. Michael though, and he was said to racket about more than he stayed put.

Susannah much preferred to stay put.

“It’s not fair,” Della said, winding golden thread around her needle. “You’re the soul of domestic tranquillity, sweet, soft-spoken, literary, and demure, and Edward can’t bother to travel two miles to pay a call. Nita ignores her own wardrobe, reads only German medical treatises, and spends her days tending those whom Dr. Horton has quacked, and she gets the late-night caller.”

“Hush, Della.” For Edward’s deliberation was related to Nicholas’s blasted sheep and Nita’s benighted Mr. St. Michael. Kirsten had overhead Nicholas discussing the matter and had told Susannah of Edward’s desire for the sheep to be included in the marriage settlement.

Sheep, of all the smelly, helpless, dim-witted creatures.

A man of Edward’s standing could expect a bride to bring some assets to the marriage. There was no insult in that—even to an earl’s daughter who should have been well dowered.

Della stabbed the fabric again. “Do you fancy a French-Scottish sheep nabob for a brother-in-law? He made Nita laugh at whist. I rather like him.”

Susannah snatched up a pillow and swatted her sister with it. “You are horrid to go on about this. If it weren’t for Nita, I wouldn’t know what to expect on my wedding night, and I won’t tell you unless you hush.”

Of course, Edward had provided a bit of enlightenment on that topic as well. On several occasions.

Truly, Susannah would kill him if he didn’t propose on bended knee, ring in hand, and sheep be damned.

Della tossed the pillow to the floor. “I already know about the wedding night. Nita told me too. Sounds very odd to me. Very personal. The kissing part might be interesting.”

The whole business was part of being a wife, which Susannah would endure. Edward’s kisses tasted like his pipe, those few kisses she’d chanced upon. Kisses led to babies though, indirectly and eventually. One could read stories to babies.

One could hold babies and love them too.

“Why the sigh?” Della asked. “You sound like one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s heroines by page 287.”

“They aren’t heroines if they always need some fellow to get them out of scrapes,” Susannah said. Her own mother had pointed that out. A woman must seize her fate with both hands, else she’d end up a lonely old maid surrounded by books and cats.

Of course, she must not
be
seen
seizing her fate, and perhaps she ought not to have seized her fate prior to seizing a marriage proposal.

“This snow looks like it means business,” Susannah said. Already the bushes and trees wore a fresh dusting of white, though Susannah meant business too. The next assembly was a good three months off, and she was nearly at the end of her Shakespeare binge. “Perhaps we should get some fresh air. Pay a call on Mrs. Nash now rather than wait to cross paths with her at the assembly.”

Della wound her thread for another golden French knot. “But it’s cold out, and poor, one-handed Titus will pine for you terribly, and George will eat all the chocolate biscuits, and—”

Settees came with an abundance of pillows because some siblings needed an abundance of thrashing.

“I’m going,” Susannah said, smiting her sister stoutly. “If I have to bribe Kirsten into going with me, I’m going. I feel a compelling need to pay a call on Ed—I mean, Elsie Nash.”

Della stopped laughing long enough to put her hoop aside. “Bribing Kirsten never ends well. She charges interest of her own devising. I might, for example, have to dance with your Mr. Nash, and his breath is not exactly pleasant when he’s been at his pipe—meaning no offense to your swain.”

“I cannot wait for you to leave for London this spring. You are a plague on my nerves, Della Haddonfield. For your impertinence, you will indulge me in a short visit to the lending library when we’ve paid our call.”

Della rose and stretched, a small, pretty, comfortable, and truly dear young lady. “Lay on, Macduff, and damned be him that first cries, ‘Books enough!’”

Susannah spared
Titus
a final glance—an awful story about awful, greedy, violent people—and parted ways with Della at the foot of the stairs. For a call on Edward, the sweet, soft-spoken, literary, and demure soul of domestic tranquillity needed to fit herself out with all the planning and subtle cunning of a Roman general bent on victory.

* * *

As a very young man, Tremaine’s fascination with, and devotion to, the gratification of his breeding organs had bordered on an obsession. Life had been a procession of frustrated urges, fantasies, frequent occasions of self-gratification, and the rare, much-anticipated interlude with a willing female who knew what she was about.

Such females became more readily available as Tremaine’s circumstances improved, while his preoccupation with erotic gratification had curiously ebbed.

And thus the first of many adult insights had befallen him: he excelled at wanting what he could not have, and the roots of that dubious talent twisted around childhood memories best left unexamined.

Those roots yet held life, apparently, for as Tremaine assisted Nita to dismount outside the sheep byre, he wanted to swive her all over again, but more than that, he wanted her acceptance of his marriage proposal.

“We shouldn’t linger,” she said, her hands remaining on his shoulders. “We’re apparently in for some weather.”

Nita was lovely, with the snow dusting her scarf and lashes, when by rights she should be chin deep in a hot, scented bath. Instead, she was paying a call with Tremaine on a flock of woolly beldames.

I
love
you.
The words sounded in his mind—only in his mind, thank God—as startling as they were heartfelt.

“Let me take the horses around back,” he said, “out of the wind. Go inside. You’ll be warmer.”

He kissed her on the lips, George having had the great good sense to look in on Kinser. A capital fellow, George, if somewhat given to scolds. Tremaine tied the horses to the rowan growing at the back of the byre and sent a prayer skyward that the damned snow let up.

So he and his lady could
linger.

“How do you tell the sheep apart?” Nita asked when Tremaine joined her inside the byre. While not cozy, the little stone structure was appreciably warmer than the out-of-doors and full of fat, milling sheep. Some reclined on the straw, chewing their cud, some sniffed at Lady Nita’s hems, two were nursing lambs, and one napped with a lamb—Tremaine’s little ram—curled at her side.

“You tell them apart the same way you do people,” Tremaine said. “By their facial expressions, their general appearance, their voices, the way they move. Shall we say hello to our friend?”

As they approached the sleeping pair, the ewe awoke but remained curled in the straw.

“I’m glad I wore my old habit now,” Lady Nita said, drawing off her gloves and kneeling. “He’s painfully dear.”

She meant that, meant that the sight of the lamb cuddled against his mama made her heart ache. Tremaine’s damned heart ached too, at the sight of Nita petting the little fellow and blinking hard.

“Will wee Annie be well?” he asked.

Nita used her gloves to swipe at her eyes. “She should be. Croup is common and needn’t be serious. Shall we give him a name? Something gallant and brave?”

How brave did a fellow have to be to curl up against a warm female and drift into dreams?

“Call him anything you like, my lady. He’ll be honored among all the other rams of the herd to have been given a name.”

Marry
me. Let me give you my name.

The ewe was a tolerant sort, or perhaps she recalled the scent of the humans intruding on her afternoon’s slumbers. She sniffed at Nita’s hand, then gave her baby a few licks around his ears.

“Don’t wake him,” Nita told the ewe. “Little ones need their rest.”

Tremaine drew Nita to her feet and straight into his arms. She went willingly and the simple feel of her against him, even through layers of winter clothes, settled his nerves a sorely needed degree.

“Have you considered my proposal?”

Nita nodded against his shoulder and remained right where she was. Not well done of him, to raise the topic here, among the beasts, with the scents of straw and livestock thick in the air.

And yet the location was appropriate too. Tremaine had first noticed Nita—truly noticed
her
—when she’d been so concerned with a newborn lamb shivering on the frozen earth.

“I want to be sensible,” she said.

“You’ve been sensible until you’re sick with it,” Tremaine said, though ironically, Nita’s selfless, tireless, pragmatic medical skills made others well.

He could spare her that paradox and would, gladly.

“Not sick with it,” Nita said, “but lonely, certainly. With you, I need not pretend to be someone I’m not.”

George Haddonfield might have been able to decipher the emotions those words were intended to convey. Tremaine heard only a nascent acceptance in Nita’s observation.

“I do not contort myself for the sake of social niceties,” Tremaine said, stroking a hand over Nita’s hair. “And I protect those entrusted to my care. My wife will not be allowed to scamper off to a war-torn country while I have breath in my body, Nita Haddonfield. Consider yourself warned.”

Nita could do with protecting. Her family had given up that cause years ago, and Tremaine looked forward to remedying their lapse. He’d even entertained the notion that Nita was marrying him in part to allow her to withdraw from her medical folly gracefully.

When Nita drew back, Tremaine let her go, though it pained him.

“Such dramatics. I have no intention of frequenting any battlefields, Mr. St. Michael. The sheep seem healthy,” she said, holding her glove out for a ewe to sniff. “They all seem wonderfully healthy despite the wretched weather. This makes me happy.”

There was that smile, the one Tremaine was learning to watch for.

“Good health makes them happy too, to the extent sheep trouble themselves over finer sentiments. Will you make
me
happy, Bernita Haddonfield?”