Chasing the Heiress (6 page)

“I couldn't say, sir.” She pretended to look once more at the print. “I can't see his face for the soap-suds.”

Colin watched her leave with regret. He could grow used to a companion with a quick wit and well-turned ankles.

* * *

When she arrived at the kitchen the next morning, Lucy told herself that returning to her dishes was a wise course. She was growing too fond of him, of his quick wit and easy smile. The kitchen offered her a safe and anonymous retreat. Even so, she found herself adding extra soap to the water to make the suds thick.

By early afternoon, three coaches with passengers had come and gone, all eating in the dining hall before they left. Every dish had been used and washed and used again. Washing should have been welcome work, a break from the worry of sitting beside Colin's bed, praying he would live. Instead, each dish seemed like her enemy, keeping her from checking to see that he was still well.

She touched her fingers to her lips. She hadn't expected a simple kiss to create such a complicated web of emotions. And she certainly hadn't expected to want to kiss him again. She returned to the pot, scrubbing absently, while she remembered the feel of his mouth against hers. His hand in her hair.

“I think you've got that pot nice and clean, Lucy.” Nell lifted the pot from Lucy's hands and gave it to a towheaded girl at her side. “Peggy will be helping with the dishes until his lordship departs.”

“Is something wrong?” Lucy's stomach clenched. The kitchen had been her safe haven.

“Nothing at all.” Nell patted Peggy on the shoulder as she led Lucy into a quiet corner. “His lordship has made us a fine proposition.”

Lucy stiffened. “A proposition?” She willed her face to remain impassive. Had she misjudged the kind of man he was? From living with her cousin, she'd come to believe that the men of the
ton
were venal and selfish. But Colin, she'd told herself, wasn't a lord as much as he was an officer. And she knew officers—their faults, their prejudices, their shortcomings, but also their virtues. Nell was still talking, and Lucy forced herself to listen.

“I can't see any reason to refuse, but I'll tell him nay if that's what ye be wishing.”

Lucy's heart pounded hard in her chest, and her breath felt stiff. She knew how coercive the aristocracy could be. “What does he want?”

“An active man who finds himself bedridden grows bored easily, and bored guests are difficult guests. They complain about the beds, the noise, the food, even the smell of the air.”

“Go on.” Lucy felt her distrust grow like yeast in a glass of sugar water. She'd been taught from infancy to minimize her risks, to take precautions, to remain safe. She'd been a fool to disregard that training.

Nell held out two pound coins, and Lucy felt her stomach upheave. She'd allowed herself to believe that Colin was an honorable man, but this . . . how could this be honorable?

“He wishes for you to entertain him during the day. And he's provided more than enough to pay both you and Peggy for the next two months. Peggy's da died last month, and she's the eldest of four—I've been hoping to have enough trade to hire her. And this . . .” Nell smiled at the coins.

Lucy looked at Peggy, her thin arms and legs, already doing exactly as Alice told her. “What does he expect me to do?” Peggy's presence made refusal difficult, and she wondered ungenerously if that was what Nell had intended.

“Oh, he's provided a list.” Nell held it out. “These things and nothing else. And you may refuse three requests per day. Even better, if he asks for something not on the list, we may keep his coin without any additional obligation.”

Lucy read the list. Nothing salacious. Reading aloud. Writing letters. Games involving cards, dice, marbles, or boards, but no wagers. She turned the sheet over to see if there were additional items on the back; then, still suspicious, she held it up to the light to see if other words appeared. Nothing. Her relief felt like cool water on a hot day. He was exactly who she had believed him to be.

“Mr. Fletcher says his lordship's relations should be here in two, three days at the most.” Nell grinned. “And he's already paid us.” She pressed one of the pound coins in Lucy's hand.

Lucy turned the coin over. No scullery maid would refuse so much money for a few days' attention to a convalescent. But she still felt vaguely uncomfortable, as if there were a larger game at play, and she didn't know its rules.

Even so, she pocketed the coin. “What harm can come of it?”

“That's what I thought.” Nell patted her on the back. “Go on up now. And take that basket: I've collected some games and books from the public rooms.”

Lucy picked up the basket and headed toward the guest lodgings. She hoped Colin grew less appealing with familiarity. Otherwise the harm might be to her heart.

* * *

Fletcher was standing at the door when Lucy arrived, basket in tow. Fletcher spoke loudly enough that Colin could hear each word perfectly.

“Thank heavens that you agreed, Miss Lucy, or I might have killed him by nightfall. Morose and moody, he is, and no cheering him.”

“Then perhaps we can distract him.” She tilted the basket so only Fletcher could see its contents. “See anything he likes?”

“Ah, yes, miss. This.” The coachman smiled broadly as he pointed.

Lucy laughed out loud. “This should be interesting.”

From his bed, Colin strained to see what Fletcher had picked. “Why are you talking to Fletcher when I'm the one who is paying for your time?” Colin had made the agreement with Nell, he told himself, because he needed to know Lucy better before he could consider taking her with them as Jennie's companion. But, in truth, all day he had missed Lucy's teasing tongue and her quick wit. He'd even tried to amuse himself by making absurd statements and predicting what she would say in response. But none of his imagined retorts surprised and delighted him as much as hers did. The game had only made him want her company more.

“Fletcher indicates that you like Fox and Geese.” Her cheeks were still flushed from the heat of the kitchen.

“I last played when I was a boy.” He shifted toward the center of the bed, hoping she would sit beside him. Instead, she placed the basket on the bed and pulled a chair forward.

“Fletcher chose it first off, so I would wager—if we were allowed to wager—that it's your favorite.” Few people teased him as regularly, and successfully, as Lucy, and it made him feel whole in a way he hadn't felt in months.

“Let me see what's in that basket.” Colin began to rummage, pulling out dominoes, card decks, marbles, and dice. Near the bottom, he discovered two double-sided board games. “Backgammon on the front, chess on the back, and this one pairs checkers with Fox and Geese.” Under the games were four small books.

“Horace Walpole's
Castle of Otranto
. Know anything about it?”

“It's a ghost story. Terrifying, especially if you read it by candlelight.”

“Then you'll have to read it to me by candlelight.” With satisfaction, he watched her cheeks flush a slightly deeper crimson.

“Our agreement is to keep you company
during the day
.” She turned her nose up at his suggestion, establishing the boundaries of their flirtation, if a flirtation it was.

“I suppose no
Otranto
then—I would hate not to find the terrifying bits terrifying.” He turned back to the basket, his mood already improving. “Let's see: three more. Thucydides's
History of the Peloponnesian War
or part four of
A History of the Buccaneers of America
.”

“Does the Thucydides start with volume one?” She opened the book to its title page.

“What? No pirates?” Colin felt lighter in her presence, less burdened by the past and his choices.

“I prefer my history to be ancient. Besides, I refuse to read any books except from the beginning. In the camps, books circulated from hand to hand, but one could rarely read all the volumes or read them in the right order. Half the time, the volume I'd be reading would end abruptly, and I could never find the next volume. What's our last option?”

He picked up a battered book with no spine and opened to the title page. “It's in Spanish.
El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha
.” He spoke the words with an almost perfect accent.

“It sounds like you can read that yourself, or I can read it to you. In Lisbon, one could easily find interesting things to read, if one was willing to translate.”

He opened
Quixote
to the first page, “I picked up a smattering of whatever language I needed. Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, a bit of German to converse with the Prussians, Austrians, and Swedes. Usually I learned just enough of one language to pretend to be a native speaker of one of the others.”

“I liked
Quixote
, especially during the wars.” She took the book out of his hands and let her finger run down its missing spine. He watched the movement jealously.

“Why?”

“Quixote believes in chivalry, in doing good deeds, in restoring justice to the world. But he is a bit mad, and he doesn't see anything as it truly is. As long as he lives in his imagined chivalric world, he's happy. He defeats a giant threatening the countryside because he doesn't realize the giant is really a windmill. But when he is cured, he sees the world as it really is, making him sad and isolated. With no dreams to sustain him, he dies.”

“Perhaps we'll read
Otranto
instead.
Quixote
sounds a bit melancholy.”

She tilted her head in memory. “Perhaps, but it's also thoughtful and funny. Why would one want to live in a world devoid of hope or dreams? If all you have is a stark reality, would it not be better to live in a dream world, where at least you believe you are doing good?”

“Does my nurse tilt at windmills, then?”

She looked up at the ceiling before answering. “Probably. If my only possible reality was stark and ugly, I'd rather cling to the beautiful dream. And you?”

“Like Quixote after his cure, I see the stark ugliness and retreat from it.”

Her face grew solemn with concern; then, shaking it off, she smiled brilliantly. “Enough of that, sir. I know you didn't bring me from the kitchen for philosophical conversation.” She pulled Fox and Geese out of the pile on the bed. “I believe, instead, you wished to challenge my skill at herding geese.”

“Fletcher will tell you I'm an exceptionally wily fox, outwitting unsuspecting geese at every step.”

“I've already seen that for myself.” She held up his list of activities. “Or I would still be in the kitchen . . . with my soap-suds.”

He felt his expression move from surprise to shock, to amusement and a sort of triumph. But she made no comment, only set out marbles on the cross-shaped grid.

The day passed so companionably that Colin could almost forget how he had come to be there, at a rural inn, gunshot and waiting for his elder brother's help. The acuteness of his failure faded in Lucy's laughter, and his pleasure in her company was as sweet as it was unexpected.

During a particularly competitive game of backgammon, he told Lucy how his elder brother Benjamin had spent afternoon after afternoon teaching him strategy, until he'd grown skilled enough to beat his next oldest brother Aidan, who before then had never lost and afterward never won again. He had been eight and Aidan twelve. Lucy clapped with delight, praising his younger self with real enthusiasm—then just as enthusiastically trounced him without mercy.

As they played their way through a dozen games, he observed with interest the trajectory of her mind, learning—as he had suspected already—that she was a sharp and formidable adversary.

In only another day or two, he would have to take up his responsibilities, Aidan would arrive, and Colin would have to deliver the infant to his relations. But until then, he allowed himself the time to heal, and the babe the time to grow strong and hardy. Like the hours before a battle when soldiers would draw together all their strength, it was a waiting game. But this time, while he waited, he had the sustained companionship of the most interesting woman he'd ever known. For now, he was Quixote, holding on to a beautiful dream.

When night finally fell, Nell's boys brought up an extra lantern, and Lucy read
Castle of Otranto
to him. But after the third supernatural episode, she was too afraid to leave his room to return across the darkened courtyard to her own. She pulled in a second chair from the adjoining drawing room and, tucking her feet up, she fell asleep by his side, returning to her room before he awoke in the early light of day.

* * *

When Lucy returned the next morning before breakfast, she was horrified to find Colin dressed in his trousers, shirt, waistcoat, and cravat, on his way to find her.

“Where do you think you are going, sir?” She let her tone convey all her dismay and concern. Fletcher—that traitor—would pay if Colin fell or overexerted himself.

“
We
are going. I believe games with balls are on your list. Yesterday, I looked out the window into the garden and saw a fine bowling lawn.”

“No, no games with balls.” Lucy looked out the window and grimaced. The bowling alley was plainly visible. She should have realized that Colin was not a man willing to rest long in bed and spoken to Nell in advance about keeping Colin from it.

“I believe that marbles are balls, so by extension, either bowling is on the list or balls are just especially large marbles. I'll leave you to choose which.” He was teasing and playful, obviously feeling well for the first time since the attack.