Slowly Rising, page 7
"Aye. She means well."
"That's easy for you to say, Adam. She has not yet looked to meddle with you."
"Why would she? I don't need anybody to brush my hair."
"Neither do I!"
"But you should have somebody to cosset you."
"That's what you're for, husband!"
"Well, 'tis an extra pair of hands to help. For when I'm busy with... manly things. Besides, I don't know much about petticoats, perfumes and curling papers."
"Those are womanly things, are they? Our sole interests? All that should matter in our minds?"
"Who knows what goes on in women's minds? I've long since stopped trying to figure that out."
Mrs. Wilding laughed. "Probably for the best. It would be far beyond a man's understanding."
"You're lucky I'm besotted, woman, letting you flap your saucy, shrew's tongue at me like that. In centuries past, such wicked chatter would consign you to a scold's bridle. Women are meant to be seen not heard."
"Yes, well, we know how the men of Slowly Fell tried to silence their women once before. That did not end too pleasantly for them, did it?" After a pause, she added, "And on the matter of chattering women— my lady's maid talks and sings to herself, you know. I've heard her in her room at night."
"She fits in here then. You're none of you fully sane."
"Mr. Wilding!"
"Well, you've taken on a lot, staying here with me, when you could have had some other life with a man who has no witches in his family or curses to bear. Only a mad wench would do that."
She scoffed, "As if I'd let some other woman take my place at your side."
"There could be no other. It's you or nobody. You're the only one I've ever wanted and will ever want."
"Even when I flap my saucy, shrew's tongue?"
"Especially then." To prove it, he kissed her again.
Until she came to Slowly Rising, Amalie had never seen two people behave like this together. A tiny nugget of a wish had begun to glow within her, a shy longing for what she might have known, if only—
The surface of the pond rippled suddenly, as if a passing bird dropped a berry from his beak and disturbed that dark glass. But there was no bird in sight.
"'Tis getting cold," said Mr. Wilding. "We'd best go in."
She cautiously looked around her tree trunk and saw him stand, one hand reaching down to help his wife to her feet.
"What does she talk about then?" he added.
"Who? What?"
"Your lady's maid. You said she talks to herself in her room at night."
"I know not. Mostly it's in French. Although I have some knowledge of the language, her speech is far too fluent for me to keep up. She sings too sometimes."
Amalie scowled and clenched her jaw, shaking her head. Damn you, Coquin.
"McKenna has worked in service since she was thirteen," said Mrs. Wilding, suddenly contemplative. "That's a year younger than I was when I began. I too was so keen for approval. I see much of myself in her."
"She's certainly a hard worker like you."
"Indeed. I have no complaint. It is pleasant to have her here, and I suppose Lady Bramley knew I would like a female companion in which to confide from time to time."
"You cannot confide in your husband?" he protested.
Her reply was a coy, "Not always. Not when he's off doing manly things. Some matters are better off kept between women."
"Well, I don't know that she has room to keep all your naughty confidences tucked away, Sarah. She's a tiny creature and needs feeding up. I almost stepped on her several times since she's been here. Makes me nervous o' breaking the bony little lass."
"She's a sweet girl. Be kind to her."
"Why would I be anything else?"
"Sometimes you can appear a little stern and cross, even if you do not mean to be."
"Then she'll just have to stop hovering about under my feet and popping out from behind doors, scaring the Beelzebub out o' me! Makes me nervous. Like living with a ghost."
Mrs. Wilding muttered thoughtfully, "The poor girl has been unlucky, losing her trunk on the way here. I've managed to find two dresses that fit her with a little adjustment, but I'm sure she would rather have the comfort of her own possessions."
"Aye. Next time I have business in Shrewsbury, I shall make inquiries at The Lion and see if I cannot trace her luggage. Somebody must have had sight of it and perhaps it has been turned in there by now. I cannot imagine there would be anything of great value to be stolen from it."
The master and mistress walked back up the slope toward the house, his arm around her waist, hers around his.
"If I find that some good-for-naught lads thought it would be a good jest to run off with a young lady's petticoats," said Mr. Wilding, "I'll give 'em a good walloping."
Soon the couple had walked too far for her to hear more, and then Amalie could finish her stroll around the pond.
Her heart was very full, but light. She felt extremely fortunate to work for a young couple in love. If she could never know that feeling herself, to experience their love vicariously was surely the next best thing. Far less dangerous and distracting from her duties too.
If things had been different for her— if there had not been so much to learn and do in her twenty years— she might have paused long enough to know the kiss of a passionate young man. A real kiss. Not like that awful slobbering wet thing that a footman called Edward once forced upon her in a dimly lit corridor, after he'd sipped all the leftover port from the gentlemen's glasses one evening. No, not like that, but a kiss from a man who touched her heart, and looked at her the way Mr. Wilding did his wife.
Their happiness together was almost enough to give any disillusioned woman hope. Almost.
But one could not change fate and a love affair was not in Amalie's path. Again she reminded herself of how little good the men that featured in her own life had ever done or caused. The Adam Wildings of the world were few and far betwixt. And even he had his faults, one of them being his habit of willfully disheveling her mistress again, just as soon as Amalie had managed to make her tidy.
* * * *
She dreamed of the pond that night, and of herself standing at the edge, barefoot, dabbling her toes in the cool, still water.
How peaceful it was. Until something caused a ripple across the surface. Not that bird again dropping a berry; this time it was a powdery substance falling in a shower. Like salt tipping slowly from a giant teaspoon. A few grains at a time.
She looked and saw flames tickling their way through the grass around her. It crackled and hissed, shriveling everything it touched. Leaving the earth charred, the trees wizened stumps. And down came an axe, chopping into the stumps, splintering through the heart of the wood.
From it he made a box. Big and heavy. For the church.
How hard and fast he worked upon the almery, putting all his fury and passion into it, carving pictures inside and out. She saw the sweat upon his back. It dripped down, falling through the air and landing on the wood, sinking into the grain.
"Amos Wilding and the folk of this village will live to regret what they did to your sisters. Their own consciences will plague them enough."
"Oh, they'll know they cannot destroy me. I shall plague them. I shall declare a curse on Slowly Fell unless Amos Wilding gives me all in his possession. I will make him pluck out his heart and give it to me on a plate."
"This is madness."
"The villagers will be so scared of me that they'll rise up and make him do it. You'll see."
"And what of me? What of my heart? Is that to be plucked out too?"
"I can do far more for you, give you more... provide for you, once I have the Wilding fortune in my clasp, can't I, Jep?"
"I don't want riches, Belle. All I want is you."
"Think of me as gone already. 'Tis for the best, Jep Wyatt."
Amalie turned, took a great breath of the smoky air and leapt forward. Into water.
Slowly she fell. Downward she drifted, down into the glittering, dancing lights, down into the weeds, where others waited, wrapped in their own long, shining, cottony hair, bobbing there like the half-exploded seed pods of bulrushes.
After that, she dreamed every night of a man called Jep Wyatt constructing the almery, of his rage and heartache carved into it; then of the pond and of herself taking comfort and refuge in its quiet, soothing darkness.
Chapter Five
"So what can you tell me about these folk I'm to protect?" said Gideon, handing the borrowed coat back to its owner. "The Wildings of Slowly Rising."
Heath Caulfield examined the returned garment with a careful eye. "Back in one piece and without stains. There's a surprise."
"The Dowager Lady Bramley means to get me another, before I leave for Shropshire on Friday. I told her it weren't necessary, but she's set on it."
"Good. It's time you took a little more care with your attire. Now you're rising up in the world."
"Rising up? Didn't know I were down."
"You know what I mean to say, Jones. The Dowager Lady Bramley is a very good friend to have."
"So she may be. But I am comfortable with my clothes and I don't give a sparrow's fart what I look like. Not for her, or anybody."
His friend chuckled. "You may not like it, Jones, but as Shakespeare said, Apparel oft proclaims the man."
Caulfield, of course, had come by this opinion only since his marriage some five years ago. Before that, when the two men first met while working for the Bow Street magistrate, he had been just as shabbily attired as Gideon and just as little inclined to change. In those days they thought practically for warmth and ease of movement, and to blend in with their surroundings. None of his friends knew or cared anything about "fashion". But now, it seemed, working men who wanted to get on in life were expected to know about such things and be comfortable with them. Women and the French had a lot to answer for. He was certain they colluded in the travesty together.
"You're in good hands with Lady Bramley," Caulfield assured him. "She has a good eye for quality, and she knows all the best tailors. I can assure you there will be no unnecessary frills."
"In any case, I told 'er ladyship she can take the cost out o' my wages, if she insists on dressing me up like something the cat dragged in."
"I believe that's the look she's trying to avoid for you, my friend."
"Ha bleedin' ha. My sides split with the 'ilarity."
Smiling, Caulfield poured ale from a jug into two tankards on the table between them. "Well, Lady Bramley must have liked you to go to that trouble. If you impress her she will put more work your way. And, although she would never admit this, she has a tender heart for the underdog."
"I don't need charity."
"Put your pride aside and that chip on your shoulder with it. Take an opportunity when you see one." He paused, examining the frothy head of his ale. "As far as the Wildings...I can tell you little. I do know that Mrs. Wilding— Miss Sarah Wetherby as she was before her marriage— worked for Lady Bramley as a Coping Girl."
"What the deuce might that be?"
"She was sent about the country to look after families in troubled times, to nurse the sick and dying, comfort the grieving, keep house for them and manage their unruly children."
"And the mister?"
"He was a blacksmith by the name of Wyatt and now he's a landed gentleman with a new name. That's all I can tell you with certainty. I'm sure he struggles with his new prosperity. Any man would, when he was never raised to expect it."
"Where does this fortune come from? Lady Bramley mentioned the wool trade and mining, but only in passing."
Caulfield did a fair impression of the dowager when he'd imbibed a few ales. "It is not the done thing to talk of money, Jones. One should never let one's finances become public tittle-tattle."
Gideon laughed.
"But I remember my wife reading something to me that her friend wrote in The Gentleman's Weekly," Caulfield added, somber again now. "It was a piece exposing the dangerous conditions under which miners are forced to labor. Some of the pit workers are young children, you know, used for their convenient size. A disaster at the Black Wilding Wolf Pit was used in the story as an example of the horrors that can occur. I assume it's the same Wilding family."
"So what happened?"
"About fifty years ago the mine shaft collapsed, burying several men and young boys alive. The local people claimed a curse was responsible. Country folk tend to be a superstitious lot. But that tragedy was surely caused by greedy management and a callous disregard for the workers' safety."
"No wonder the Wildings need my help then. They must have made a few enemies over the years."
"They have always been a secretive family and for the last half a century they've hidden themselves away from society, hoarding their wealth. The Wildings are not known for charitable dealings. But Adam Wilding seems an honest fellow, from what I've heard, so I would not paint him with the same brush as the rest of them. I don't envy him, taking all that on." He looked up, his expression slightly warmer now as he resumed his gentle teasing. "But what of you, Jones? Will you manage in the countryside? You'll find it very different to life in the rookeries."
"Reckon I'll survive."
"All that filthy fresh air and disgustingly pretty landscape as far as the eye can see? Rivers and streams with clear water that doesn't stink? You might prefer it there and stay. Find some rosy-cheeked, doe-eyed, plump-lipped milkmaid to turn your life around."
"Turn it around? There's naught wrong with my life the way it is, ta very much!" He made a forward slashing motion with his hand. "I know where I've been and where I'm headed. Don't need nobody else hanging on me to muck it up."
Caulfield sipped his ale. "I suppose every man thinks that, until he finds love."
"Oh, I've found love plenty o' times," he replied cheerfully. "Hasn't changed me for the better. If anything, it's them scheming wenches what's made me into the disreputable cad I am now. Always swear off 'em for a while. Only to get dragged in again by the next pair o' pretty eyes, a winsome smile or a long, shapely pair o' pins. Never learn my damned lesson."
"You speak of lust. I speak of enduring, everlasting love, Jones."
"'Ave you smacked yer 'ead against a lamp post? You sound dicked in the bleedin' nob. Must be that fancy school you went to."
"You'll understand when you find the right woman."
"Spare me your preaches, Caulfield. There's nothing worse than a moon-eyed feller, under his wife's thumb, telling me what I'm missin' and how my life ought to be just like his. As if I might ever want to give up this blissful bloody state of bachelorhood in exchange for the monstrous leg irons o' marriage."
His friend chuckled. "You go on the way you are then and don't mind my advice, but with your reckless habits you won't live another ten years."
"'Tis fine by me. I could do with the rest." Besides, he'd often felt as if he 'd outstripped fate already, lived beyond expectations— and even the intentions of certain folk. As a consequence, he made the most of this life he probably shouldn't have had and lived every day to its fullest.
Caulfield closed his eyes and shook his head, as if to say there was no hope for his friend.
"'Tis true," Gideon insisted. "At least I will have enjoyed meself and done no 'arm to anybody else in the meantime."
"Depends upon your definition of enjoyment, Jones. And harm."
Leaning across the tavern table, one arm resting carelessly amid the wet tankard rings, Gideon replied, "I go home when I want to. If I want to. I eat what I want, drink what I want, bathe when I feel the necessity. You, on the other 'and, will start looking at your fob-watch soon because the Trouble and Strife awaits your company. Now you're at her beck and call."
"Yes." Caulfield allowed a slow, shy smile to creep across his lips. "I have a wife and little children to go home to. Folk who care for me and are generally pleased to see me. It's a good feeling, my friend. You should try it."
This suggestion dismissed with a broad laugh, Gideon leaned back and drained his tankard in one gulp. But later, when he stumbled home to the Covent Garden boarding house and climbed the crooked, narrow stairs to his dark, cold rooms on the third floor, the only sound to disturb the loneliness that of a drunken couple screaming at each other on the other side of his thin wall, he thought again of his friend's comment and recalled his conversation with Lady Bramley.
"Do you have family, Mr. Jones?"
"No."
"I suppose that's just as well in your line of work."
"Yes. It's lucky I've got nobody. I often think that."
He wasn't being entirely sarcastic. Just a little. There were times when he thought it might be nice to have family, of some sort. But then he'd have to change his habits to suit somebody else, and he'd survived this long by playing to his own rules, responsible only for himself.
Listen to that gin-soaked racket next door, for instance. They were screaming bloody murder at each other. Not so long ago they were "in love". Tomorrow, perhaps, they would be again. For what that was worth.
He kicked hard at the wall with his heel. "Shut yer pieholes! Some of us are tryin' to catch forty bloody winks."
No, he was better off on his own.
Once he sobered up he'd remember that and forget everything else.
So he fell back onto his bed and closed his eyes, waiting for the noise to die down— perhaps, with any luck, one of them would throttle the other— and that foolish pang of loneliness to be swept away again. Tomorrow, when he woke, it would be a new day, a new dawn, and with it his usual equilibrium must return. Surely it must.
Rain had begun to fall sometime after he stumbled through his broken door; he could hear it now drumming steadily at his window, the weeping moonlight reaching through the thin, worn bit of sackcloth he used for a curtain and painting long slashes of shadow on the wall by his bed. Sleepy-eyed he watched shifting patterns dance over the mold patches. Thin, dark, reedy figures joined arms and then parted again. He could almost hear the music.
