Hadrian (36 page)

“Blessed beaming beloved saints.” A sincere prayer on his part, in gratitude for having survived such an experience.

Avis turned her face to kiss his wrist, then rubbed her cheek against his knuckles.

He stayed awake, and he even managed to lift his weight away from the warmth and softness of her, the breeze tickling his belly.

“You’ll get too much sun.” She patted his backside, then stroked him gently, and Hadrian could feel that caress over all of his skin.

“Can’t move.”

She smiled against his hand and managed to draw the edge of the blanket over them, and that felt lovely too. For long, long moments, they remained thus, breathing in counterpoint, skin cooling, until Hadrian realized just being inside her was inspiration enough to rekindle his randy inclinations.

He needed something sweet, a dessert, after that last joining.

A slow, tender loving, because he could not bear to part from her after what had gone before. He came to regret his greed, because his first pleasure had been passionate, but this one, softer, more shared and less demanded, was the more loving.

The most loving.

“You labor under a misconception, my dear.”

“I’m not laboring,” Avis corrected the man blanketing her with his lovely, solid,
naked
weight. “I’m barely breathing, so thoroughly have you knocked my wits asunder.”

Her heart too, for she could not have found what she sought in this meadow alone.

Hadrian nuzzled her neck and subsided against her. “It isn’t always like this. For many, it’s never like this. You will have expectations of me I’ll never be able to fulfill.”

She opened her eyes and tried to angle out from under him, the better to see his expression, but he cuddled her back into place, trapping her with his chin on her crown.

“You’ve had that much experience,”—she lipped at his earlobe—“that you can make such pronouncements?”

“I’ve had more than you, my lady, and as a vicar, one hears all manner of unhappy confessions and confidences.”

“All manner?”

“You’d be surprised how many marriages that have only the faintest echo of love in them and no passion,” Hadrian said, tone bleak.

Avis hated,
hated
that he’d been unhappy with Rue, at least in this regard. Bad enough she herself had lost so many years to self-consciousness and confusion. Hadrian had done nothing to deserve the same fate.

Hadrian kissed her ear, briskly, a call to focus. “Your mill wheel is creaking along at a great rate. Do you understand me, Avie? This wasn’t a tumble for sport.”

“Never that. Thank you, Hadrian.”

“God above.” He lifted up, and she missed even the weight of his chin resting at the top of her head. “You don’t thank me for sharing pleasure such as this, Avie. Thanks are for chocolates, a game of cricket, or books one lends to friends.”

Avis pushed his hair back from his face. “Don’t get into a state, Hadrian. Your hair has grown longer.”

“I’ll cut it.”

“You will not.” She smoothed it back. “I love it long.”

“What else do you love about me?” He closed the distance between them again, resting his cheek against hers. His question had been bold, and he was entitled to fortify himself for her response.

She stroked his nape, while the breeze set the meadow grass dancing a sunny hornpipe. “I would make you a list, but you’ve worn me out. I feel a nap coming on.”

“Then I’ll considerately keep my own list regarding present company for recitation at another time.”

He allowed her an orderly retreat, but he’d made his point: She loved him, and he loved her. For her part, this loving encompassed both the infatuation of a wounded young girl and the mature appreciation of a woman who’d endured alone for too long. Her love included friendship, lust, and all manner of unruly hopes, but a fat measure of selflessness too.

She really and truly loved him, and he loved her back. How very, very delightful.

Also quite messy.

“I’m that happy to see you, Master Hay.”

Cecily Carruthers beamed up at the young man on her front porch. This one had ever been a pretty lad, and such eyes! Harold was a handsome fellow too, of course, but the younger brother had a look about him that made a female—even a female as ancient as herself—sigh mightily.

“Lady Avis intended to join me today, but found herself indisposed,” Master Hay replied. “She asked me to convey her regards.”

“Shall I send you home with some tisanes, then?”

He looked a little uncomfortable, so she patted his arm. Young people had grown so proper in this present age. How easily their elders scandalized them.

“You needn’t say more. Lady Avis wouldn’t be lying abed for a simple cold.”

“She did not give me particulars.” Master Hay’s smile was back in evidence, and Gran knew from that smile that the lady hadn’t had to give him details. He was a noticing sort, always had been.

“Well, come sit a while.” She latched on to a muscular arm and towed him into her cottage, forcing him to duck his head lest he bang it on the lintel.

“You’re getting on well enough?” He’d caught her on a tidy day, not that the place was ever exactly messy, but Young Deal would forget to scrape his boots, and the grandchildren would get their muddy fingers on her drapes, and the cat might take a fancy to the harebells sitting in a blue crockery bowl on her table.

“I manage,” she said, leading him to her kitchen table. “Young Deal looks in almost every day, and my Nancy’s cottage lies just beyond the lea rig. What about you, Master Hay?”

“I’m in the company of a lovely lady. My day could not be better.”

“Does Lady Avis buy that sack of goods?” She assembled the tea tray—the everyday, which matched well enough for a young bachelor calling on a tenant. “You’ve the look of a man with troubles, Master Hay.” A handsome man, and he would stay handsome too, not grow saggy and whining like many others.

“Lady Avis warned me you were a hopeless baggage.” He held her chair for her, as if she were some fine lady a quarter her present age.

“I am an old baggage, and you didn’t stop by to hone your courting skills.”

“I am calling on all the Landover tenants, but I do have a particular question for you.”

“Let me get the tea steeping, and you’ll be wanting some scones and butter.” Because wouldn’t those old biddies slurping tea and lady’s pints down at The Snooty Fox be full of questions, when one of them saw Master Hay’s fine horse tied to Gran’s porch?

“If you made those scones, I’ll have one.”

Lovely boy. “You’ve heard from Master Hal?”

“He’s thoroughly enjoying his summer on the water.”

“Took that Lord James with him, didn’t he?”

Her guest remained silent, probably torn between a younger brother’s bewilderment and family loyalty.

“Don’t begrudge your brother his choices,” Gran said. “He’s a good man.”

“And a wonderful brother, but he’s the one who suggested I put my questions to you.”

She slid into a chair, but not before young Bothwell was on his feet, holding it for her again. “Sit, silly boy, and ask your questions.”

“Your reputation is sadly understated,” he murmured near her ear, but he subsided into his chair and let her serve him a flaky scone with clotted cream.

“What questions have you for an old woman who can barely see, hear or creak around?”

“Unless she’s on the dance floor, reeling Fenwick under the table.”

“Needs must. Young Fen knows how to turn a lady down the room, and there are those who think themselves too good for his company.”

Gran’s chair sported a thick cushion, the scones were fresh, and she had a young man captive in her parlor, proof that life yet held wonders and pleasure for an old woman with too many stockings to darn.

“I’ve announced my engagement to Lady Avis,” Master Hay said, “but I have questions about the unfortunate incident in her past.”

Now this was disappointing. Gran took a fortifying nibble of scone. “Put your questions to her. You know what befell her, and you know it wasn’t her fault, not any of it.”

Master Hay poured the tea and nudged a pink porcelain cup across the table. Old Deal had brought that cup back from Manchester as part of a matched pair back in ’85, when the wool harvest had been quite good.

“I know the situation was not of Lady Avis’s making. I know it better than most, but somebody delights in propounding the notion that Avis is wanton, fallen, and suffered no more than she deserved.”

Protective was worlds better than nosy. Gran added sugar to her tea and took another nibble of a fine scone, if she did say so herself.

“I’ve heard the talk. Petty bitches, whispering behind their hands and averting their eyes. Worthless, the lot of ’em.”

Master Hay had forgotten to pour himself any tea. Gran saw to the oversight.

“Who benefits from such talk, Gran?”

“A fair question. Not easy to answer. Any woman who thinks life has been unfair to her would feel superior to an earl’s daughter plagued by scandal.” At some point, every woman faced unfairness in life—as did most men, come to that.

“Was somebody else desirous of becoming Collins’s baroness?”

“We’ve few enough titles locally that the list of his potential wives would have been short, and Lady Avis was the most reasonable choice. He could be charming, but most of the papas and mamas would see through that, even if the daughters didn’t. Eat your scone, Master Hay.”

He picked it up but didn’t take a bite. “So maybe a young lady sought him, but wasn’t seriously considered?”

“None that I can recall.” Not that her recollection was perfect. “Young ladies are a vaporish lot, and they take odd notions.” When he took a bite of scone, she put a second on his plate. Just watching a specimen like Hadrian Bothwell consume her cooking did her old heart good.

“This is the best scone I’ve eaten in ages. What do you recall of Collins’s familiars?”

“A gormless lot. He was tossed out of one decent school after another, but always bringing his friends with him when he got sent down. Some of them weren’t so bad, but it was clear they were sowing wild oats in Collins’s company.”

Gran had felt sympathy for the baroness, watching her son become more self-indulgent and disgraceful by the year. She still felt sympathy for the woman, who barely bestirred herself to come to services any more.

“Collins should have been at university when he assaulted Lady Avis.”

Gran passed him the butter, made fresh that morning. “Collins would have been up in Edinburgh, drinking and wenching away the spring, while his poor mama thought he was at university.”

“He attended in Edinburgh?”

“I don’t know as he attended.” Gran cast back, trying to recall details. “Young Deal claims the boy manufactured documents granting him admission, when no decent school would have him, and then off he went, his pockets full of spending money, while his poor mother thought he was gone for scholar.”

“That presupposes a lot of planning on Collins’s part.” Now Master Hay added cream to his tea and stirred in the exact, same clockwise rhythm his father had used. Master Harold had the same habit, too.

“Collins was cunning,” Gran said, mindful she referred to the baron in the past tense. “Like a slinking, predatory beast, and he could wind his mama around his finger.”

“You are on good terms with the baroness?”

“You’ve been from home for too long, young man. Baroness Collins married a man no better than his son, and endured his foolishness until he broke his idiot neck racing a curricle in the rain. She’s to be pitied, but no, I do not have a close acquaintance with her, but rather, with her abigail, who calls upon me for the same tisanes I’ll be passing along to you, as well as headache powders and nerve tonics.”

“I meant no offense, and you’re right, I’ve been from home too long. Who might know the names of Collins’s accomplices in crime?”

Old Deal had known them, just as he’d known each and every sheep in his flock, and when rain was coming despite a cloudless sky. Why did old age have to be so lonely?

“The baroness might recall those names,” Gran said slowly. “Or her abigail. That lady never forgets anything to do with the Collins family.”

She let him steer the conversation toward her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the ripening crops, and Lady Avis’s plan to take up residence in the dower house.

“Nonsense, that,” Gran sniffed. “Avis Portmaine lets that flouncing companion of hers have far too much sway. You’ll set that to rights when you marry, won’t you? Married women don’t need companions, not when they’re married to the likes of you.”

“Was that a compliment?”

Oh, such a smile he had. That smile had likely kept the pews full to bursting over in the West Riding.

“I state facts. I knew your parents, my lad, and while they had their differences, they were no more lonely than Lady Avis will be married to you.”

“If we marry,” he said, and Gran had raised too many children and grandchildren not to see the doubt in his eyes. “A lady can change her mind.”

“She changed her mind before, you idiot, because she wanted to marry you, not Collins.”

“I beg your pardon?”

She creaked to her feet, sparing him only a glance over her shoulder as she took the tea tray back to the counter. He was young and handsome now. Twelve years ago he’d been
very
young and handsome.

“I tended Lady Alex, you’ll recall, because I’m the herbalist around here, and the physicians had done what little they could. Lady Alex told me.”

“Told you exactly what?”

“Lady Avis had already informed her brothers she wouldn’t go through with the engagement to Collins, because another had caught her eye.”

He’d forgotten to stand, his pretty manners knocked aside by what was clearly new information. “You assume that other was my humble self?”

“I know it was,” Gran said, scooping dried herbs from jars on the counter and into a cloth bag. “Lady Avis and Lady Alexandra were close, for they had no one else. Lady Avis told her younger sister you were a gentleman to your handsome bones, and why should she shackle herself to Collins when there was an honorable, intelligent, entirely lovely fellow such as you right next door?”