Major Wyclyff's Campaign (A Lady's Lessons, Book 2) (5 page)

Smiling, he stroked her cheek. "You promised to marry me."

She pulled free, out of his arms. "I most certainly did not!"

His empty hands clenched, and his patience began to fray. "In the hospital. When I was ill. You promised to marry me."

"But you were dying." Again she stared at him, her gaze roving over his body. He waited, allowing her the time to look her fill and assure herself that he was whole.

"As you can see, I am recovered."

"Well, I cannot help that," she shot back. Then, suddenly, she pushed up on her feet, straightening enough to tower over him. "In any event, what are you doing here? And how dare you interrupt my ritual!"

He paused at the abrupt change in her tone, but he reined in his temper. Shock often sent delicate constitutions into strange mood shifts. He gestured to the yawning hole at their fleet. "What is this ritual?"

She turned to look into the pit, and he caught a flash of reflected torchlight in her eyes. "I was sacrificing... well, you among other things."

"Me?"

"Yes! For arranging and planning my life like every other person has tried to do since I came of age! My word, even when you were delirious, you were ordering me to marry you. I had to agree just to silence you." Suddenly, she planted her hands on her hips. "Indeed, I should throw you back in the pit along with the rest of the constrictions and burdens. How dare you ruin my moment of symbolic relief from all of London?"

"Relief from London? What nonsense is this?" He straightened, ignoring the bolt of agony in his knee, pulling himself tall enough to stare her in the eye. "Besides, you said I created the perfect ending for your ritual."

"That was before I knew you were you!" she snapped. "Now I shall have to do an entirely new ritual with new corsets. And whalebone is terribly expensive, you know."

He stared at her, and suddenly his temper broke. "This is insane!" he bellowed.

"It is not!" she yelled back. "It is symbolic, and I believe you should have to buy the corsets."

He reared back. "What?"

"You are the one who ruined this experience. It is either a whole new ritual or you shall have to throw yourself back into the hole. Your choice." She folded her arms across her chest as if daring him to deny her.

"I will not throw myself into your pit—"

"Your effigy, then."

"Absolutely not! And I will not buy you corsets. Not yet, at least. What I will do is marry you, then buy you new corsets; then I shall take you to London before we leave for India!" The words were out before he could stop them, but once said, he did not regret them. Perhaps this was no way to tell a lady they would marry, but then again, a lady did not bury innocent furniture in the middle of the night!

Unfortunately, as the silence stretched between them, he realized that perhaps this was not the most ideal circumstance to reunite with Sophia. Especially as he was beginning to glimpse her stubborn streak. It was possible that she would be stubborn enough to cry off their engagement just to spite him.

In fact, the more she stared at him, her mouth sagging open in shock, the more he believed he might have erred. At last she drew back, smoothing her muddy dress as if it were the most costly of court gowns.

The motions reassured him. For the first time since this whole bizarre episode began, he recognized the Sophia he knew—despite her attire. She was cool, composed, and almost regal as she looked down at him and smiled.

"I do not wish for any new corsets."

And with that, she strode away, head held high, stomping most effectively on her small, bare feet.

He watched her go, doing nothing to stop her. He was in too ill a temper to continue their conversation. And she was obviously not in an appropriate frame of mind.

He instead busied himself with filling in her pit. It didn't take long. He moved quickly, doing the minimum necessary to ensure any wandering strangers were safe from her handiwork. Then he mounted Demon and rode toward the Rathburn home.

It was not far to her house, and he saw her immediately, but he did not detain her. He merely wished to make sure she returned home safely. And as he watched the moonlight wash her silhouette with silver, he could not restrain a smile.

She was magnificent. Her body was tall and slim, her carriage graceful. She was a true aristocrat, her blood nearly as blue as that of the Regent himself. Even when tiptoeing back to her manor door on bare feet, he could see the pride in her movements, the generations of breeding.

Tonight's episode he excused as merely a temporary female aberration. After all, she had just completed her fifth London Season. She had thought her fiance dead and was now facing a lifetime spent on the shelf as too old to be marriageable. A woman on the verge of spinsterhood would certainly undergo enormous emotional distress. Her actions tonight were merely a symptom of her fears.

She was perhaps only now realizing that her worries were at an end. He still intended to marry her, despite tonight's show of temper. Then he planned to spend the rest of his life caring for her.

The thought gave him so much pleasure that he whistled all the way back to his room at the inn.

* * *

The following morning, Sophia stared at her drawer of unmentionables and frowned. They were all gone. All her stiff corsets, itchy underclothes, and even her walking boots. All buried.

Which was exactly as she had intended. Until the major had shown up, of course, and ruined the entire thing. Now she wanted to repeat last night's ritual, except that she had nothing worthy of burying. She actually liked everything that remained.

She closed the wardrobe with a sigh and sat back down on her bed. It did not matter, she told herself. Her arms ached from last night's digging, and she did not wish to repeat the process.

So what was she to do today?

She turned her head to stare at the steady hands of the gilt clock on her dresser. It was not even teatime yet. My goodness, the days went ponderously slow in Staffordshire. In London, she would have already attended one or perhaps two functions, frittering away her time with idle chatter and insipid gossip. Thank goodness that part of her life was over.

Of course, now that she was in Staffordshire, she was merely frittering away her time doing absolutely nothing except feeling bored. She tapped her fingers together. What exactly did a free, unfettered spinster do with her time?

The morning's correspondence had brought some relief to the tedium. She fingered the missive from her sometimes friend, Reginald, Lord Kyle, and re-read his message. It began with the usual on-dits from London, nothing that she cared to know or follow, though she did manage to read every word at least twice. It was only at the end that his correspondence shifted to the odd.

Staffordshire must be overrun with madmen. I fear I sent one to your doorstep in the form of a major recently released from hospital. The other is a man I call Uncle Latimer. You would know him as Lord Blakesly the elder (the younger one being both presumptuous with the title and an idiot to boot). Have you heard anything of him?

It ended with the usual farewells, mixed with dry comments about his difficult tailor. Sophia knew nothing of Lord Blakesly the elder, though she absolutely agreed with Kyle's assessment of the younger. As for the realization that Reginald was responsible for directing the major to her here, she had every intention of chiding him for it when next they spoke. She would have written him a letter stating her opinion, but her escritoire was currently buried in the side yard.

What struck her as particularly odd was that Reginald considered the major insane. True, Lord Kyle clubbed all military men as madmen. Swordplay and bullets tended to disrupt one's attire, and that, to Reginald's thinking, was proof of a weak mind. But perhaps he had a point. The major had just recovered from a severe illness. Perhaps it had weakened his normal reason.

But he had not seemed mad last night, she thought with a sigh. Indeed, he had looked magnificent riding in on his huge stallion. At first, she had thought him a conjured spirit, tall and dark, like King Arthur riding to battle. The torchlight had turned his brown locks to a reddish gold like a magical helmet. And when he had bellowed at her, all she could think of was keeping the spell alive so that he would remain by her side.

There was no spell, of course. Only the major, still as handsome and commanding as ever, even after his illness. Even now, she could hardly believe it was him. Alive and seemingly unhurt.
I am well
; that's what he had said.

He was well, but she remembered all too clearly the hours spent by his bedside. The pain that had wracked his body. The agony of watching his strength slip away. And then that horrible moment when they told her he'd died. She could not stop her tears even now, despite the sure knowledge that he was alive.

But the Major was not some mythical creature, she reminded herself. He was a man. A man who had been desperately hurt. Who even now could catch another fever. What if last night's events had reopened his wound? What if he had returned only to die again? Only to abandon her once more? She did not want to need someone, to want someone, who might slip away so easily. She did not want to hurt like that again. Her body clenched at the horrors she envisioned. And yet, at the same time, she kept remembering how glorious he had seemed last night. How strong.

Yet how forceful and opinionated! He was as bad as the worst of the condescending fops who graced the London ballrooms. No, he did not live for his tailor or the latest on-dit, as Reginald did, but he, like the others, expected to be obeyed unquestionably. He practically ordered everything and everyone about him. Why, his interruption of her ritual was typical of him, and all because he thought she was doing something silly.

Oh Lord, she groaned into her pillow. Her mind was spinning in circles. She kept remembering him looking so virile. Not sick at all. Thinking back to her removal from London, she knew she should have spoken directly with the doctor. But the nurse had been adamant that the major had died, and Sophia had been heartbroken. After all, she had seen the signs. The major had been going to die. Had died. Or rather, she thought he had. And the pain had been too much to bear.

Still lost in her confusing thoughts, Sophia was startled by a discreet knock at the door. "Beggin' yer pardon, miss," said Mary—her maid at her aunt's estate—as the girl pushed into the room. "But yer aunt wondered if you planned to attend tea."

Sophia blinked, her gaze skipping straight to the clock. "Oh my, yes. I had clean forgot." She hopped up from the bed, using the motion to force thoughts of the major from her mind. "Tell Aunt Agatha I shall be there directly."

She did not waste time on her appearance. It was just she and her favorite aunt. What she did do was grab the book of scandalous poetry that she had purchased secretly in London. The two of them absolutely delighted in reading it over crumpets.

It was, in fact, one of her favorite times of the day.

With a small skip, she tripped down the stairs of the small house. From there it was a single hop before she burst through the door. "Aunt, I have just been reading this poem about a whore in Peru—"

"Sophia! Your guest has arrived."

Sophia froze with one foot over the threshold. There before her, painfully gaining his feet, was the very person who had been drifting in and out of her thoughts all day. And all night.

Major Wyclyff.

And if she thought he was handsome last night, today he was truly magnificent. He was in his dress uniform with gold braid and medals. He stood rigid and tall, the pride of all of England clear in his broad shoulders. He looked magnificent, not sickly at all.

"Oh!" was all she could say.

"Oh, dear," gasped Aunt Agatha, her hands fluttering before her. "Have you forgotten the major's appointment? Truly, my dear—"

"Appointment?" gasped Sophia, her gaze still riveted on her guest's rugged face. She noted lines of strain about his eyes and a lingering leanness to his features. "What appointment?"

"For tea," he answered as he executed a bow worthy of the king's court.

"Tea?" she gasped as she finally found her breath. "Not my tea with Aunt Agatha. Goodness, Major, first my ritual and now teatime. Why must you be always popping up at the most inconvenient places?"

"But, but," stammered her aunt, her lavender ribbons fluttering about her gown, "he said you invited him."

"I most certainly—"

"Did," countered the major before she could finish. "I believe you said I was the crowning touch to your ritual, and would I please come to tea."

Sophia thought back, belatedly realizing that she had said something to such effect. "But that was before I knew it was you."

"Nonsense," he countered. "I know a lady as refined as yourself would never invite strange gentlemen to her aunt's house." Next, to her total mortification, the major's gaze traveled leisurely down her body, no doubt taking in her flyaway hair, her rumpled gown—without stays—and, of course, the scandalous book in her hand.

She whipped it behind her back.

"You are mistaken," she said tartly, the words out before she could think to stop them.

"About your refinement or the strange gentlemen?" He smiled as he spoke, and she could tell he was trying to tease her, but she could not respond. Not when he stood there in his dress uniform, looking magnificent in every way, and she...