The Sherbrooke Series Novels 1-5 (170 page)

She choked on her asparagus. Her eyes went wide, seeing him at what she’d designated a Level Seven. She went perfectly still, once she caught her breath.

“Tell me, how do you punish your lads in the stocks?”

“If the miscreant merits a Level Five punishment, he is stripped to the waist, his head and hands locked in and the women torment him.”

“How?”

“It depends on the nature of the crime committed. For tardiness in assisting a guest, the women will whip him with small bunches of hollyhocks.”

“This doesn’t make the man want to be tardy all the time?”

“Oh, no. Hollyhocks are very irritating. They make you itch for a good week. It is really quite effective. Actually, to be fair about this, it was the former vicar’s wife who devised that particular form of punishment discipline.”

“Oh, God,” he said and jumped to his feet, toppling his chair. “I truly wanted to be your partner, just your partner.” He grabbed a good-sized piece of bread, and fled the small parlor, leaving Helen to sit there, staring after him, wondering how he would look in those stocks, naked—completely naked. She wouldn’t let anyone come near him, just her, and she wouldn’t have a silly bunch of hollyhocks in her hand. No, she would use her mouth and her tongue and—Helen sighed deeply and took herself to the inn’s kitchen to help Mrs. Toop peel apples for a pie.

Lord Beecham marched across the inn yard through the small gate to the stable. He didn’t bother with a saddle or bridle, just grabbed Luther’s mane and swung himself up on his back. He chewed his bread as he rode, without stopping, directly to Shugborough Hall. Flock opened the door to him. “My lord, what is amiss? Is that a piece of bread clutched in your hand?”

Lord Beecham ate the bread.

“MY LORD, YOU LOOK maddened now that you have swallowed the bread. Have you been attacked by highwaymen? What is amiss?”

“I am amiss. Where is Lord Prith?”

Flock walked to the dining room, Lord Beecham on his heels. He stepped back just in time to prevent Lord Beecham from walking over him.

“Help me, sir,” Lord Beecham said to Helen’s father, who was seated in isolated splendor at his own dining table, a glass of champagne in his hand. Flock came to stand behind his master, ready with the champagne, his eyes down, his ears wide open. “I am done for, sir, you must help me.”

“Oh, dear,” Flock said suddenly, stepping forward, “you didn’t bring that poaching Nettle, did you, Lord Beecham? I don’t have my gun.”

“Now, Flock, can’t you see that his lordship is quite alone? That he suffers? From what, we will doubtless learn in good time. Were I to venture a guess at this very moment, I would say that he is hungry. Sit down, my lord. Flock, serve his lordship a bit of baked pheasant covered with jellied apricots.”

“Yes, sir, I am very hungry,” Lord Beecham said. But he didn’t want food, not really. He wanted to weep. It was all over for him. He had fought it, fought it with all his might, fought a good fight. He had thought of his father, and continued to fight it. But even the darkness of his memories had not diminished in the slightest what had happened to him, what he was helpless now to fight against.

He jumped up from his chair, nearly knocking it over. He began to pace. “Sir,” he said, striding up and down the dining room, the oak planking creaking beneath his boots. Thank God, he had not taken the time to pull his boots off. He just might have forgotten them altogether. He might have ridden Luther here in his bare feet. The humiliation would have been rather staggering.

No, thank God, his boots had been on his feet the whole while he had made frantic love to a woman. He had never made love to a woman before with his boots on, except Helen. Had he ever taken his bloody boots off? It wasn’t to be borne. He sucked in air and looked like a wild man.

“I just left your daughter at the inn.”

“Oh? My little Nell is accounted an excellent hostess. What displeased you?”

“Myself, this damnable situation. Sir, there is no hope for it. I am undone. I suppose I simply must marry your daughter. I had not planned to marry until I was almost dead because my own parents gave me a powerful distaste for marriage. Actually, my father’s example with each of his three wives made me determined to avoid taking a wife of my own. But now I see that it doesn’t have anything to do with me or with Helen. It is other people, not us. It doesn’t seem to matter anymore.

“I must have Helen. I cannot continue without her. Well, it is not exactly without her, but this other, it’s madness, and it has to stop or I will hurl myself over a cliff, and than where would I be?”

“I believe you would be dead, my boy.”

“Not at all a good finish. Please, sir. Have I your permission to court and wed your daughter?”

Lord Prith stared at him. “I have heard of your sire. His name was Gilbert Heatherington, was it not?”

“Yes.”

“My dearest Mathilda was a friend of his second wife. Poor Marianne died within five years of her marriage to him.”

“Yes, sir, I was there. My father was obsessed with building a dynasty. But I am the only child of his loins who survived. He had no caring at all for women, none really for the children except that they live, which they didn’t.” Lord Beecham stopped. There was no reason to continue this. His father was dead, all three of his wives, including his own mother, dead as well, and the innumerable offspring.

“I am not like my father.”

“But you speak of marriage as if it would be your downfall. Why would you consider marriage a bad thing just because your father mucked it up?”

“He humiliated my mother. He kept her pregnant every year until I could hear her begging him not to take her, not to force himself upon her, that she would die with the next pregnancy, but he just laughed and forced her, and that last time she did die, cursing him, but he didn’t care. I believe he was with a mistress at the time. But I was there, sir, and I heard what she said. I heard her death. I despised him. I swore never to impregnate a woman, but then I realized that I had to have an heir, so I decided to wait, wait until it was almost the end of my time, and then I would take a wife and beget an heir.”

“How old were you when your mother died?”

“Ten.” He stared at Lord Prith. He couldn’t believe at all that he had blurted that out of his mouth. It was said. It couldn’t now be unsaid. He waited.

Lord Prith sat back in his chair. “I am sorry for that, my boy.”

Lord Beecham continued to stare at the man he hoped was his future father-in-law. He had spilled every bit of blackness in his soul, laid it all out for Lord Prith to examine. Now Lord Prith would realize that he wasn’t the man for his beloved daughter. He had been stunted and embittered. He wasn’t worthy of someone pure and wholesome, the only woman to make him beg to give his all to his marital duties until he was called to the other side.

But he wasn’t worthy. It all came down to that. He waited to hear the ax drop on his neck.

Lord Prith said, “At least you are not short. That bodes well for you. Helen turns down short men.”

He blinked. Lord Prith was considering him? His confession had not set him irrevocably against him? He cleared his throat, and said, “No, I am two inches taller than Helen. She tries to pretend that I am not, but it is true. Two inches, perhaps even a quarter of an inch more than two inches.”

“You and Helen will have magnificent children. It is difficult, as you well know, my boy, not to impregnate a woman. You will not kill my daughter with too many birthings, will you?”

Even as Lord Beecham shook his head and said “No, I will not,” he remembered that Helen couldn’t have children. She was barren. He felt a very deep shaft of pain, but he felt it for just a moment. In the grand scheme of things, his second cousin, a ship captain who lived in the colonies, in a place called Baltimore, could have his title, or one of his cousin’s male children could have it. He was a good fellow, he wouldn’t blight the Heatherington escutcheon.

But truth be told, Lord Beecham didn’t care what sort of a man his cousin was. He wanted Helen and he wanted her forever. It was the oddest thing. He was standing in Lord Prith’s dining room, Flock likely behind him in the shadows, not moving a muscle for fear of anyone realizing he was still in the room, and it didn’t matter a single whit. He felt wonderful. He felt whole.

“I will protect Helen with my life. I am not a pauper. She will have everything she could possibly desire. I have a beautiful country estate in Devon. Paledowns. She will love it there, all rugged hills and valleys and the coastline, all jagged and old, sir, so very old.” He shut his mouth on his poetic outpourings. He was losing what few wits remained to him. He would make his summation pithy. Show the depths of his ardor with a few witty words. He cleared his throat and opened his mouth, and what came out was, “I have never met a lady like your daughter. She is radiant, sir. I cannot imagine how I could be so very lucky as to have her leap at me from her horse’s back in Hyde Park and hurl me to the ground.” He cleared his throat. What had that come from? “Ah, Paledowns, sir, she will be happy there. She will also be happy in London. I have three other houses as well dotted over the northern landscape. She will doubtless approve of those as well. If she doesn’t, she can discipline the caretakers and change things until she is pleased.

“I will worship her, sir, until I cock up my toes and pass to the hereafter.”

Lord Prith said comfortably, “You don’t have to worry about things like that, my boy. My dearest Nell nests wherever she happens to find herself. Your home sounds like an excellent place for her, any and all of them. You know, now that I reflect upon things, my little girl did seem a bit on the quiet side whilst you were gone, my boy. Dare I say that she moped? Flock, are you still about, your ears all sharp?”

“Yes, my lord, but I have been staring at the epergne, my lord, wondering how best to clean all the little hidden crevices amongst all the grapes. I have barely heard a word anyone has said.”

“Good. Do you think that Miss Helen was moping—or is that too strong a word?”

“Miss Helen moped as I have also moped, my lord. I perhaps taught her through example how to mope properly. It is not too strong a word.”

“Good, I didn’t think so. She was also distracted. I would catch her looking off into nothing at all, as if dazed. One of her lads at the inn let a thief steal several bridles from the stable. She disciplined him, but her heart wasn’t in it, all could tell. She has lost flesh, which isn’t good for her, since she is well nigh perfect just the way she is.”

“Yes, she is perfect.”

“Hmmm,” Lord Prith said, drank more champagne, and looked off toward a painting on the wall. Lord Beecham glanced at the painting, a line of rabbits hanging from a skinny rope in a sixteenth-century kitchen, ready for the cooking pot. He didn’t like paintings like this though they were so very popular in nearly every dining room in London. They always put him off his feed.

“Helen isn’t perfect, my boy,” Lord Prith said. “I must be honest with you, since it appears that you see her only with honey flowing from her mouth. She is her own woman. Perhaps one could call her occasionally obstinate and, rarely, just sometimes, a bit on the stubborn side. Those words aren’t too strong, are they, Flock?”

“They are perhaps shaded by your loving parental eye, my lord.”

“She is used to doing precisely what she wants when she wants to do it. She is strong-willed and strong of limb as well. I have seen her knock a suitor from one side of the room to the other when he chanced to offend her. She didn’t break anything, but the fellow had a black eye for a week.

“She has opinions, my boy, opinions that are her own, not necessarily gently formed by her dear father. She is interested in all sorts of things, as you very well know, what with this lamp business. She is a mistress of discipline. Yes, even I know this about my dearest Nellie. Her lads always strive to please her, but when they run afoul of what is right and proper, she does discipline them. Come to think of it, they sometimes beg for it, but she is fair in her judgments and doesn’t always give them what they want.

“She won’t let you tread on her like a rug, my boy. In short, my sweet little Nell is a handful, just like her dearest mother, my precious Mathilda.” Lord Prith looked over at Flock, an eyebrow arched in question.

“Well and accurately stated, my lord.”

“Thank you, Flock.”

Lord Beecham couldn’t help himself. He asked, “Have you ever seen any of her lads in the stocks?”

“Certainly. Other villagers rent the stocks from her to carry out their own punishments. She is considered a goddess of justice in Court Hammering. Wives adore her because she won’t allow their husbands to drown their livers in her taproom.”

Lord Beecham said, “She is much more than a goddess. I must have her, my lord.”