Eight Hunting Lyons (The Lyon’s Den Connected World)

Chapter Nineteen

H e left the very next morning.

Li-Na had known he would leave soon. After all, he’d been planning a trip to London the day he fell ill. It made sense that he’d depart as soon as he felt well. But this morning? The morning after he’d touched her so intimately? After their impromptu afternoon together, they’d cleaned up and headed inside. His sister had appeared soon afterwards with both children in tow, and there’d been no time for private discussion. Li-Na had plenty of private thoughts—most of them filled with emotions, heated cheeks, and a wonderful excitement. After hearing for years about the mythical quickening, she’d experienced it for herself. And it had been wonderful.

Unfortunately, except for a few apologetic looks over his sister-in-law’s shoulder, Lord Daniel said nothing to her. What could he say with the countess and her children there? So Li-Na had sat with the quiet child and stacked rocks with him while the other three had spoken in low tones together, presumably about Stefan’s guardianship. From what little she overheard, it appeared Lord Gordon was increasing his efforts to get control of Stefan and the estate. Daniel was grim-faced as he, Stefan, and his sister-in-law went for a stroll. Li-Na remained behind with Joseph as they shared Mrs. Hocking’s meat pies in the castle kitchen. She watched him closely, remembering his angry fit in the inn. Whenever his body tensed, she kept herself very still. The room was silent except for the wind, and she was absolutely still. If she did not talk or touch him, he seemed to quiet on his own. He calmed himself so long as she did not interfere. But she had to be very still and very patient.

When the other three returned, they were shocked to see that all was well as Joseph and she walked slowly around the castle gathering rocks to play with.

“You’re as good as Nanny,” the countess said. “Better maybe.”

Li-Na smiled. “It’s easy to be patient with a child for an afternoon.”

“No, it’s not,” Daniel said, his voice quiet. “You’ve got a way with him.”

What she had was the quiet of this place slipping inside her heart in a way London never could. It allowed her to be still with the boy which kept him calm. She realized now that she would miss Cornwall when she returned to the Lyon’s Den. There, nothing was ever still but here, a woman could manage her own thoughts and grow.

How startling that Bessie had been right. She needed this time away from London to realize that she could have something different in Cornwall. Or perhaps that she could be someone different here. Someone who painted unusual birds. Someone who experienced a quickening while outside. Someone who thought a great deal about what else she might experience with Lord Daniel in Cornwall.

She didn’t speak those words. She held them close in her heart and let them settle into her mind and body. This way, the next time Lord Daniel offered her a new experience, she would enthusiastically agree.

She didn’t get her chance that night. Lord Daniel drove his family back to the inn while Li-Na stared alone at the darkening sky. It was late when she collapsed into her own bed. She didn’t hear him when he returned, and in the morning, she found a note on top of her work that said he’d gone to London for a few days.

I hope to be back very soon. Please do whatever your heart desires while I am gone.

D

What her heart desired was him or at least a further exploration of what they’d done. But failing that, she had her work and her paints. After a twitchy couple hours with her abacus, she abandoned it in favor of her paints. But when she went to grab her easel, she chose something else entirely.

Instead of propping the paper upright, she lay it flat upon the great table in the gloomy hall. Daniel had told her that years ago many people had gathered here to eat every night, but decades had passed since anyone had lived here, and so all was in disarray. It was only after a bitter argument with his father when he was a teenager that he had started to come here to escape from his family. In time, he had reclaimed the best rooms for his own use. And then, when Peder and Nessie had been growing their family, he had settled here to escape the chaos at the manor.

He liked the quiet, as did she now.

So she rolled out the paper on the table to stroke ink characters onto it in the traditional way. But this time, she didn’t want to brush feelings onto the page. She was feeling too much in too chaotic a swirl. But she could write words, every thought drawn into a Chinese character that meant something. Or might reveal something. Or would simply settle her thoughts into order.

The first character she wrote was anger . She dashed it onto the page like she was whipping it. The characters for fury, hatred, and bully landed there, too. And then she felt bad for the last word. Lord Daniel was the opposite of a bully. In her life, she’d been beaten, shackled, and worse. All Lord Daniel had done was tempt her with art supplies and his naked body in the sunlight.

He was no bully and she was ashamed enough of the thought that she tore up the page and lay out a fresh one.

The next word she wrote was alone . That was the crux of it, she thought. It had nothing to do with the way he’d made her feel, but the fact that she was alone in this great, silent castle next to the ocean. What was she supposed to do with herself now that she was so upset that even the clack of the abacus irritated her? How could she long for Mrs. Hocking’s sour expression? She, who had always been so self-contained, now ached for…

She stopped her thoughts, stopped her brush where she was busy painting the seventeenth Alone character. She would not say she ached to be with Lord Daniel. She would not admit that she was partial to his chatter or couldn’t forget the feel of his calloused hand sliding between her thighs. Her longing for him was because he was her only companion in this dilapidated castle.

Which meant the remedy was to go out and meet new people. After all, she needed to get some information from the villagers. She had to find out the prices of goods in Cornwall and compare them to what the steward had recorded in the ledger. If she spoke to other people, then she would no longer think so constantly of Lord Daniel.

With that plan in place, she put away her brush and paints, she burned the words she had written, and then headed to the village along the path his lordship had shown her. And in this way, she would return to her quiet mind.

The first person she met along the path was Mrs. Hocking. The lady was early for her work at the castle and in a few moments, Li-Na figured out why. The woman had four children in tow and they were headed to Widow Greeves’ farm to replace the pigpen and its fencing.

“Damned pigs been running wild through my garden. I told her to fix those monsters inside their wallow, but she can’t do it what with her back pains and because she’s an old bitch. She was mean when she was a girl and spit in my tea, mean when she married and pecked her man to death, and mean now, blaming my boys for her pigpen being as flimsy as an old twig.”

“So you’re going now to fix the wallow?”

“We’re going there to see that no one accuses my boys of not doing their part for that old bitch. Everyone pitches in for something like that. And I’m going to stand there and see that my boys do right. Everybody making a day of it when it won’t take more than a few hours. But my boys will help or I’ll whip them senseless.”

The boys were all young. No more than ten, and they each carried an armful of sticks. The youngest had two fistfuls and a small trail of broken pieces behind him.

“I’ve never been to such a thing. May I come too?”

The woman screwed up her face up as she appeared to think about it. Then she tapped her eldest on the shoulder. “Go on now. I’ll meet you there. And mind that Alan stays with you.” She looked at Li-Na. “That boy is always looking at the sky. Can’t say what it is up there he likes. It’s just the sky, day in and day out, but he stares at it.”

Li-Na looked at the puffs of white and gray. She could spend many years painting “just the sky.” Instead, she smiled. “Children have their own fun. I’ve never been able to figure it out.”

Mrs. Hocking nodded, then pursed her lips and spit. She waited to say anything until the boys were far enough ahead that they couldn’t hear. Then she turned to Li-Na. “Anybody can watch the pigpen fixing, but there’s been lots of talk about you, not all of it good. We’re used to Lord Daniel’s strange ways, but he never brought one like you here before.”

Li-Na winced. This was why she hid herself away in London, why she always wore a veil in the Lyon’s Den. It made it so much easier to interact when they weren’t looking at her strange face or straight black hair.

“I’m not that different,” she began, but Mrs. Hocking shook her head.

“A woman who does figuring,” she said. “Do all the women do that where you’re from?” She looked up to the sky. “Stands to reason that a woman from a different place would look different. But we never thought she’d be doing the work of men.”

“The bookkeeping?” Li-Na asked, startled to realize that was why they thought her odd.

“And painting. Does everyone there paint too?”

“Everyone who can paints,” she answered. It was the basis of their language. If one could read and write, one could paint because every character was evaluated on its beauty as well as its meaning.

“It’s a strange thing, to be sure. Just so you know that. You look different to them, you talk different, and you do different.”

“But not to you?”

She snorted. “You clean up after yerself, don’t you? You took care of his lordship when he was sick, didn’t you? That’s all I care about, and so I told them.”

Li-Na looked at the sour woman and all the pieces fell into place. “That’s why they were so polite to me when his lordship was ill. It was because you told them to mind their manners.”

“I told them you were good to his lordship, and you knew your place. Didn’t put on airs, didn’t expect special food, and you took care of him when he was down with a fever. Something I wouldn’t do for anyone but my man and my babes. But you did it.” The woman eyed her narrowly. “You’re not sick, are you? Not come down with the same fever?”

“No. I’m very hale.”

“Then I don’t see why you couldn’t come to the pig’s wallow. Though, mind me, you’ll be looked at up and down if you do.”

She was looked up and down wherever she went. And she had the sneaking suspicion that so long as she stayed near Mrs. Hocking, the worst behaviors would be kept in check. As far as she could tell, the woman always wore a sour expression, was curt in her words, but she saw things in a practical way. That was an attitude that Li-Na could appreciate. And so she smiled and pointed at the lady’s overflowing basket of meat pies.

“May I help carry anything?”

“Lord, no!” she cried as they started walking. “His lordship would have my head if I had you fetching and carrying for me. He pays me good money, he said, good money and then some to do a job. And if I ask you to do my job, then you can’t do your job. So he said, and so I know. I’ll be carrying my basket, and you’ll be smiling sweetly at everybody in the village. If they say something cruel to you, just smile like you don’t understand their words. You can’t say the truth like I can. Just be a foreigner and act polite. They’ll leave you alone.”

“I don’t always understand them,” she confessed.

“Don’t matter. They don’t always understand me, but that’s their fault. I speak plain as can be.”

Li-Na smiled, feeling her heart lift. This woman who had seemed churlish nearly every time they’d interacted, now seemed to be her biggest supporter, and she’d never even known it. And since they were talking comfortably, she decided to get her most pressing questions answered.

“Can you tell me how many men are paid to re-dig the pig wallow?”

“Paid? What nonsense is this? We are none of us paid. It’s our Christian duty and the vicar told us so.” She shot a hard look at Li-Na. “You’d know that if you’d been to church, but I told them all you were tending to his lordship. But that won’t work again come Sunday.”

“Oh. Of course. I didn’t think I’d be welcome.” At least that’s what Mrs. Dove-Lyon had told her. There was always a vicar or someone coming to the women and men of the gaming hell, asking them to church. Bessie never stopped anyone from praying, but anyone who went to church came back ashamed or angry. Except for the few who never came back at all, and that was more frightening to Li-Na than anything else.

“It’s a house of God,” Mrs. Hocking said. “You’d not be not welcomed, if you catch my drift.”

She did not, but she supposed she would find out.

Then the woman grunted. “Go with the countess. Tell her you’ll help with the boy. I’ve heard you have a way with him. If you keep him quiet, we’ll all be grateful.”

Li-Na nodded. She would do just as the woman said, but in the meantime, she went back to her original question. “No one is paid then? To help with the pigpen?”

“No one but the widow who gets her new pen. What kind of question is that?”

“Because his lordship pays the steward for that. He said it cost thirty-eight shillings for men and supplies.”

“It costs sticks and manure!” the woman cried, outraged. “And my meat pies.” She lifted the basket with pride.

She turned to Mrs. Hocking. “Do you know the cost of other things? Seed and hay? What it takes for medicines and the like?”

“I do. I can tell you down to the last penny.”

Li-Na grinned. “I will add up—to the last penny—how much Lord Daniel has been over-paying his steward. And,” she added quickly, “I’ll make sure he knows it was you who helped me figure out these things.”

Mrs. Hocking nodded, her expression dark as she spoke. “There’ll be a reckoning then, I think, once his Lordship returns?”

Li-Na shrugged. “I will tell him whatever I can. It’s up to him to do the rest.”

“He’ll do the right thing,” the woman said. “He’s always done right, even when it meant he had to muck out the pig wallow himself.”

Li-Na turned, surprised. “He’s done it himself?”

“He’s done it and not complained. His brother, too, though not after he got sick. They’re good men when they’re here.”

Li-Na nodded, her thoughts turning glum again. Lord Daniel was a good man, but he wasn’t here.

“Tell me more,” she coaxed, “about what Lord Daniel has done. And I’ll make sure to mention that your boys have helped with the garden when it’s needed.”

Mrs. Hocking screwed up her face. It wasn’t a classically beautiful expression, but Li-Na recognized it as the face she made before she started a tale. And from the intensity of the expression, Li-Na knew it would be a good one.