Chapter 12
Twelve
At the feasting table, the concubine sat on her king’s left when custom would have her sit on his right.
Her king did not object. Indeed, he would not let her change positions.
Because, during a long feast, the concubine often relieved her boredom by putting her right hand in his lap.
— The Concubine and Her King. Unpublished MS.
Her bedchamber held what the housekeeper Mrs. Rumney said was an escritoire but what Susannah would have called a desk. It was of mahogany, very fine and feminine, with long tapered legs, and Susannah had taken to writing there at night.
She would spend an hour or two after dinner with the earl, but it seemed far too risky to talk into the night, too perilous to sit with him as the dark closed in around them because that could only lead to her thinking about being in the dark with him in other ways.
So she went to her room and told herself stories and wrote them down.
But she did not write of Tommy Treadwell and his new adventures. She wrote about a woman who cared for a man of great power and great sadness. This woman tended her love the way Susannah wanted to tend to Henry.
It was not the same kind of tending she had given her brothers.
She wrote all her yearning out, and, in the light of day, she could congratulate herself on having her own adventure and not wasting her precious time at Bledsoe Park with wishing for what could never be.
They planned a picnic and chose a shady spot under an enormous oak not far from the house. Henry—he was Henry more and more to her every day, but she must not slip up and call him that—saw they’d forgotten to bring anything to drink and insisted he be the one to walk back and fetch the lemonade.
While Susannah and Mina spread out the blanket and took the sandwiches from the hamper, Mina told Susannah about the search for a grandmother and how a great and powerful marchioness—who was Mina’s great-great-aunt, think of that, Miss Beasley—was searching out a wife for the earl.
“I want a grandmama, you see,” Mina said as if it were perfectly natural for a man to marry in order to please his granddaughter.
But, after Henry’s last marriage, Susannah hoped he’d marry to please himself, too.
He returned with the lemonade and both delighted and surprised Susannah by immediately lying down on his side on the blanket, using his elbow to support his head while they ate. It was such an informal posture, so youthful and easy, so at odds with how he usually held himself.
“Dare I ask how you’re going to get up?” Susannah said teasingly.
“The usual way,” he said.
“With lots of moaning,” Mina said and gave her crusts to him.
“I may not be spry, but I do not moan,” he said. He popped one of the crusts in his mouth and chewed, all while looking at Susannah. “How are you going to get up?”
She had her legs coiled to the side, so she rolled to her knees and, holding her skirts, got to her feet. It was not entirely graceful, but she had done it.
He watched her. “Not fair.”
“Said the earl.” She laughed and plopped back down again. “Don’t worry, I’ll help you up. But I have to rest first.”
And he smiled. He smiled.
“I’ll help, too,” Mina said.
He turned his smile on his granddaughter. “Will you? Then I shall never have to invest in a walking stick as long as I have you two to help me up.”
But when the moment came, he refused all help and did it as Susannah had, albeit with a few creaks and grumbles.
“You won’t believe this,” he said to Susannah. “But when I was young, I could sit cross-legged and rise straight up without uncrossing my ankles until the very end.”
“And did all the young ladies swoon in admiration for you?”
He snorted. “I was surrounded by the rest of my regiment, so no.” Then, “Would you have swooned for me?”
Silly man, I swoon for you now.
“Of course,” she said, folding the blanket. “I’ve seen that picture of you in your uniform.”
Yes, it was flirtation. Of course, it was flirtation. But they were with Mina, and the sun was shining, and there was no harm in making him feel admired. Because he was.
“I have excellent taste in young men,” she added.
“Who was that boy?” Henry asked as they walked back towards the house. “The one who danced with you. At the fête.”
Her face went hot at the thought of that night. That kiss.
“Will Skinner, the village scamp.”
“I was walking towards you, trying to get through the press, but then he swept you up, and—”
“And then you disappeared!”
“You danced with such a light heart. I suddenly realized I might spoil your fun with your friends.”
She didn’t have friends. “You wouldn’t have spoiled anything, my lord.”
“I hope Mina and I are now among your friends,” he said stiffly.
Friends.
Yes.
It was a much better name for what they were to each other than patron and authoress.
After all, she had barely written more than a paragraph of the book she planned to name The New Adventures of Tommy Treadwell. Tomorrow, she’d set to work in earnest.
After dinner, she stayed longer than she meant to in the little library. She ate a crumbly cake, and Henry drank port.
He pushed back, stretched out his legs.
“You never married.”
“Since I am Miss Beasley, you know that. And some might think it rude of you to mention it,” Susannah said tartly.
“Do you think it rude?”
She answered sincerely. “Yes.”
He pulled his legs in and straightened his back. “Then I beg your pardon.”
She used her fork as a scepter. “Pardoned.”
But he did not back away from the subject as she expected.
“It’s only that you are a, uh, very interesting woman, and I find it difficult to believe you never had offers.”
She turned her head and looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Who said I never had offers?” She fluttered her lashes.
“You,” he said. “You.” He shook his head and smiled. Two smiles in one day.
“Me, what?” She fluttered her lashes again but then could not hold her coy pose a moment longer and burst out into laughter.
“You are a saucy minx,” he said, but it was not said as a scold.
“Yes. And you are—”
He leaned forward.
You’re a good man and an earl, a rich man, a peer of the realm, a soldier, a widower, a father, a grandfather.
“You are a startlingly handsome gentleman.”
He sat back. She couldn’t tell if she had disappointed him.
She raised her fork once more. “That is the exact thing I thought when I first saw you. That is one startlingly handsome gentleman.”
“And when I first saw you, I thought you were—”
“A madwoman.” She crossed her eyes and poked out her tongue.
“No,” he said, and she uncrossed her eyes and withdrew her tongue.
“No,” he repeated. But he said no more.
“Well, go on, then.”
“I thought you might be a witch.”
“What?” She began laughing again. “I like that. I say you’re a startlingly handsome gentleman, and you call me a witch.”
“I later emended it to enchantress.”
“Yes, that’s much better. And have I enchanted you?”
She meant it as a joke and was smiling, but he was not smiling when he said, “Yes.”
She was in very great danger of feeling things she shouldn’t, thinking he felt things he couldn’t.
“Oh, goodness.” She stood, yawning. “I must to bed.”
Suddenly, she heard her words as an invitation. Bed was not an innocent piece of furniture but a place for far more than sleep. She felt herself color.
But he hadn’t heard it that way, at all.
“I will retire also.” He was already on his feet. “All that picnicking and standing up.”
“Yes.”
They lit their candles, and he turned down the lamps. They walked to the staircase. They climbed the stairs, side by side.
At the top, she turned to him to say good night as his room was in a different wing from hers, but he was already moving in the direction of her wing.
He turned around and walked backwards, holding his candlestick up. “I will light your way, Miss Beasley.”
He gave her a grin, and, for a moment, he looked positively boyish.