Chapter Eleven
Maulvi was sounding better but looking worse.
Every time Martin visited, the other man seemed to have shrunk, his skin looking duller and duller against the fresh linens that the Widow Croft changed every morning.
His face was almost all cheekbones now, without any fat to round out the smile that had greeted Martin all his life.
Smile he did, though, at Martin’s appearance, and his voice sounded as strong as ever when he said, “At last you have returned. I thought you must have replaced me already and forgotten all about me.”
“There is no replacing you.” Martin sank into the wooden chair upholstered in leather that Lolly had gifted Widow Croft’s household some decades ago.
The sentiment was true: Maulvi had been a servant of Martin’s family since before Martin was born, and losing him was going to hurt Martin more deeply than losing his own father.
“You must replace me,” Maulvi said, the smile dimming, “for I know what happens if you are without a supervisor. You’ll decide we should grow peat.”
“That was one idea—and when I was all of twelve, I might add.”
“That you brought up again when you wanted to do away with our coal purchases.”
Martin allowed the man his ribbing. It was good to see him cheerful.
Maulvi asked, “Have you solved the problem of the cottages for the Beauchamps?”
Ah, but that was why they had rubbed along together so well all these years: at heart, they were both workhorses. “The problem of the cottages is a problem of physics as well as a problem of resources.”
“In other words, your pockets are too empty to do anything about it.”
Not empty. But Martin didn’t want to explain to Maulvi the dilemma of spending the small reserves of his bank account on purchasing new land versus leaving a financial legacy for his children.
It was too depressing—and, unlike Mrs. Bellamy, Maulvi had too much of an interest in the children to comfort Martin that he was doing his best.
If this was his best, then Martin was neither a very good father nor a very good baron.
“Aren’t you supposed to be retired from such concerns? I hope you haven’t been spending your days reading old estate reports. Surely there must be something more interesting to occupy your thoughts.”
“Oh, I don’t need to read an estate report to know exactly what is going on. The wheat is drying too slowly because of the cold; the women’s dormitory is full to capacity; and Jarvoise is still complaining that you haven’t given him enough budget to properly care for the azaleas.”
Martin admitted to each guess being true.
“And—” Maulvi continued, “you have put poor Mrs. Bellamy to work because you cannot bring yourself to hire a steward to replace me.”
The room suddenly felt too hot. “She wanted the work. She said she would be at loose ends without something to occupy her.”
“Are you now a man with a secretary, then? Have you hired the widow on a permanent basis?”
Martin could not look his friend in the eye. “No, she is only helping until she hears from her niece.”
He had been spending an inordinate amount of time considering the errant letter from the niece, name unknown.
When it arrived, would Mrs. Bellamy pack her things and leave within the day?
What if her niece said there was only room for her to sleep on a pallet in the room with the children, like a nursemaid?
Could Mrs. Bellamy hope to be happy as a hanger-on to a family member who she hadn’t seen for over a decade?
Of course, she must be. It was the proper and natural course of action for a person to spend their last years with their remaining family.
As much as he and Mrs. Bellamy enjoyed each other’s company now—and he was aware that even in his own thoughts, he avoided naming the fire that erupted between their bodies—she could not be happy living for long in his shadow at Northfield Hall.
She deserved to be in a home where she had a proper place, and where she never had to question how long she was welcome.
Maulvi peered at Martin as the Widow Croft served them each a cup of chamomile-and-ginger tisane. When she had bustled back into the kitchen, Maulvi asked, “I don’t know Mrs. Bellamy well. What is she like?”
Martin made a meal out of sipping his drink so he could think of a proper answer. “She is made of strong stuff. No matter what circumstance she is presented with, she will find a way to tolerate it.”
“Is she in deep grief over the loss of her husband?”
His tisane spilled onto his knee. Martin jerked up at the shock of hot liquid. Cursing, he did his best to clean it up with his handkerchief.
Maulvi waited for the commotion to end before prompting, “You were going to tell me more about Mrs. Bellamy.”
Martin should change the subject. Maulvi knew him too well, and Martin was too full of thoughts about Mrs. Bellamy to keep them secret.
Thoughts—and feelings.
“What is there to tell? I do not know how she feels about her late husband. She is intelligent, well informed, kind, discerning. Her handwriting is elegant. What else could there be to say?”
“Is she good company?”
Martin forced himself to behave like a normal, civilized human being. “Yes.”
Maulvi watched him, and he watched Maulvi, and Martin found himself admitting:
“She has seduced me.”
To his credit, Maulvi did not guffaw, though his eyebrows did jump to the top of his brow. “She has seduced you?”
“Well, I didn’t intend to act on my…inclinations, if you see what I mean, but she persuaded me it would not hurt either of us.”
“And?”
And Martin wasn’t sure if it was true that neither of them would be hurt. When he was in the same room as Mrs. Bellamy, he was intoxicated by her, but when apart from her, he filled with a sense of foreboding.
They did not belong together. Their time together would end. And when it did, how could that ending be anything but hurtful?
“Has it only happened the one time?” Maulvi asked.
Martin felt his cheeks flame with shame. It should have been limited to the one time, shouldn’t it? He had indulged himself and Mrs. Bellamy, and when he had returned to his senses, he should have resolved not to let it happen again.
“Then perhaps she has done more than seduce you,” Maulvi said into Martin’s silence. “Have you fallen in love?”
At this, Martin could honestly scoff. “It has been hardly a month, Maulvi. I find her interesting and pleasing and…” Intoxicating, but he would not say that aloud. “Yet I hardly know her well enough to consider myself in love with her.”
“I do not recall that it took you so long to declare your love to Lady Preston.”
But he had already been engaged to Lolly before he fell in love with her. Even if they had not anticipated an actual wedding, Martin had had every right to fall in love with Lolly. And besides, he had been young and his idea of love had been simple.
Having loved Lolly for twenty ensuing years, Martin could look back and see that what he had considered love before their wedding had merely been the seeds necessary to grow into deep, layered, intense love.
Perhaps—perhaps!—a few of those seeds were germinating between him and Mrs. Bellamy. But Martin knew better than to give them any light or water.
She was not for him.
“Lolly was Lolly,” Martin replied. “Come now, old man, surely we do not want to turn into boring gossips. What do you think I should do about the wheat?”
Maulvi frowned at him. “It is not gossip if it is your own heart at stake, sir.”
“My heart is safe and sound,” Martin promised. “Now, have we put enough food stores away that I need not worry about a bad crop?”
Maulvi let the topic drop. But when the Widow Croft came in to tell Martin he had visited long enough, the old man asked his common-law wife, “Is it possible to have two loves of your life, do you think, dear Rebecca?”
She grinned at him. “Sure I do, for I had Mr. Croft and now these last forty years, I’ve been blessed with you.”
Maulvi looked at Martin as if he had won an argument. But Martin’s concern was not that it was impossible for him to love again; he knew only that it couldn’t be with Mrs. Bellamy.
As September bled into October, evening came sooner and sooner—and Martha grew ever more eager to retire to her bedroom, where she could wait for Lord Preston’s knock.
She made a ritual of changing into her dressing robe, brushing out her hair with a hundred strokes, and dabbing on perfume from her dwindling supply.
She always had time to remove her stockings to greet him with bare feet on the hardwood floor, but he never kept her waiting long enough for her to light the candles beside her bed.
That they did together, sometime after their first kiss by the door and their four-footed steps to the mattress.
He loved her long hair. Some nights—usually after their first bout of lovemaking—he sat her up and ran his fingers through her hair as if they were the brush.
“It’s terribly thin compared to what it used to be,” Martha said self-consciously on one of their first nights together, and Lord Preston objected, “It is beautiful as it is. So silver, like Rumpelstiltskin himself spun it!”
She had never thought of it that way, so she let him keep on admiring it.
He loved her hands, too. Almost always, he greeted her first by bringing one hand at a time to his lips and kissing each fingertip, his eyes locked on hers.
It made her feel like a queen. Once, she curtsied—and he pulled her to her feet and thrust his tongue inside of her right there beside her closed bedroom door.
When the full moon came, they left the candles unlit and tied back the curtains so the room flooded with moonlight.
Hidden in the shadows—knowing he couldn’t see her drooping breasts or sagging stomach—Martha climbed atop Lord Preston and rode him as if she were a twenty-year-old harlot.
She even placed his thumb on her nub, earning herself the loudest orgasm of her life.