Chapter Fourteen
The next few days passed uneventfully. Emily remained in bed, in part because she had no desire to leave, and in part because Mrs Chambers and Oliver insisted on it.
While he left on occasion to visit the household and help with chores, he still spent most of his time with her, either reading or playing cards.
By the end of the third day, she was heartily sick of whist and Vingt-un, and was relieved to wake the next day to a clear head and hunger pangs.
Finally.
Oliver still snored in the truckle bed, so she dressed as quietly as she was able, hoping not to disturb him. Although he had treated her precisely the same as he always had since the shirt-removal incident, she couldn’t get the image of his torso from her mind.
That little line of hair snaking down to—
She shook her head, trying to force the image from her head as she slipped from the door.
But she had only reached the dining room when Oliver tumbled down the stairs after her, resplendent in shirtsleeves once again.
His hair was carelessly dishevelled in a way that made every muscle in her body tighten.
“Emily!” he said, coming to a stop before her. “What are you doing out and about?”
“It’s about time I had some fresh air.”
“Outside? But it’s freezing.” His eyes narrowed. “I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to,” she said. “I’m doing it anyway.”
He clucked his tongue in irritation. “You are incapable of rest.”
“I’ve had three full days of rest, Oliver, and if you force me back upstairs into that tiny room, I might lose my mind.”
He heaved a sigh. “Fine. In that case, allow me the honour of showing you around. You’ll need all your wits about you to escape Clarabella.”
“Who on earth is Clarabella?” she asked, mystified.
“You’ll know when you see her.” He grinned and released her arm. “After breakfast, Emily.”
“I don’t appreciate this ordering me about you’re doing.”
Mrs Chambers rounded the corner from the kitchen, and Oliver immediately shifted his hold on Emily, drawing her closer against his body.
The sudden proximity and his warmth startled her that she didn’t move away, not even when he rested a light hand on her waist. Her face flamed.
Being touched like this made her feel dizzy all over again, but this time she suspected it had nothing to do with being hit in the head with a brick.
Drat it all. She’d thought she’d overcome this strange fascination with him, but here she was, her heart fluttering as though she were seventeen all over again.
She stepped back, and Oliver let her. “I’m feeling much better,” she announced, trying to look utterly unperturbed. “I’d like to go outside today.”
“Oh good,” Mrs Chambers said, and beamed at Oliver. “Doris will be glad to see you.”
“Doris?” Emily stared at Oliver. “First Clarabella, then Doris.”
“Ah, you’ll like Doris,” Mrs Chambers said, “but Clarabella is a nasty piece of work. You watch out for her, now.” And then, as if she had not said something utterly bemusing, she bustled past Emily and into the parlour.
Emily rubbed her temples. “Am I still dreaming?”
He laughed. “Have some toast, and I’ll show you.”
After breakfast, little John threw himself affectionately into Emily’s lap. “Did you know Clarabella chased Mr Beaumont half across the yard?” he asked.
Emily glanced at Oliver. More and more intriguing. “I did not,” she said.
Oliver heaved a mock-pained sigh. “You’ve ruined the surprise.” To her, he added, “Clarabella is a pig.”
“I named her,” John said proudly.
“She sounds as though she might be a delight, but she is a menace,” Oliver said, his mouth twitching as though he could not quite keep hold of his straight face. “That beast ate one of my boot’s tassels.”
Emily had another strange desire to laugh. Oliver sparked that desire inside her more and more the longer she remained in his company. “Serves you right for wearing such expensive boots in the farmyard.”
“I knew you would take her side!”
Emily could not hold her smile inside any longer. “Have you yet to make peace with poor Clarabella?”
“Poor Clarabella? I have to take my life into my hands every time she is released from her pen.”
“Clarabella likes me,” John said, snuggling closer. Emily, who had not been subject to the unconstrained affection of small boys before, and who found she liked it very much indeed, held him tighter. “I think she doesn’t like Mr Beaumont.”
“That much is obvious,” Oliver said, and held out the affected leg, boot sans one tassel. “I even bribed her with a carrot, but my overtures were ruthlessly overturned.”
“Perhaps she doesn’t like carrots?” Emily suggested.
“She eats rotten turnips,” Oliver said. “The idea that she could dislike carrots is preposterous.”
John squealed with laughter, both at the sight of the afflicted boot and the exaggerated woe in Oliver’s voice, and Emily chuckled. Oliver looked rather overtly pleased with himself.
Mrs Chambers summoned John to do his letters and plied Emily with warm layers galore—mittens and cloaks and scarves—until she was so thickly bundled, she could barely see. Then, when both Oliver and Mrs Chambers were satisfied she would not catch hold, he offered her his arm.
“Allow me.”
She stepped outside on his arm and inhaled deeply. In Dalston, not a day went by without venturing outside at least once, either to the market or some other shop in the village, or else feeding the chickens and tending to her little vegetable garden with whatever skill she possessed.
So far, she had mastered potatoes, turnips and cabbages, and thought she could go the rest of her life without eating more of any.
“How very gallant,” she said as Oliver supported her.
“It may surprise you to learn that I was taught how to be a gentleman.”
“Did you forget or merely disregard those lessons?”
“You wound me! One must first know the rules in order to break them.”
“If you expect me to be impressed with your flagrant lack of respect for rules, then you have missed your mark.”
He shot her a mischievous glance. “Why, darling, I didn’t think I was capable of impressing you, but I’m pleased to learn I was wrong. How, pray, could I achieve such a notable event?”
“You’re being ridiculous,” she said.
“I’m not! If I could impress you, I should make the attempt immediately.”
She didn’t say that he had already impressed her with the readiness he had thrown himself into the hurdy-gurdy lives of these people; how stoic he had been in the face of his injury; how selfless he had been when he had ridden out to find a physician for her.
If she did, she would be voicing things that she didn’t dare acknowledge even to herself.
“It is an impossibility,” she said.
He clasped his hand to his chest. “Shall I ever recover from this blow to my heart?”
“Your self-esteem, perhaps. Your heart remains untouched.”
“Does it?” He turned to her, eyes gleaming with an oddly golden light today, like tiger’s eye. “Perhaps I find your cruelty refreshing.”
Her heart skipped a beat, and she told it very firmly to stop.
“We barely like one another,” she reminded him.
“As I have told you before, that is no longer true. You may not like me, but I like you. You may deny it all you like, but there’s no hiding from the truth.
” He turned her, leading her around the house to the back garden, where chickens fluttered and pecked in a vegetable patch, which sported the winter vegetables of leek, winter cabbage, and sprouts.
“Now,” he said, stopping by the gate, “let me introduce you to Doris.”
With a squawk, one of the chickens abandoned the soil she was pecking in and ran headlong for them.
Oliver opened the gate, beckoning Emily inside, and bent to greet the bird.
He stroked her head and picked her up, cradling her in his good arm.
Her feathers were brownish bronze, and she had beady black eyes.
“Hello, Doris,” Emily said, removing her glove so she could better run a finger along Doris’s clipped feathers. “She likes you,” she said to Oliver.
“That’s what one gets for feeding the chickens. I also have it on excellent authority that Doris loves everyone. She’s an anomaly among chickens—she enjoys being held.”
At the sight of Oliver crouching in the dirt, holding a chicken of all things, speaking about them as though he were intimately acquainted with them, made a lump form in Emily’s throat. “Have you kept chickens before?”
“Not in the slightest, but John has been keeping me apprised.” He grinned up at her from where he crouched. “And I haven’t been spending all my time with you, you know. Sometimes I’ve even been helpful.”
Who was this man? Certainly not the same one who had taken her to Gretna Green. “Did you enjoy helping out?”
“On occasion, when it involved chickens and pigs and horses. I used to steal away into my father’s stables all the time. Asked the head groom to take me on as a stable hand. He never did, but he let me pretend sometimes.”
“You wanted to be a stable boy?”
He shrugged, and Doris fluttered in protest. “It seemed a simple occupation. Every boy loves horses—and very few like expectations.”
Oliver did not strike her like every boy. His childhood could not have been happy if he’d sought solace in the stables.
“If I could be a farmer’s son, I would be,” Oliver said, letting Doris go.
She nudged his shoulder. “You like mud that much, do you?”
He laughed, nudging back, and her stomach fluttered the way Doris’s feathers had. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s brave Clarabella and see how the road is doing. I think the snow is melting.”
Yes, the snow. The road. Soon, they would be leaving here, and all these confusing emotions would stay behind. All this was merely a product of their proximity; once she had some space and time to herself, she would come to her senses.
Back around the other side of the house, Oliver checked the gate to the pigpen was closed, and led her down the driveway to the road. As before, spread between the hedges, the dent where Oliver and his carthorse had passed a few days prior now partially refilled.
This time, however, there was the steady drip, drip, drip of melting snow. It would not be long now until the road was passable enough for them to walk it, if they so chose. Not that much longer until other vehicles could potentially pass by.
Their adventure was nearly at an end.
Oliver took her bare hand in his; she’d failed to replace her glove. She’d always hated her hands—scrubbing sheets and pots with their caustic soap always made her skin chap and crack, but he touched her as though she were made of glass.
Even Marlbury had not made her feel delicate before.
She ought to pull free, but it had been such a long time since someone had comforted her, she couldn’t quite bring herself to retreat from his warmth. She was a cold hearth, and now finally there was fire.
At what point was this wrong?
She closed her eyes.
“Emily?” he said softly.
She was relieved to be returning home—Isabella needed her, and she needed to find her equilibrium again. No more handsome gentlemen and long-forgotten desires.
“I expect we’ll be able to leave tomorrow,” she said, pulling her hand free.
Something in the region of her chest hurt, and she steadfastly didn’t look at his face.
What she needed from him now was his levity, an assurance that he felt nothing at the prospect of them parting.
Then she could convince herself that she, too, felt nothing.
But he just stared at her steadily, as though he was searching for the right words to say.
A hoarse, squeaking bellow sounded from behind them. The moment shattered, and when Emily turned, she almost laughed.
A large, pot-bellied pig stood in the centre of the yard, a gate behind it swinging open. Its head swung low, and it made another furious grunting sound that made the hair stand up on her arms.
She had seen plenty of pigs in her life, but she had never seen one that so embodied the concept of rage.
Oliver let out a laugh, and shifted his hold on her hand, gripping her more firmly. “This is Clarabella.”
“So I’d presumed.” She tensed as the pig grunted again. “Will she chase us?”
“Almost certainly. When I give the word, run, or she will be sure to eat an item of your clothing.”
She could not have done this with anyone else. And even though the pig had to be two hundred pounds of solid muscle, something airy lifted inside her—the opposite of the dread that had been plaguing her just moments ago.
“Ready?” Oliver asked.
Clarabella glared at them both. If Emily’s imagination were a little less logical, she might have thought her eyes gleamed red. She squeezed Oliver’s hand. “Ready.”
Clarabella put her head down and snorted.
Oliver launched forward. “Run.”