Page 50 of The Lady's Companion
Her return to normality was aided by the bailiff, or so she thought. He winced when the toddler hugged tight in his mother’s arms, kicked out and caught him in the small of the back, forcing him even closer to her. “I trust that you can tell I bathed,” he whispered, hardly lover’s talk.
She could tell, right down to the carbolic soap he used and the scent of lanolin on his arms. He was so close she thought she could even smell the singe marking the flatiron tip printed on his shirt beside his neckcloth.
“See there, you’ve singed your shirt,” she scolded, her words as prosaic as his.
He shrugged, which made her even more aware of his well muscled arm around her shoulders and slipping down her back a bit as he grasped the handgrip beside her. “I’m not much of a housewife,” he said. He looked around at the other inmates of the mail coach, and she wondered for the smallest moment if he wanted them gone, too.
“I would have done it for you,” she whispered back, leaning toward him slightly as the toddler aimed another kick into the bailiff which propelled his chest into her face.
“Sorry, Susan,” he said with a frown over his shoulder and a slight shift away from her. “Didn’t mean for you to eat my buttons.” He tried again. “You’ve added ironing to your catalog of skills now?”
She nodded, deciding silently that even with a blindfold on her eyes, she would probably be able to pick out that certain odor of carbolic, singe, and David in a roomful of bailiffs. “Cora is even now teaching me how to do ruffles.”
“Which I will never require,” he added.
“Thank God for that,” she said quickly, without thinking howintimate it sounded, how permanent. “I am not doing at all well with ruffles.”
He chuckled, and the look on his face changed enough for her to wonder what it was she said that seemed to be settling his countenance into such great contentment. He raised his hand up behind her back and twirled one of her loosening curls into a corkscrew on his finger. “I think your pins are coming out.”
“Drat!” she exclaimed, unable to move to do anything about it “Perhaps it would help if you did not play with my hair,” she said, sharper than she intended. The bailiff promptly slid the curl from his finger and settled his arm more comfortably on her shoulder. He leaned back as far as he could, closed his eyes, and was soon asleep.
A man must be tired to sleep in a mail coach, she decided an hour later as the bailiff showed no signs of waking. When the coach stopped to let off a passenger, he settled his head against her breast and slumbered on. I suppose you can sleep anywhere, she thought, remembering Lady Bushnell’s letters and the dreadful campaign from Burgos to Lisbon. Did you dream of Jesusa then, and what are you dreaming now? She decided it was a pleasant dream, because his free arm came around her waist and rested in her lap. She looked at the clergyman seated across from them, but he only nodded at her. Oh, dear, I am certain he thinks we are married, she thought.
Well, what of it? she told herself as her eyes began to close, too. I am tired, and I have worried enough for ten lady’s companions this past week. She closed her eyes and rested her cheek against the bailiff’s hair. He murmured something into her breast and his arm tightened around her waist.
She dreamt then, and it was a naughty dream, with the bailiff figuring prominently in it in considerably more detail than the evasive Professor Fowler ever discussed in his silly book. She was feeling much too dreadfully warm again for it to be a dream,so she opened her eyes and looked down. The bailiff still slept— she could tell by his even breathing—but he had worked his hand inside her cloak and it was cupping her breast in a most alarming fashion that she did not wish to stop. And what are you dreaming, sir? she asked herself, and was hard put to feel anything but a most curious mixture of amusement and incredible desire.
It was such a wonderful, drowsy feeling, especially when he began to run his thumb lightly across her bodice front. My goodness, she thought as the warmth spread, but I don’t suppose I ever considered my nipples as anything more exciting than items to be carefully covered when wearing light frocks. This puts a new light on matters.
It won’t do, she told herself at last. If he continues this, the other passengers will be vastly distracted when I unbutton my bodice, raise my skirts and throw myself on the mail coach floor. The thought made her giggle, and the bailiff woke up, removed his hand, and had the good grace to blush a shade somewhere between crimson and bonfire red.
“Susan, I do beg your pardon,” he whispered, his hand at his side now. He straightened up and moved away, careful to keep his army overcoat tight about him.
She thought he wasn’t going to look at her, but after a few minutes, he relaxed, shook his head, and glanced in her direction.
“Well, if you ever had any doubts, I like women,” he whispered. “Heartiest apologies.”
“Accepted,” she whispered back.
He didn’t say anything else, and understanding his embarrassment, Susan did not press him. She was content enough to gaze out the window at the growing dark and wonder at herself. I cannot blame Mama or Aunt Louisa, she admitted, considering her upbringing. I was raised to be a pattern cardof propriety. She reflected further; that had not changed. Each time the vicar visited her, she had no urge to kiss him, or even rest her hand on his shoulder. And now here is the bailiff, a man decidedly unacceptable, and I want to kiss him and do something—anything—to relieve this edgy feeling I have. Strange, indeed. I will watch for Wambley and think of dinner, instead.
At Wambley, which appeared about as soon as full dark, Susan had good cause to think well again of the bailiff. She remembered Wambley from the nooning stop on her way to the Cotswolds, when they all left the mail coach – in her case unsuccessfully – in a mad rush for dinner. This time, she girded her loins for what lay ahead. I will plead for nothing more than soup and tea, she told herself.
In the taproom crowded with ravenous travelers, David Wiggins compensated entirely for his naptime lapse on the coach. As Susan prepared to jump up and down if she had to, to attract attention over much taller heads, the bailiff nodded, gestured, and then ushered her to a table that appeared almost miraculously as the crowd parted like the Red Sea.
“However did you do that?” she whispered as a potboy scurried toward them, wiping his hands on his apron.
The bailiff smiled and leaned closer. “You could do it, too, if you were a foot taller and a former sergeant. Bring us some soup, bread, cheese, and tea,” he ordered the potboy. “If you’re really quick, there’ll be some extra coins just between you and me.” The boy grinned at the bailiff and hurried toward the kitchen, oblivious to the calls of the other mail coach riders.
They ate and even had time for a brief stroll about the inn yard before the other passengers emerged from the taproom. It was a quiet walk, neither of them saying anything, until Susan stopped and looked up at the bailiff’s outline in the moonlit darkness.
“I can’t help it,” she said, the words tumbling out. “I mustworry. Suppose we are unsuccessful? Suppose young Lady Bushnell insists that her mother-in-law come to the home estate?” She tucked her arm more snugly into the crook of the bailiff’s elbow.
“Well, then, you will be looking for another position, and I will have to take my Waterloo wheat somewhere else that needs a bailiff,” he replied. He sighed. “I can’t see the Bushnells keeping anyone at Quilling Manor, once the old lady is forced to capitulate. I’d love to buy it, to be sure, but I have no money for that kind of purchase.”
Somehow, in all her worrying about Lady Bushnell, she hadn’t considered the full effect on the bailiff. “And you’ll have to leave Quilling Manor?” she asked, but it was more of a statement.
He nodded. “I’ve received an offer of a similar position near Gloucester, but there’s no succession house, and I don’t think the owner is inclined toward experimentation.” He patted her hand. “We just have to convince young Lady B.” He released his grip on her. “Of course, any year now, our good parson might get up the nerve to make you an offer on a leaky vicarage and all the church mice you could catch, which would assure you a future.”
