Page 60 of The Lady's Companion
“I like my meals on time and I’ll be putting my cold feet on your legs when I come in late at night after a lambing or a calving.” He kissed her again. “I think everything else will revolve pretty much around those two matters,” he concluded, his words teasing her. “What about you?”
She chose her words carefully. “I could tell you that I don’t ever want to be shouted at, or made to feel little, but you would never do that anyway,” she said as she traced the outline of his jaw with her finger. “I know you will not beat me, or use me unkindly, because it is not in your nature. No one told me; I just know.”
“Oh, Suzie,” he said, and it was more a sigh than words. “You do me honor.”
“All you have to remember is that I love you, David,” she whispered.
“Done, Mrs. Wiggins.”
They arrived in Quilling at the end of the long spring day, when the sun was gone, but the sky was not yet dark. While Susan waited in the public room, the bailiff paid the innkeep for stabling the horse and gig and went to claim them. Susan sat quietly, drinking tea and remembering her first visit there. You are right, sir, she thought as she watched the keep pour ale for a customer. This is a friendly village. I have found a husband in this place, and our children will likely go to school here.
David came back then and motioned to her. She rose to go when the innkeep called to the bailiff. “David, Ben Rich’s little Owen stopped in this morning. He told me to tell you to please stop at the sheepfold on your way to the manor.” He took a few swipes at the counter with his damp rag. “He appeared agitated, but acted like he didn’t want me to know, the little beggar.”
“Oh?” David said, concern evident in his eyes.
“Told him I could send some men, if he was having trouble, but the little ragged muffin puffed up like a lord and said he was perfectly capable. Lord save us, David, but what’s in the water in Wales to make all men from there think they are kings?”
They rode in silence to the sheepfold, David alert for trouble, but nothing appeared out of the ordinary. “Ben? Owen?” he called when the gig rolled to a stop in front of the stone building.
The door burst open and Owen Thrice ran out. The bailiffleaped from the gig in time for the lad to grab him around the waist. “Mr. Rich is sick,” he sobbed. “I’ve been doing the best I could.”
David knelt by the boy and wiped his face. “I’m sure you have, Owen,” he said. “Let’s go inside and you can tell me everything.” He helped Susan from the gig, shrugging at her while the boy tugged him along by the hand.
The crofter’s cot looked much the same, except that Ben Rich was lying in bed, faintly snoring. Two lambs negotiated the room on the stiff legs of newborns, gradually picking up speed while a ewe paced back and forth.
“Owen Thrice, what on earth!” the bailiff exclaimed. “Watch your step, Suzie.”
Owen sat beside Ben Rich, who continued to slumber through the baaing. The air was redolent with sheep manure. Susan felt her eyes beginning to water from the fumes, and she longed to open the door, but that would only lead to the exodus of lambs and an increase in the young boy’s misery, which was already amply evident on his face.
“Mr. Rich is sick and I’ve been taking care of him,” Owen said.
“The sheep, lad? We have pens for them outside, last time I looked,” David said.
Owen Thrice burst into tears, adding his noise to the confusion about them. “ ‘Twas Ben’s idea, Mr. Wiggins. He thought to help me from his bed. I tried and tried to help one of the ewes, but she died anyway, and then one of that ewe’s twins died, and I tried to get the orphan lamb to suck her but the ewe wouldn’t let him, and now I don’t know what to do, because Ben sleeps and sleeps,” he said in one breathless sentence, the words tumbling out of him.
Without any comment, the bailiff handed Owen his handkerchief. When he had collected himself, the boy hunkered down in front of the hearth like the bailiff, looking up at him asthough he knew David could solve all problems.
“Where’s the dead lamb, lad?”
Owen indicated with his head. “Beside the shearing shed. I didn’t know what to do with it.”
“Then go get it.”
Susan blinked in surprise, but didn’t say anything. She went to the bed and put her hand on Ben Rich’s forehead. He was cool now, but the stiffness of his nightshirt and the sour odor about the bed, obvious even in the ripe-smelling room, told Susan a tale of high fever and sweats. “He appears to be only sleeping, and he is not hot,” she told the bailiff, who nodded and sidestepped the lambs, who continued their rapid circumference of the room.
Owen struggled in with the lamb carcass, which he flopped down in front of the bailiff. Immediately, the ewe took an interest and came closer, nosing her dead lamb and making anxious purring sounds.
“Watch, lad, and you can do this next time,” David said as he picked up a knife from the table. Deftly he made several slits around the carcass and skinned it so fast that Susan blinked in surprise.
“Catch me the orphan,” he ordered Owen, who leaped up and wrestled the lamb to a standstill. Just as quickly as he had skinned the animal, David slid the skin onto the orphan and sat back. “Watch this, lad,” he said.
The ewe nosed the orphan wearing her twin’s carcass. In another moment, the rejected lamb was nursing successfully. The ewe’s other baby soon joined the adopted orphan. Susan laughed out loud to watch them nurse, their tails twirling ecstatically.
“Works every time,” David commented, then looked at Susan, apology in his eyes. “I’m going to stay here and see what else needs to be done. Take the gig, Suzie. Tom will unhitch it foryou.” He wiped his hands, then put them around her waist. “You’ll have to tell Lady Bushnell the glad tidings.”
“But when ...”
“As soon as I can, love.” With a look to make sure that Owen was staring at the lambs, he kissed her with all the fervor of that first kiss in the barnyard. “Make me a warm spot in bed.”
