Page 19 of Tremaine's True Love
“You hope,” Tremaine said, “that by attending the birth, you did the child a service, rather than a disservice, for life in that cottage is precarious indeed.”
Lady Nita’s plow horse shuffled onward, head down, gait weary. The horse, too, had been out at all hours in bad weather. As the wind continued to whip through the bare branches of the hedgerows, tiny flakes of snow came with it.
Any shepherd boy knew the smaller the snowflakes the more likely the weather would turn nasty in earnest.
“Here is the rest of the syllogism,” Tremaine said, because Lady Nita’s family had apparently neglected to say these words to her. “Babies will be born and babies will die, and it’s the duty of those amply blessed to aid those in precarious circumstances. However, because babiesdodie, we all occasionally need a pretty waltz and a pleasant evening in good company. Martyrs have many admirers but few friends, Lady Nita, and worst of all, they never have any fun.”
On the Continent, where decades of war had laid waste to much that was good, sweet, and dear, people seemed to grasp this. Life was for living, for rejoicing in, not for suffering through. In the Highlands, where thrift had become a cultural fixture, the same rejoicing was brewed into the very whisky and song that punctuated every celebration.
Lady Nita swiped at her cheek, as if a stray snowflake might have smacked her, then she did it again on the other cheek.
“I love to waltz,” she said, gaze on the horse’s coarse mane. “I love to sing, and I like nothing better than to join my sisters for great silliness over cards, until we’re laughing so hard we’re in tears. Nicholas would take even that from me to see me married to some viscount or lordling.” On that pronouncement, she sent her horse into a businesslike canter.
Tremaine followed several yards behind and grappled with a realization. His objective was no longer strictly a profitable transaction with Lord Bellefonte. Where Lady Nita was concerned, a point had to be made about life and her entitlement to some of its joy.
Then too, a woman constantly in the company of the ill and impoverished was a woman at risk for illness herself, of the body or of the spirit. Lady Nita’s brothers were remiss in not protecting her from those harms, though Tremaine lacked any authority to correct their oversights.
And yet he could not stand idly by while Nita Haddonfield martyred herself on an altar of guilt and obligation. He was bound for Germany at week’s end if Bellefonte would not offer terms for the sheep, but in the remaining two days, the choice of weapon belonged to Tremaine:
Waltzing, singing, or cards. Or perhaps all three.
* * *
“Damn fookin’ cranky besom yowe! Git ye doon the noo!”
Kinser’s affectionate profanity seemed to impress the wayward ewe—“yowe”—not one bit. She’d leaped up onto the stone wall marking the boundaries of the pasture, and considered freedom with what George took for ovine glee.
“Perhaps we should leave her to find her own way off the wall,” George suggested. “She won’t jump back into the pasture if we’re glowering at her.”
“She’ll nae leave her own kind,” Kinser said. “Unless she takes a notion to ramble aboot the shire. That un’s piss-all contrary.”
Every damned denizen of the pasture struck George as contrary—much like the Haddonfield womenfolk—but he hadn’t trusted Kinser to get the ewes moved before worse weather arrived.Kinserwas contrary and, more to the point, plagued with a fondness for both whisky and warmth.
A small boy came trundling down the lane on the far side of the stone wall. He moved with the trudging gait of a child bundled up against the elements and stopped when the ewe baa’d at him.
“Tell her to get down,” George called. “Wave your arms and chase her back toward us.”
“That be the Nash lad,” Kinser said. “On his way home from Vicar’s.”
The boy apparently grasped the situation, for he rushed the sheep, waving his arms and making a racket. She bounded down from her perch and scampered back to the herd bunched at the far end of the pasture.
“That’s it, then,” Kinser said, taking another pull from his flask. “My thanks, Master George. Best get ye to a warm hearth soonest.”
Kinser waved at the boy, blew a kiss to the sheep, and left George in the middle of the pasture, his toes freezing, his nose freezing, and his arse none too cozy either.
“Digby!” George called to the boy. “I’ll take you up on my horse if you’re bound for home.”
The child did not have to be asked twice. He scrambled onto a stile and waited for George to mount up and trot over to the fence.
“My thanks, Mr. Haddonfield,” Digby said, climbing up before George. “B-beastly cold, isn’t it?”
“Wretched beastlydamnedcold,” George said, for a boy ought to know that colorful language in the company of other fellows was quite acceptable. “You were at your Latin with Vicar?”
“I was keeping warm,” Digby said, wiggling in the saddle, which was cold as hell against George’s fundament. “Uncle thinks I’m slow, but Vicar has a fire in the study, and the schoolroom at home is freezing.”
The child’s words were nearly unintelligible, so badly were his teeth chattering.
“Ask Vicar about the Second Punic Wars,” George suggested. “The Battle of Cannae is good for at least an hour’s diversion.”
