Page 44 of Tremaine's True Love
“I hadn’t thought to use the ashes,” Addy said. “We certainly have enough of those, and the boys want to learn their letters.” She kissed the baby’s cheek, expression puzzled. “Thank you. For the food as well.”
“You are welcome,” Tremaine said, coming to his feet and resisting the urge to dust off his backside. “I’d never realized one can learn the alphabet by visiting an imaginary pantry. Lady Nita, shall we be on our way?”
The youngest boy was again in need of the handkerchief, while Tremaine needed to be anywhere else. He’d wanted Lady Nita’s company for the trip to Stonebridge, but he hadn’t anticipated that she’d tarry long here at the cottage.
“It is time we were leaving,” she said, readjusting the scarf around her neck. She paused, her gaze on the little fellow docilely tolerating his sister’s ministrations with the handkerchief.
The child had weak lungs. Evan was his name. He’d outgrown his trousers a year ago, and the coat he wore like a night robe was fastened with twine.
Lady Nita’s eyes held a question, about little boys and scarves, about kindness and the poorhouse. Tremaine nodded slightly, and her ladyship wrapped a beautiful blue lamb’s wool scarf about the neck of a wretched boy.
“I’ll want to hear letters should I visit again,” Tremaine said very sternly, though he’d paid his last voluntary call on this household. “And I’ll expect that baby to have doubled in size.”
He bolted for the door with as much dignity as he could muster—precious little—and Lady Nita caught him by the hand before they were down the porch steps.
“Mr. St. Michael.” She drew him closer, until her arms were around Tremaine’s middle, and his had somehow found their way around her too. “You are so very dear.”
The words melted an old anxiety in Tremaine. He could tolerate being dear, to Lady Nita anyway, better than he could tolerate the stench of cabbage, dirt, and despair. He rested his chin on her crown, fortifying himself for trotting about in the cold without benefit of his favorite scarf.
“You looked after my sheep,” he said.
“You looked after mine. Teaching the children their letters that way was brilliant. Those are bright children. They’ll be reading their Book of Common Prayer by Beltane.”
Ironic that the only book in that house should be from the Church. Tremaine stepped back, because a chilly ride yet awaited them.
“The mother can read?”
“Addy had a genteel upbringing. Some local fellow got her in trouble, her family turned their backs on her, and the rest is a cautionary tale. I’ve told her about vinegar and sponges, but they don’t work for everybody.”
Lady Nita pulled on her gloves, as if such a topic were unremarkable for the proper daughter of a peer. Would Horton have bothered to tell a soiled dove about vinegar and sponges? Did he even know of them? Had Lady Nita’s mother been the one to pass along knowledge decent women weren’t supposed to have?
And was Tremaine the only soul in Christendom affronted that Lady Nita should be burdened with these concerns?
“Do you ever think the Chalmers family would be better off in the poorhouse?” Tremaine asked.
Her ladyship fairly bounced down the steps, the visit having apparently restored her energy as cottage pie and ale could not.
“Tell me, Mr. St. Michael, would the merino sheep be better off with Edward Nash? Would you leave your tups in his care?”
Tremaine boosted her into the saddle for the fourth time that day and did not dignify her question with a reply.
Lady Nita looked after this family and after others. She did not question the responsibility or attempt to shirk it, even when she ought to.
Who looked after her? Somebody clearly needed to, lest illness or nervous exhaustion carry her off. If Tremaine offered to take up that post, would she make a habit of tucking herself close to him and finding himvery dear?
CHAPTEREIGHT
“Lovey, I don’t trust Mr. St. Michael.” Nicholas Haddonfield snuggled up to his countess and pillowed his cheek on her breast. Nick’s siblings knew better than to comment if they thought it unusual that the earl and his countess retired to their rooms after the midday meal.
How did women always manage to smell so good? Leah’s scent was lily of the valley with other notes. Sweet, kind, lovely notes that Nicholas would die to protect.
“You are not in the habit of allowing men you distrust to gallivant about with your sisters,” Leah said. Sweet, kind, lovely—also practical, that was Nick’s countess, even before she’d become the mother of his heir.
“I trust Nita,” Nick replied, “and I know the effect frigid air can have on a man’s base urges. St. Michael lurks in the social undergrowth, like a wolf studying a henhouse from downwind. I wish I knew what he was truly about.”
Leah traced Nick’s eyebrows with her fingertips, which made Nick want to groan like a horse being groomed in that one particular spot that rolling on the ground and acting like a horse never quite attended to.
“Are you falling asleep, Nicholas?”
