Page 41 of Miss Dauntless
How could she possibly…? But she was married to the major, and he was the original canny fellow, and he and Tremont socialized in various male venues.
“I am honored to admit that his lordship and I are courting, though we are doing so as discreetly as possible. You might well need to find somebody else to look after John on half days.”
“Alasdhair concluded as much. He claimed Tremont would keep you too busy at the soldiers’ home, and he said it with a particularly smug air that implies he knows more than he’s saying. Does that place have a name yet?”
“The men enjoy debating various choices. Victory House, The Garrison, Form Squares… They trot out the topic on Sundays, when Tremont joins us for supper. He asks questions. ‘Victory over what?’ ‘A garrison defending territory from whom?’ But he never expresses an opinion. Instead of bickering, the men discuss, almost despite themselves. The whole business fascinates Tommie, who thinks we should name the place The Castle.”
“Why?”
“Because an Englishman’s home is his castle.” While for an Englishwoman, that castle could become a prison.
“You worry for Tommie over this courtship with Tremont,” Dorcas said. “I would be deranged if anything happened to John. In his way, the major would be, too, but how could acquiring a doting step-papa be any risk to Tommie?”
The major was apparently not the only canny MacKay. “Tremont is constitutionally incapable of hurting a child, but I do worry. When my marriage to Harry was at its worst, and I contemplated dire options, the thought of leaving Tommie without my protection stopped me. I brought that child into the world, and he is entitled to all I have to give him until he can manage on his own. Tremont is good and dear and wonderful, but a part of my heart will always choose Tommie over any adult male.”
“It won’t come to that,” Dorcas said. “If Tremont is the right man, it won’t come to that.”
“Tremont can be the best man in the world, and life can still conspire to disoblige my dreams.”
“Harry Merridew must have been a proper limb, to use Mrs. Oldbach’s term, and not in its humorous sense. Is something else bothering you besides courtship jitters?”
Dorcas calmly wound her yarn, and Matilda realized that Tremont’s trusting nature—or his optimistic nature, givingpeople the benefit of the doubt until proven wrong—was contagious.
“The men might be whistling,” Matilda said, “but they are also keeping secrets. They stop talking when I walk into a room, they are more watchful, and I suspect all that whistling is intended to distract me from the fact that they are up to something, and I won’t like what it is.”
“Shall I alert the major?”
“I’m being silly.” Though the memory of Biggs, usually so voluble, falling oddly silent—twice—would not leave Matilda’s mind.
Dorcas’s winding never changed tempo, but her gaze acquired a ferocity that suggested hurling thunderbolts occupied her free time.
“The worst part,” Dorcas said, “of being at the mercy of a small, mean man is that he can make you doubt yourself. You cannot trust your own senses. The bonnet you thought fetching is dowdy if he says it is. The song you worked so hard to learn at the pianoforte is sentimental drivel when he declares it such. When a decent fellow finally comes along, you cannot believe in his virtue, or in his regard for you. If Harry Merridew inflicted those wounds on your soul, I am glad he’s dead. You see the men hiding their conversations from you, peering out of windows more often, and otherwise behaving out of character, and that is real, Matilda. You are not silly.”
“Thank you.”
“You’ll tell Tremont?”
“Yes. I know the look of a man keeping secrets. I can nearly smell it on him, and fellows are keeping secrets. Tremont must be told.”
“Your aunt Portia is not as I had imagined her,” Tremont said, guiding the gig around a beer wagon half loaded with barrels. “I expected a fluttery little dumpling aging into vagueness.”
Matilda sat agreeably close to him on the bench, which suggested to Tremont that cold weather had advantages when it came to courting. Why did polite society go about the troth-plighting in spring, after all? But then, spring meant fewer heavy clothes…
And courtship was making Tremont daft.
“Aunt has learned to be both formidable and invisible. If she ever confronted Uncle Porter, it was behind a closed door with the curtains drawn. He was twenty years her senior, and she humored his moods.”
“Is Portia’s endless forbearance the ideal to which your father tried to conform you?”
“Unsuccessfully,” Matilda replied as they passed a tavern from which emerged the strains of a filthy drinking song. “Papa’s intentions were probably good. Aunt’s life has been devoid of gaiety, but she has never feared for her next meal or a safe place to sleep.”
Matilda’s aunt—who appeared to be barely ten years Matilda’s senior—had been reserved, polite, and skeptical of Tremont’s intentions. She had produced a modest tea tray that was of a piece with her tidy Chelsea cottage, and yet, she had quoted dear old Aurelius, Shakespeare, and Proverbs with equal facility.
When Tremont had given her more of the same in return, she had thawed—a little.
“Should we have taken Tommie with us?” Tremont asked, because something about the visit had not agreed with Matilda. She was quieter than usual and had declined an offer to stop at a fancy tea shop in Knightsbridge.
“Perhaps next time. Tommie would rather tag around after Jensen and Tuck, and honestly, they need his civilizing influence if the household isn’t to find itself in the midst of a contretemps.”
