Page 16 of Grasp the Thorn
He nodded. He had been young for an ensign, but his size meant people took him for older. And he grew up soon enough, especially after a few battles. “I was twenty-four years a soldier, Miss Neatham.”
“Twenty-four years? But you cannot be forty, yet!”
Bear resisted preening at her assessment of his age. “Forty-two, and I joined up when I was sixteen.”
She looked at him aghast. “Your mother sent you into the army when you were sixteen? What did your father say?”
“He had always intended me for the army. My mother fulfilled his wishes.” He tried for a joke, “I daresay she would have handed me over after my father’s funeral if they had taken eight-year-olds.”
Her eyes widened with horror before she looked down at her ever-present sewing. “But you were pleased, you say.” She sounded doubtful.
“Yes. The army suited me, especially when I was young. And I suited it.” Until he got sick of the endless futility.
She made no comment.
Bear contemplated his notes, trying to remember whether the figure obscured by a water stain had been 54 or 64. He would have to measure that wall again. He closed the ledger, made a note of the measurements he would have to repeat, and tossed the water-damaged notes into the fire.
Miss Neatham frowned at her sewing.
“It was for the best,” Bear told her. “My mother could not stand the sight of me, and I was glad to get away, even to school.”
“But she must have been proud of your army record,” Miss Neatham prompted. “Mrs Raby said you were a war hero; one of Lion’s Zoo, she told me, which she says is a very fine thing, though I did not precisely understand it. A group of officers? And you worked for the Duke himself?”
“A silly name,” Bear grumbled. “Our colonel was baptized Lionel and has a lion on his family crest. He has been called ‘Lion’ since he was a small boy, and I have been ‘Bear’ for as long. We also had a Fox and a Cat. After that, every officer who joined us had the name of a beast foisted on him. We acquired a Bull, a Tiger and a Snake. Even a Wyvern and a Centaur.”
Her face came alive with interest, and she leaned forward as if to hear better, her sewing disregarded in her lap. “A very good rider, I take it.”
“The best. He was younger than I when he joined as a drummer boy, but we found he could ride anything even vaguely horse-like. Broken or unbroken.”
He told her about the day he and Fox first saw Cen catch a crazed horse in the aftermath of a battle, calm it, treat its wounds, and bring it back to its owner. That story led to another, and then another, and they were both surprised when Mr Neatham woke, demanded a chamber pot, and they realized how late it was.
“Thank you,” Miss Neatham said before she went off to bed. “I do not know when I have more enjoyed an evening.”
“I am afraid I spent the whole evening talking about myself,” Bear said. Her apparent interest had spurred him on. So different from the bored debutantes he had briefly considered courting last Season. They asked for his stories, but their eyes glazed over within minutes, and he soon learned that any conversation must include the latest fashions or gossip in order to engage their attention.
“It was wonderful,” Miss Neatham replied. “I have never been out of this village, Mr Gavenor; barely outside the grounds of Thorne Hall. Someone like you, who has travelled the world and seen so much—why, your stories are better than a book!”
That, from the daughter of a librarian, Bear mused as he helped Mr Neatham prepare for bed, was great praise indeed.
CHAPTER 12
The rain continued for days, turning tumbling streams into rivers, every path and lane into a tumbling stream, and every bank into a series of waterfalls. At last, a day dawned that was crisp and clear. A few white clouds scudded high in the sky.
Bear walked as far as he could toward the village, to find that the bridge was gone. They would be cut off from the direct route to the Mersey and across it to Liverpool until the bridge was rebuilt, or until the river dropped back into a fordable stream. Presumably, the local landowners would be approached to fund the replacement bridge, and Bear didn’t mind contributing at all. In fact, he’d do his best to persuade them of the need for a stronger, higher bridge. His industrialist buyers wouldn’t want a country home where the weather might isolate them from their enterprises.
He spent most of the day at the hall, making extensive notes about what needed to be torn down, what must be replaced, what could be repaired, and what would do with a minimum of refurbishment. He was tired but satisfied when he returned home to Rose Cottage and found an appetizing dinner waiting for him, and Rosa and her father as company to share it with. A man could get used to this.
The idea that had been evolving in the back of his mind crystallized. Why shouldn’t he get used to it? He needed, or, at least, wanted a wife, and Rosa needed a husband; someone to protect her from nuisances like Pelman, and give her status in the community.
He would have to think through the idea, for there must be some substance to the accusations against her. Not as much as Pelman and his sister made out, undoubtedly, but some seed of scandal from which the rest of the ugly plant had grown.
What would scandal matter, though, when they left this place, and she was Rosa Gavenor, not Rosabel Neatham? Whatever she had been forced to by her poverty, Rosa had the training and instincts of a lady, and if she were not a complete innocent, then neither was he. She could be the hostess he needed when he had to charm potential clients, and she was certainly young enough to breed an heir for Aunt Clara.
Not to mention that his male parts ached to engage with her in the activity required to produce such an heir. For a moment, Pelman’s words ‘a tigress in bed’ reverberated in his loins, but he’d not credit a word the man said. However much he might hope that part, at least, of the allegations proved to be true.
He thanked Rosa for the meal and took his brandy through to his study while she made her way up to bed, reminding himself sternly that she had given him no encouragement to follow her, and she was, in some sort, under his protection. He was not the kind of cowardly scoundrel who would proposition a woman with no power to refuse him.
Not like Pelman. What a swine the man was.
