Page 187 of The Ladies Least Likely
He was surly because he’d gained an extra beating that morning for not finishing his porridge before it grew cold. He’d been remembering how Harriette had taken him fishing the day before, and how, when his three old bullies had come nosing about, all she’d needed to do was take her slingshot from her pocket to send them slinking away, spitting insults.
His tutor had also delivered rather unexpected news.
She came back immediately, another thing he liked about Harriette. She never held a grudge. She plopped down on a tuft of grass beside him and the skirt of her petticoat, much tattered and mended over the course of their summer romps, spilled over his leg. The casual encroachment on his space was another habit of hers he’d grown fond of. She never recoiled from him, not when he was in pain or raging or sullen. She never let him remain cross for long, and she never withdrew from him, not when he stammered so much in front of other people that he strangled for breath, not when she’d seen his foot unbound.
Not even when she’d found him, many times, in the kitchen of the Manor House, sucking back tears and gritting his teeth against the welts and bruises his tutor had raised on him with the cane. Being Harriette, she merely began carrying witch hazel in her pocket, and soaked cotton cloths in it that she then pressed to his wounds, all without saying a word.
“Why are you blue-deviled?” She flipped open her sketchbook, laid the amulet beside her, and picked up the small metal cylinder that held her black chalk. She had a swift, steady hand and a remarkably good eye. Ren had put many of her sketches up in his room, though not the ones she did of him.
He wondered how she would receive his news. Harriette, he’d been surprised to learn, was only ten years old. She acted older. He was fourteen, and the years between them, at their age, ought to have meant a gap of worlds, one a child’s and one of a boy verging on manhood. But Harriette was more canny and matter-of-fact about the world than Ren was, and in many ways, he felt his sheltered life had kept him a child. That was why he longed for a change, and was terrified of it.
“My mother is coming to visit,” he said. “And I suspect that means she’s decided to send me to school at last.”
“You said you asked to be sent to school,” Harriette reminded him, her hand moving quick and sure.
“And my father always denied me, since he didn’t want his shame known. That his heir was a cripple.”
“You are not a cripple,” Harriette said. “So why did the countess send you here when he died, instead of off to school? To give you time to mourn?”
“To remove me from her sight, I think. My tutor told her I wouldn’t do well in school. That the boys would be cruel and hurt me, and the canings there when I am slow or stupid or disobedient would be worse than the ones he gives me.”
Harriette paused and considered him. “And because Mr. Mortmickle, the great ogre, would lose his salary were you sent away.” She snorted. “Someday, Renwick, I wish you would use the cane on him, so he can see how it feels.”
She only called him Renwick when she was feeling peevish or stern.
“You’ll miss me, will you, lass?” he said. Adopting the southern Somerset accent, its round smooth vowels, made the question feel less heavy.
“Of course. No one here is half as quick in his wits as you. Who shall I chum with then, Abel Cain and his gang?” She scoffed.
Something tightened in Ren’s chest as he watched her. It was a typical cloudy day, warm but breezy, and her hair frizzed about her face in its usual fashion. Her cheeks held yet the round softness of the child, but Ren thought he saw, for an instant, the outline of the woman she would become: strong, beautiful, confident.
“You’ll grow up and forget all about me,” he said.
She shrugged. “Like as not. And you’ll forget me the moment you set foot in Harrow or Eton or wherever her ladyship chooses to send you.”
“I won’t,” he vowed, and the force of his own words surprised him.
She was a half-orphaned girl of no family, and he was destined to take his seat in the House of Lords. It was fated that they would part and have no more to do with each other. He wanted to go to school, no matter how much he expected he would be teased and humiliated and beaten further. He longed for it.
But he would miss these days of freedom, of roaming through the countryside following every whim. He would miss the sense of discovery he had with her, the sense that the world was not hostile and disapproving but rather wondrous and remarkable, shot through with surprise and beauty.
He would miss her.
“Come find me,” he said suddenly.
“Hmm?” She finished her sketch, several copies of the amulet with various shadings, and closed her book. The crayon and the notebook disappeared into a pocket, but she held the amulet, regarding it curiously.
“Come find me. When I’m back. Or whenever you need—a friend.”
It sounded so feeble when he said it, he wished he’d kept his mouth shut. But her eyes when she raised them to meet his gaze said that she understood.
“You’ll marry,” she said. “Have a countess of your own. Raise all sorts of little lords and ladies.”
For the first time, he hoped that would be true. He could imagine a family and children in his future, and not just to perpetuate the line. He wanted someone in his life who loved and accepted him, like Harriette did. He wanted the joys of companionship, someone to share his thoughts with, to vent his feelings to. Someone who touched him as easily as Harriette did, without flinching.
“And you?” That sharp twist came again in his chest. After this summer of constant companionship, she would grow up into the strange separate world of women and he would never know her this way again.
He might never know anyone this way again.
