Page 12 of It Takes Two to Tumble
“I am cross,” Ben replied levelly. “I thought you might show some manners to your father. And we all know he cannot speak French any more than I can,” he added pointedly, “so perhaps we could speak English together. Just as a novelty this one evening.” He carved himself a piece of mutton. “Although I must say, it was very kind of you to present your father with a pet.”
“A pet?” Peggy asked incredulously. Her hair, Ben noticed, was in plaits that had been quite neat a few days ago but were now positively disreputable. He had caught Captain Dacre staring at the twins in open dismay at their dishevelment. “We did no such—ow!” She glared at Jamie, who had evidently kicked her under the table.
“The dormouse, of course,” Ben said mildly. “It was very clever of you to realize that your father was likely quite lonely after you absconded into the wild, leaving him alone and with nobody to talk to after two years at sea.” The children all looked down at their plates. Out of the corner of his eye, Ben could see the captain’s gaze steadily on him. He tried to ignore it but Captain Dacre wasn’t the sort of man you could simply stop paying attention to.
The children sat sullenly. Ned poked at his mutton with the edge of his knife while Peggy loaded her spoon with mashed peas, positioned it like a catapult, and aimed it at her twin. Jamie saw this happen and looked ready to duck.
“There’s a gooseberry custard tart on the sideboard, but something went terribly wrong when Mrs. Morris sliced it,” Ben said to no one in particular. “She cut it into eight slices.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jamie watch him intently. Jamie knew this as the preamble to one of his favorite games. “That’s fine by me,” Jamie said. “Peg won’t get any if she launches those peas at me, which leaves two slices each for the rest of us.”
“Quite right, but she isn’t going to launch peas or anything else.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Peggy rest her spoon on her plate.
“One and three-fifths of a slice for each of us,” Jamie said promptly.
“But what if I decide to allocate the pie according to weight? That seems only fair. I’d say I’m about twelve stone, and so is your father.” The mere estimation of what the captain might have beneath his clothes by way of sinew and muscle was enough to make Ben’s cheeks heat. “You and Peggy are maybe four stone apiece and Ned’s about seven.”
“That’s about a tenth of the pie each for me and Peg.”
“Ah, but I don’t have tenths, I have eighths.”
Jamie made an impatient sound. “Remove a quarter of an eighth and you’ll have a tenth.”
“Which is grossly unfair because I don’t even care for gooseberry tart and I don’t see why I ought to have twice as much—”
“Three times as much,” Jamie corrected.
“—as you and Peg. So let’s come up with a better model of distribution.”
They went on like this for the remainder of the meal. Sums kept Jamie’s mind busy, and a busy Jamie didn’t set fire to things or get suspected of poaching by evil-minded neighboring landlords. Peggy, if her brother was content, was less inclined to divert attention with her own antics, so there was peace in the kingdom. And, frankly, Jamie was very clever at maths and Ben wanted to encourage the child’s gift, especially since the boy was eight years old and could hardly read a word. Ben didn’t know why he couldn’t read, or if it was possible to teach him, only that it was a chip on the lad’s shoulder and Ben couldn’t blame him. So he did what he could to help Jamie use his mind in other ways.
If Ben had to guess, he’d think that the children had banded together to rid themselves of any adults who might make Jamie suffer for his illiteracy. Schoolmasters and tutors likely came down hard on him. Ned and Peggy had probably decided to protect their brother by driving off anyone who might discover he couldn’t read.
Ben didn’t want to let the captain know about Jamie’s problem until he could be trusted; frankly, the captain seemed just the type to think punishing knowledge into a child a reasonable course of action.
After supper, he sent the children up to the nursery to eat their tart—in the end, they each agreed to get a third, which was extravagant, but it might put them into a deep enough sleep to last until morning.
That left him alone at the table with the captain. All of a sudden it seemed like they were sitting too near to one another, even though neither of them had moved. Ben was close to people all the time. He prayed with the old and he sat with the sick. He dandled babies on his knee and embraced brides on their wedding days. He was no stranger to proximity.
What was new and unsettling was the way the captain was looking at him. There was something in the captain’s expression, some measure of interest that Ben feared mirrored the expression in his own eyes. That was something he hadn’t seen in a long while. Outside in the barnyard, the fresh air and tiny animals had washed the scene with ordinariness; he had halfway convinced himself that he hadn’t seen anything like desire on the captain’s face, or that if it was desire, it didn’t matter. But now, alone in the candlelit dining room, there was no mistaking it for what it was, and there was no telling himself it didn’t matter. The tiny spark that flared between them seemed, at this moment, to matter more than anything else in Ben’s small universe.
He watched the captain open his mouth to speak, but then close it again, and instead swallow. He was handsome, Ben supposed, if you liked angry men, which Ben wouldn’t have thought he did. Unfortunately, the captain’s face relaxed a bit at that moment, some of his crossness smoothing away, and Ben had to acknowledge that he was rather desperately handsome. Ben hastily looked away and took a drink of his brandy.
“It’s getting late,” Ben said, flustered. “I probably ought to get some sleep.”
“Wait.” The captain took a sip of his brandy and regarded Ben over the edge of his glass. Those eyes, which were supposed to be black, were undeniably, unforgivably blue, and Ben felt a surge of inane, betrayed anger at the portraitist. “Don’t go yet.”
For a moment Ben was at a loss. He didn’t know if it was the low timbre of Captain Dacre’s voice or the heat of his gaze, or if maybe he had managed to get drunk on a few sips of wine, but if the captain had leaned over and touched him, kissed him, done whatever he liked to him, Ben would have hardly known how or even why to protest. He felt rooted to the spot.
And he didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to come up with another feeble excuse to get out of the dining room. He wanted to stay here and find out what happened after another hour and another few glasses of wine. He knew it would be putting paid to his hopes and dreams, because it was one thing to quietly and privately desire men and quite another to act on it, or so he told himself. He could lust after all the men in the north of England and he could still have the safe and comfortable life he longed for. This was what he told himself in the quiet hours of the night when doubts assailed him.
Sitting there, wishing there was some way to will Captain Dacre to act on the interest that was so plain in his eyes, the truth struck him. This was something he wanted, and it was something he’d never have if he married, and neither would Alice; he’d be selling himself and Alice a bad bargain by going through with their marriage.
He wanted to turn back the hands of the clock to a time before he had realized that.
“Why do you look like that?” Phillip demanded. The vicar’s face had turned grave. Gravity didn’t sit well on his cheerful features. His mouth belonged in a smile. And if that wasn’t a harebrained notion, Phillip didn’t know what was.
“Oh, woolgathering,” Sedgwick said, looking almost normal again except for a slight furrow between his brows.
