Page 29 of Goodbye, Earl (Ladies’ Revenge Club #4)

T he bonfires were lit as the sun began its final stage of setting, the sky still a brilliant violet above them.

The smell was something Freddy remembered like a lifelong dream, the spark and sizzle and smoke.

It stirred the child that still lived within him, reminding him of how much grander and sprawling all of this had looked when he was little.

When he was little like Oliver.

The boy was with his mother just ahead as he was handed back to his governess, who would tuck him in for the night and wait with him at the cottage until his parents returned.

Claire was talking to the governess, the wooden sword she’d purchased for their son held loosely in her hand at her side, where the “blade” vanished and reappeared in the wind-blown folds of her skirt.

It was almost as long as Oliver was, but that only seemed to delight the boy.

“She looks well with a sword,” said Tommy from his side, leaning on her walking stick, “doesn’t she?”

He gave a scoffing little laugh, glancing down at his grandmother. “You are a real instigator. Do you know that?”

She scoffed right back, mocking him. “Where do you think you got it from, boy?”

It made him laugh. He shook his head, glancing back to Claire as she knelt to pass the too-large sword to their son.

“She does look well with a sword,” he decided. “She looks well always. Perhaps it’s best that she doesn’t always have the accompaniment of that particular accessory, however. I might not have made it this far.”

“Doubtless not,” Tommy agreed.

They watched for a moment, the little red flecks from the bonfires beginning to dance visibly in the air as the sky darkened. When Oilver turned to wave goodbye to them, they both waved back.

“What was that with Silas before, by the by?” Freddy said without looking down again. “The wager.”

“I think you know the answer to that,” Tommy replied wryly.

Freddy chuckled, turning to level her in his gaze, meeting her cobalt blue eyes. “I just mean the specifics. Was it the flirtation? Just speaking to me? A fully reconciled marriage?”

“Oh, that,” Tommy replied, her wrinkles rearranging with a grin. “You will never know.”

“Tommy,” Freddy said with a fond and exasperated sigh as Claire turned and started walking toward them.

“Don’t muck it up,” Tommy suggested, patting his arm, and turning to walk beyond the fire, leaving him there to receive his wife in privacy.

“I won’t,” Freddy answered, only softly, only to himself.

Claire smiled at him as she arrived, close enough to speak, her eyes shining brightly opposite the flames. “He won’t go down without a fight,” she told Freddy with a little laugh and a shrug. “The governess is in for some suffering.”

“He’s had a lot of excitement,” Freddy replied, gesturing with a tilt of his head toward the food stalls. “Are you hungry?”

Claire hesitated, as though she were for a moment remembering the last time he’d offered her food.

He hadn’t meant it that way at all, but the way she looked just then made him feel positively wolfish, a slow grin spreading over his face. “If the stalls don’t suit you, I could always take you back to the cottage and whip something up, of course.”

She gave a little hiccup, covering her mouth and averting her eyes. “Freddy!”

“Well, I actually could,” he told her, unable to stifle a laugh. “Come on, I know which ones have the best offerings. Do you like pasties?”

“The little pies?” she said weakly. “Of course I do.”

“Ah, right,” he said, taking her hand without asking and tucking it into his elbow. “You’ve a weakness for pie, don’t you, my love?”

“Freddy!”

He laughed, and this time she did too, blushing and shaking her head like she couldn’t quite believe herself.

“What else can you make?” she asked, a teasing lilt in her voice like she thought perhaps she’d imagined the baking, even now.

“I’ve a talent for sauces,” he answered with a little thrill of pride.

“So anything that goes well with them was worth learning. Abe and Millie are particularly fond of my hollandaise and fish. White fish, if I can get it. Pastries are actually new for me, but I really like how involved and tactile it is. It keeps my mind still.”

“Does it really?” she replied, softer now, thoughtful. “Like the walks you take in the mornings?”

He almost stopped walking, the strength of his surprise was so great. He faltered just enough to need to skip back into place without losing his stride, and turned to stare down at her as they reached the stalls, the scent of cinnamon and roasted nuts rising from behind the tattered curtains.

“You’ve been watching me take my walks?” he asked, perhaps a little more gruffly than he’d meant to.

She was the next to hesitate, her mouth forming a little O shape like she realized she’d given something away. “Not watching ,” she lied blatantly. “I have … heard tell …”

“Claire,” he said flatly.

“Oh, all right,” she said with a little wriggle of her shoulders and a stomp of her foot. “I was watching. Angrily.”

“Angrily?” he repeated, raising his brows. “Why the devil would that anger you?”

“Oh, because you’re so … why are you … ugh.

” She pulled away from him, throwing her hands onto her hips.

“You wouldn’t stop tormenting me, even when you weren’t thinking of me at all.

I’d look out the window and there you were, glittering in the sun, picking up dirty rocks and putting them in your pockets, and it was so confusing , Freddy. ”

He was trying not to smile. Trying not to laugh. “Dirty rocks?” he repeated carefully.

“And the dog! Walking the little dog!” she continued, going shrill. “The puppy!”

“It is my puppy,” he said, already drowned out by the next complaint.

“And looking like … like … calm and lean and … oh, you are infuriating!” she said, blazing and more than a little frayed at the edges of her sanity. “I love you!”

He couldn’t move for a moment. He couldn’t do anything other than stare. He wanted to do something dashing and heroic and kiss her here in front of God and everyone, but he could not fucking move.

“You do?” he managed to say, stupid and hoarse.

She looked just as surprised as he did, at least, her eyes gone very wide. She blinked them, her heavy lashes brushing against her cheeks, and then silently nodded, a slow, creaking nod like she was a rusty clock and her wheels were struggling to turn.

“Do …” She started to speak then stopped, pressing her lips together. She looked away for a moment, drawing in a little breath of the sooty, flame-soaked twilight air, and then looked back at him. “Do you love me?”

He felt a wind leave his body, a little weather pattern that had stalled in him five years ago and finally shook itself free. “Of course I bloody do,” he said, more than a little indignant. “What do you think all of this has been? Do you think I came here to toy with you?”

She didn’t answer. She looked blanched, like he’d just caught her in her worst suspicions, her most shameful fears.

“Christ, Claire,” he muttered. “Come here.”

“Why?” she asked, even as one of her feet slid forward in the dusty ground, like it wanted to obey without knowing for certain.

“So I can kiss you in front of all these people,” he said firmly. “So there’s no question anymore. Come here.”

“I don’t … think …” she was stammering, shuffling toward him the same way she had that night at the wedding, like she knew very damn well that he was going to.

“No, you often don’t,” he agreed, crossing his arms and waiting. “I’m not doing it for you this time, Claire.”

She narrowed her eyes, fisting her hands in her skirt and making herself take the steps, returning to him, nearly brushing against him. “You didn’t!” she reminded him. “The night of the wedding? You made me do it, remember? You made me do it and I did.”

“Did you, love?!” a hawker exclaimed, clearly delighted. “Go on, do it again!”

Claire didn’t even look at the stranger or otherwise acknowledge the insolence, though that pale pallor on her cheeks immediately darkened at the realization that they now had an audience.

Freddy only just then realized it too, realized how quiet it had gone around the stalls, how the only sound was the crackle of the bonfires. He didn’t look around, but he could feel it, the staring, the gathering of eyes.

He was irritated, he realized. He was annoyed that she was correct. He was deeply, deeply in love.

“You’re right,” he snapped, and grabbed her around the waist, pulling her against him with a snatching finality and crushing his mouth into hers to the delighted cheers of their gathered audience.

She kissed him back, just as hard, just as flustered and impatient.

They did not dissolve into passion. They did not tangle or lick or indulge as they might have otherwise. That was not the point. Not for this particular kiss.

All the same, when they broke apart, they were both panting, both flushed, both rumpled beyond reason.

He reached down and took her hand, lacing her fingers through his. His heart was slamming so hard against his ribs that he thought one might crack.

“Freddy,” she whispered, flicking her eyes toward the crowd and back to him. “Please.”

He nodded. With a sigh, he turned toward the people and broke into his best grin, holding up her arm and taking a bow so that they would applaud again, so that they would think it had all been part of the games.

“Go on,” one of the women passing by muttered, fanning herself. “Where’s my husband?”

He wondered if perhaps they’d gotten away with anonymity this late in the day, this deep in the drinking, and this far from the fire. Perhaps the gathered onlookers had thought they were just normal lovers, having a spat and a kiss for the enjoyment of the crowd.

He bought a pair of pasties with quick, shrugging precision, flashing a smile at the woman selling them, grabbing Claire’s hand before anyone could look any closer or otherwise ask any questions, and pulling her into the torchlight procession that had begun to wind through the center of the grounds, letting them be swallowed by the crowd.

He knew, of course, that they had very certainly been recognized. He knew that. It was only easier to manage everything in this moment if he pretended otherwise.

Perhaps his wife had rubbed off on him.

She took a torch from the first person who offered one and held it up between them, falling into step with the movement of the procession like she had planned this activity all along.

She didn’t look at him. She simply blended into the crowd, into the night, and walked with her own thoughts for a time, next to him.

Once they’d done the loop and begun to pass back the way they came, she glanced at him over the sputtering blue-white light of the fire and sighed. “Well,” she said with a resigned shrug. “I suppose that’s done with.”

He wrinkled his nose up, nodding. “Yes.”

“Not how I’d have planned it,” she commented, watching him with a softness to her face that was not the panic or anger he would have anticipated.

“Nor I,” he agreed.

She turned for a moment, offering the torch to a woman just behind them, and then dusted her hands off from whatever had settled there while she held it.

He frowned, looking at her unadorned hands, at her bare ring finger on the one she extended then for him, offering to lead him out of the throng. He took it anyway and they vanished into the dark, into the soft grass and the shadow on the outside of the procession.

“Give me my pasty,” she said, reminding him that he was holding them.

He handed it over and lifted the other one to his mouth, wondering if a rush of flavor might break the little spell of stunned horror that had settled over him. He followed her as she turned and started walking along the path through the center of the field, back toward where the cottages were.

“How would you have planned it?” he heard himself asking, his mouth apparently farther ahead in things than his mind was.

She laughed, a soft tinkling sound in the night, turning her head to wait until he could catch up and fall into step beside her. “I don’t know,” she confessed with a shrug, nibbling on her own food. “I just know it wouldn’t have been that.”

“Reasonable,” he acknowledged, taking another bite.

“How many shillings do you think Tommy will win from this?” she pondered, gathering her skirts up into her hands as they started to climb the incline of the first wold between the field and the cottage overlook. “More than three, I should hope.”

He could only stare at her, not quite able to accept how calm she was acting about all of this. “Do you think Tommy will find out?”

“Freddy,” she said dryly. “Please.”

It got a laugh out of him, just a little one, enough to scrape away some of the dread that had started clinging to his shoulders like barnacles. “Claire, wait,” he said. “Wait a moment.”

She turned, brows raised.

“I don’t want to go back to the cottage yet,” he confessed, shrugging. “But I don’t want to go back down there either. Do you want to just sit for a minute? Just sit here on the wold?”

“In the dirt?” she asked, a fondness warming her words. “Like your rocks?”

He nodded.

And she did. She didn’t hesitate. She looked for the right part of the incline and eased herself down onto it, her skirts spread around her like a picnic blanket, and she sighed, as though she appreciated the relief of it.

“Come on, then,” she said to him, waving him over with her pasty like she hadn’t just created the most perfect piece of art there in the grass, like she hadn’t just outshone both the bonfires below and the cozy homes above. “Sit with me.”

Freddy Hightower knelt in the grass and then rolled onto his backside next to his wife. He nibbled his lukewarm, partially crushed pasty. He contemplated the mess they had made.

And he thought that perhaps it was the first time in his life that he had ever experienced anything so perfect.