Page 27 of Hearts at Home
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G wen ignored his words. The way his body spoke was much more interesting. The hard length under her exploring hand grew impossibly harder and larger, and his whole body quivered as she stroked her hand up and then down.
She spread her thumb and curled her hand around the girth as far as she could, given the concealing fabric of his trousers. The evidence of his desire.
She had a theoretical knowledge of human mating, gained mostly from her observations of horses and a little from listening to others talking. Men who forgot that their farrier was female and shared bawdy tales in her hearing. Women who thought her age exempted her from the usual care they exercised in front of maidens.
Remembering what she had heard, she squeezed. Jack groaned as if in pain, and Gwen nearly snatched back her hand, but then his hips thrust forward to encourage her, and she tried the same manoeuvre again.
For a moment, he remained still for her explorations, but all too soon, he put his hand on her wrist, not grasping but just halting her movement. “Enough, Gwen. I am holding on to my reason by a thread, but I’ve enough sense to realize that someone could come along at any moment, or your father could wake up.”
He had a point. She reluctantly let go. He gathered her close to him with his good arm and pressed a kiss to her hair. “Believe me, there is nothing I want more than to let you explore my body, and to explore yours in my turn. In private, though, my Gwen, and with the benefit of marriage. Are you my Gwen?”
She rested her head on his chest and put her arms around him as far as they would go. Her heart and her desire screamed Yes in unison. But what would become of Da? What of the business? She had kept it going not just so she had a roof over their heads and food to eat, but so Evan would have something to come home to. Wouldn’t it be selfish to put her own wants and needs ahead of those of her family?
“How would it work, Jack? My home is here. My work is here. My father needs me.”
He kissed her hair again, his hand stroking her nape. “You have a home and a life. I don’t have a home, and I’ve lost the only life I know. If you are willing, Gwen, I would like to share yours. I don’t know exactly how that would work. We would have to decide that for ourselves. Together.”
It sounded too good to be true. “We are courting then?” she asked.
“If that’s what you need,” he confirmed. “Courting, and then, when you are ready, betrothed.”
“If we can decide,” she cautioned. “If we are both happy to go ahead.”
“I will be happy with whatever makes you happy,” he assured her. “But shall I tell you what I think our life might be like?”
She nodded. This was probably a dream or a mistake, and tomorrow or the next day it would all fall apart. In the meantime, she would enjoy it.
“I’d like you not to have to work so hard,” he said. “Is it like this all the time, or is it the season? Have you thought of taking on another person?”
Gwen shrugged. Thought of it over and over, and done her budgets to see if she could make it work. “The trouble is I am a woman,” she pointed out. “Men do not want to work for a woman, but they might pretend just to get a job, and then refuse to take my orders. And would a stranger treat my father with respect? And if I choose the wrong person, might they take my customers and set up on their own?”
“But you need more help,” Jack insisted, “or am I wrong?”
“The work is there,” Gwen confirmed. “We used to support three farriers—my father, Evan, and an apprentice, with me helping out when things were busy. I used to have time to make garden ornaments and fancy hinges and other frivolous things. We had a cook and a housemaid, too. But Evan left and the farrier across the river stole our apprentice, and Da…” she shrugged helplessly. “On my own and with Da to care for, it is all I can do to earn enough to pay our bills.”
“I can provide money to take a chance on an assistant,” Jack told her. “I’ve won a few prizes and found a bit of abandoned treasure over the years, and most of the money has been invested. And I haven’t yet resigned from the army. I’m on the invalid list, and half pay. We could afford to hire one man to start with and then take on an apprentice when business picks up. You’d have to interview the applicants, but I could sit there and look grim.”
Gwen smiled at the thought, for he was usually so mild, but then she remembered him taking Lord Gussie’s whip and decided he could look grim when he had to. It sat poorly with her, though, to give up her business to a husband, however loved.
Jack seemed to know that without being told. “You would be in charge, Gwen, never doubt it. But I can make sure they respect you and your father. And I’ve seen your frivolous things. You’re an artist, Gwen. There’s a market for the things you make, and I’d love for you to have time for them.”
She twisted so she could look up into his eyes. That could actually work! “If your arm heals, will you go back to the army?” She didn’t think she could bear it if he left, too.
He shook his head. “Not a chance. Even if I could bear to be separated from you, Gwen, I couldn’t go back to that life.” He shut his eyes and took a deep breath. “No. The army and I are finished. They have no claim on me. I did the twenty years I signed up for, and five more besides. As an officer, I didn’t have to sign up again. Once I’ve resigned, I still have money enough for a wife. I get around two hundred pounds a year in interest, and sometimes a bit of a bonus when a ship I’ve invested in reaches harbour. With what you earn, we could also pay for a housemaid and someone to do the laundry. Or a cook. A cook would be good.”
Two hundred pounds a year! “It is a fortune,” she protested.
“Not a fortune, but enough for a family to live on in a country town.”
She settled back onto his chest. “I thought soldiers spent all of their money on gambling, women, and drink,” she said. “That’s what Father told Evan.”
She could hear his chuckle rumble in his chest. “I did some of that when I was young,” he admitted. “But it isn’t as much fun as you might think when Truth or one of the other sisters visits your dreams or whispers in your drunken ear.” He managed a good imitation of a woman’s quavering voice. “Wrath, I am disappointed in you. We raised you better than that.”
“My mother’s voice in my head sounds exactly like that,” Gwen mused. She remembered a question she had been wanting to ask him. “Wrath is an unusual surname. Was it your mother’s name?”
Another rumbling chuckle. “It is actually my first name,” he admitted. “Or part of it. Mind you, I have been Jack Wrath for more years than I was Refrain-from-Anger-and-Forsake-Wrath Thursday. Wrath for short. My mother’s name was Thursday, so Sister Heart told me. Magdalen Thursday. Sister Heart collected me from the brothel where my mother died birthing me. I have always thought she must have been an orphan too, with the christened name Magdalene and a surname like Thursday. Some orphanage supervisors have no imagination.”
Gwen was still thinking about Jack’s name. “Your Tabby named you for a bible verse?”
“Not him. His father Faithful, or more properly, He-Will-Guard-the-Feet-of-His-Faithful-Servants Bridgeman.”
“I am beginning to see a pattern,” Gwen noted.
“You are correct, of course, my clever love. He named those orphans who arrived nameless in the same way he was named, and the way he named his children. He opened the bible at random, then hunted the surrounding verses to find one that the child could live up to.”
“Truth?” she asked.
“Sanctify-Them-by-the-Truth Bridgeman. And before you ask, the sisters were Heart, Blessed, Meek, and Joy. My-Heart-Rejoiceth-in-the-Lord, For-the-Lord-Thy-God-has-Blessed-Thee, The-Meek-Will-He-Guide-in-Judgement, and Your-Sorrow-Shall-be-Turned-Into-Joy.”
Gwen’s arms tightened in an effort to comfort. “I am sorry,” she said. She tilted her head to look up, and he was staring at her, his eyes narrowed in bewilderment.
“Sorry for what?”
“For your loss.”
He shook his head. “My loss?”
“You said ‘were’. I thought you meant they were dead.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Jack admitted. “I ran away to join the army, and I have never been back.”
Like Evan. Or did Jack have good reason to abandon and ignore the people who raised him? “Were they unkind to you, Jack?”
His brow furrowed again, and he made almost a question of his answer, drawing out the single syllable. “No?”
“Oh. I thought that might be why you did not keep in touch.”
“It was me, not them,” he admitted. “I thought about at least writing a letter, but by then it was a couple years later. I figured they would have forgotten about me. They must have been angry at me running off, in any case. They disapproved of fighting and of war. I daresay they haven’t given me a thought since I left.”
Gwen couldn’t let that pass. “They think about you every day. They wonder if you are still alive. They search the casualty lists for your name and give thanks when it doesn’t appear. They remember you in their prayers. They worry that you are dead or badly wounded, and that they will never know. They write to the war office to ask for reassurance, but they never hear back. Not even just a small note.”
He wiped under her eye, and examined the drop of water he brought away on his thumb as if it was a diamond. “Your brother?” he asked, the sympathy in his voice her undoing. Gwen buried her head in his shoulder. “Family should not ignore family, Jack. Are they not your family?”
* * *
The question stunned Jack. Were the Bridgemans his family? “Perhaps they are,” he mused. “Certainly, I never had another.” Her attentive silence drew a confession from him. “I used to wish they’d write to me.” He chuckled at his own foolishness. “Not that they knew where I was, or even what name I was using. I could have written to tell them. I should have, I suppose.”
How did he explain that he was afraid that the people he loved would ignore his letter. If he never wrote one, he could pretend they were waiting to hear from him. If he told Gwen that, surely she would despise him.
“They hated war, Gwen,” he told her. “When I ignored their teaching and went for a soldier, they must have been disgusted, surely?”
“War!” The snort of disgust came from Griffith. “Only a fool goes for a soldier.”
Gwen had moved away from Jack at the first sound from Griffith. “Time to go home,” she said.
Jack helped her to ready the horses, roll up the blanket and persuade Griffith to mount. He was disappointed and relieved in equal measure that their intimate conversation was over. She’d given him a lot to think about.
“I’ll take the horses back,” he offered, when they arrived back at the Hughes’ cottage.
“Thank you, Jack,” Gwen said. “Just wait one moment?”
She led her father to the door and sent him into the house with a whisper in his ear, then hurried back to Jack, who had tied the horses to the hitching rail and waited beside them. “I told him to set up the checkers,” she said. “Kiss me, Jack?”
He did not need to be asked twice. She came into his one-armed embrace so sweetly, lifting her lips for his, and the tenderness that welled in his chest kept his initial forays gentle, but she opened her mouth under his ministrations and when her tongue tangled with his, he could not resist deepening the kiss.
The passion with which she responded was almost his undoing. It was as well that Griffith shouted from inside the house, and called Gwen back to her senses. “I must go,” she said, her hand lingering in his.
“Shall I escort you to chapel tomorrow?” Jack asked. It was an impulsive offer, but it felt right when he said it.
She blushed and smiled. “Of course. We are courting, are we not?” She had taken two steps away when she thought of something else to say. “Jack, perhaps your family is longing to hear from you. You will never know unless you ask.”
He let her have the last word, bent to place one last sweet kiss on the corner of her mouth, and led the horses away. He returned them to the inn, his mind still on her untutored but enthralling response, the taste and the scent of her.
He paid little attention to conversation with the ostler, responding almost at random. The path from the inn stable to Adam’s house required even less thought, since he’d walked it twice a day for more than a fortnight.
She thinks herself undesirable. At least he had been able to show her undeniable physical evidence that he, at least, wanted her desperately. He groaned as he remembered her enthusiastic explorations.
What is wrong with the men of Reabridge? It had worked to his advantage, since she was still single, and willing to allow him to court her. But their neglect of her had caused her pain, and he would wipe that away, if he could. Though I am not saint enough to wish her married and happy, and therefore lost to me.
So lost in thought was he that it must have been his soldier’s instincts that had him twisting out of the way of the assailant who leapt from a narrow alley between two shops. He stuck a boot in the way of the man’s legs, and the villain’s own speed sent him crashing head first into the pole that supported the shop’s awning.
Just as well, for a second man rushed Jack, this one with an upraised stick that would have done damage if Jack hadn’t ducked under it and come up swinging. A fist to the jaw saw this attacker laid out on top of the other one.
A third man lingered in the alley.
“Come out,” Jack invited, his fighting spirits high. Even lacking the use of his arm, he’d flattened two men. “There’s more where that came from.”
“I don’t want any trouble,” quavered the alley lingerer.
“I won’t attack you if you don’t attack me,” Jack offered, peering into the shadows.
Slowly, sidling along the wall of one of the shops, the man approached. Like the two groaning their way back to consciousness beside him, the third man was respectably dressed—a tradesman, merchant, or clerk, at a guess.
Not the sort of ragged denizen of the slums that Jack expected, and all strangers to Jack. Theft? Some sort of vendetta against out-of-towners?
“What’s this about?” Jack asked the third man.
One of the others began to struggle upright as he replied. “Leave Gwenillan Hughes alone! We saw you, kissing her in the doorway, leading her astray with your foreign ways.”
The third man seemed to take heart from the revival of one of his accomplices, for he said, “Poor old man Hughes might not be able to protect her anymore, but she isn’t without friends. If you hurt her, you’ll have half the town after you and you’ll not be able to use your fancy fighting tricks on everyone.”
His words gave Jack a clue to the missing pieces of the puzzle that was Gwen Hughes. “You’ve been chasing off her suitors!” Jack accused.
“We’ve been looking after her,” protested the third man. “We promised Evan we’d watch out for her.”
“And she does not know a thing about it, does she?” Jack speculated. “That’s why she thinks she is undesirable and unmarriageable. Because you have scared off anyone who so much as looks at her.”
The two men gaped. The one who had attacked first spoke without opening his eyes. “Undesirable? Gwen Hughes? Hasn’t she looked in a mirror?”
“She’s stunning,” one of the others said. “That’s why Evan wanted us to warn off anyone who might give her a slip on the shoulder.”
Jack shook his head. “And you never said a word to her, right? Come along, gentlemen. We are going to go and explain to Miss Hughes exactly what you have been up to.”
* * *
Gwen could scarcely believe it. No, that wasn’t true. She could well believe that Evan had thought to protect her after he was gone, and that his idiot friends had carried out his instructions with a heavy and indiscriminate hand. Come to think of it, Evan himself had intimidated a suitor or two when she was still a girl. If he was here, he’d probably be proud of his friends.
She wished he was here. He was her brother and she missed him. Even if he was over-protective, bossy, and a terrible letter writer.
The three men shuffled their feet and turned their caps in their hands as they responded to her interrogation with the names of some of the men they had chased off over the past few years. It was impressively long, and the man she’d thought was courting her nearly six years ago was up near the top of it.
They were a bit ashamed of that one. They had not been keeping as close an eye on her as usual, since two of them had just got married and the third was away on his quarterly training with the militia. “I came back and saw him with you at the festival,” he said. “Had his hands all over you, he did, in the bushes down behind the church. He didn’t hurt you, did he, Gwen?”
“Only when he abandoned his courtship,” she retorted. “You fool. Didn’t you think to ask him his intentions?”
They exchanged glances and shuffled their feet some more.
“Just to be clear,” she told them, “Jack Wrath has asked to court me. So, you will keep your noses out of my business, if you please.”
“But Gwen,” one of them protested, “he’s a stranger. How do we know if he is good enough for you?”
“And what business is it of yours?” she retorted. “I am a grown woman, and will make up my own mind. Now off you go, and stay out of my affairs, or I shall tell your wives what you have been up to. I’ll tell your mothers, furthermore, and see if they don’t box your ears for you.”
Jack left with them, but knocked to be let in again some ten minutes later. “I told them that I know I’m not good enough for you, but if I am lucky enough to win you, I will spend the rest of my life striving to make you happy,” he reported.
“What business is it of theirs?” she asked again, as she moved into his one-armed embrace.
“Did I do the right thing by making them come to tell you what they have been up to?” he asked. “Does it help to know I am not the only one to have found you attractive?”
“You are the only one to ignore their intimidation,” she pointed out.
“I’ve faced the French Imperial Guard, my love,” he said, “and the Iron Duke. Three slightly flabby townsfolk are hardly a challenge.” He kissed her nose. “I was furious on your behalf when I realized what they’d been doing, and I still want to give them all a good kicking. But at the same time, I am grateful that they were so presumptuous and so foolish. Someone could have stolen your heart years before I even came here, and where would I be now?”
She lifted her face so that the next kiss landed on her lips. “Perhaps I should bake them a cake,” she suggested.
“We could invite them to the wedding,” he suggested. “Will you marry me, Gwenillan Hughes? Will you be my wife, my partner, my friend? I worry that I am older than you, and I have too few years ahead of me to offer you. I worry that I have spent my life as a man of war and I will wake you with my nightmares. But I love you, my fierce magnificent maid. I cannot walk away and pretend I never met you. If you will take a chance on me, I will spend every day of the rest of my life being the best husband I know how to be.”
Gwen was going to do it. She was going to seize the chance with both hands, for he was the man who refused to be scared away by her brother and his stupid friends, or even by Gwen’s own prickly nature. And she loved him. “I will marry you, Jack Wrath. Life is uncertain, and one day I might be gone and you will be alone. Or you might be gone and I shall be alone. So, I shall be your wife as soon as we can manage it and live each day as if we shall be separated tomorrow and as if we shall be together forever.”
He kissed her again, and she found that, enthralling as earlier kisses had been, he had been holding back. The kiss spun out into a symphony of sensation—lips, tongues, teeth; his hands on her body and hers on him; touch and emotion blending in an overwhelming cascade of feeling that left her panting and bereft when, after a mindless stretch of time, he drew back.
“We have to stop while we still can,” he said. His breathlessness and the anguish on his face were reassuring. He wanted her as much as she wanted him.
“Why?” she asked. “We are betrothed. We will be wed as soon as we can.”
He kissed her hands, then groaned and pulled her back against his hard body. “A common license. We shall talk to the vicar tomorrow, and I shall ride to the bishop in Chester on Monday. No. You need me to look after Griffith while you work at the Harvest Festival. On Tuesday. We can wed the following Wednesday.”
She nodded. That would work. But she wanted more. “In the Welsh mountain valleys, when the winter bites hard and there’s no pressure to stand witness, a promise exchanged makes a marriage,” she commented. “Why should we wait? Stay with me tonight, Jack. Come to bed, and make me your own.”
“I want to treat you with all honour and respect,” he insisted.
Gwen buried her face against his chest, her mouth curving in a smile. That was not a no. “Treat me with honour and respect by believing I know my own mind, love of mine. Come.”
She stepped away, but took his hand to draw him after her. He did not resist.
* * *
He left her in the early light of dawn, giving her a lingering kiss at the door. “Latch it behind me, my love. I will be back in time to escort you and Griffith to chapel.”
By that time, he was regretting he had taken advantage of her invitation. He should have stepped back. Now that her three stupid self-appointed guardians had been discovered and stopped, he should have let a better man win her. A man who could be the husband she deserved. It was too late, of course. He had taken Gwen and made her his own. He would have to marry her, though he was not fit.
He did his best to smile as usual, though he sat brooding beside her and Griffith. Then the preacher announced his theme for the day. “Today, we look forward to tomorrow’s harvest festival, brothers and sisters. Let us ponder therefore on those ancient words: “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”
As he read the passage, certain words leapt out to Jack. “A time to kill, and a time to heal,” the man said. “A time of war and a time of peace.”
Jack listened, absorbed as the preacher spoke of building things up, and all things in their season, and something in his heart shifted. He had had his fill of war, of killing, of tearing down and mourning.
For everything there is a season. He could do this. His harvest for all those years in the army was peace and all that came with peace. He could be Gwen’s husband and the father of her children. It is my season for love .