Page 16 of Pride of Arm

The next words emanating from Grace’s mouth were not so romantic. “Have you become touched in the head from all those rocks falling on you?” She yanked him into her room and locked the door behind them. “I’m going to have to examine you more closely to determine whether or not you can be trusted to walk back to your room tonight.” With that dire warning that made him stiffen in all the right places, she relieved him of his banyan and marched him back to the warmth of her just vacated bed.

13

3January, 1844

Montcliffe Abbey

Essex, England

When Lucy joined the rest of the household at breakfast the next morning, both Lord Rumsford and Sir James were beaming when they greeted her. “You’re just in time for an amazing announcement.”

Musicians had been placed throughout the Abbey at various open corners and staircase landings and warm strains of Mozart filled the air.

After she’d filled her plate from the sideboard in the family sitting room, she looked up to see Hugh walking through the door with a sly smile on his face as well. “What is going on behind my back?”

Hugh pointed toward the front of the room. “You should ask them.”

Major MacKenzie and her aunt Grace were standing awkwardly, waiting for everyone to get settled at their breakfasttables around the room. Lord Rumsford rose and cleared his throat. “Since there are no longer any surviving fathers to make the announcement, then it is left to me. My good friends, Mrs. Grace Phippen and Major Duncan MacKenzie, R.E. are going to begin publishing bans in our chapel beginning this Sunday.” He raised a glass of champagne and Lucy noticed there were filled glasses at everyone’s place at the tables, so she raised hers in a toast as well.

“To the happy couple, a long and happy life.”

“A long and happy life…” everyone else in the room echoed.

Lucy wondered just how long she’d been sleeping that so much had happened without her knowledge. Across from her at the table, Hugh raised his glass toward hers and gave her a wistful smile before draining the champagne in honor of the couple.

A few hours later,Sir James and Lord Rumsford sat by the fireplace in the Rumsford study and discussed the status of their holiday matchmaking strategy.

Rummy raised another glass of champagne he’d spirited away from the breakfast room and said, “One down, one to go.”

“You think you’re going to accomplish the other one before Twelfth Night as well?” Sir James sent him an impish, knowing smile and raised his own flute of champagne, pretending to study the bubbles as they rose in the glass.

Rummy reached down onto his lap and rubbed Calypso’s back just the way she liked it. She purred and rumbled at him a bit before jumping down and disappearing into the fireplace flames.

Sir James gave a hearty laugh. “She must know something we don’t. I’d wager she’s off to fix someone’s mortal woes.”

Later that night

Lucy tossed and turned in her huge bed and regretted her earlier harsh words that week with Hugh when she’d warned him they had to be more circumspect in their interactions with each other. They’d both agreed that their paths forward had to be separate in order to preserve both Lucy’s reputation and that of the young women’s academy on which both she and her Aunt Grace depended for their livelihood.

At the end of the holiday, she and Hugh had accepted that she’d become the wife of Silas Miller and Hugh would return to the rebuilding of his estate.

But that was not the end of the searing want tearing Lucy’s heart apart. She wondered if turning his back on her had been any easier for Hugh. The searing looks she caught him sending her way when he thought she wasn’t looking told a different story.

She sat up, suddenly alert when she smelled the faint whiff of smoke, then saw small trails of smoke emanating from the wall facing her. Suddenly, the lithe six-toed cat she’d seen everywhere that week was suddenly jumping up on her bed to join her. Instead of joining her on the pillows, the cat began insisted clawing of Lucy’s toes through the covering at her feet.

“Ow, stop.” The cat leapt down from the bed and looked back at her expectantly until Lucy relented and pulled her dressing gown from the back of the chair near her bed where she’d left it. She followed the cat out the doorway and down the hallway. When the cat shifted directions and whisked down theback servants’ stairway, Lucy became suspicious. Where was she going?

Finally, at the bottom of the steps, she led Lucy to the lower kitchens and on through to the pantry. There were sounds emanating from inside, so she held her breath and peer around the door. There sat Hugh atop the marble counter where Cook rolled out endless batches of dough. He’d taken a trifle from one of the cooling racks and was eating the sweet custard-like dessert directly from the bowl…with his bare hands.

He crawled to the edge of the huge counter and extended his hand toward Lucy without a word. After grabbing a tin of biscuits on the way, she climbed up to join him and began scooping trifle out of the bowl with the biscuits. After they’d emptied the bowl and made a huge mess of the counter, Hugh crawled toward her and claimed her lips, licking off the trifle as he went. Where a blob of the sweet dessert had fallen and still clung to one of her breast through her dressing gown, Hugh leaned down and sucked the sweetness from the tip of her breast. She groaned and moved closer to him, wrapping her legs around his waist.

Much later,when the embers had died down in the fireplace in Sir James and Rummy’s private bedchamber in a far corner of the Abbey, they were joined by Calypso. When she first claimed Rummy’s lap, he stroked her back gently and whispered close to her furry ear, “True love is worth every risk, isn’t it, my darling, when you find the missing piece of yourself.” She lay there quietly for a few minutes before leaping down and disappearing into the last embers of the fire.

14

5January, 1844

Twelfth Night