Page 6 of The Valentine Skates
“I’ll make it well worth your while if we can keep this just between the two of us.”
“You had only to ask.”
Lilianne suspected Margaret knew exactly what she had in mind, but was certain she could trust her to remain discreet.
After nearly a week of his bedside vigil through Emily’s fever, Frederick was beyond grateful that Mrs. Miller had taken to sharing the round-the-clock watch with him. His strength had always been prodigious, but he swore the days and nights spent at his daughter’s bedside had been the most debilitating experience of his life. Not even the endless hoisting of rocks up from the river to build and re-build fences had ever brought him this low.
He bent over his daughter for quite possibly the thousandth time to graze her forehead with the back of his hand, searching for any sign of fever. It had been a frustrating few nights when she would awaken cool in the morning only to become increasingly hot as the day wore on.
He turned at the sound of the door latch and saw Mrs. Miller lean toward him. “There’s someone to see you at the kitchen door.”
“I’m not seeing anyone.” He immediately regretted his sharp tone and shot the woman an apologetic smile.
She gave her eyes a dramatic roll and added, “This is a someone you’ll surely want to see.” At his quizzical look, she motioned out the door with her thumb. “I’ll stay here with Emily.”
Frederick whipped out the door and strode through the corridors toward the kitchen on the lower level. The smells of something wonderful bubbling on the stove reminded his stomach he was hungry. How long had it been since he’d last eaten? “Where is this, this person who demands to see me?”
The Howick butler, Jameson, turned away from a woman standing in the shadows near the fireplace. She wore a full-length dark red woolen cape with the hood draped tightly around her face.
“Squire Meredith, perhaps you’d like a bit of privacy with the lady. There’s no one in the family sitting room at the moment.”
The woman turned and followed Jameson back to the upper level with Frederick bringing up the rear. There was no mistaking the identity of the woman in red. Even if he hadn’t been able to see her face beneath the draped hood, there was no one else with quite so tempting a backside and swaying walk. What was Lilianne up to now?
The minute the sitting room door clicked shut behind them and Jameson backed out into the hallway, Frederick grasped her shoulders and turned her to face him. When he pushed back the drooping hood, her glorious white-gold hair fell free and flowed down over her breasts.
Neither said anything because words weren’t necessary. He cupped her chin and pulled her close, claiming her lips. In spite of her resolve to be nothing more than a friend, she melted into him and her arms encircled his neck while she clung to him like a drowning victim. After a long time, he let her go and stood back a pace.
“What is this all about?”
“I came to see Emily. I couldn’t bear to have her think I’d abandoned her when she was so sick.” She opened the cape like bat wings and did a quick pirouette. “What do you think? Don’t I look like my lady’s maid now?”
“No, you certainly do not.” He chuckled and pulled her back for another kiss. “Let’s go look in on the little imp. Her fever comes and goes, but when she’s awake, she likes to argue with me. I think she must be getting better.”
At a series of wild yelps outside the kitchen door, he jerked open the door and Tiber lunged inside, his huge paws braced against Frederick’s chest.
“What’s wrong with him? He must have sneaked out the door after me and followed me all the way along the river.” Lilianne made as if to scold the beast, but Frederick stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.
“He’s come to see Emily. We might as well take him in with us.” He knelt down to the shivering dog and laid his index finger next to Tiber’s huge snout. “Any more loud outbursts from you, and you’ll spend the night in the barn.”
Lili stood in a far corner of Guildford’s common barn and kept her cape hood lowered over her face. Helena stood next to her in a long woolen navy pelisse. They blended into the crowd of local townspeople who had come to watch the sheep farmers sheer the ewes before lambing season began.
They’d made it in time to see Frederick’s demonstration. He murmured low to the ewe he’d had brought in, and she gave a mighty jerk before calming in his hands. The wicked sharp shearing blade in his hand flashed in the sunlight coming through the wide barn doors left open to accommodate the crowd. And then, as if by magic, the wool peeled off the creature and pooled into great fluffy curls on the floor at his feet. The hands he used to gentle the ewe were powerful with long, graceful fingers and callouses on the palms. Lili yearned to have those hands on her.
Chapter Four
April - The Reckoning
Lili’snow well-worn cape spilled over the back of the chair in Emily’s bed chamber. When she brushed the pads of her fingers across the child’s forehead, the skin beneath her dark feathered bangs was cool to the touch. It was a few hours after noon, and Emily still showed no signs of fever. Praise God.
However, the skin on the backs of her hands still showed pale in the candlelight, a terrifying reminder of how close small Emily had come to death after falling through the ice that fateful night.
Although she could sit up for a few hours each day, her voice still carried a hoarseness from her brush with death in the cold waters of the River Wey beneath the ice. Lili’s wolfhound, Tiber, lay silent but watchful near the fireplace, a grim reminder of how close they’d come to losing her oldest friends’ child in a skating accident that winter.
Dr. Towle had pronounced Emily should remain invalided at Wembledon until she could get out of bed and walk a few minutes without having to sit down and gasp for breath. As a consequence, her father, Squire Frederick, spent several hours each day riding between his neighboring farm and Wembledon. He was a stubborn man, much like the stubborn boy Lili had come to know and love so many years before.
It wasn’t the years so much as the miles that separated them now. Miles she’d traveled from her comfortable Surrey existence to slavery thousands of miles away in a perfumed, silken prison, but a prison nonetheless. Her fantasy of a family of her own was just that. Every time she caught herself imagining the pale young imp clutching her bear close on the bed was hers to love, she had to stop and remember. This child was not hers to hold. Emily’s own mother, Lili’s best friend, had paid for this precious child with her life. The man with the dark shock of hair he constantly pushed out of his tanned face and who refused to leave Emily’s care to others, was not hers to love, either.
At some point during the long vigils they’d shared at the small girl’s bedside, Lili had come to a decision. She would fight with all she had to keep both of them safe. And that included being safe from herself, safe from the ugly gossip that would surely accompany any perceived closeness to the disgusting escaped harem slave of Wembledon House.