Elisabeth Fairchild (13 page)

Penny held the door wide for him with a jingle of the overhead bell, a cheerful announcement of their weary little party. Alexander tried not to wince as he leaned into the carter’s arm and hopped over the threshold.

Penny shut the door behind him. The narrow shop seemed suddenly very crowded and rather darker than before, for the three of them blocked the window’s light.

The barber of Dufton looked up from the man he stood shaving, and bade his reclining customer, “Please vacate the chair, Mr. White. The gentleman’s injuries take precedence.”

Mr. White, who bore the distinction of wearing nothing but black, in direct contradiction to his name,  swiveled his newly trimmed head to get a look at the intruders, his pale, lantern jaw half shaven, a look of discontent turning down the corners of a purse-pinched mouth.

“Not at all,” Alexander insisted, though the ankle throbbed horribly, and he longed for relief. “No more than a sprain, this. If you will be so good as to help me to the bench, I will wait my turn.”

The carter saw nothing unusual in his request, and obligingly helped him to the bench, but Penny Foster frowned as he sank down with a wince.

“Well Miss Foster,” the barber said, as he tilted his customer’s head and applied the blade with a practiced rasping sweep. “Do you bring me another injured stray?”

Penny’s frown grew more pronounced. Alexander wondered if she meant to insist the barber attend to him at once. “Mr. Shelbourne is a guest of Valentine Wharton’s, Mr. Bridgeman,” she said briskly. “Newly returned from fighting on the Continent. Can you not . . .”

“Ironic, really.” Alexander interrupted with a laugh. “Napoleon gave me nary a scratch, sir, but I have fallen on your fells.”

Both Mr. Bridgeman and Mr. White had a dry chuckle at that.

Miss Foster regarded them all impatiently. “Perhaps you have something to dull the gentleman’s pain while he waits, Mr. Bridgeman?”

“Are you in pain, Mr. Shelbourne?” Bridgeman was anxious to please. “I’ve rum,” he said. “But the lad must run to the gallipot if it’s opiates you want.”

“No need for that,” Alexander protested, too late. Miss Foster was already out the jingling door again with a hasty, “I’ll go.”

The three watched her determined departure. She was a sight worthy of admiration, the wind kicking her cloak as she went, catching at her hair, whipping color into alabaster cheeks. A stirring sight, this beautiful young woman, and all her concern for him.

“You could not be in better hands, sir,” Bridgeman’s razor swept clean Mr. White’s soap lathered chin with a final stroke. “Miss Foster is always taking in the brn and injured. Dogs, cats, wild ponies. Ain’t that right, Mr. White?”

He rocked back on the balls of his feet to tap the blade clean against the brass bowl held tight to Mr. White’s neck.

His pale customer fingered freshly shaven skin and looked about him, as if he had something important to tell.

“Took in Eve of Appleby, didn’t she?” he asked, voice lowered to a conspiratorial murmur. “And her blow-by.”

Barber and customer looked at one another by way of the mirror and nodded, as if at a profound truth.

Who?

“More than her family would do.” The barber’s neatly trimmed brows rose.  His thick lips pursed contemptuously.

A lad appeared from the back of the shop, silencing them. He bore a wooden tray, and on it a sweating canister. Bridgeman lifted the lid with tongs, steam belching forth, and bade the lad, “Back to the wig washing.”

Mr. White said, “Whatever became of the child?”

Bridgeman delved into the fog with the tongs, lifting a strip of smoke wrapped linen, silencing White’s questions with hot toweling.

“Joy, they named her, was it not?” he said, brow furrowed. “I’ll never know why. Nothing in the least joyful in that poor child’s birth.”

Alexander nodded, as indication of his interest, ankle forgotten. “Who was Eve of Appleby?” He could not stop himself from asking.

The two men exchanged a look. Mr. White plucked the toweling from his mouth as if he could not hold back his response.

“Local strumpet,” he said.

“Comely lass,” Bridgeman nodded as he took the damp toweling from White, and applied a little horsehair whisk broom to the man’s neck cloth. “A pity I could not save her. Died bearing the child.” He shook his head sadly.

Mr. White examined his freshly shaven jowls in a pewter backed mirror as he rose from the barber’s chair. He handed Bridgeman a coin, and turning to Alexander said, “The chair is yours, sir. I do thank you for waiting so patiently. It is not often a man of my profession receives such a courtesy.”

Bridgeman nodded, dusting hair off of the barber’s chair with a snap of linen toweling.

“And what occupation might that be?” Alexander asked, intrigued.

“My card,” White said, and handed him an elaborately engraved bit of pasteboard, the edge banded in black.

“Will you take my arm in rising?” The barber offered Alexander his elbow.

“Perhaps if we brace him both sides?” Mr. White offered.

“How very kind of you,” Alexander took advantage of their arms, the barber’s and the undertaker’s. A fortunate encounter, he thought--one might almost say felicitous.

She returned from the apothecary, a packet of white powder in hand, instructions for mixing of same with water scribbled on the side.

All Alexander could think when he spied her through the window was that this kind soul allowed the world to think her a fallen woman for the sake of a strumpet named Eve, and he did not understand why.

Mr. Bridgeman knelt before him, cutting the boot away, and none too gently. He gripped the arms of the barber’s chair, lips pressed tight, stoically bearing the man’s clumsiness.

He closed his eyes and clamped his jaw against the threat of a most unmanly yelp as the bell announced her return. Bridgeman, distracted, turned to see who it was, momentarirelaxing the pressure on his ankle. Alexander managed a smile for Miss Foster. She responded with an answering warmth, her gaze almost as probing as Bridgeman’s fingers as they resumed the destruction of his boot.

Alexander grit his teeth and gripped the arms of the chair once more, smile fading, his eyes closing involuntarily.

“Mr. Bridgeman,” she said sharply.

“One moment, Miss Foster.” The barber waved her away.

“No, sir,” she said firmly. “Now, if you please.”

Bridgeman stopped sawing the dearly bought leather. Hoby made a stout boot to military specification if one were willing to pay the price.

Alexander unclenched his jaw.

“The boot must come off.” Bridgeman waved the instrument of destruction. “The swifter the better. His foot is horribly swollen.”

“And more easily so, would you not agree, if you know you do not pain him in the extraction?” she asked.

The barber could not argue the point and yet he tried.

“Pain, my dear? He does not complain. Do I add to your injuries, sir?”

Alexander almost pitied the fellow.

Miss Foster muttered something under her breath. He thought it sounded like a name, repeated twice. Lady Anne? Then she put a hand on the barber’s shoulder before he could commence torturing his Hessians. “He is a soldier, sir,” She said, voice low. “What do you expect him to say?”

Bridgeman eyed her, then him, thinking.

“I shall have to probe for broken bones. Perhaps it would be best.” Rising, he rang for a pitcher of cool water.

Alexander watched Miss Foster measure powder into a glass. She had pretty wrists, a pretty way of moving. More beautiful than these was the look of concern for him in her amethyst eyes.

Who was Lady Anne, and why did the name sound vaguely familiar?

“Thank you, Penny,” he said when she handed him the powder-clouded glass of water.

She froze, her gaze meeting his. Perhaps her hand trembled a little. Certainly the surface of the water danced as he took the glass, their fingertips brushing.

She let go, lashes fanning down over her magnificent eyes. “I do not like to see anyone suffer needlessly, sir,” she said softly.

He paused, lips hovering above the brim of the glass, eyeing her keenly, her words more significant to him than she could know. He had used those same words, almost exactly those words when Oscar had taken him aside one day and asked, “Why the heart, Cupid? Always the heart?”

He wondered if she would understand that he had not liked to see any man suffer, even in the killing of him.

Miss Foster’s gaze rose to his face again. She waited for her potion to be drunk. Would she consider him worthy of her mercy if she knew the things he had done?

He tossed back the tincture in a single gulp, wincing at the taste. Handing her the empty glass he faced Bridgeman, gripped the chair again and said lightly, “I am at your mercy, sir.”

“I think you are right,” Bridgeman said at last, when his patient sat ashen, and panting, clutching the chair as if it might walk away while he briskly rebound the foot. “Nothing but a nasty sprain. Must stay off of it as much as possible, young sir. You will need tending. Do you stay at Wharton Hall?”

“Yes,” Penny blurted when it took Cupid some time to unclench his jaw and say in exactly the samemoment, “No.”

“What?”

The packet of powder seemed now to take effect, for Alexander Shelbourne laughed, sleepy eyed, almost giddy in saying, “Val kicked us out this morning.”

“Why?” Penny asked.

Shelbourne stared blankly a moment, as though he could not quite remember. “Oh, yes!” He smiled. “Dared to question his honor, we did, when he suffered the headache. Unwise, that.”

“But where will you stay?”

“Ought to go home,” he said. “Must face them eventually.”

“You cannot travel so far with this injured foot.”

He shrugged. “Oscar will look after me.”

“And where is Oscar?”

“Inn . . .” he said, eyelids drooping, head beginning to bob.

“In what?” she said.

“Black Boy,” he murmured as he drifted off to sleep.

The sun was setting when the wagon stopped jiggling and jerking over the uneven road. The golden glow of it met his squinting attempts to open his eyes, warm against his face, too bright in his eyes. Groggy, he felt, heavy and stupid and groggy.

He heard her tell the pony
Whoa!
heard a dog bark, and then her father’s voice.

“What’s this, then?”

“Mr. Shelbourne,” she said. “Fell from Nichol’s Chair.”

“Is he killed?”

Alexander wanted to laugh, longed to say, “No. The barber of Dufton did that,” but his mouth wouldn’t work. His throat rasped the words in an inaudible murmur that sounded like a breathless grunt.

“You bring him here?” Penny’s father sounded annoyed. “I do not think it wise, my dear.”

“I know,” she agreed. “But, he and Val have had a falling out, and the inn he mentioned staying at with his friend Oscar has no record of either of them.”

“Give me the reins,” he ordered gruffly. “I will drive him to Wharton’s.”

Again he tried to speak with no more luck than before, limbs leaden, tongue too thick.

Her voice again, sweet in his ears. “You surprise me, father. Would you turn away someone in need?”

Penny. Sweet Penny. She played Samaritan for him.

“Perhaps I should have.” Her father’s voice was subdued. “I should have more carefully guarded your reputation, Penny, my love.”

She laughed. “How? Would you have turned Eve away?”

Eve again. He tried to sit up, to pay attention.

“Would you have risked Felicity to another’s kindness?”

No response to that. A horse nickered. The wagon creaked and shook beneath him as she stepped down.

“There is no turning back the clock, father.”

“I should have . . .”

“What? Ruined the girl’s chances, to save mine? Nonsense. Never mind that. What are your wishes, now, with regard to poor Mr. Shelbourne?”

Her voice was louder now. She stood at the tailgate of the wagon.

Her father’s  sigh was one of resignation. “Call Weaver and Tom, lass. We’ll never manage carrying him in on our own.”

He lay upon the bed beside her chair, slack-jawed, eyes closed, foot raised, an occasional moan slipping lips gone soft with sleep.

Not a pretty fellow, her Cupid, and yet sight of him stirred her. He filled the bed to overflowing, so tall his feet dangled off the end, so broad-shouldered that she, who had always considered herself a strong, big-boned lass, felt quite small beside him.

 Strong, weather tanned hands rested dark against the linens--hands that knew well how to handle a gun--hands that had killed.

His hair spilled wantonly upon her pillow. Her fingers itched to touch the bristling thickness, to skim the stubble darkened chin. She stroked Artemis’s ears instead, unable to stop looking at Alexander Shelbourne’s mouth, remembering how he had kissed her at Aira Force-a breath-taking kiss--a breath-taking look in his eyes.

With a sigh she delved her fingers deep in Artemis’s neck ruff, imagining what might have been, what might still occur.

Atemis rested his head upon her knee, his loving golden brown gaze riveted on her face.

Sweet daydreams. She passed the tip of her tongue along her lower lip. She had almost forgotten how soft, how warm and demanding a man’s mouth might be. As Val’s had once been.

Her hand fell still on the dog’s neck. She considered kissing this rugged Cupid, as he lay sleeping. The urge to do so welled far more strongly than she imagined possible.

She pressed her lips together, stifling desire.

Tears needled the back of her eyes. She longed to let them spill down her cheeks, years of regret and longing made liquid.
Oh, Lady Anne! Is this what life was like for you?

With a low whuff, Artemis nudged her hand with the back if his head. She sighed, gave his head another pat,  and blinked the tears away. She was not Lady Anne. She was nothing but a tarnished penny, nothing to do about it. Not worth much. Not worth crying over. She laughed rather than cry.

Artemis stood, attention shifting to the figure in the bed.

“Hmm?” Her Cupid made a breathy noise, lips moving, eyes rolling beneath closed lids. To her surprise he murmured, “What’s so funny?”