Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand (20 page)

When he got up and dressed in the morning, Roxie was still sleeping, her arms thrown out like a child, her hair fanned around her face. He built a fire for her, wincing at the noise the coals made, but chuckling to himself at the soundness of her slumber. Roxie, not only are you rendered boneless by intercourse, but deaf also, he thought, a smile on his face. And I feel like I will live a thousand years now. Such immortality you bestow, my love.

They were all assembled and deep into breakfast before she came down. Winn patted the chair beside him. "My dear, I was afraid you would sleep through our departure."

"Oh, no," she replied, not looking at him as he poured her coffee, just a hint of unruly color in her cheeks. "You're all leaving at once?" she asked.

"Winn is ever so far behind on
our
family affairs at Winnfield," Amabel said, effectively snubbing Roxie from the family circle.

"I am sure he is," Roxie replied smoothly, smiling at him as he handed her a cinnamon bun.

"I think you should join him there, my dear," Clarice said.

Don't meddle, he thought. Let her take her time, Clarice. "Oh, sister, this is a delicate matter," he said out loud. "Helen and Lissy need some time to work around to this change in their lives. We'll take things as they come."

"I suppose it was rather a rush," Amabel said, her eyes on Roxie. "Are you even out of mourning yet?"

Winn could hear everyone take in a breath and hold it. He looked at his wife, who calmly set down her knife and fork. Go get her, Roxie, he thought.

"Yes, it was a rush, Amabel," she replied. "And no, I am not out of mourning yet. You can think what you choose. I really don't give a hearty damn." She nodded to Clarice to pass the eggs as Amabel choked on her tea and left the room coughing.

Edwin giggled. Fred grinned at the departing Amabel, and Lettice glowered at him. "You're a quick one," Clarice said, smiling at Roxanna. "It's hard to render Amabel speechless!"

Roxie blushed. "I don't make a practice of that," she assured her sister-in-law as she touched a napkin to her lips. "Now, can I help anyone pack? Amabel, perhaps?"

I do not know what is coming over me, she thought as she allowed Lord Winn to pull back her chair from the breakfast table. I don't make a career of setdowns. She glanced at her husband. And I don't, as a general rule, leave fingernail tracks all across a man's back. I certainly hope I didn't draw blood. Oh, my. What must he think of me? The sooner they are all gone, the better for my piece of mind. Or what's left of it, at any rate.

"Roxie, come with me to the bookroom a moment," Winn was saying to her. "We need to discuss a little business."

She allowed him to take her arm and stroll with her down the hall. She noticed that he barely limped now.

"Your foot is better this morning?" she asked.

"Yes, and everything else, too," he replied, a slight smile on his face.

Better let that one pass, she thought as she sat next to him at the desk and he indicated the ledgers in the glass-faced cabinet.

"Tibbie handles all the estate matters, planting, lambing, and so forth," he was saying, when she dragged her thoughts back from last night to the present. He held out a smaller book. "I've settled a yearly allowance of five thousand pounds on you, Roxie. You can keep a record here."

She gasped. "Five thousand pounds?" she repeated. "Fletch, I was managing on two hundred pounds!"

"A paltry sum," he declared as he replaced the ledger. "You'll be wanting a new wardrobe when you're out of mourning in a few months."

"Yes," she agreed, "but I was thinking more in terms of muslin, and less of cloth of gold and ermine!"

He laughed and took her hand. "You really are a wife after a Yorkshireman's heart, Roxie dear! I'll bet you even turn up your petticoats, and scrape butter off bread to conserve."

"Doesn't everyone?" she asked blithely, grateful for his light tone, especially after last night's heavy doings. "I am sure that will be more than ample for my needs, and see to the finishing of the renovation here."

"My dear, that comes out of estate funds." To her relief, he looked up from his contemplation of her when Lord Manwaring called to him from the front hall. "Use your allowance on yourself and the girls! No arguments. Fred is anxious to be off. He knows it's best to travel with Amabel on a full stomach."

She allowed him to help her up, but she held him back for a moment. He looked at her and shook his head.

"If you intend to apologize again for what happened last night, I won't listen," he said softly. "I had a delightful time, and so did you, and let's leave it at that for now."

She sighed.

"And don't sigh and flog yourself," he continued. "What I do want you to do is write me occasionally, and let me know how things go on here." He led her into the hall, her arm tucked through his. "See my solicitor in the village for funds, and I think his wife knows a good piano teacher, if you find you haven't time."

"Aye, sir," she said, amused.

"I'm trying to think of everything," he protested and tugged at the loose hair under her cap. "I've left our marriage lines with him, and a fair copy of my divorce papers, and a statement of chattel. I can see no further difficulty from Lord Whitcomb on that head."

"Very well," she said, hurrying to keep up. "Ah, here comes your farewell committee. Good morning, my dears!"

Lord Winn picked up Felicity, who was still rubbing sleep from her eyes, and continued down the hall beside her. He looked across Roxanna to Helen. "Helen, I trust you will continue riding. I have arranged for a rather gentle little mare to be delivered to your mother. With saddle, of course."

"You needn't have—" she began.

"Roxie, it is so hard to do nice things for you!" he protested, amusement evident in his voice. "Well, nearly always," he amended, his eyes roguish. "Helen, teach your mother to ride. She might find it useful."

"Yes, sir," Helen replied, taking her commission quite seriously. "And I will practice my Scarlatti."

"You'll be back in a few days?" Lissy asked, her hands on his face.

He stopped then and gave her his full attention. "No, my dear, I won't," he said at last.

"But when?" she persisted as he set her down and opened the front door.

“I don't know," he said.

Roxanna knelt beside her daughter, hugging her close, and feeling an absurd urge to join in Lissy's sudden tears. "Lord Winn has a lot of business to attend to," she explained. "We were . .. lucky to have him here as long as we did, Felicity."

Lissy sobbed, stopping only when Lord Winn picked her up again and held his handkerchief to her nose. She blew, and then threw her arms around him in another flood of tears.

Roxanna looked away, the pain of departure suddenly real. I owe you so much, Lord Winn, she thought. She gathered together her own disordered thoughts, and tried to smile and nod at Edwin Chandler and his friends, standing there with baggage in hand. You've rescued my daughters for me, and given me enough income to live on for the rest of my life. I have a beautiful home now, and nothing to fear or worry about. Why do I feel so dreadful?

It was an unanswerable question. Lord Winn, his face a study in discomfort, gently pried Lissy's hands off his neck and handed her daughter to her. Lissy watched him. “I want to know when you are coming back," she stated, each word distinct, the model of her mother.

Yes, Roxie thought, tell us when.

"Lissy!" he began, exasperated. He looked at Roxanna. "That depends on a lot of things," he said, "none of which you will understand."

"I want to know," she demanded.

Clarice stepped to her brother's side then and nudged him. "As a parent of some years, I recognize that tone, Winn, even if you are unfamiliar with it. Four-year-olds want answers, brother."

Roxie nodded to Clarice in complete agreement. "Yes! Don't they?" So do I, she thought, and I am much older than four.

Lord Winn thought a moment then cleared his throat. "Very well, Felicity Drew," he said and put his hand on her shoulder. "I will make a flying trip back here in March with my York solicitor. We have to return to Northumberland-to settle up a rather pesky deed, and I trust the snow will be gone then." He knelt by her again. "Now. Will that satisfy you?"

Lissy was silent a moment, tears forgotten. She blew her nose again on Winn's handkerchief. "Mama, can we mark a calendar?" she asked.

"I am sure we can, my dear. Now don't plague Lord Winn anymore."

"I am not a plague, Mama," she replied with dignity. "I am merely a trial."

And so the Rands were laughing when they entered the carriages drawn up for them. Lord Winn tied Ney's reins to the back of his brother-in-law's carriage, then came up the front steps again, walking slowly, reluctantly, almost. He took Helen's hand in both of his hands.

"Take good care of your mother," he said, his voice strained.

Oh, dear, she thought. I hope you are not getting a cold, too, from all these comings and goings.

"I will," Helen assured him. "And I will write."

"Excellent!" he kissed the top of her head, then picked up Lissy again. "You are not even a trial, Lissy. Admire that view of the Plain of York for me," he told her. "I live at the other end of it, think on."

She nodded, and touched his face again. "March?"

"Just three months, Lissy."

And then it was her turn. What do I say to you? she thought as he took her by the arm. I like you a lot. God knows I have used you down to a burned wick. It's even quite possible that you know me better than Anthony did. You've seen me through one of my worst experiences.

"I don't know what to say," she admitted, tears in her eyes.

He hugged her close, taking her breath away with the strength of his grip, and then he released her.

"You'll think of something someday, Roxanna," he said.

"You're sure of that?" she murmured.

"No, I am not," he replied, his words honest. "But then, I always was a fool where women are concerned. Take care, Roxie. Think of me occasionally."

He kissed her then, put on his hat, and took another long look at the three of them standing close together on the front steps. He turned his back on them, hurried down the steps and into a carriage. He did not look back, but they stayed on the front steps until the carriages were only a speck on the road.

"Well, my dears," she said at last, when she finally noticed that Lissy was barefoot and Helen shivering. "Let's finish the cinnamon buns and find Meggie. There's much to do."

The hall was so empty, with no quick, firm steps of a military nature. There was no Haydn played too fast in the sitting room. The cinnamon buns didn't taste the same, and even Lissy left the last one unfinished on her plate. When she suggested that Five Pence needed some exercise, Helen shrugged and continued to sit there until Roxie reminded her.

"We are feeling sorry for ourselves," she declared finally. "Come, girls, it's time to get dressed."

She shooed them upstairs to their room and went into the room she shared with Lord Winn. The bed was a mess, she thought, but what fun. She sat on his side a moment, wishing that it was still warm and still smelled of him.

It did not. She peeked in the dressing room, but all his clothes were gone. So was his shaving gear, his book, and his spectacles. She straightened the bedcovers and noticed something white under the bed. She pulled out his nightshirt and laughed softly. So that was where it ended up, she thought as she hung it on a peg in the dressing room.

There was a calendar next to the clothes hamper. She found a pencil stub and drew an X through December 30.

"January, February, March," she said. "And what then, Roxie? What then?"

If it wasn't the snowiest winter on record in the North Riding, then it was second cousin to the snowiest, Roxanna decided as she marked the last X through January 31 and crumpled the page into the fireplace. She sat on the hearth and poked at the coals. February would be long, she knew, fifty days at least. Then would come March, and Tibbie and the shepherds would be on the alert for ewes snuffling about, looking for a likely spot on the thawing ground to drop their lambs. And the wind would blow, and she and Lissy would continue to spend too much time at dusk looking across the Plain of York.

Helen seemed to adjust quickly to Lord Winn's leaving. She devoted long hours in the stable to Five Pence, and cajoled Roxanna into currying the Empress Josephine, her mother's new mare and parting gift from Lord Winn. Roxanna had to admit that she was looking forward to a break in the weather so she could ride the pretty animal.

"Mama, she likes you," Helen declared.

"Well, I do believe I like her," Roxanna replied, stroking the horse's nose.

"I am going to draw ^ picture of the Empress to send to Lord Winn," Helen said as she handed Roxanna a bucket of grain. "Do you think he will like that?"

"I am sure he will," Roxanna said.

"You'll mail it?"

"Of course. But don't tell Lissy. I think it almost makes her more sad to send letters because it reminds her that he is not here."

Helen turned back to Five Pence and began to curry the pony. "She'll get over him, Mama," she said, her voice matter-of-fact, a little cold, almost. "I have."

"My dear, you sound a wee bit bloodless," she scolded, startled from her contemplation of the Empress.

Helen leaned against her pony. "Mama, I do not want to like someone else who will just be leaving, like Papa," she said calmly. "It's too hard to do."

Roxanna sat down on the grain bucket and pulled Helen close to her. "Oh, my dear, I wish you did not sound so adult," she whispered into Helen's ear.

Helen only cuddled in close to her mother, her eyes filled with misery. "Mama, I miss him, too." She sat up. "Why, Mama? He wasn't here that long. Why do I miss him?"

Roxanna cradled her daughter close again. "Well, he had a way of filling up a room, didn't he?"

"He did." She moved off her mother's lap and back to Five Pence again. "I am forgetting things about Papa, too. Will I do that with Lord Winn? Why does that have to happen? I try and try to remember . .." Her voice trailed away.

I have no answers, my love, she thought that night as she sat in the bookroom, long after the girls were asleep. She picked up the picture of her horse that Helen had drawn, folded and addressed to the marquess. "My husband," she said out loud, wondering why it seemed so distant now. He had been gone a month and more. Even their tumultuous night together was fading around the edges now. She put her head down on the desk. I shall have to start taking long walks again when the snow stops. If it ever stops.

He wrote once a week, in response to their letters. Lissy usually received pictures he had drawn, sketches of Winnfield, mainly. One sketch was of the picture gallery with a series of forbidding, pop-eyed faces glaring down from the cobwebbed walls, and a note, "Wish you were here," scrawled across the top in spooky handwriting that made them all laugh.

To Helen he wrote horse advice, and sent along music, one sheet a Mozart exercise, and another a work of his own creation that Helen played over and over. "So you do not care?" Roxie said to herself as she heard Helen humming the tune and rehearsing it endlessly.

Her own letters from Lord Winn could have been read from the pulpit on Sundays, prosaic bits of news about Parliament's latest blunder, or more often, the business venture he was involved in that took him to London for several weeks. "Mind you," he wrote, "soiling my hands with business makes me smell of the shop to some of the high sticklers I know; but since I seldom have any dealings with the
ton
anymore, it hardly matters. They can be proud; I choose to be richer."

It was an intriguing venture, and so she wrote him, asking for more details about the canal system he was investing in. He responded promptly with maps and schematics of the canals. She pored over them, feeling complimented somehow that Lord Winn would not dress them down or simplify them because she was a woman. He seemed to know that she could follow them, and she did. To Lissy's delight, one of the canal maps had a small boat sketched in, with a pirate on a plank who looked something like Lord Whitcomb.

His letters to her were nothing special, no intimate references to make her tuck them under her pillow to hoard and read over and over again. But she read them over and over anyway, chiding herself as she did so. What are you expecting, Roxie? she asked herself. It impressed her how forcefully his personality came through his words. He could almost be there, except that he was not, and they all felt the poorer for his absence.

"Do you think he misses us as much as we miss him?" Lissy asked her one night after prayers and before she blew out the lamp.

Roxanna sat on the bed, looking into Lissy's eyes, so like her own. "Oh, I am sure he is very busy with his canal venture, my love, and all the activities of his estates."

"Do you think if I told him I missed him, he would come sooner than March?" Lissy persisted, even as her eyes started to close.

"I think you ask too many questions!" she said, avoiding the issue.

Without question, she missed him. Even long before their precipitate marriage, she had enjoyed waking up in the dower house with the thought that perhaps if she worked on the renovation at Moreland, she might run into him during the course of the day. He always had something to say, some observation to make, that cheered her. True, he could be outrageous, but it was worth a blush to really laugh again.

As February began to slide toward March, she thought she understood why his letters were so businesslike: he obviously did not choose to further whatever relationship might have begun between them. The thought pained her a little, even as she scolded herself for thinking there would ever be more. She had made a marriage of convenience and that was all it was, barring one slip. Everyone's human, she thought, and then blushed. Maybe some of us more than others. But it was only a onetime moment, obviously of little importance to Lord Winn.

Or so she reasoned as she and Mrs. Howell busied themselves with some early spring cleaning, in the hopes that would bring an end to the eternal snows of 1817. And then it was March 5, a year since Anthony's death, and Lord Winn sent a note accompanying a bolt of burgundy dimity. "Dear Roxie, how about a walking dress of this? I found it in London and thought it would look especially nice on your back. More to follow. Winn." Two days later, a carter arrived with bolts of material, lavender, soft gray, blue and white, and a note pinned to one bolt of green fabric: "Is there enough for you and the girls? I can send more. I probably will. You know me. Winn."

Meggie laughed over that note. "Enough?" she asked, pointing to the bolts that they stashed in the linen room. "We could outfit an army from this. Someone ought to tell Lord Winn that current fashions don't require whole bolts. Well, Roxanna? You're woolgathering again."

Guilty, Roxanna looked up from the note. "You know me," she read again as she dragged her attention back to Meggie. No, I don't know you, Lord Winn, she thought. And yet I know you awfully well. Lord, what a mull. "Yes, Meggie? I'm sorry. Say again?"

It was springtime material, but spring was still just a dream in the North Riding. Roxanna summoned a modiste anyway, and plotted and planned wardrobes for her and her daughters as the snow fell and the wind whistled around Moreland’s well-insulated windows. When the weather broke, she promised herself a whole day in Darlington to look at hats and silk stockings.

When she finally completed the wallpaper and painting in Lord Winn's bedroom, she declared the renovation complete. True, the bedcovers and furniture were still definitely Queen Anne in a house more Regency now, but that could wait for a trip to the warehouses in Richmond. Curtains could wait, too. The matter interested her less and less. What was the point of renovation? She and the girls had their rooms completed, and Lord Winn was not selling Moreland. The other bedrooms would only remain empty.

And then it was March. Lissy triumphantly threw away her February calendar page. "Mama, he said he would come in March, didn't he?" she asked for the umpteenth time. She stood still only long enough for Roxie to button her nightgown and then ran to the window seat. "Do you think I will be able to see him from this window when he comes?"

Helen joined her. "Lissy, he might not come."

Lissy shook her head. "He said he would."

Oh dear, Roxie thought as she watched them both in the window seat. We have got to get over our melancholy. And we cannot spend all our days waiting for something to happen. Please, Lord, a break in the weather, she prayed that night.

She heard the wind howling as she shivered in bed and clutched her pillow close to her. Go to sleep, she told herself, even as she listened and dreaded the snow that would follow soon. But as she listened, she heard a different sound. The wind was coming up from the south, accompanied by the welcome drip of water from the long icicles outside the window. Spring was coming.

For two days, the winds blew warmer and gradually the ground began to emerge from the long sleep of a Yorkshire winter. Snow was everywhere still, but they could walk outside now and see the dark soil again. And here and there crocuses poked up through the snow.

"Come, girls," she said after breakfast. "Put on your oldest shoes. We are going walking."

She thought it would take some urging, but the girls were almost as restless as she was. The wind cut across the dale as they left the house, but it was warmer than the blizzards of January. Lissy tugged on her beloved red mittens and held up her hand.

"Mama, they almost do not fit!"

Roxanna smiled at her daughter, and examined her mitten. "That means a new pair next winter." She looked at Helen. "And for you, too?"

Helen nodded. "But let us not talk about next winter. Mama," she said. "Let us put it off, as you like to put off things."

They laughed together, grateful to be outside.

They passed the dower house, looking almost like a doll's house now, after the spaciousness of Moreland. "Do you know, Helen," she murmured, "I think I will ask Meggie if she would like to move in there."

"Why, Mama?" Helen asked. "She likes it with us."

"Every woman should have a home of her own," Roxanna said decisively. "Before she came here, Meggie only lived in rented rooms." She took her girls' hands and walked more purposefully toward the park beyond the house. "I will ask Lord Winn what he thinks."

It was really too cold to be walking long, but the meadow seemed to open up for them. And there in the distance were sheep. Lissy ran ahead, waving her arms. As Helen and Roxanna watched, she stopped and looked down at one sheep, then hurried back to her mother.

"Mama, it is grunting and grunting," she said, giving a demonstration that would have made Lord Winn laugh, Roxanna decided. "Is it sick?"

Roxanna shrugged. "Let us see." She hurried closer, and discovered the ewe deep in labor. She knelt in the mud beside the sheep and fingered its bedraggled wool, looking about for help. "Helen, see if you can find Tibbie or one of the shepherds," she asked as the ewe grunted, then panted softly, looking vaguely disturbed.

Helen was gone a long time and the wind blew colder. Lissy knelt beside her, grunting along with the ewe. Her nose was red and she shivered in the wind.

"This will never do," Roxanna said at last. "In for a penny she muttered as she took off her cloak and rolled up her sleeve.

"Mama, what are you doing?" Lissy asked in astonishment as Roxanna inserted her arm into the ewe.

"Call it a courtesy," she said as she rummaged around and discovered a wonderful tangle of legs inside the ewe. The animal only looked back at her once and continued chewing placidly. "Goodness, Lissy, there are at least two lambs in there!"

Lissy leaned closer. "Mama! Do you know what to do?"

"I think I can figure out this puzzle," she grunted as she pulled on two legs, pushed back two others, then hooked her forefinger into an eye socket as another unborn lamb licked her wrist. "Stand back, Lissy! This may be like a cork in a bottle."

By the time Tibbie arrived, there were two lambs shaking themselves off and contemplating the ewe's udder. "Well, well, Mrs. Rand," he said as he squatted to watch her continued efforts. "No. You keep going. This last one ought to slide right out like an oyster. Grand work, Mrs. Rand! You'll put my shepherds out of business!"

As Roxanna sat back on her heels, her fingers aching, Lissy stared at the three lambs. She listened with satisfaction as the sheep made its odd purring noise and the lambs at the udder settied down to more serious matters.

"Mama, you are wonderful!" Helen declared as she ran up with a shepherd.

Roxanna accepted a piece of toweling from the man. She was bloody and covered with mud, but smiling with satisfaction. Spring had come to this harsh land at last, bringing new lambs. Perhaps it would bring Lord Winn back for a visit.

That evening Helen wrote a narrative to the marquess of her mother's exploits in the meadow, while Lissy drew a picture of the three lambs. Over her daughters' protests, Roxanna vetoed Lissy's first picture of her arm in the sheep. "I think Lord Winn has sufficient imagination to figure out where lambs come from," she assured her children as she added her note about the dower house and Meggie, and sealed it with the pictures.