Once Upon a Kiss (Book Club Belles Society) Read online

  If Justina was not still chewing her crumpet she would have stuck out her tongue at all four ladies. But she contented herself with a weary flutter of eyelashes. Let them all think what they would.

  There was one way to win out over the other ladies’ teasing, of course. “I would much rather be a rich man’s mistress than a wife,” she exclaimed, sighing extravagantly.

  “Jussy!”

  She looked at her sister. “What’s the matter now? A mistress has all the fun and none of the responsibility.”

  “That is a wicked thing to say. And Becky, stop laughing! You’re only encouraging her.”

  “Oh, I forgot,” Justina rolled her eyes, “I’m not supposed to know anything about it. But you all know I speak the truth. A wife is the dutiful acquisition, the one who bears babies, manages the house, frets over the accounts and woodworm in the rafters. What does a mistress do? Puts up with the man for a few hours here and there, and has no need really to ever get out of bed. If it were me, I would lounge about all day in a bath filled with asses’ milk and have hot chocolate brought to me on a silver tray.”

  While the other young ladies were deeply engaged in dissecting the horror of her terrible suggestion, Justina victoriously swiped the last of the crumpets and speared it on her toasting fork.

  Thirteen

  When the girls returned home, their mother was waiting to regale them with the story of Mr. Wainwright’s visit. Although there was not much to tell, she managed to stretch the facts by repetition, peppered with a lot of her own suppositions regarding the event, and by the time they sat down to dinner it was still the subject that dominated any other.

  “I could have been knocked down by the tickle of a feather duster when I saw him standing there on our doorstep. So very handsome.” She reached over to pat her eldest daughter’s hand, apprehending it in the motion of reaching for the tureen of potatoes. “So elegant and refined. With shoulders surely the width of our doorframe and enough height to necessitate bending his head just to enter the house. What a delight for us all to have his company.”

  Their father looked up from carving the beef. “I doubt we shall enjoy much of that delight, my dear. Or the sight of his remarkably wide shoulders. Except from behind and at some rapidly expanding distance.”

  “Why, pray tell?” she demanded.

  Justina, aware of Catherine glaring at her across the table, fixed her attention to her own plate.

  “He must be accustomed to much grander company than ours, my dear, and yet I sense he is not the sort to enjoy society in general.”

  “How can you conclude that much already? He was barely a quarter of an hour in your library.”

  “His words may be few, but they are succinct.”

  “Well,” their mother muttered crossly, banging her glass down as if it were a judge’s gavel, “we do have two parlors and you set the broken arm of Lady Brockhampton’s nephew in Manderson. And he once had his eye on our Catherine.”

  “Mama, she was fifteen,” Justina interrupted. “And he was fifty if he was a day.”

  “So? Many a time has an older gentleman married much younger, particularly when he is a widower without children. Such admiration from a distinguished gentleman of mature years is most gratifying. That he should have noticed our Catherine was nothing to sniff at, and you, my girl,” she pointed with her fork, “would be lucky indeed to win similar notice. But, of course, you have not that same sweet temperament a man requires in his wife and the mother of his children.”

  Justina looked at her sister. “How nice for you, Cathy, to be bought as mild-mannered breeding stock, but at least he wouldn’t have troubled you long since he had one foot in the grave already. Feed him some of Clara’s bread pudding and you could finish the job nicely.”

  Their mother addressed her husband again in a louder tone, increased agitation visible in vibrations of the lace around her cap. “I hope you told Mr. Wainwright that you have served the medical needs of every owner and leaseholder of Lark Hollow estate for two and twenty years, including Admiral Vyne, a war hero. I’m sure we are good enough company for a man who made his fortune in trade.”

  “You might think so, my dear,” said their father, “but as you are entitled to your opinion, Mr. Wainwright is entitled to his. He, like our youngest daughter, seems to have plenty of them. A slice of beef, Jussy?”

  She lifted her plate.

  “It is not ham, of course,” he added. “I know you have no liking for ham these days.”

  Justina caught his eye and then he quickly looked down again, maneuvering the slice of roast beef carefully onto her plate.

  “It seems Mr. Wainwright has no liking for ham either,” he muttered. “Another thing the two of you have in common, Jussy. Pork.”

  “Goodness gracious. Is that all you could find to talk to him about?” their mother exclaimed. “Pork?”

  “I see nothing amiss with that for conversation. One must talk of something, and it was Mr. Wainwright who raised the subject in the first place. Porcine flesh appears to have been much on his mind.” He returned to his carving, and Justina felt panic prick like pins and needles in her veins.

  “Why on earth would you talk to him of pork?” their mother cried, excessively upset, as she often was, by her husband’s eccentricities and lack of social graces.

  Sadly for his wife, he took delight in all the same things that so distressed her. “’Tis another of life’s mysteries, my dear. Since he is such a fine gentleman from Town I thought it might be the fashionable subject and so I let him talk of it. Heaven knows he did not have much else to say.”

  “Pork indeed!”

  “Quite. I would suggest you read up on the matter, my dear, in case he returns.”

  But Mrs. Penny preferred to speculate on a topic far more pleasing to her than pork. “He must have seen Catherine about the village, determined who she was, and came here to begin the acquaintance. It is not unexpected. I asked him if he had seen her about, and he was very reluctant to say so, as only a gentleman smitten would be.”

  “Are three days of distant sightings enough to produce such an effect, my dear? I did detect Mr. Wainwright to be struggling in something quite deep, but I did not take it to be a state of smit.”

  “He is a man with a determined aura, and I daresay he makes up his mind with alacrity. Besides, many a courtship has begun thus with love at first sight.” She looked proudly at her eldest daughter. “I suppose he wanted to be sure your father would introduce you at the harvest dance, Catherine, and that’s why he came.”

  It was on the tip of Justina’s tongue to exclaim that the man did not plan to attend the dance, but she remembered, in the knick of time, that she had nothing to say on the matter and knew naught about the man. So she contented herself by stabbing a fork into her potato.

  As it turned out, her interruption was not required in any case. Dr. Penny poured a moat of gravy on his plate while somberly assuring his wife, “I asked the man myself, and he has no plans to attend the harvest dance.”

  “Of course he will attend. He must. It will be very strange if he does not.”

  “I rather think, madam, that Mr. Wainwright would prefer to be thought strange than to put himself in the way of dancing and general merriment. He is a man of business, as he took great pains to remind me, not a gentleman of leisure.”

  Although she said no more on the subject then, their mother had a quietly satisfied look on her face for the remainder of dinner. Justina suspected she was already plotting a spring wedding for Catherine and Mr. Wainwright.

  For her part, Cathy did nothing to discourage their mother. If anything, her silent blushes seemed only to reinforce the likelihood of a soon-to-be blooming romance. Justina observed her sister worriedly, fearing that Catherine would lose her heart quickly and rashly to a marble-hearted man unworthy of her affections. A man who went around in
sulting and then kissing other women without so much as a “by your leave.”

  Justina thrust her fork into the boiled potato again with great energy as she thought of how the Wainwright person had stared at Cathy in the street that day and although his face hardly moved, he must have felt admiration. Why would he not? The man had two functioning eyes in his head. He could hardly fail to compare Cathy’s beauty to her looks—which he had already disparaged.

  As for Cathy—she pondered her shortage of beaus as if it was entirely her own fault, lying awake at night in their bed, twisting her braid around her fingers, and sighing heavily like a set of well-primed organ bellows. Now here came a man at last, and she would think it her duty to seize him.

  Having stabbed her boiled potato into submission, Justina could not summon her appetite at all now.

  “Pass the horseradish, Jussy,” said her father softly, breaking into her thoughts. As she reached for the little china dish, he added, “I see you are not hungry.”

  “You should not have eaten so many crumpets at Diana’s house,” said her sister.

  “Jussy’s eyes are always bigger than her belly, as they say.” Their father chuckled. “One day she will take too much onto her plate and that will be the end of her adventures.” He gave her a sly wink. “Perhaps that day is already upon us, eh, Jussy?”

  Later he called her into his library, and although she prepared herself for yet another punishment, Justina was shocked to discover that her father thought the matter settled.

  “Mr. Wainwright has taken upon himself the burden of keeping Sir Mortimer Grubbins,” he explained calmly.

  “What did he tell you, Papa?” She folded her arms. “It was all lies, to be sure.”

  “Really? He did not strike me as the sort to employ falsehoods. Indeed he was brutally honest and to the point, Jussy. A refreshing change in a young man, I thought.” Her father smiled benignly.

  “Why would he keep a pig? He knows nothing about pigs!”

  “That is a question only Mr. Wainwright can answer. Why do you not go and ask him yourself?”

  “Me? Go there alone? It would not be proper.”

  He jerked back in his chair. “I am glad to hear you know the proprieties. I thought you did not care for them, as we seldom see examples to prove that you do.”

  Justina paced before her father’s hob grate, but it was not a very large space and so the dramatic effect of her protest was severely curbed.

  “And when you go there, Jussy, if I were you I’d find a way to apologize to the gentleman for putting him out. You may not care for his approbation, but it will not soften your mama’s mood with any of us should she discover you’ve put him in a sour temper. After all,” he sighed, “Mr. Wainwright will never look at your sister with a favorable eye if his impression of the family is not improved. But it seems we must all hope he marries Cathy. Your mama clearly has her heart set upon it.”

  His life, of course, was very much easier when their mama was happy and not in one of her fretful moods. It was so for all of them.

  ***

  The creature eyed Darius as he approached cautiously, holding the bucket of scraps. It greeted him with a deep grunt, spiraled tail twitching happily. Although he had, with Farmer Rooke’s assistance, provided a makeshift pen in one corner of the orchard, the pig found its own way in and out of the enclosure with very little trouble. Now it stood proudly on the outside of the fencing, watching Darius and his bucket with the benevolent amusement of an indulgent uncle.

  “Here…pig.” He tipped the bucket over the fence and the contents cascaded into a small trough. “Food. Eat…pig.” He refused to call the creature by its name. Why people thought it necessary to anthropomorphize he had no earthly idea. It was a pig. A pig, therefore, he would call it.

  But the animal looked at him expectantly and grunted. Again Darius pointed at the trough within the enclosure. “Eat, pig.”

  Four muddy trotters carried the beast toward Darius with an almost menacing stride, backing him to the fence. Man and pig eyed each other. That large, dewy snout lifted and twitched.

  He felt as if he were back in school and the Latin master stood over him, tapping a cane to his palm and waiting for the recital of a conjugated verb.

  Finally, since there was no one present to witness the concession, Darius cleared his throat and muttered, “Sir Mortimer, please do eat.”

  With another grunt, Sir Mortimer Grubbins trotted amiably back inside his pen through the hole he’d made, and inspected the offering with another grunt. Snouting through the trough, he selected the tastiest morsel—a cabbage leaf—and proceeded to chew greedily, still watching his new caretaker with those cleverly complacent eyes.

  “Bon appetit,” Darius added, bemused and gaining considerable respect for his charge.

  The sudden clanging of the bell at the gate drew his attention away from the pig, and he made his way around the trees to find two figures peering through the bars, one of them in a scarlet hooded cloak. Despite that bright flare of color, his gaze went immediately to the second figure in her drab gray coat with the frog clasps across the bosom and the wilted-looking bonnet that someone had possibly retrieved recently from a well, a cider press, or the jaws of a goat. Perhaps all three. He’d never seen a woman quite so dilapidated, and he could only assume that was the reason why his eyes sought her out. He immediately thought of going quickly inside for his coat. Visitors this early were unexpected, and he was not dressed to receive them. It was too late, however. They’d seen him.

  Besides, she had scornfully referred to him as a dandified gent before. She could not do so today. Not that he cared what she thought, of course.

  With the empty bucket dangling from one hand, he lifted the gate latch. “Miss Penny, do come in. I wondered when you would grace Midwitch with your presence again.”

  Scowling, she walked through the open gate. Her gaze traversed the length of his exposed forearm for he had rolled up his shirtsleeves rather than risk getting them dirty while dealing with the pig. “This is Miss Lucy Bridges,” she muttered sullenly. “Sir Mortimer Grubbins is really her pet.”

  The girl in the scarlet cloak couldn’t seem to raise her eyelashes, but she bobbed a curtsy and moved her lips. He thought she might have whispered something, but he couldn’t be sure. The gate clanged shut, and he gestured for them to follow him through the orchard.

  The chatterbox began at once. “We will take the pig off your hands, sir, as soon as—”

  “That is not necessary, Miss Penny.”

  They both stopped and looked at him, the little one in the red stumbling into her friend, behind whom she seemed intent on hiding herself.

  “I have decided to maintain the animal myself. I paid Farmer Rooke this morning, so he is made whole again. Sir Mortimer now belongs to me.”

  “Oh,” said Miss Lucy Bridges.

  “You may visit him, madam. Whenever you wish.”

  “Oh,” the girl whimpered again, her eyes concentrating on the ground between them. He wondered if she had breathing problems, for there was a noticeable amount of inflating and deflating going on beneath her cloak.

  “And when you sell the house, what then?”

  Darius turned to the impertinent questioner. “I’ll worry about that when the time comes, Miss Penny. Since he is now my pig. My property.”

  Her glare, had it formed a physical blade, could have cleaved him in two. So he ignored her and returned his attention to Lucy Bridges, whose shyness made his own reserve seem like the height of outgoing affability. He led her through the trees to where Sir Mortimer was busy with his trough. “As you see, I am tending to the animal. He is quite safe in my hands.”

  “Oh…oh, yes,” Lucy mumbled, reaching over the fence to pet the pig. “Thank you, Mr. Wainwright, sir. It is…it is very good of you, indeed.”

  He nodded sharply, pleas
ed to find that not everyone in Hawcombe Prior lacked basic manners.

  The other woman pushed her way around him to examine the pig for herself. Finally satisfied the animal was cared for, she swung around to face him again.

  “Sir Mortimer Grubbins,” she said firmly, “is not to be slaughtered.”

  “Since he now belongs to me, I believe that decision is mine to make.”

  She pursed her lips, and Darius was betaken by the sudden distressing thought of kissing them again, even with her friend present. He took a step back, placing his free hand on the fence. “Now that I have assumed the burden of caring for the pig, you can do something in return for me.”

  When her lashes flickered uncertainly, he imagined their soft caress fluttering against his cheek.

  “My great-uncle left a vast number of papers and ledgers in disarray,” he continued, keeping his voice stern. “I need an extra pair of eyes and hands to help sort through them or I’ll be here for months.”

  She grimaced. “Goodness, we can’t have that, can we? The sooner you’re gone the better.”

  He chose to ignore the rude remark. He knew, of course, why she wanted him gone from Hawcombe Prior. As long as he stayed she would be reminded of certain misadventures she evidently tried now to forget.

  “It seems my great-uncle seldom disposed of anything. Even the most insignificant scrap”—he let his gaze wander down to her feet and then back up to her bonnet—“was kept. I must put everything in order before I leave.”

  She peered up at him, her large eyes doubtful.

  “I have already sought your father’s permission to employ you for the task. It is quite proper.”

  He could almost see his face reflected there in her pupils as they widened. Was she surprised or annoyed? Or simply curious? Was she drawn to looking at him, as he was to looking at her? He had never felt so confused in his life as he was by Miss Justina Penny. At his age it was a remarkable development and not at all cheering. He’d survived eleven years without complications of this sort, and he’d really expected to continue in the same way. Sensibly. Decently. Calmly. Animal husbandry and wayward women had not been part of his plan.