He frowned. “Why?”
She seemed about to say something, then stopped. “Take it from me, it just would.”
“In what way?” he persisted.
“Very well, if you must know, I think that if he knew you were a gentleman and unmarried, he would attempt to force us to marry.”
He laughed. “You cannot be serious. Nobody, vicar or otherwise, could force me into anything I did not want. Why would he even consider such a thing?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Because he thinks it a scandal that you’re in my bed, that’s why.”
“Yes, but nothing’s happened. And even if it had, I’ve been in dozens of—” he broke off, noticing her expression. “At least I’m sure I must have been . . . Probably.”
“He was right to remind me that I don’t know anything about you.”
“I don’t know anything about me, either,” he reminded her. “But even I can tell that a marriage between us would be prepos—” He broke off.
“Yes?” she said with a sweetness that didn’t deceive him in the least.
He tried to retrieve his position. “You don’t want a marriage of that sort, either, or you wouldn’t have gone out of your way to assure him I was—how did you put it?—oh, yes, ‘this feeble, injured creature.’” It rankled. Injured, yes, but a feeble creature? As if he were of no account. “Why did you do that, eh? So that he wouldn’t think me any danger to your reputation at all?”
“Exactly so!” she flashed. “I have no wish to be yoked in marriage to any man, let alone a man I know nothing about, who just happened to ride past one day and fall off his horse at my feet.”
“I did not fall off, I was thrown when my horse slipped! And if you didn’t want to be compromised, why didn’t you accept his offer to take me to his house?”
“Because, you fool, despite growing evidence that you have the thickest skull in creation, the doctor said it could cause you serious damage to be moved!” And with that she snapped the bed curtains shut and stormed from the cottage, slamming the door with a bang.
Six
Maddy stomped into the garden. Wretched man. So the idea of marrying her was preposterous, was it? As if Mr. Nameless—who couldn’t even sit up without getting dizzy, and needed to be fed like a baby—were some enormous catch, and she a person of no consequence!
She knew she wasn’t any man’s idea of a desirable bride, but did he have to laugh? She dashed an angry tear away.
She was probably better born than him anyway. Her mother’s ancestors were of thehaute nobilite—even if they had fallen from grace for a generation or two.
She glanced across to where the children were playing some sort of game over by the wall. Knights and maidens it looked like, with Susan and Lucy playing the maidens and Jane playing the dragon. Poor Jane. Never the glamorous role. Perhaps she should . . . No. Jane was enjoying herself, she saw, giving her brothers a very hard time as the dragon, roaring and hurling imaginary bolts of fire at them, and pretending to eat up their reed swords when they got too close.
The children were perfectly happy. She was fed up with talking to children and impossible men. She needed to talk to the bees. She’d talked to the bees ever since she was a little girl. Grand-mère had taught her:One must always talk to the bees, confide in them your thoughts, tell them the news, who has been born and who has died. Do this and the bees will never let you down.
She wended her way through the densely packed vegetable beds, past the chicken house to the line of fruit trees parallel to the wall that they called the orchard.
Set into the wall were arched recesses, and in those recesses sat her pride and joy, her bee hives. The recesses had been constructed with the ancient wall, built specifically for bee hives. It pleased Maddy to be part of a continuing tradition.
The bad weather was in the past, she saw as she drew closer; the little creatures were busily flying to and fro. Bees were wonderful predictors of weather. Taking care to stay out of their direct flight path, she made her way to her favorite seat, a simple slab of thick slate set on top of two stones against the wall, with hives to the left and right of her.
A dozen bees buzzed around her curiously. She stayed calm, and deciding she was harmless, they flew off.
“Oh, bees, I’m so cross and out of sorts,” she began. She told them all about her stranger with no memory, for you should always tell the bees about any newcomer.
“And as for being forced into marriage to avoid scandal, who in their right mind would want that? I can’t imagine anything worse than to be tied in marriage to a man who’d resent you for the rest of his life. Don’t you agree?”
They did, she could tell. Bees were sensible creatures.
Maddy knew what it was like to live with a resentful man. Papa had come to resent Mama, and theirs had begun as a love match—or so Mama said.
Maddy was not so sure it was love at all. Papa had been dazzled by Mama’s beauty, her noble family, and her fortune. But his love cooled as he slowly realized Mama’s family and fortune would never be returned, and Mama’s beauty had faded as she failed, time and time again, to give Papa the heir he craved . . .
Poor Mama, grieving endlessly for her lost babies, blamed so bitterly for what she could not help, for what tore her apart.
