HUGH
Ann was keeping secrets.
I recognized the look from just before she’d left me in Spain—distracted, bemused, and trying desperately not to appear as if her focus lay elsewhere. I could well imagine why she’d want to leave St. Ivo’s after this day’s work, but I would be damned if she’d abandon me again.
“Madame, you took risks,” I said as we gained on the retreating forms of Marigold and Mrs. Fletcher. “You confronted a half-drunk crowd of men who were intent on violence.”
The scene had brought back memories of my betrothal to Ann, if one could call her acceptance of my offer a betrothal. A crowd of men in an ugly mood had been contemplating even uglier acts as they’d tossed their dice and leered at a recently widowed Ann.
“You were with me,” she said. “You took the same risks, and yet, I’m not castigating you on the village green, Hugh St. Sevier.”
I heard a snort behind me—Violet. Where had she come from? And if Violet was trailing us, Dunkeld was also likely within earshot.
About which, I did not care. “I was so proud of you, Ann St. Sevier, I almost told Dunkeld to scamper back to his porch and let you deal with matters.” I took her hand and leaned closer as we walked along. “You know who’s rigged the races, don’t you?”
“I heard that,” Violet said.
Ann smiled. “We have a nanny.”
We had a friend or two. “You, madame, have information about this whole mess you have yet to share.”
The Fletchers passed through their gate. Mrs. Fletcher stopped only to pick up her watering can, and then the ladies disappeared into the house.
“Freeman is the logical suspect,” Ann said, “but as you note, his horse speaks for him, as does his general character. I hate admitting that.”
“While I,” said Thaddeus Freeman, coming up on Ann’s right, “am glad to hear it. Didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but one develops the habit of listening.”
“Or lurking behind oak trees,” I retorted, drawing Ann to a halt. “Do we consider the matter of the hound races resolved?”
Freeman gazed across a green now devoid of all but a few stragglers. “I hate loose ends.”
Dunkeld and Lady Violet joined us, and Noah Purvis ambled over from the direction of the smithy.
“Nice work, madame,” he said. “I still wish we knew who’d drugged those hounds. Rotten thing to do.”
Freeman scowled. “Are you accusing me, Purvis?”
“Nah,” Purvis said. “You are like a hen with one chick when it comes to that idiot horse of yours. You might slap a glove across a fellow’s face, but you wouldna skulk about to tamper with his dog.”
Who would? And what did it say about Freeman—decorated war hero and former magistrate—that his horse was his character witness?
The door to the Fletchers’ cottage opened, and Mrs. Fletcher herself emerged, carrying what had to be a full watering can, based on the way she set it on her front porch.
“Evening, all,” she called, waving. Her shawl flapped in the evening air, which was still far from cool, and a hint of a notion of an idea fluttered through my imagination.
“Good evening, Mrs. Fletcher,” I said. “Would you mind if we joined you?”
She gathered up her shawl. “I’m afraid we haven’t enough chairs, monsieur, though I am sorry to decline such pleasant company.”
“We can assemble in the garden, and all I’m asking for is a quick chat.”
Ann had slipped her arm through mine, while Dunkeld, Violet, and Freeman were looking askance at me. Purvis looked merely curious.
“I’ve been boasting about your garden,” Ann said. “Lady Violet is quite the gardener, and Dunkeld has an interest in botany as well.”
Devotion to a product of fermented barley hardly qualified as a botanical interest.
Mrs. Fletcher’s gaze went to the door of her cottage, and that one glance—resigned and resolute—told me much.
“Very well, around back with the lot of you. I’ll just fetch Marigold, though I don’t know as we have even a tea service for so many.”
“No need for tea,” Violet said with aggressive good cheer. “And I’ve had quite enough lemonade to last me until Christmas.”
Purvis and Freeman brought up the rear, and we were soon standing about on Mrs. Fletcher’s back terrace, all of us pretending to admire her potted herbs and strung beans. I had considered confronting my suspect without an audience, but in present company, the Fletchers would be among friends, did they but know it.
“We cannot offer you all a seat,” Marigold said when she joined us, “but I do want to express my appreciation for what just transpired on the green. The races were getting out of hand. The horse races aren’t as bad, for some reason, but this business with the dogs… it was never a good idea.”
Lady Violet had taken one of the two available chairs, and Mrs. Fletcher the other. That left Ann and Marigold standing and meant the other fellows remained on their feet as well. I didn’t want us looming over Mrs. Fletcher, so I gestured for Ann to take a seat on the low wall edging the terrace. Dunkeld sat upon the stones at her ladyship’s feet, and Purvis perched his immense bulk on the back stoop.
Freeman led Marigold to a potting bench and took the place beside her.
“Whose idea were the hound races?” I asked when the company had found seats.
“I’m not sure,” Marigold replied. “The enclosed hare-coursing on the very green was too much, and Papa persuaded the aldermen to give it up. The hares haven’t a fighting chance in that situation. I begged Papa to leave St. Ivo’s if they were so determined on that cruelty.”
“The owners were unwilling to muzzle their hounds,” Mrs. Fletcher murmured. “We came up with the races as a compromise.”
“We,” I said, “meaning you?”
She looked at her hands, which I subjected to a physician’s discreet perusal. No clear evidence of rheumatism, despite those hands having done a great deal of hard work.
“Thomas was willing to champion the idea,” she said, “but yes, the suggestion was mine.”
“The lending library was your suggestion, too, wasn’t it?” I asked. “The collection is impressive.”
Mrs. Fletcher looked away, in the direction of her glorious beans.
“That collection,” Marigold said, “was far less impressive before Papa died. He willed his books to the lending library. Mama had intended for the village itself to build up the collection, but Papa’s books are still the bulk of the titles.”
Ann was watching me, as were Violet and Dunkeld. Purvis was studying the terrace’s flagstones as if they held the secrets of eternal life, and Freeman was sitting quite close to Marigold.
“We could have used those books,” Mrs. Fletcher said. “Could have sold half of them when Thomas died and donated the other half. The aldermen would not let me sort the collection. They just kindly sent a few stout lads to haul the lot wholesale to the lending library, to save me the trouble. Some of the most valuable titles—the ecclesiastical rarities—never made it to the lending library.”
“The aldermen thanked us,” Marigold said. “We saved them the effort of procuring books, and the whole village has benefited. Some apparently more than others.”
“You saved them the effort of finding a midwife, too, didn’t you?” Ann gently posed that question.
“Mama would never refuse aid to a woman in childbed,” Marigold said, “and we still do what we can when there’s illness or injury.”
“For which,” I added, “you are not compensated.”
Mrs. Fletcher’s gaze went to her daughter. “They know,” she said. “They’ve puzzled it out somehow. I thought I was careful, but then, I thought St. Ivo’s was a lovely little village.”
“Mama, nobody knows anything. I don’t know anything. Perhaps you are tired? The day has been taxing to all of us, and an early bedtime—”
Mrs. Fletcher held up a hand. “Marigold, I love you dearly, but I need not involve you in my schemes. This village doesn’t consider you their responsibility, but they owed me, and I exacted payment as I saw fit.”
Her soft words held a ferocious load of fury, and I knew not how to proceed. I had incidental observations and hunches to go on, no proof.
“They cheated you out of a roof over your heads,” Ann said, “and devised the plan that put you in this cottage, didn’t they?”
“Donnie Vaughn is a great one for saving money,” Mrs. Fletcher said. “Thomas’s contract only required that adequate provision be made for his widow in the event of his death. ‘Adequate provision’ was to steal the use of this cottage from Monsieur St. Sevier and hope he’d never notice.”
“How do you eat?” Ann asked.
“They don’t,” I said. “Not as they should. I noticed that Miss Fletcher’s clothing was sewn for a more robust frame, but I did not see the significance of that detail. No Sunday roasts, no tea tray for company. If Mrs. Fletcher lacks energy, it’s because she’s hungry, not because her advanced years have turned her frail.”
“I have energy enough,” Mrs. Fletcher said. “I am so sick of eggs and potatoes… I could expire of it, though I am far from frail on my good days. All the basil and tarragon in the world can’t make eggs and potatoes other than eggs and potatoes. Ungrateful of me. Grant and Donohue leave the occasional fish or fowl on our back step. Otherwise, we would starve. Those men risk being hanged as poachers to do us a bit of kindness, and yet, it’s Vaughn and Dreyfuss strutting about in the churchyard on Sunday.”
“And without your good offices, the poorest children would die aborning,” Ann said.
“And your good offices,” Marigold murmured. “The Purvises try to keep us in butter, and Herr Rutherford pays me to sweep and dust the shop so Trudy has a few less chores to attend to, but we haven’t much coin.”
“We have no coin,” Mrs. Fletcher retorted. “Marigold refuses to beg, and I refuse to starve. Does that make me a criminal?”
Freeman, the former magistrate, remained silent, though Ann spoke up.
“You drugged the hounds, ma’am. Monsieur says coffee can kill a dog, and I’m sure Dervid Grant would rather have Lionheart trotting at his side than any amount of winnings stashed beneath the mattress.”
How did Ann know that? She was speaking from certainty, not hunches and guesswork.
“I’m careful,” Mrs. Fletcher said, “and I do have an eye for a healthy hound. I watch for who has natural speed, and I let that beast gain a reputation as the favorite, then I tilt the odds just the least little bit and let it be known in certain quarters that the favorite is due to falter. I’m not always right, but my system has worked well enough to keep us from the poorhouse and see a few deserving others gain some coin.”
“And that,” Noah Purvis said, “is why Elizabeth Bellamy sashays up to me in a quiet moment and asks me to place a wee bet for her. I do it, but I feel as guilty as if I’d kissed the girl beneath the maypole.”
“Herr Rutherford does it too,” Ann said. “Which is why your Ava is occasionally deep in conversation with him and then tells you she was ordering thread or ribbon that never shows up.”
The arrangement with accommodating gentlemen also explained why Elizabeth had warned Ann off with a passing allegation of shoplifting.
Purvis’s dark brows drew down, then his expression shifted to a fond smile. “Avie and I struggle, with all those mouths to feed, and our lot has bottomless appetites too. They get that from their mother. My Ava is clever, and she knows I dislike the races. I’m not too keen on Elizabeth Bellamy either—a nervous filly, that one—but I feel sorry for the lass.”
Freeman asked his first question. “Why? She’s comely, she has family, she’s in good health.”
I could feel the ladies collectively wanting to cosh the squire for his brilliance.
“Elizabeth Bellamy,” said Mrs. Fletcher, “is the only reason her family still owns any property. I taught her how to keep the books, and she took control of the family ledgers before she was out of the schoolroom. Her father is an idiot, her mother a hypochondriac. One brother is a fribble and the other hasn’t bothered to learn how to manage land. Elizabeth has saved that family, and you can quibble with her means, but not her results.”
“And for her efforts,” Ann said, “she is probably begrudged a pittance in pin money which Nigel instructs her not to fritter away on peppermint sweets.”
“Elizabeth is the Bellamys’ unpaid clerk, secretary, house steward, and man of business,” Marigold said, “and I am not paid to teach in the dame school. I—who had a more thorough education than any man in this village save Vicar himself—am permitted to teach there, to give me something to do, you see. Spinsters should rejoice at any chance to redeem themselves from lives of meaningless isolation.”
“Now, Marigold,” Mrs. Fletcher said, though she sounded more proud than reproving.
“Trudy Rutherford doesn’t even have pin money,” Marigold went on. “Not in the sense of having her own money to spend. She is in that shop at all hours, the children underfoot, the customers pestering her at every moment, while Dear Johann stands about on the steps all day, smiling at nothing. Then he takes a notion to look over the books and decides that Trudy isn’t to spend so much on hair ribbons for their daughters. His great solution is to put the girls’ hair into one braid rather than two, because he has never tried to sleep on a single lumpy braid.”
“He’s fussing over hair ribbons?” Ann said.
“The fussing isn’t the worst of it,” Mrs. Fletcher retorted. “The true insult is when he comes up with one dunderheaded idea and thinks himself a genius, while ignoring the fact that his shop would fail without his wife’s hard work and common sense. The poor woman is so tired she stumbled into the smokehouse door and got that dreadful black eye.”
And Trudy had come to Mrs. Fletcher for aid rather than allow me to treat the wound, probably in part because Mrs. Fletcher did not charge for her services.
“Without Ava to keep the books,” Noah said, “my forge would fail. She’s telling me to get spectacles, and she’s right. You spend years looking into the flames in a darkened smithy, and your eyes eventually pay the price. I could no longer see to keep the ledgers even if I knew how. But as for pin money… I make the coin, and it disappears. Ava never complains outright, but… there’s a strain, and the lads just keep growing and growing.”
Noah was silent for a moment, staring hard at the flagstones, then he aimed a look at Mrs. Fletcher. “You told Ava when to bet and how, didn’t you?”
Marigold looked as if she wanted to put a hand over her mother’s mouth, but Freeman had at some point taken hold of that hand.
“I might have hinted,” Mrs. Fletcher said. “I told Marigold how to bet, and she spread the word in certain quarters, once she realized how good I was at picking winners. Most weeks, I said nothing, but several times in the course of a summer, I’d make an informal prediction.”
Freeman looked as if he was puzzling out a cipher. “You rigged the races and shared the winnings with those like yourself who have not been compensated for their labors? The other ladies, the servants, the poorest families.”
Mrs. Fletcher adjusted her shawl and said nothing.
“Dervid Grant works himself to flinders,” Marigold said. “Arden Donohue’s skills with a fishing line got us through the winter. We owe those men, and Lionheart is a fine specimen. I asked Mama if she thought there was any chance Lionheart might win a race, but I never… Mama?”
I did not want Mrs. Fletcher admitting to criminal activity, and yet, she had to know she’d given herself away as the mastermind drugging the dogs.
“The watering you do,” I said. “The cottage, the livery, the smithy… This end of the green blooms with blue salvia, and you take care of it.”
“Salvia’s not much work, once you plant it. A little weeding—Marigold sees to that, and the Purvis boys help. The livery provides the fertilizer.”
Some of which doubtless ended up in this lovely back garden. “But this late in summer, the flowers need water, and water weighs about eight pounds per gallon.”
Freeman must have caught my drift, because he picked up a watering can near the bench he shared with Marigold.
“A can that holds five gallons,” I went on, “weighs about two and a half stone, and you are supposedly a frail old woman afflicted with rheumatism.”
“She never fills the watering can to the brim,” Marigold said. “Half empty, the can wouldn’t weigh that much.”
“She fills it nearly full,” Noah said, “and totes it around as easily as some women carry a parasol. I know how a sore back or injured hand lays me low from time to time, and when I’m afflicted, I cannot pick up a hammer without feeling it.”
“The stick isn’t for show,” Mrs. Fletcher said, brandishing her cane. “When I overdo, my back acts up too. The Harbuckle’s helps then, as does bedrest.”
But hauling water up and down the lane, tending to the salvia, and discreetly pouring a flask of coffee over a stall’s half door into a water bowl had not overly taxed Mrs. Fletcher’s energies. The shawl obscured much, as did the knack of being invisible. The shawl had also obscured…
The Harbuckle’s. Lady Charlotte had been dosed with Harbuckle’s Heavenly Helper, but how to prove that?
I was saved that trouble by my own dear wife.
“Harbuckle’s,” Ann said, “helps rig a race, too, doesn’t it? A full-size hound probably weighs a little less than half what you do, so the dosing and timing weren’t difficult.”
Mrs. Fletcher seemed to shrink in on herself, and she again took refuge in silence.
“You need not admit anything,” Ann said. “I smelled the elixir in Lady Charlotte’s water bowl, and Frau Rutherford said she stocks it only for you. The game is up, and I commend you for running it well and generously, but the issue remains that you and Marigold need to eat, and you refuse to beg. More to the point,” Ann said, looking at me, “those should not be your only alternatives.”
Ann expected me to find a solution to the Fletchers’ situation, but keeping them fed and housed was only half an answer. The larger issue was a community in bad economic spirits. The malaise had to do with money, power, and accountability for both, and I—a product of revolutionary France—was the least likely person to come up with an effective treatment for an English village.
But Ann, along with the rest of the assemblage, apparently expected me to, and for Ann, I would try.
“I can make Donohue and Grant my gamekeepers,” I said, “and procure the requisite certificates such that they will ensure nobody is in want of a partridge or hare for the stewpot.”
“Donnie Vaughn won’t like that,” Marigold said—with some relish.
“Donnie Vaughn,” Freeman muttered, “should have been arrested for disturbing the king’s peace, inciting a riot, and attempting murder.”
“He’s an alderman,” Mrs. Fletcher retorted. “Nigel is new to the magistrate’s post, and Vicar is old and looking to retire. Besides, the second alderman is Nigel’s dear papa, and a more spineless bag of wind you never did meet.”
And the third alderman was Dreyfuss, Vaughn’s nearest neighbor and friend.
“How does one become an alderman?” Ann asked. “And how is an alderman unseated?”
“Has to do with the council,” Purvis replied. “I’m supposed to be a member of the village council, but it doesn’t do much other than meet for a drink once a year. We seem to elect the same aldermen over and over.”
To my French soul, this village-rule-by-free-drinks arrangement was repugnant in the extreme, though I knew it to be a regular feature of rural English life. A man standing for the hustings was expected to spend great sums entertaining the voters in his district, such that many a fellow was inebriated by the time he cast his ballot, which he did publicly.
“The council,” said Freeman, “is anybody who qualifies to vote in general elections, meaning the squires with land producing a decent income, and the merchants who qualify under St. Ivo’s scot-and-lot rules.”
“The male merchants,” Mrs. Fletcher muttered. “Maybelle Pringle has been managing her millinery since Moses came down from the mount, and she pays the borough levies, but she is not on the council.”
“I’ve thought about selling our herbs,” Marigold said, “but a vicar’s daughter is a lady. A woman who peddles tisanes is…”
“Not begging,” Mrs. Fletcher said. “Or starving.” A long look passed between mother and daughter. An herbwoman’s skill might well save lives and ease suffering—and earn her a living—but she would never be considered a lady.
What was the benefit of being a lady if the primary privilege associated with genteel birth was desperation? “The council chooses the aldermen?” I asked.
“Aye,” Purvis replied, “as best I recall, from among its own numbers. Those numbers have dwindled in recent years as families move to Town or sell up and emigrate. Dreyfuss, Vaughn, and old Mr. Bellamy run without opposition.”
“Then it’s time for some new blood,” I observed. “You, Noah Purvis, would make a fine alderman. Rutherford might be willing to serve, and Freeman will be an asset to any organization claiming his support. Anderson seems to be a decent fellow, and I daresay Grant and Donohue have a few ideas about how to manage matters in this village.”
“They don’t own land,” Purvis retorted. “You can buy them gamekeeper’s certificates, and they’ll make all manner of new friends when they have legal game to hand out, but that won’t qualify them for the council.”
Ann grasped my scheme before the others did. “They will own land,” she said, bestowing a luminous smile upon me. “Beautiful wooded acres. If they sell the deadfall in Town as firewood, that alone will bring in far more than the forty shillings that separates a voter from his poorer neighbor.”
“Clever,” Dunkeld muttered. “Land is land, and the rules are the rules.”
Lady Violet smacked his arm. “It’s brilliant. Unlike St. Sevier, who wants only to practice medicine, those families will husband their acres conscientiously. I daresay the new aldermen ought to pass an ordinance making cruelty to a hound a felony offense.”
Noah Purvis shook his head. “A misdemeanor carrying a heavy fine and resulting in surrender of the victim. My boys would love a dog or two to play with.”
The discussion continued, ranging from potential changes to St. Ivo’s village ordinances, to what activities might replace the hound races as a means of raising municipal money, but my interest lay elsewhere. St. Ivo’s would muddle on, I hoped with fewer symptoms of greed and mismanagement, and that was good.
I was more concerned with how Ann and I would muddle on. She seemed to sense that my contributions to the discussion were at an end and rose when Freeman had concluded an oration about meeting minutes and agendas.
“The day has been long,” she said, “and challenging. Monsieur, if you would please see me and our guests back to Belle Terre, I’d appreciate it.”
The appropriate rounds of bowing and curtseying followed, and Marigold Fletcher surprised me with a stout hug. The woman needed some meat on her bones, but she lacked nothing in the fierceness department. Perhaps Freeman might benefit from that fierceness, if he played his cards right.
We four bundled into the coach, and I realized that sitting across from Violet rather than beside her felt right. My place was beside Ann—and hers beside me, I hoped.
“That was brilliant,” Violet said, “getting the damned races shut down without identifying a culprit. And that business with the watering can and the various drugs... I would never have puzzled it out.”
“No,” Dunkeld said, “you would not have, but you would have badgered St. Sevier until his medical mind and madame’s astute nose got to the bottom of the puzzle. I have some ideas about how you might parcel out those wooded lots.”
His lordship blathered on, probably out of kindness. I was weary in body and soul and not up to making conversation. Dunkeld managed to hold forth most of the way back to Belle Terre, though he might as well have been speaking in ancient Etruscan for all I grasped of his wisdom.
I was aware of only my wife, sitting beside me. Ann had faced her worst fear—a lot of half-inebriated men intent on violence—and bent the lot of them to her will. My presence in that situation had fortified her.
Was she up to the challenge of taking me into her bed? I yearned to be intimate with her, to regain my status as lover in addition to husband. Even more, I longed for her trust and respect. Those treasures were worth working for and waiting for, though I hoped that on this odd, difficult day, I had made some progress toward my goals.
“Let’s have an informal supper on the terrace,” Ann said. “The evening is mild, the view of the woods peaceful, and none of us is inclined to change into formal attire. Dunkeld, you have reached your quota for the day of maundering on about trees and coppicing and whatnot. We will discuss baby names over our meal and whether Hugh ought to build a surgery on the green, with a space for Miss Fletcher to set up an herbal shop.”
We acceded to Ann’s management, gratefully in my case. Ann went off to confer with
Cook, Violet repaired to her room to freshen up, and I was left with Dunkeld’s brooding company over a predinner glass of sherry in the library.
“I’ve been thinking,” Dunkeld said, “about your lady wife.”
That made two of us. “My Ann is formidable, but she frightened me half to death today.”
“Violet was itching to wade into the affray as well. I half suspected she shooed me away from the vicarage so she could bring a rearguard action on her own.”
“But her ladyship is sensible, and thus she remained safely on the porch. She will marry you, Dunkeld.”
His lordship’s smile was sweet and a little befuddled. “Do ye promise?”
“She lacks confidence. I suspect once she’s past the six months’ mark, some of her old ghosts will fade. A child can survive birth at seven months, though that’s certainly not ideal.”
“Old ghosts are the very devil,” Dunkeld said, downing his drink. “They leap from the shadows just when you think you’ve put them to rest.”
With his usual blend of delicacy and deliberation, Dunkeld was working up to something. I sipped my drink, though strong spirits in my present condition were ill-advised. I was unaccountably weary and, without Ann in sight, also restless.
“Are you haunted by old ghosts?” I asked, simply to be polite.
“I’m Scottish. Ghosts are part of it, but I’m thinking more of your Ann.”
“Out with it, Dunkeld.”
“Violet says Ann could not have run from you in Spain.”
I was in no mood to hear her ladyship’s assessment of my marital past. “Ann slipped away, carrying little more than an extra cloak, a canteen, and spare stockings.” She had taken only half our supply of coins, and I—greetings, ghosts—had not given chase.
“Violet is right. Ann loves you,” Dunkeld said with all the considerable certainty of which he was capable. “Ann loves you with the sort of… Violet doesn’t look at me the way Ann looks at you. The only reason I don’t kill you is because I never saw Violet looking at you the way Ann does.”
“Au nom de Dieu, de quoi—” I stopped and tried again, though Dunkeld could manage quite well in French. “In the name of God, what are you going on about?”
“Motive,” Dunkeld said softly. “The ladies were right to focus on motive. Violet claims that Ann’s motive was not to get away from you—it couldn’t have been. Ann loved you then, she loves you now. One can hardly grasp two intelligent women both committing such folly where you are concerned. I comfort myself with the notion that Violet was recovering from a bad marriage, and you were a sensible mount after she’d taken a hard toss.”
My tired mind did not have the strength to grapple with Dunkeld’s theories, but my heart… My lonely, hopeful heart found something in his words and Violet’s theories. Ann was reluctant to take me to her bed, which was understandable after years of separation.
But in Spain, we’d rubbed along quite well. Our marriage had been a growing source of wonder and gratitude to me. I had had every indication that my wife was increasingly fond of me, and my own sentiments had qualified as smitten. Not merely appreciative or cordial… smitten.
I would have died to protect Ann in the village, and I would have died to protect her in Spain.
A combination of dread and relief washed over me. What had Ann done to protect me?
Motive, Dunkeld had said. Focus on the motive, as Violet so easily did. I passed Dunkeld my drink. “Don’t wait supper on us. Madame and I have matters to discuss.”
“Listen more than you talk,” he called after me. “My sister told me that, though it’s a precept Clemmie honors in the breach.”
I left him looking smug as he sipped my drink. Perhaps for Violet I had been a sensible mount—spare me equestrian analogies in matters of the heart—but for my wife, I wanted to be much more, and for more than the space of a few pleasant hacks.
I found Ann asleep beneath the covers of the vast bed she’d shared with me only once before. I peeled out of my clothing, washed what needed washing, and used her toothbrush and toothpowder. Then I joined my wife beneath the covers, took her in my arms, and prayed for inspiration.