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Authors: Grace Burrowes
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dote on his sisters—on most of his sisters.
Lady Nita glanced back in the direction of the cottage, which now boasted a cheery plume of smoke from the chimney, a load of chopped wood on the porch, and a deal of laundry laid over the bushes and porch railings in hopes it would dry rather than freeze.
“I have no use for marriage,” Lady Nita said. “If I hadn’t attended Annie’s birth, she’d likely have died. Addy was decent once, and she does not cope well with her fall from grace. Women in such circumstances can give up—”
She fell silent as the wind gusted, the breeze rewrapping the tail of her ladyship’s scarf so the wool covered her mouth.
The horses plodded along the frozen lane while Tremaine considered Lady Nita’s point: an evening she might have spent embroidering by a cozy fire was instead spent seeing that a baby arrived safely into the world. She was justifiably proud of that, and yet she was also troubled.
“You hope,” Tremaine said, “that by attending the birth, you did the child a service, rather than a disservice, for life in that cottage is precarious indeed.”
Lady Nita’s plow horse shuffled onward, head down, gait weary—for the horse, too, had been out at all hours in bad weather. As the wind continued to whip through the bare branches of the hedgerows, tiny flakes of snow came with it.
Any shepherd boy knew the smaller the snowflakes the more likely the weather would turn nasty in earnest.
“Here is the rest of the syllogism,” Tremaine said, because Lady Nita’s family had apparently neglected to say these words to her. “Babies will be born and babies will die, and it’s the duty of those amply blessed to aid those in precarious circumstances. However, because babies do die, we all occasionally need a pretty waltz and a pleasant evening in good company. Martyrs have many admirers but few friends, Lady Nita, and worst of all, they never have any fun.”
On the Continent, where decades of war had laid waste to much that was good, sweet, and dear, people seemed to grasp this. Life was for living, for rejoicing in, not for suffering through. In the Highlands, where thrift had become a cultural fixture, the same rejoicing was brewed into the very whiskey and song that punctuated every celebration.
Lady Nita swiped at her cheek, as if a stray snowflake might have smacked into her, then she did it again on the other cheek.
“I love to waltz,” she said, gaze on the horse’s coarse mane. “I love to sing, and I like nothing better than to join my sisters for great silliness over cards, until we’re laughing so hard we’re in tears. Nicholas would take even that from me to see me married to some viscount or lordling.”
She tapped her whip against the horse’s quarters and sent him into a businesslike canter.
Tremaine followed several yards behind and grappled with a realization. His objective was no longer strictly a profitable transaction with Lord Bellefonte, for where Lady Nita was concerned, a point had to be made about life and her entitlement to some of its joy.
Then too, a woman constantly in the company of the ill and impoverished was a woman at risk for illness herself, of the body or of the spirit. Lady Nita’s brothers were remiss in not protecting her from those harms, though Tremaine lacked any authority to correct their oversights.
And yet he could not stand idly by while Nita Haddonfield martyred herself on an altar of guilt and obligation. He was bound for Germany at week’s end if Bellefonte would not offer terms for the sheep, but in the remaining two days, the choice of weapon belonged to Tremaine:
Waltzing, singing, or cards.
Or perhaps all three.
* * *
“Damn fookin’ cranky besom yowe! Git ye doon the now!”
Kinser’s affectionate profanity seemed to impress the wayward ewe—“yowe”—not one bit. She’d leaped up onto the stone wall marking the boundaries of the pasture, and considered freedom with what George took for
Lady Nita glanced back in the direction of the cottage, which now boasted a cheery plume of smoke from the chimney, a load of chopped wood on the porch, and a deal of laundry laid over the bushes and porch railings in hopes it would dry rather than freeze.
“I have no use for marriage,” Lady Nita said. “If I hadn’t attended Annie’s birth, she’d likely have died. Addy was decent once, and she does not cope well with her fall from grace. Women in such circumstances can give up—”
She fell silent as the wind gusted, the breeze rewrapping the tail of her ladyship’s scarf so the wool covered her mouth.
The horses plodded along the frozen lane while Tremaine considered Lady Nita’s point: an evening she might have spent embroidering by a cozy fire was instead spent seeing that a baby arrived safely into the world. She was justifiably proud of that, and yet she was also troubled.
“You hope,” Tremaine said, “that by attending the birth, you did the child a service, rather than a disservice, for life in that cottage is precarious indeed.”
Lady Nita’s plow horse shuffled onward, head down, gait weary—for the horse, too, had been out at all hours in bad weather. As the wind continued to whip through the bare branches of the hedgerows, tiny flakes of snow came with it.
Any shepherd boy knew the smaller the snowflakes the more likely the weather would turn nasty in earnest.
“Here is the rest of the syllogism,” Tremaine said, because Lady Nita’s family had apparently neglected to say these words to her. “Babies will be born and babies will die, and it’s the duty of those amply blessed to aid those in precarious circumstances. However, because babies do die, we all occasionally need a pretty waltz and a pleasant evening in good company. Martyrs have many admirers but few friends, Lady Nita, and worst of all, they never have any fun.”
On the Continent, where decades of war had laid waste to much that was good, sweet, and dear, people seemed to grasp this. Life was for living, for rejoicing in, not for suffering through. In the Highlands, where thrift had become a cultural fixture, the same rejoicing was brewed into the very whiskey and song that punctuated every celebration.
Lady Nita swiped at her cheek, as if a stray snowflake might have smacked into her, then she did it again on the other cheek.
“I love to waltz,” she said, gaze on the horse’s coarse mane. “I love to sing, and I like nothing better than to join my sisters for great silliness over cards, until we’re laughing so hard we’re in tears. Nicholas would take even that from me to see me married to some viscount or lordling.”
She tapped her whip against the horse’s quarters and sent him into a businesslike canter.
Tremaine followed several yards behind and grappled with a realization. His objective was no longer strictly a profitable transaction with Lord Bellefonte, for where Lady Nita was concerned, a point had to be made about life and her entitlement to some of its joy.
Then too, a woman constantly in the company of the ill and impoverished was a woman at risk for illness herself, of the body or of the spirit. Lady Nita’s brothers were remiss in not protecting her from those harms, though Tremaine lacked any authority to correct their oversights.
And yet he could not stand idly by while Nita Haddonfield martyred herself on an altar of guilt and obligation. He was bound for Germany at week’s end if Bellefonte would not offer terms for the sheep, but in the remaining two days, the choice of weapon belonged to Tremaine:
Waltzing, singing, or cards.
Or perhaps all three.
* * *
“Damn fookin’ cranky besom yowe! Git ye doon the now!”
Kinser’s affectionate profanity seemed to impress the wayward ewe—“yowe”—not one bit. She’d leaped up onto the stone wall marking the boundaries of the pasture, and considered freedom with what George took for
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