South Landers: Wenna Part 8

Chapter 7.

When she'd been nothing but a lodger, Wenna had a.s.sumed she couldn't change anything in Devon's bedroom. Now a wife who shared his bed, she thought she could freshen up the area.

First she took down the velvet curtains and whacked them on the clothesline outside until the nap stood up again. The multi-paned window looked almost gracious when she replaced the revitalized fabric. Pleased with herself, she s.h.i.+fted the washstand to catch the morning light beneath the window. This left more s.p.a.ce at the end of the bed, and more s.p.a.ce for her to get to work polis.h.i.+ng the enormous bed, starting at the foot.

As her rag moved over the ornate wooden embossing, she found carved figures among the leaves and flowers, persons who appeared to be...she peered closer and stared. Her mouth went dry as she gaped at the appalling sight of bodies writhing into unlikely positions with unlikely beings. Her husband slept in a bed lewd enough to take the place of pride in a brothel. Short of breath, she examined each exaggerated phallus and every s.e.xual depravity known to man, woman, or beast.

By the time she'd been reluctantly enlightened, the carvings gleamed a golden red and the silver travelling clock in Devon's study chimed the hour of ten. A trifle late, she delivered the morning mugs of tea to the office, afraid her cheeks still held the warmth of t.i.tillation.

Now free until three o'clock, she patted her neat chignon, brushed down her black gown, straightened her collar and cuffs, and jammed on her elderly hat. Now or never.

a.s.suming confidence with a ramrod spine, an elevated chin, and a determined smile, she put her drawings into her cloth bag and left for the hat shop. As luck would have it, the only customer left as she arrived on the doorstep. The bell jangled as she walked in, alerting Mrs. Busby, the middle-aged proprietor of Madame Fleur's hat shop, to her presence.

"Good morning, Miss Chenoweth." The woman's professional smile spread across her well-worn, comfortably plump face. Like Wenna, she wore black on her substantial frame, but for another reason entirely. When fitting hats on ladies sitting in front of a mirror, she needed to be the background for the hat and not let her gown distract from the color or design she hoped to sell. "Another order for Mrs. Brook?"

"Not today, Mrs. Busby. I have an idea I'd like to discuss with you, if I may?"

"Of course you may. Your ideas in the past have been good for my business, which is why Mrs. Brook has always had a special price from me."

Wenna rested her bag on the nearest seat, a red padded velvet with a carved wooden back. "Mrs. Brook brought you extra customers because her hats looked so stylish with her hairstyles. As you know, I designed her hairstyles using the latest pictures from France. These days, the ladies like large, complicated hairdos. This means the hats need to be small to set them off."

"And your idea is?" Mrs. Busby raised her thin black eyebrows.

"I've left Mrs. Brook and branched out on my own now, Mrs. Busby, and I have a few drawings I would like to show you." Wenna set her four pages across the countertop where Mrs. Busby usually made out her accounts. "I have depicted various hat shapes and the hairstyles that look best with them. When ladies try on hats, often they buy the first one that fits their hairstyle. This might not be the best in a fas.h.i.+on sense, or to suit the occasion, or even to suit your pocket. If the ladies had a hair stylist, perhaps in the back of your establishment, hair could be designed to suit any hat. I think this might be good for both of us." With a certain amount of trepidation, she watched the milliner's face.

Mrs. Busby's tongue rolled over her teeth while she thought. "You would be the hairstylist?"

"I can work from half past ten until half past two every day. Today, without charge, I'll style the hair of any lady who would like to see the effect." Wenna held her breath.

"Would you like a small gla.s.s of sherry, Miss Chenoweth, while we discuss this?"

Wenna left at half past two wearing a cream fabric pillbox decorated with black leaves-bought for a discounted price. She'd styled five heads, sold ten hats, and managed to remain "Miss Chenoweth" the whole time. Tomorrow, she would earn six pence per head. Smiling, she paused on the street to admire the cut flowers in buckets for sale outside the toolmaker's establishment. A posy of pink roses absorbed her for a moment. Even from some feet away, the heady fragrance perfumed the surrounding air. Knowing she shouldn't buy frivolities with her meager funds, she turned away.

"Lovely, ain't they?"

She smiled at Mr. Snow, the tavern owner. "I love roses. I love the delicate perfume."

"A newly wed, pretty young woman should have some. Let me buy you a bunch."

She blushed. "Thank you. No."

"I'm an old and ugly man. Your husband won't say a thing." Mr. Snow had an expression of little-boy mischief on his face and a definite twinkle in his round brown eyes.

She laughed. "What a shame. I'd love him to be wildly jealous."

"Done, then." He pushed his hand into his trouser pocket, searching for tuppence.

"You're very generous, Mr. Snow, but I don't have a vase. I couldn't take something so lovely and watch it die."

"Reckon I could find a spare pickle jar or two from The Pig and Whistle, if you think they would be good enough to hold your flowers."

"I think they would be perfect. Thank you, Mr. Snow, for your practical suggestion." She watched him choose the prettiest bunch. As he presented her with the posy, she said, "I see they're digging up the road in front of your hotel."

"Gas pipes," he said in a morose tone. "Street lightin' is all very well, but not when we keep havin' problems with the pipes. Twice they've changed my nearest, and twice they've dug up the road. Needs to be finished before winter, or we'll have bogs in the street the way we did last year. I'll walk back with you."

She walked beside him through the crowded street. Wagons trundled by, and various men greeted Mr. Snow, staring at her. Previously, she'd been glanced at and dismissed. Selling her idea had added a lift to her confidence. She would need this tomorrow, when she charged money for her services. "I've heard that we'll all have gas lighting in our houses within a few years."

"I wouldn't be surprised. Progress keeps creepin' up on us. No more'n twenty years ago, this street was mostly tents, and look at it now."

"So much has been done in such a short time." She gazed around, focusing on the new buildings, nothing more than thirty years old, and realized for the first time that she saw history in the making.

"Mr. Snow!" Maisie, the shapely barmaid from The Pig and Whistle, pulled to a breathless halt on the footpath in front of them, glancing at Wenna's hat before turning to Mr. Snow. "I'm supposed to tell you the cook's drunk and he's throwing his knives all over the kitchen."

With a quaint bow from the waist, Mr. Snow said, "Excuse me, Mrs. Courtney, but I must deal with the emergency. Maisie'll come over later with them pickle jars."

The couple hurried off to deal with the problem while Wenna strolled home. She sat the blooms in a basin until ten minutes later, when Maisie came to the door with two big jars. "I was noticing your hair before, Mrs. Courtney, and I was wondering where you had it done."

"I do my hair myself, Maisie."

"Fancy that." Maisie's blue eyes shaded with disappointment.

"I can do yours, too, if you like, when you have the time, and teach you how to do it yourself," Wenna said, a.s.sessing the barmaid's straight brown hair.

"Fancy that!" Maisie's face lit up. "Soon as I finish serving the lunches, I'll have time."

"Well, I'll see you in half an hour?"

An hour later, after her hair had been meticulously styled with braiding that started at the top of her head and ended at her nape where the plaits crossed and twisted into a bun, Maisie agreed to tell the hotel's customers that she had her hair done by a Miss Chenoweth who had set up in Busby's hat shop. Visible to at least twenty women per day, she would be a great advertis.e.m.e.nt for Wenna.

Wenna made the afternoon tea, sighing with unutterable boredom, and then settled into the study to sew the new bodice for her russet skirt.

Dev pulled up the creaking hired wagon containing his second load of bricks. He'd delivered his first early this morning. This would be his last. As the least skilled of the builders, Dev had been the natural candidate for the job.

The mason, Jim, a short, st.u.r.dy, gray-haired man about fifty years old, came over and stood near the tray. "Just in time. The lads have finished the foundations." He indicated his four grinning muscle-bound sons, dressed like him in dusty s.h.i.+rts and trousers, with brightly colored handkerchiefs tied around their necks to catch the sweat.

Four months ago, Dev had begun building in the foothills. He had a grand plan, but had started with a compact house in which he, or the next owner, could live while the later building took shape. He had named this "The Gatehouse" in his mind. During the first month, he'd had an underground tank excavated to make sure of the water supply. His laborers had dug the room-sized hole, lined the area with stone and mortar, and brick-vaulted the top. Gutters, yet to be bricked into the soil, would guide the run-off from the rains toward his tank.

Dev had planned this first design like most settlers' cottages, a central pa.s.sage with two rooms either side, and a kitchen, a laundry, and a bathroom built at the back. The days of having a separate building for these last rooms had pa.s.sed, fire not being as prevalent in the stone-built houses as in the old wattle and daub.

He knew Wenna was curious about what he did all day, but since she thought land was bought to be sold, she would see him as a fool to be building a house. Perhaps he was a fool when he would be leaving within the year, but he had been a.s.sured the main construction could be completed by then-the walls, the floors, and the roof. Since he worked as his own laborer, too, the job should be done sooner, and he would see something of himself left behind.

"I'll unload, and you'll have your bricks in a trice." He leaped down from the flatbed and began hefting his load into piles, helped by two of the so-called lads. His land had been cleared of the native scrub, but he'd kept a few tall she-oaks for the shading of his houses. As he worked up a sweat, he thought about living in this beautiful stark country and being his own man. A dream-no more. As the heir to his father's t.i.tle and estates, he was expected back in Cornwall to do his duty, some of which he had pre-empted by marrying. Producing an heir, well, that would happen soon enough.

During the heat of the day, the walls had arisen as he watched, and had heightened as he learned how to mix the lime mortar. He'd never been another man's laborer, but he enjoyed being his own, seeing his sweat pour into a substantial building.

Satisfyingly worn out after helping build another outside wall, he drove the flatbed wagon back to Adelaide, a little more than two miles away. The horses plodded, swis.h.i.+ng away the flies and the dust, while he resigned himself to another night of frustration.

Wenna-lovely, maddening, obstinate Wenna-wasn't ready to welcome him between her legs yet. Perhaps she looked like Jenny, but the beautiful, willing dairymaid hadn't needed to be readied. The first time she'd pa.s.sed him a cup of fresh sweet milk and offered her wholesome smile, he'd wanted her. The second time, he'd realized he could have her, but he resisted temptation.

Although she was older than he, in her twenties, she was a maid, and gentlemen didn't dally with maids. Instead, dry-mouthed, he noted how brightly the sun shone on her red hair and how patiently she listened to his gauche ramblings. Somehow, talking to her while she squirted the milk into the buckets absorbed his emptiness, left him feeling at peace, less frustrated with his disciplined life.

He'd shamefacedly told Jenny's back that his brothers said he looked exactly like a past tutor of theirs, blonde and lanky, and she understood the implication. She sc.r.a.ped out her milking stool, arose, and walked into his arms, her fingers pus.h.i.+ng his hair out of his eyes.

"You're beautiful," she said. "You look like a picture in a storybook, like a prince. Your brothers-they're jealous." She raised her soft mouth to his.

"I love you," he whispered.

In silence, she stroked his hair, pa.s.sing her fingers through, sifting. Unmanly tears filled his eyes. His mother had used the same soothing touch when he'd gone to her with a problem.

"Shh," Jenny said as she rocked him. "I feel love for you, too, and I can see that you do need it."

She unlaced her bodice. When she put his hand on her soft breast, he forgot about his gentle, golden-haired mother who had died ten years before. The fresh scent of Jenny's skin, the freckled white of her breast and the aching hardness between his legs took over from memories of the distant past. With heat spreading throughout his body, he kissed her.

Her fingers tangled in his hair. "I am yours for the asking."

"I can't marry until I'm twenty-one. We'll have to wait."

Jenny ran a thumb across his cheek. "We can never marry, but I do so want you." She drew him farther into the milking shed and, frantic with l.u.s.t and longing, he took her the first time in the hayloft. Later, he held her in his arms, worrying that he might have given her a baby.

"Hush," she said. "We will make sure you don't." And she taught him how to protect her.

Over the following months, he knew he wanted to love and protect her for the rest of his life. He needed only two years to turn twenty-one, and then he could marry without his father's sanction.

However, his father heard about Jenny and, without consulting his powerless youngest son, found a husband for her, a local farmer. He dealt with Dev by enrolling him at Cambridge. Two years wasted studying law and he was pushed off to France to learn self-sufficiency, or so his father said. The banished cuckoo in the nest, Dev learned as much about viticulture as he could. When stories of the new land Terra Australis began to filter through to him, he s.n.a.t.c.hed up the position of the secretary to the next governor of South Australia, likely offered because of his mother's connection to the governor's wife. A t.i.tle would never be his, and a new start would suit him. He held this position until the governor finished his term.

In the meantime, his unhappily married older brother, William, Viscount Dellacourt, died. John, the second in line for the t.i.tle, was recalled from his base in India, but as a colonel in the British army, he had responsibilities. Word arrived that he'd been killed in a skirmish, and Dev succeeded to the unwanted third-hand t.i.tle of Viscount Dellacourt, heir to the twelfth Earl of Marchester and all his properties. His laugh when he read the notification sounded bitter even to him.

The wagon turned onto King William Street, and Dev dropped off his rig at the Saddler's Arms, where he'd hired the horses. He walked back to his lodging, hot, sweaty, and dirty, but elated. As he opened the door into the foyer, the office door squeaked open.

"I picked up your mail with Mr. Finn's when I went to the post office," young Ernie said, grinning and waving a bundle of papers.

"Good lad." Dev accepted his mail and glanced through. The Earl of Marchester, his father, dutifully enclosed a report of estate matters three monthly. Not, however, this month.

Wenna heard feet pounding on the treads.

Devon called out, "Good evening," as he pa.s.sed the sitting room. "The bedroom looks different," he said, returning to the doorway after he had washed and changed.

"A small amount of cleaning and a slight rearrangement of furniture does wonders for the look of a room. You live your life in a shambles."

She glanced up at him. He wore a dark suit, and he'd brushed his hair into gleaming corn-silk softness.

"I'm a rag of a man who lives his life in a shambles, am I?" A slight smile softened his face. "You must have seen something in me, or you wouldn't have married me." His expression one of challenge, he took her sewing from her lap, placed the fabric on the side table, and drew her to her feet. Staring straight into her eyes, he slid his hands onto her hips and set his body right up against hers.

Her wretched heart gave an excited leap. "I married you because I want to go to Cornwall," she said, her tone regrettably uncertain.

"And in return, what did you promise? If you can't remember, I'll give you a small hint." His hands spanned her waist, and he gave her a brief kiss. His gaze met hers, and his eyebrows lifted to a query.

She put one hand behind his neck and, unable to suppress a smile, drew his mouth down to hers. Darned man. His soft lips fastened on hers with just the hint of his tongue teasing across. She wouldn't open to him because she disliked that disgusting probing, but at the light touch of his tongue on hers, she stood on tiptoes, digging her fingers hard into his shoulders. His arms tightened around her. The kiss deepened, and her whole body heated.

Last night she had been unable to stop caressing his hard, silky-smooth part, and she'd wallowed in the wickedness of his encouragement. The lewd bed, no doubt, influenced his ideas. When this man, her husband, touched her, she wanted to be whatever he wanted her to be: his wife, his lover, respectable, wanton, smart, or silly. When he smiled, she was his to be molded. When he gave her s.p.a.ce, she turned back into the disciplined person she'd always been, one who never forgot her goal.

He walked her backward to his desk, lifting her skirts as he sat her atop. Her crinoline hoop subsided after first aiming for her nose. One tilt of his hips pushed the hoop out of the way, and he stood between her thighs. Like a wanton, she undulated against his ready hard part, making a soft noise of surrender. His hands cupped her b.u.t.tocks, drawing her even closer, and his mouth swallowed her sounds of eagerness. Her fingers dug into his back. She could think of nothing but the sensation between her legs. His unwilling wife had turned into a molten heap after the barest touch. The creak of the floorboards beneath his feet brought back her sanity.

She pushed at his shoulders. "You'll have to stop," she said in a soft, indecisive tone she could scarcely recognize. "We're both neat and tidy and ready to go over the road for a meal."

He laughed. "And you think everyone will know what we've been doing?"

"I'll know."

"Indeed. But this is what happens to women who tell their husbands they are useless. The husband tends to think he should prove he's a man, at least."

"I suspect most people you meet know you're a man." She covered his seeking mouth with her hand.

"And tonight you look all woman." He angled his head so that her hand covered his cheek almost like a caress. "There's nothing more tempting than a tidy woman waiting to be mussed."

She wriggled back a little, sliding her center of pleasure away from all temptation. "You're quite impossible."

"True," he said pleasantly. "Let that be a lesson to you." With an inscrutable smile, he rearranged the shape in his trousers.

She slid from the table to the floor, using one hand to check her hair, not certain of the lesson she should have learned, but knowing the one she had learned. l.u.s.t for him could control her too easily.

However, she had discovered he liked her gown and her hair. With two choices of bodice and gown-four combinations as well as her best blue gown-her outfits wouldn't look new forever. Her plan to incorporate her black gowns into her wardrobe culminated today when she'd put a waistband on the black skirt of the newest, wearing that with the cream bodice she had trimmed with black braid. The new cream-and-black hat completed her outfit.

If she could do nothing more, she could merge her body with his and bear his child. When she did, she would own a part of him forever. Her attraction to him melted her bones. Perhaps she didn't understand him. Perhaps she could never empathize with those not born to work. Perhaps she could never match him or be good enough, but she could appreciate the perfection she had married.

Huffing out a sigh, she followed him down the stairs and into the street. The churned dust had settled and the place had quieted, though the shops wouldn't close until dark, a little more than an hour away. He held open the door to The Pig and Whistle for her, and she led the way to his usual spot when Maisie appeared.

"We have a window table free," the waitress said, a firm smile on her face.

Devon looked surprised but pleased as he sat at a table with a view of the outside street. "What do you suppose prompted an offer of a window table?"

Wenna watched a rather-satisfied Maisie walk away. "We're a couple. They need the tables closer to the bar for the men. I've been thinking. A bath in the morning would suit me better than a bath in the evening. Do you mind changing?"

"Not at all," he said in his cultured voice. "I don't have a bathing preference. I heated the stove in the evenings because I don't spend the day at home." His thick lashes shaded the expression in his eyes.

Tonight would be the night; she knew that. She knew Devon wouldn't wait forever for the tupping he'd wanted to do from the start. If she hadn't decided to clean his bed, she wouldn't be so nervous. When she had finished polis.h.i.+ng, she'd understood that he wouldn't be content to have her lying beneath him staring impatiently at the ceiling.