Cordelia walked beside her friend as they strolled toward the large, red-brick vicarage. "What new smithy? Oh, Mr. Snaffle. He is very virile looking, isn't he, what with those huge arms and all that curly hair, and his very, very tight breeches."
"Cordelia!" Plum said, trying to look shocked but afraid the laughter in her eyes was giving her away. "Such a vulgar and unseemly innuendo shocks my maiden's ears."
Cordelia laughed aloud as she paused at the gate. "A less maidenly woman I have never met."
Plum paused as she clicked the gate closed, enjoying the warmth of the sun on her back, the air filled with the scent of honeysuckle. A faint frown tugged her straight eyebrows together. "About that... are you sure I shouldn't tell-"
"Absolutely certain."
"But what if I meet someone who knows me? Someone who tells him about my past before I can?"
"As the wife of a simple country gentleman-for a gentleman he must be since his advertisement is very well worded-you are unlikely to come into contact with any members of the ton. No one will know who you are, so you will be able to tell your husband in your own time, when you feel the moment is right. Say six or seven years from now."
Plum looked down the dusty road to the green at the center of the village. Ram's Bottom had been a haven for her, but it had also been a prison. She had hidden herself and Thom away from the prying eyes of gossips, but the years were slipping by, and Thom deserved to have a better life than the poverty Plum could offer. "Very well. I will call later for the recommendation."
"It will be waiting for you," Cordelia said, waving as Plum turned and resolutely started toward the green, her mind full of the letter she would send to Mr. T. Harris. Along the way she noticed that several women were clustered together on the green in small clumps talking intensely, but she thought nothing of that. The ladies of Ram's Bottom were notorious gossips, happy to spend hours in the analysis and dissection of each others' character, antecedents, and offspring.
"No doubt they're tearing some poor lady's reputation to shreds," she said to herself as she skirted the green and headed for the smithy.
A few minutes later Plum regretted her complacent attitude.
"I want ye," Mr. Snaffle said, leaning in and spraying Plum with the odor of unwashed body, onions, and horse sweat. It was, she found, not a scent conducive to romance. Large arms and thick curly hair he might have, but Mr. Snaffle was definitely not going to suit her. "I want ye bad. Feel how bad my cods want ye."
Before she knew what he was doing, a massive hand descended on hers and slapped it over the bulge in his tight breeches.
"Mr. Snaffle!" she gasped, and snatched her hand away as she tried to sidle out from under the brawny arm holding her pinned to the rough planking of the blacksmith's shed. "You forget yourself! I have no interest in you or your cods, so please allow me to pass."
The fetid smell increased as the blacksmith laughed in her face. Plum turned her head, wishing she'd sent Thom to have the pot mended-the convenient ploy she used to meet and consider the blacksmith as husband material-then immediately regretted such a cowardly thought.
"Ye play coy with me, Missus, but I know how much ye want me too. Give us a kiss."
Plum tightened her fingers around the handle of the pot and gritted her teeth. Her life, one moment only mildly horrible, had turned into full-fledged, raging nightmare. "Mr. Snaffle, if you do not let me pass this instant, I shall be forced to take action against you."
He leaned up against her, flattening her against the wall with his broad, sweaty chest. She shifted the pot, relieved he was just leaning his upper parts against her.
"No one cares iff n ye scream, Missus. They all know ye for the trollop ye are, pretendin' yer all high and mighty by marryin' a man what was already married. Miss Stone says that yer own family won't have nothin' to do with ye. Give us a kiss," he demanded again, spittle collecting in the corners of his fleshy lips.
"I am not a trollop," Plum said softly, moving the pot slightly, so as to give her a longer backswing. "I have no idea how this Miss Stone-whoever she might be-found out about my marriage, but I can assure you that I am innocent of her charges. Now please release me, or I shall do you a bodily injury."
He rubbed his chest against hers, his hands on her upper arms, holding her in place. "Everyone knows that ye'll spread yer legs for any man what gives ye a taste of his manflesh." He slid one hand up, grabbing a handful of her hair, jerking her head back. "I told ye to give us a kiss. I'm not of a mind to tell ye again!"
"Mr. Snaffle?" Plum swung the pot as far back as she could.
"Aye?" His repulsive lips were descending on hers.
"This is for your cods." She brought the pot forward as hard as she could, striking him right at the junction of his legs. He screamed and fell backward, clutching at himself, spitting curses and profanities as he rolled over into a ball. Plum took a deep breath of relatively clean air, and stepped forward to stand over the writhing man.
"Henceforth I shall take my smithy business elsewhere," she said, and gave him a swift kick in the kidneys just because she felt like it. "You're lucky I'm a lady and not given to spite!"
With her head held high she left the smithy, a stubborn, brittle smile on her face, the eyes of what felt like the entire village scoring her flesh as she hurried home, clinging to the hope that perhaps it wasn't as bad as Mr. Snaffle made out, but knowing it was much, much worse. She would have to move again, leave Ram's Bottom, and how was she to accomplish that with only five shillings and no friends but Cordelia?
"Blessed St. Genevieve," Plum all but sobbed as she stumbled into the tiny cottage she shared with Thom. "I'm going to have to marry Mr. T. Harris, no matter what sort of man he is. With luck, no one in Raving will know about me until I can marry him."
"Marry who?" a low, disinterested voice asked.
Plum clutched the wall and fought to regain her breath as well as swallow her tears of self-pity. "Oh, Thom, I didn't see you. What are you doing down there by the coal scuttle?"
Thom's golden brown eyes considered her aunt for a moment before her head dipped below the rough-planked table in front of her, returning a moment later when she stood up, a tiny kitten cupped in her hand. "Maple has had her litter. Only three, but one was born dead. I was just making sure the two kittens were all right. Who do you have to marry?"
"Whom," Plum corrected absently, her heart still pounding from the scene in the blacksmith's. "I am going to marry-hope to marry-a Mr. T. Harris. If he'll have me, that is."
"Oh," Thom said, and bent down to return the kitten to the nest she had made for Maple and her babies.
"Oh? Is that it? You're not going to ask me who Mr. T. Harris is, nor why I am going to marry him?"
Thom rose and dusted her sooty hands off on her lavender gown, Plum noted with a mental sigh. It wasn't the soiling of the gown she regretted, it was the tomboy nature of her niece. Thom was twenty years old, a young woman of intelligence and high spirits, of a good, if impoverished, family, and if she wasn't the loveliest woman on the face of the earth, she was very pretty, with cropped chestnut curls, large dark gray eyes, and a very sweet smile. When she smiled, which Plum had to admit wasn't often, Thom being a serious, takes-everything-literally sort who would rather spend time with the various animals she had collected than with the two-legged variety most young women preferred.
"Although how you are to catch a husband with no dowry, and a notorious aunt, is beyond me." Plum signed again, this time aloud.
Thom cocked her head and watched as Plum plucked her bonnet off and sank down into the rickety chair next to the fire. "I thought it was you who were planning to marry? I've told you before that I have no desire to marry. Men are so"-she wrinkled her nose as if she smelled cabbage cooking-"silly. Stupid. Mindless. I have yet to meet one who makes any sort of sense. To tell you the truth, I don't think there are any. I will do quite well without one of my own, thank you."
"Oh, Thom," Plum said, on the verge of tears
, but unable to keep from smiling at her niece's dismissal of men as a whole. "What would I do without you?"
"Well, I imagine just what you are doing now," Thom replied. "You do seem to have the habit of talking to yourself, Aunt Plum, so if I weren't here, you'd probably be right where you are, telling the room that you're going to marry Mr. Harris. Who is Mr. Harris?"
Plum blessed the day Thom came to her. If anyone could make her laugh at herself, it was her niece. "Mr. T. Harris is a man in search of a wife, and as I am a woman in search of a husband, I am hoping that we will suit one another. You wouldn't mind me marrying, would you Thom? You know I wouldn't marry a man who couldn't keep you, as well."
Thom shrugged and filled a small cracked saucer with the last of the milk, setting it down next to the new mother. "If it will make you happy, I don't mind in the least, as long as Mr. Harris won't mind me bringing my animals. I couldn't leave them behind."
"No, of course not," Plum said, trying to envision just how she was going to tell her prospective husband that not only was he gaining a wife and a niece but three cats, six dogs, two goats, four tame mice, and a pheasant that thought it was a rooster. Her mind boggled at that thought. She shook her head, clearing it of the morose thought that she was doomed, and rose to find a relatively clean scrap of paper before settling down at the table to write a letter so dazzling, it would be sure to capture Mr. Harris's attention. "I pray he is an honest, likeable man with no secrets that will come back to haunt me. I just don't think I could stand another husband with secrets."
Chapter Three
"How many applicants remain, Temple?" Harry asked, wearily pushing up his spectacles as he leaned back in the private room bespoken at the local inn for the purpose of conducting interviews.
Temple consulted his list. "Let me see, applicant number fourteen was reported too ill to travel...."
"Strike her from the list. If she is of frail health, she won't be able to stand up to the strain of the children. It takes a strong woman, in full possession of her faculties-both mental and physical-to deal with my brood."
"... and number twenty-three changed her mind at the door ..."
"Shy. Shy won't do either. My wife has to have a firm sense of purpose. Determination, too. Grit wouldn't hurt, either."
"... and numbers thirty and thirty-one appear to have run off together ..."
Harry raised both eyebrows and forbore to comment.
"... and number thirty-three, the last applicant, appears to have decided not to meet with you." Temple looked up. "There are no more, sir."
Harry stood and stretched, rubbing the back of his neck and collecting his hat. "Well, that was six hours wasted. I hope to God I never have to meet so many women again."
Temple trotted alongside Harry as he strode out of the inn, pausing to pass a few coins to the innkeeper before heading for the small stable block. "Were there none that meet with your specifications, my lord?"
"Shhh!" Harry waved Temple's words away as he waited for Thor to be brought out. "No my lording, Temple. The fewer people who know my true identity, the better. At least until I find a wife."
"My apologies, sir. Were there no women-"
"No, there weren't," Harry said, slapping his leg with his riding crop as he looked around the quiet inn yard. "Not a single blessed one of them would do. Most of them were too young, a few were of the right age, but lacked the mental capacity I seek in a wife. I don't expect her to be a genius, but I must have a woman I can converse with, one who has an interest in books and current events and such." Harry noted a very pretty woman hurrying into the inn, the bottom six inches of her dark red gown covered in mud and filth as if she'd been tramping through the woods. "The remaining two qualified applicants were, to put it finely, a little on the homely side."
"You said that you weren't requiring your wife to be toothsome, sir." Although the words were subservient, the tone was most definitely chastising.
"Toothsome, no, but I'd like to be able to look at her without thinking of bulldogs. One of the women today had a great hairy wart right in the middle of her forehead. I couldn't stop staring at it. No matter where I looked, my gaze ended up back on her forehead. I couldn't possibly have a wife whose forehead held such an unwholesome fascination for me. That woman who scampered into the inn just now-she's the sort I'm looking for. Not beautiful, but pleasing, soft on the eyes, with a delicate oval face and lots of-Harry made a gesture with both hands that was universally understood by all men over the age of fourteen-curves. Why couldn't one of my women have been like her? I don't think that's asking for too much."
Thor charged out of the stable, snorting like a steam engine, his ears back as he hauled a young stable boy behind him. Harry grabbed the reins with the ease of long practice, thumped the horse on the shoulder in an affectionate greeting, and flipped the boy a coin before mounting the fiery bay. "Hurry up, Temple, I've a desire to get home before the children bring the house down about their ears."
"Just coming, sir," Temple said, looking warily at the new mare Harry had purchased to replace his old mount. The mare bared her teeth and narrowed her eyes at him. Just as he was about to take his life into his hands and climb into the saddle, a feminine cry reached his ears.
"Mr. Harris? Sir?"
Harry turned to watch as the curvaceous woman in the well-used red gown hurried out of the inn, her skirts held up with one hand as she dashed across the muddy yard. He admired the flash of ankle for as long as was gentlemanly (far too short a time since the woman dropped her skirts as she reached them).
"Mr. Harris?"
Temple turned his back on the mare as he faced the woman, an error Harry was about to rectify when it occurred to him that the woman must be the missing last applicant. He eyed her again, closer this time, appreciating not just her pretty face with cheeks bright with exercise but the raven-black hair that was visible beneath her bonnet, the slash of black eyebrows across her brow, and two dark eyes that had an appealing, almost exotic tilt to them. To Harry's great mortification, he became instantly and fully aroused. Clamping the reins under his knee, he pulled his jacket off and laid it across his lap in what he hoped was a suitably nonchalant it's-a-bit-hot-out-today manner.
"Mr. T. Harris? I'm Frederica Pelham. I apologize for being so late, but I lost my way a few times and had to ask for directions."
The woman was speaking to Temple, having given him a glance that took in more of his horse than him. Harry wished he could dismount and speak to her, but his reaction to the sight of her had left him in the unenviable position of having to remain astride Thor. The thought of her noticing his bulging breeches had the unexpected (and lamentable) effect of making him even harder.
"I'm not too late, am I? You haven't... er ... filled the position?"
She caught her lower lip between her teeth, clearly worried and anxious. Harry wondered why such an attractive woman should be so desperate for a husband. She had no warts, no physical imperfections that he could see, and her voice was educated and well-spoken.
Temple cleared his throat and glanced toward him. Harry shook his head, then remembered he couldn't stand before the woman with his breeches nigh to bursting, and nodded. Temple looked confused. "Er-"
"No, you're not too late," Harry said, fully enjoying receiving the attention of those dark, velvety eyes as they turned upon him. "Mr. Harris is my man of affairs. I am the one who is looking for a wife."
"Oh, I see." the woman said, and eyed him just as curiously as he had been examining her. She didn't appear to find anything objectionable about him, although she must have wondered why he was so ill bred as to remain on horseback, sitting in his shirtsleeves while speaking with her. He damned his own lack of control, and decided that the interview would have to be conducted quickly.
"We were about to return home, but if you don't mind answering a few questions here, I'm sure we can have this business over with quickly. You said your name was Pelham?"
She made an odd sort of fl
inching movement, but lifted her chin and stared him straight in the eyes while answering. "Yes, sir. Frederica Pelham, although my friends call me Plum."
His eyebrows rose. "Plum?"
"For Pelham. It's a pet name, you see. My father used to call me Plum. He was Sir Frederick Pelham, of Nottingham."
Daughter of an impoverished baronet, no doubt. She had a niceness about her that did not allow her to look on him with scorn despite the fact that he was insulting her by remaining on his horse.
"Do you read, Miss Pelham?"
She looked startled by that question, but recovered quickly enough, although her high color remained. "When I have the opportunity to, yes."
"Ah. Good. I have a large library." Harry considered her, trying to separate the lustful urgings of his body from the less earthy desires of his mind.
"Do you?" Plum asked politely, reaching out to pat Thor's long face. Harry grabbed the reins from under his knee, about to pull Thor back lest the stallion snap at her, but was surprised when his high-strung horse not only allowed her to caress his ears but bumped his nose into her, searching her person for treats. Plum laughed, a low throaty laugh that Harry found utterly sensual and erotic, a sound that seemed to stroke his skin, leaving him harder than ever, unable to keep from visualizing her lying in his bed, surrounded by all that glossy black hair, laughing that sultry laugh.
"He likes you," Harry said as he dragged his mind back to the present.
"He probably knows how fond I am of horses. He's very handsome. What's his name?"
"Thor. Do you ride?"
A wistful look flickered through her eyes as she gave Thor one last pat, then gently pushed his head away. "I love to ride, but haven't had the chance to in a long time."
A very impoverished baronet's daughter, Harry amended. Still, possession of a fortune was not one of the qualifications for his wife. Thus far, Plum had exceeded every expectation he had-there was just the one remaining. "Er ... how do you feel about children?"