Deborah Hale - The Wedding Wager

Leonora cast about for any topic that promised to distract her from this adolescent preoccupation with Morse. Good heavens! Now she was thinking of him by his Christian name, as well.

“I hope Uncle Hugo didn’t miss our company at breakfast.” The sentence erupted from her in a breathless rush.

Morse’s eyebrows raised. “Did he not tell you he was going off to London? Of course—you weren’t at dinner last night. He said he’d be away for a few days. Some urgent matter of business. I’m afraid it’ll be just the two of us until he gets back.”

An unaccustomed giddiness expanded inside Leonora, as though she was one of those newfangled hot-air balloons inflated too quickly. She tried pulling herself back to earth, without much success.

“We must return to work now, Sergeant Archer.” How she despised the beseeching note she heard in her voice.

“That’s what I’m here for.” He walked around the table and pulled out her chair.

The backs of his fingers grazed her upper arm. Had it been accidental, or deliberate? Either way, it set her head spinning and her breath skipping.

Leonora made a last desperate attempt to regain mastery of the situation, and of herself. Her entire childhood had been spent at the mercy of forces beyond her control. At least she had been mistress of her own feelings—cool and detached where her mother was passionate and imprudent.

Now, this man, with the most insignificant look, word or touch, threatened to overpower her carefully cultivated composure and turn her whole world on its ear.

She jerked her arm away from his hand. “We must return to our Latin studies.”

When he met her suggestion with a groan, she flared up at him. “I warned you from the start this would not be a stroll through the park, Sergeant Archer! You boasted you were equal to the challenge, but until this morning I have seen no sign of it. At this rate, we will be laughed out of Bath. You will never see your estate in the colonies and I—”

She bit her tongue. It was none of his business what his indolence would cost her. If he knew, he would only take advantage of the power it gave him over her fate.

Fortunately he quit the breakfast room without asking her to finish her sentence. In all likelihood he did not care a whit about her dire stakes in the wager.

Summoning up every ounce of frosty aplomb she could muster, Leonora stalked off after him. They had dabbled in quite enough sensational subjects for the day. The rest of their lessons would be given over to mathematics, dead languages and anything else she could furnish that might throw cold water on her growing preoccupation with Morse Archer.

Leonora’s blatant insult to his diligence kept Morse focused on his studies until almost teatime. To his surprise, he found the Latin beginning to make sense. And he had always been good with numbers, particularly as they applied to situations in real life.

How many rounds could a Rifleman fire in so many minutes? How fast would a company have to march to be at such a place by such a time?

It still irked him that none of their lessons showed any practical application to Leonora’s stated goal of passing him off as a gentleman. Several times he had tried getting the point across to her. On each occasion she had almost bitten his head off for presuming to question her authority.

On that score, she put him in mind of two inept officers who’d been his superiors in Portugal. Their blinkered stupidity and blank refusal to accept advice from anyone of lower rank had contributed largely to the fiasco that had ended his military career.

And Lieutenant Peverill’s life.

Looking up suddenly from his book, he caught Leonora staring at him. Fresh from thoughts of his young lieutenant, Morse recognized an appealing family resemblance in her face.

“I never served under a better officer than your cousin.” He wasn’t certain what propelled those words out of him.

To his surprise, Leonora did not order him back to work at once. Neither did she question what had prompted him to speak of the lieutenant for the first time since coming to Laurelwood.

“Cousin Wesley mentioned you in his letters. I think he would be pleased to know you’re here.”

Her little chin, so intrepid for all its delicacy, betrayed a subtle quiver. Behind the bastion of her spectacles, Morse thought he spied a fine mist rising in Leonora’s eyes.

Ordinarily, Morse Archer was not a man who had any patience for tears or overwrought outbursts. Yet something launched him out of his chair and to Leonora’s side. His hands closed over her shoulders.

“I’m sorry I mentioned him. I didn’t mean to distress you, honestly.”

At the slightest provocation he would have taken her in his arms. But Leonora gave him no opportunity. And no quarter.

Twisting free of his chaste touch, she flew to the opposite corner of the room and pretended an exaggerated interest in whatever she saw out the window. The steady drip of icicles melting from the eaves, perhaps.

“You have worked well today, Sergeant.” She did not bother to turn and address him face-to-face. “As a reward, you are excused from lessons for the remainder of the day.”

Earlier in the week Morse would have welcomed the news with a whoop of glee. Now he cursed himself roundly. What should have been a reward felt instead like…exile.

Leonora listened to Morse’s retreating footsteps with an exasperating mixture of relief and regret.

If she had not fled the warm invitation of his hands upon her shoulders, if she had not dismissed him from the room with her next breath, she might have surrendered to her impulses. She might have pivoted into his powerful arms and wept a woman’s weak tears against his sturdy shoulder.

The prospect tempted her, as much from curiosity as…anything else. She had no experience of seeking comfort from another person. Mother had always been too much in need of support herself to lend it elsewhere. And Leonora would have died under torture before betraying a hint of weakness to any of her detested stepfathers. By the time she had come to live with Aunt Harriet and Uncle Hugo, she was well past the age for tearful outbursts.

Yet somewhere in the mists of early memory there lurked the phantom fancy of a comforting embrace. The faint musk of horses and tobacco. The croon of a deep, affectionate voice. The subtle scratch of a serge coat against her cheek. It had been her one and only experience of security.

And it had been ripped away from her long before she was able to understand why.

Since then she had learned to rely upon herself alone. Not upon her looks, as she had seen some foolish women do. In time, creamy skin would wrinkle. Bright eyes would lose their sparkle. Shiny hair its luster.

Intelligence, determination and self-control—these would stand the test the time. Neither were they a happy accident of nature. They could be learned and properly cultivated in any girl so inclined.

Leonora returned from her reverie to find her hands balled into tight fists. So tight, in fact, that her fingernails bit into her palms.

She was determined to cultivate those serviceable virtues in other young women whom fate had placed at a disadvantage. In her school, she would recover the kind of security she vaguely recalled from her childhood.

But how would she ever win her school if she didn’t coax a better effort out of Sergeant Archer? He had shown some improvement today, in his attitude at least. Would it be enough?

“Oh, Wes,” she whispered. If her cousin’s spirit lingered anywhere in the mortal world, it would be here at Laurelwood. “You won his devotion and disciplined him into a good soldier. What am I doing wrong?”