The Wedding Wager. Deborah Hale
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bunched his shoulder muscles began to ebb.
Wednesday and Saturday nights were his only respite from the tyranny of General Freemantle. Without them, Morse was certain he’d have chucked the whole business, in spite of his debt to Sir Hugo.
True to his word, the old man had managed to dissuade the Board of Inquiry from pursuing charges against Morse, letting him muster out with no fuss.
“Think you can liberate us another few pints of that fine ale?” Morse asked the footman.
When Miss Freemantle went into the village on Wednesday and Saturday evenings, he took the opportunity to sneak off with Dickon for a pint or two in some deserted cranny of the house. While they drank and ate whatever cold collation Dickon could forage from the pantry, Morse told stories of his adventures as a Rifleman in the Fourth Somerset Regiment. It felt good to bask in the footman’s soldier-struck admiration. In fact, it was almost enough to buttress Morse against Leonora Freemantle’s persistent assault on his self-assurance.
“Better’n that sir. Do ye fancy a drop of hard cider?”
“Don’t I just! Could do with a drop this very minute.”
Dickon nodded his massive head in sympathy. “Be off, now, sir. Miss Leonora will be waitin’ on ye. I’m apt to catch the edge of her tongue if yer late. It’s the oddest thing. Before you came to the house I never heard a cross word from her. T’was all Would ye be so kind and Might I trouble ye for this or that. This past fortnight, though, she’s been as cranky as a badger sow.”
An involuntary smile rippled across Morse’s lips. He was certain it would be his last before nightfall. No doubt, Leonora Freemantle could badger with the best of them. Not to mention carp, reproach and downright bully.
Army life had been hard and dangerous by times, Morse admitted to himself. Apart from the pitiful pay, it had not been entirely thankless. He’d earned his promotions, won the affection and respect of the men in his command, gained the trust of his superiors—at least those superiors whose opinion mattered to him.
At Camp Laurelwood, however, he was reminded day and night that he could do nothing right.
Morse forced his feet down each step of the darkened staircase toward the library. Every soldier’s instinct in him shrank from tardiness. For ten years it had been dunned into him that he must be where he was expected, when he was expected, no matter what. The lives of his comrades might hang in the balance. He couldn’t make himself believe it was of any consequence whether he started lessons now, or two hours from now. It was all a pack of nonsense anyhow.
With a grunt of disgust, he thrust open the library door.
Heaving an exasperated sigh, Leonora glanced at the mantel clock. Once again Morse Archer was a quarter of an hour late for their prebreakfast lessons. This, in spite of her having sent Dickon to wake him half an hour early. Little wonder General Wellington’s Iberian campaign was all but lost, if he was commanding an army of surly idlers like her star pupil.
Drumming her fingers on the desktop, Leonora eyed the Latin grammar, open to a pitiful tenth page. Every day they slipped further and further behind on her meticulously constructed timetable. She had tried everything she could think of to challenge the man, but he obstinately refused to learn the most rudimentary Latin declension. His knowledge of English history was appalling. He couldn’t tell Agincourt from Hastings, and she sometimes wondered if he knew that Henry the Fifth came before Henry the Eighth. As for his ignorance of literature…
She could have forgiven the man if he’d proven an obvious dullard, incapable of learning. But that was not the case. In his dinner table conversation with Sir Hugo, she caught glimpses of the knowledge he’d gained while soldiering abroad. Morse Archer was too clever by half. If only she could curb his stubborn refusal to apply himself.
She’d tried everything short of cajolery. For some reason she could not bring herself to use a soft approach with him. Perhaps because his physical presence unnerved her so. Often when she should have been correcting his atrocious penmanship, she found herself instead staring at his hands. Blatantly staring at his powerful, shapely hands. Imagining them taking steady aim with his rifle, clamped around a bottle of Spanish wine or spanning the waist of some sultry Dulcinea.
Then he would glance up and catch her watching him. And his eyes would twinkle with mockery. Leonora willed herself to think of something else before she gave way to a shriek of vexation. Distracting her thoughts was no easy matter. A nauseating lump of panic rose in her throat as she pictured the days and weeks slipping away with so painfully little to show for them. Despite his hollow boasts to the contrary, at the rate he was going Morse Archer would not pass for a butler let alone a gentleman.
And when the petty nobility of Bath laughed him out of town, she would have to forfeit the wager. Marry a man of her uncle’s choosing. Surrender her dream of a school. Abandon the academic pursuits that were her only joy in life.
A briny mist stung her eyes.
Impatient with herself, Leonora pulled off her spectacles and roughly employed the cuff of her sleeve as a handkerchief. Not since the youngest years of her childhood had she allowed anyone or anything to drive her to tears. She was not about to yield that honor to a man like Morse Archer.
The library door burst open. Shutting it behind him with a bang that reverberated through the room, Morse lumbered over to the table and dropped heavily into his seat.
With a hiccup, somewhere between a gasp and a sob, Leonora pushed her spectacles back on again and stiffened her posture.
“If you learn nothing else from me in the next two and a half months, Morse Archer, I trust you will at least cultivate the civility of knocking before you barge into a room.”
He glared up at her, one eyebrow cocked insolently.
“Why should I waste my time knocking? Weren’t you expecting me?”
Leonora made herself glare back, hoping he would not notice the redness of her eyes. “I was expecting you a full quarter of an hour ago, as you should be well aware. That does not excuse the rudeness of your conduct. As penalty for lateness, we will work an additional half hour before taking breakfast.”
She ignored the groan with which he greeted this news. “And as penalty for your lapse in manners, I will expect you to spend an additional half hour reading history this evening before you retire.”
For some reason Morse showed no obvious dismay at this second punishment. Leonora was tempted to raise it to an hour.
“We have wasted quite enough time this morning. May I remind you that we have only ten weeks remaining until we must go to Bath. Let us begin with a review of yesterday’s Latin lesson. Translate the verb to eat, and conjugate it in the present tense if you please.”
“To eat?” Morse lounged back in his chair, not so much as glancing at the book open before him. “Last night’s dinner was so long ago, I’m not sure I recall the meaning of that word in English, let alone Latin.”
“Keep this up,” shot Leonora, her patience worn to a thread, “and it could be several hours before you get the chance to refresh your memory. Kindly apply yourself to the lesson and provide me with the translation and conjugation of the verb.”
Morse slammed his Latin grammar shut. “This is lunacy. Your wager is to pass me off as a gentleman soldier, not the Arch-bloody-bishop of Canterbury! If you’d just let me—”
“That is quite enough, sir!” Leonora’s simmering resentment threatened to boil over. “I am the teacher here. This wager is to test my skill. You understood that when you agreed to take part. I decide upon the curriculum. I choose the subjects. I set the lessons. You’d do well to master the role of pupil before you try usurping mine. Now let’s get on with it.”
She reopened the book and thrust it under his nose. If he insisted on behaving like a spoiled child, that’s how she would treat him from now on.
“Conjugation of the verb to eat, repeat after me…”