What would a good husband do to earn his wife’s favor?
Certainly he wouldn’t sulk as Teddy had chosen to do, today.
He’d woo her. But how? How to make a wife feel cherished and safe and fully married?
When Danvers arrived,bright and early with his morning tea and shaving implements, Teddy greeted him with a warm welcome. “Danvers, just the man I wanted to see.”
Danvers hesitated in the threshold a moment, as if contemplating leaving the rolling cart and fleeing. “Why do I get the feeling you have something in mind beyond your daily shave and medicinal tea?”
“I haven’t the vaguest notion. Do come in.”
With a leery eye, he complied.
Teddy took his usual seat in preparation for his shave. “Danvers, my wife tells me she hired you on thanks to her very good friend’s husband’s recommendation.”
A rare, brief smile flickered over the man’s broad mouth. “Colonel Lord Culver. Yes.”
“She claims you taught many of the troops to read and write, is that correct?”
Teddy helped himself to a cup of perfectly prepared English tea and waited while Danvers took his time unfolding the white cloth containing the straight edge blade, sharpening strap, and brush.
“Aye. What of it?” he finally replied.
Teddy sent the butler a placid smile. He was not going to allow the irascible man to get his goat this time. “How about this, rather than me, pulling out thread by thread, of your undoubtedly colorful past, you simply tell me. Who are you, or rather, who were you, previousto the war?”
Danvers frowned. “It’s a long tale.” He settled a white towel on the headrest of Teddy’s chair.
“I have time.” Closing his eyes, he reclined in preparation for his shave, then hissed in a breath when Danvers lay a scalding towel over his face. He could swear the man meant it to hurt.
“Very well, milord. I hale from Scotland.”
Teddy had worked that much out thanks to the man’s accent, one which seemed to have faded. That told him Danvers had been in England for some time.
“My father, whom I admired greatly was a Presbyterian minister. I decided to follow in his footsteps.” The blade slid over the strap. Back and forth. Back and forth. Then the butler peeled the towel from Teddy’s face and began slathering on the prewarmed shaving cream. “After receiving my education at the University of Edinburgh, I went to seminary and was ordained in the Church of Scotland in my late 20’s. For all my admiration of my father, we had our differences. Where he was traditional, I had gained some—as he phrased it—unorthodox ideals during my time at university, which bled into my sermons, I fear. Facing censure for voicing dangerous opinions, I was forced to resign.”
He began meticulously running the blade over Ted’s cheek, with short, neat strokes.
“When my father passed, I moved to Ireland for a time, and served in a small Anglican chapel, but conflicts with the established Anglican authority left me unable to secure a permanent post.”
Somehow, Teddy had no trouble seeing the hard-nosed butler as one who bucked authority. But he kept the thought to himself. The man was holding a blade to his throat, after all.
“The long and short of it is this: By the time I settled in England, I was barred from Church of England pulpits, and viewed as a suspicious dissenter in Scotland. I was overeducated yet underskilled for alife of labor. Thus, I decided to join the fight against Napoleon—and ended up in Colonel Culver’s regiment.”
“The so-called Iron Lion,” Ted stated as Danvers rinsed the blade.
He appeared pleased. “Oh, you know of him?”
“Georgina shared the moniker.”
He nodded and resumed shaving. “At some point, the colonel made note of my education and set me to act as a secretary of sorts. I read orders aloud, wrote correspondence, and later, with his approval, spent some of the downtime between battles teaching letters to illiterate troops.”
“You didn’t seek a chaplain’s commission?”
He shook his head, and Teddy saw the regret he tried to hide lurking in the depths of his dark eyes. “On campaign in the Peninsula, when no chaplain was attached, I was sometimes called upon to read Scripture, conduct prayers, and even say a few words over the dead. But I never sought to do so in an official capacity.
“When Colonel Culver returned to England at the downsizing of troops, I followed his lead. I won’t say I had an easy time of it.” Having finished the shave, he took another damp towel and mopped Teddy’s face.
Not wishing his skin scrubbed off, Teddy lifted a hand and took over the job as Danvers completed his tale.
