“But,” he had gone on, “I should like to tell you something in exchange. Will you listen to Mr. Fisk while I tell you this one very important, very grown-up thing?”
Willow had considered this and slowly nodded.
Mr. Fisk said, “Did you know that everyone has a job to do in this life?”
“You mean like you are a valet, and Cook is a cook, and father is a earl?”
“In a way,” he had said. “But those are the jobs that I do, and Cook does, and even your father does to survive. I am talking about a grander, more important job. This is the job that you do to make some impression on the world, to make it better in a large or small way. Usually, this job has to do with the way you affect other people. Some people are mothers or fathers, and they make a difference in the lives of their children.”
“But not me.” Willow had sniffled.
“No, not you—nor me, my lady. I’m no longer a father, am I?” Willow had the vague recollection that Mr. Fisk’s own young daughter had died when she was a child.
Slowly, Willow had shaken her head.
For a moment, Mr. Fisk had been quiet, and then he had said, “But what I mean is, some men are very wise teachers, and they make a difference in the lives of their students. And some women have the gift of healing, and they make a difference in the lives of sick people. Do you see?”
Willow had not been sure that she saw, but she had nodded.
“What I’m trying to say is thatsomepeople’s jobs are very clear and very set from the beginning. They always know what they will be. But you? You, my lady, do not yet know, do you?”
“Well, I know I will not be a mother,” Willow had said.
“Yes, this we know. But what we donotknow is what other type of person you will become—or who you will meet or how you may help them or bring them joy, or comfort, or knowledge, or whatever you may do. It’s not yet been decided, and that is a very exciting thing. Because instead of having your job already set out for you,youmay pick.”
“I may pick?” Willow had repeated, intrigued by the notion of a choice.
“Well, you may not pick Queen of England,” he had said, “but you are a very clever little girl, kind and thoughtful, with a high spirit, and pretty as a sunrise. There are so many possibilities, you simply have to be ready to accept whatever your job may eventually be, and then work very hard to seize it. Can you do that for me, my lady? Can you watch and listen very carefully and accept that job that we do not yet know but that one day will be plainly seen?”
“Yes, Mr. Fisk,” Willow had said, her imagination already taking flight. “Yes, I can watch and listen. I will pick my own job. That’s exactly what I shall do, I think.”
It was a conversation that Willow would never forget, and certainly she remembered it now, in the carriage to her wedding, to which Mr. Fisk, now an old man, had ridden through the rain to reach her in time.
“There are many possibilities,” she recited roughly, her throat tight. “I simply have to be ready to accept them.”
“Very true,” chuckled Mr. Fisk. “And now off you go. We’re nearly there. Get married to this earl, and see what might happen. You know I would never have been a party to this if I had not believed in a very great many possibilities.”
CHAPTERFIFTEEN
Cassin returned to Surrey from London with a two-part plan: marry Lady Wilhelmina Hunnicut promptly, and keep away from her indefinitely. Or at the very least until they’d pulled the anchor of Stoker’s brig and sailed safely away from her.
Cassin’s sojourn to London proved nothing if not that the longer he remained in the same country, the more he would be tempted to seek her out—and not just to take her to bed, which he urgently wanted to do. He found himself wanting to learn if his proposition for unattached sex had turned her irrevocably against him. To compare her notion of the future to his and weigh the possibility of some compromise. To discover how willing she might be to eventually leave London for Yorkshire.
It was a conversation he hoped, eventually, to have (her body he also hoped eventually to have), but considering the threat of his uncle and the as-yet-unmined guano, his future was too uncertain to make any promise. There was no tangible future he could conjure for them at this point, and to discuss the unknown seemed disingenuous and unfair.
And so he had stayed away, counting the days until the wedding. When the day finally arrived, he steeled himself to be remote, detached, and businesslike to the bride.
But good Lord, what a bride.
She’d worn a deep-purple gown, almost black, and just a hint of plum. The dark silk was scattered here and there with tiny, wine-colored embellishment. Silk rosebuds? Embroidered berries? He tried and failed not to stare, his eyes drawn again and again to the little details clustered just above the swell of her breasts, at her delicate wrists, along the small, tight seam that circled her body just above her waist.
Her hair had been piled high in a profusion of elaborate braids and trimmed with wine-colored ribbon. The effect accentuated the bright, clear beauty of her face and the elegant curve or her neck. Even the perfection of her small ear, dabbled with freckles, bobbed with a pearl, was enhanced somehow by the drama of her hair. Still, Cassin passed the ceremony glowering at the high sculptural mass of it, making a study of exactly how he might dismantle the braids and ribbons if he were allowed to touch it.
Cassin’s vague plan for detachment had been to allow himself to stare at her—for this he could not help—but to avoid engaging in real conversation with her. It was the verbal sparring that pushed him over the edge, after all; the debates and teasing and her dazzling cleverness.
Despite the distance of fifty miles, his time in London had only compounded his preoccupation with her, and he’d lain awake at night, burning to return to her. Now that he was near her, seeing her as his bride, working together to perpetrate this . . . whatever it was . . . this mutually beneficial collaboration, his desire raged nearly beyond his control.
In the end, it wasn’t the weddingdayas much as after the wedding, the hours between when he married her and when he could steal himself away again. Brevity, remoteness, and formality had been his very loose plan. And for a time, it worked, as long as they were surrounded by clergymen and Lytton relations and, inexplicably, her mother’s show ponies. But eventually, inevitably, bride and groom were forced to face each other with fewer and fewer interruptions. And then were entirely alone.
