Page 36
She stared into the orchard while toying with a dull, silverish button at her throat. Emotions played across her gentle features as she silently pondered her circumstances.
“I haven’t enough education, nor do I play any instruments or speak French, and my singing induces loyal Mr. Wiggles to howl. So that eliminates the possibility of becoming a governess. I might find employment as a companion if it weren’t for the need to care for Mama. Perhaps Jane Stewart will hire me to wait tables or clean, even cook. I don’t mind hard work.”
Not likely. Even as goodhearted as they were, the Stewarts couldn’t afford to pay her the wages she’d need to provide for her mother.
“What about your mother?”
“If I let a room at the Fox and Falcon, I could check in on Mama throughout the day.”
He wasn’t going to crush her hope. She’d little else to cling to.
“Have you any other possibilities?”
It wasn’t any of his business, but he couldn’t abandon her. More on point, he doubted she had anyone to talk to, to share her worries and concerns with.
She closed her eyes and swallowed before putting a delicate hand to her throat.
“I . . . Vicar Wright has proposed marriage more than once. He assures me Mama is welcome too.”
Something akin to a stone-laden wagon smashed into Chester’s middle.
Marriage?
Why hadn’t he considered that?
Eden was an attractive, desirable woman, and from what he’d learned about her in their short acquaintance, spirited but considerate as well.
“Do you love him?”
Way beyond the mark asking such a personal question.
She wet her lower lip, darting her pink tongue out and tracing it across the plump pillow.
Ferocious lust gripped him, and he imagined sinking his mouth onto her sweet, moist lips.
Had she ever been kissed?
Had the Vicar ever dared taste those dewy lips?
He would, and much more, if Eden wed him.
Again, a sensation akin to a plow horse’s kick to Chester’s gut cramped his middle. That ugly blackness welled up inside, but he doggedly squelched the feeling. He had no claim on Eden Haverden.
Flattening the line of her mouth, she shook her head and sighed.
“I wish I could. He’s kind and decent. Generous and gentle and quite handsome too.”
A proverbial saint, blast the honorable cleric.
“But you don’t?”
An inkling of hope rekindled.
“I do not. I’ve tried to, believe me. He’d make a wonderful husband, and I’m quite fond of his daughters.”
She’d be a wonderful mother.
She wandered to the bench situated before the roses. Sinking onto the white paint-chipped seat, she looked overhead, her expression contemplative. Mr. Wiggles trotted to her and laid his scruffy head on her knees. She absently petted him whilst gazing at the sky.
