Return to Summerhouse (The Summerhouse 2)

“Celibacy can sure put a woman in a bad mood,” Zoë said.

Amy ignored that remark. “Is it too much to ask if you did what you said you were going to do and talk to the maids about anyone who might be harboring a grudge against Tristan?”

“I did better than that, I asked Russell. He put the word out to the women and they’re to tell him anything they hear. So far, there’s been nothing. Now, if you don’t mind, I have something else to do.” She left the room.

Amy put her head in her hands. “Oh, Stephen,” she moaned. Just three more days, and she’d be back with him. Just three more days.

Twenty-two

“Are you feeling all right?” Faith asked Amy. “You look—”

“I don’t need another person to tell me how bad I look.” They were standing in front of the orangery and Amy was studying the glass walls. “I don’t think this place is safe.”

“If it were a prison it wouldn’t look safe to you.” Faith took her hands. “Amy, everything that can be done is being done. Tristan will have Thomas to look after him. He’s going to sleep in a dormitory with lots of other people.” It was all Faith could do not to let her displeasure show. In these past weeks her life had become very comfortable. True, it had been hard on her to see the line of people who came to her with diseases that she couldn’t cure, but aside from that, she and William and Thomas had formed a nice life. William was very easy to live with. His constant good humor had kept a smile on her face, and as he healed, he began to help her with the herbs. One morning, in a moment of honesty, he’d told her that his life had never been useful.

“I am sure my nephew has told you that I have never achieved much. I was much younger than my ambitious older brothers, and I was my mother’s favorite. I stayed with her until she died, but by that time I had no inclination to marry and burden myself with children. She left her money to me and I spent years traveling about the world. I even went to that America of yours.”

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“If I had, I might have missed out on the stories that you have told me. I did not see it as a place of great advancement that you seem to know it as.”

Faith had to turn away to hide her red face. She’d joined Zoë in coming down hard on Amy for telling Tristan the truth, but she realized she’d told William a great deal more than she thought she had.

“I know you plan to leave here,” he said, then held up his hand when she started to speak. “I listen more than you think and I hear you whispering with the other two women. I know that the time is coming soon. I was wondering…”

Turning, Faith looked at him.

“If you feel that you need to leave because you have no real place in this world, I would like to make you an offer. The old house, the one you have ranted about having cows in it, is mine.”

She smiled at his use of the word “ranting.” She wanted to p

rotest that she’d done no such thing, but she had. Good! she thought. Maybe she’d made enough of an impression on him that after she was gone they’d take care of the house and not let it fall into ruin.

“I can offer you the house,” William said softly. “And me.”

She realized that he was offering her marriage and a comfortable life with him. It would be nice, she thought, to live here. She would love to oversee the remodeling of that wonderful old medieval house, and she’d like to continue working with the herbs and applying what she knew while learning more.

She looked at William. He had gained a lot of weight in the last weeks and she was beginning to see the man he once was. He was handsome, intelligent, and wonderfully good company. He would make fine husband.

She looked down at the big white marble mortar and pestle that was filled with ajuga leaves. She was pounding them to make an infusion to use on mouth ulcers. No, she thought, she’d had a life of comfort with a “fine husband.” Eddie had been good company and he’d had more money than they could spend. If he hadn’t been ill and had a mother from hell, he would have made a great husband.

Except for one thing, she thought: passion. She and Eddie had never once had passion. When she looked at Tyler, her knees had weakened. She’d never felt that with Eddie.

“I’m going to hold out for passion,” she said aloud, then looked at William in horror. What an awful thing to say to a man who’d just proposed to her!

William surprised her by letting out a loud laugh. “You are a wise, wise woman,” he said, then he looked at her in a way that he never had before. “Give me a bit more time and I think I can fulfill your wish.”

Faith returned his smile. She wanted love with her passion. Not a one-night stand, but true love and passion that made her knees weak. “It would take you more than a bit of time to take me on,” she said to William.

He laughed again and reached for her, but Faith eluded his hand. “Sit down and eat,” she said in the motherly voice she usually used with him.

Since that day there had been an easy, teasing camaraderie between her and William that she’d enjoyed immensely. But now Amy was moving into their cozy glass house with Tristan and probably half a dozen retainers.

“Do not look so down,” William said. “My nephew is a man of humor.”

“Yeah, but does he pick up his socks?”

William smiled at her ill humor and went back to taking the flower heads off the chamomile that Faith had given him to work on.