Remembrance

That’s what this man did to me the closer he got: made my heart pound harder with each step he took. He hadn’t seen me, or if he had, he wasn’t interested, as he kept his eyes on the wheelbarrow he pushed in front of him.

He was dark: black hair, skin dark by birth and not just the sun, thick black lashes. His strong jaws and squared chin were dark with whiskers under the skin. Muscles mov

ed under his clothes in a way that made me feel quite warm.

As always, business was on my mind and I thought, This is the man I want on the cover of my next book. No, actually, this is the man I want on the cover of my next life.

As I took a step toward him, inside me I could hear Lady de Grey saying, “No, no.” Maybe gardeners were off-limits to a lady. But I’m from a more egalitarian century and country.

“Hello,” I said, smiling sweetly at him.

He walked past me without so much as a glance. Weren’t gardeners of old supposed to be thrilled to be spoken to by the lady of the manor?

“Hello,” I said again, only this time louder. Inside me, Catherine was frantic. “No!” she was screaming, and I knew she was afraid of this man. She’d disappeared, maybe been killed, so was this man a candidate to be her murderer?

I did my best to control my burgeoning lust and turned away to look back at the garden. After all, I did have my pride. If he wasn’t interested in me, I cared nothing about him. I—

“Ow!” I yelled as a sharp pain hit the back of my legs, then I turned around to see the back of the man, the full wheelbarrow before him, muscles straining as he wheeled it down the path away from me. He had on a dirty white shirt, a wide leather belt and heavy wool trousers. From the back he looked like Laurence Olivier at thirty-three, when he played Heathcliff.

As he passed me, he’d hit the back of my calves with the wheelbarrow, making a black mark on my pretty and undoubtedly expensive dress as well as hurting me.

Forgive my stupidity but I think that when a person hits you he should apologize, but this man just kept going. When he stopped about three yards from me, I walked over to him. “Excuse me, but did you know that you hit me with that?” I was being very polite but he didn’t so much as look at me as he lifted the handles of the wheelbarrow.

I leaned over the barrow and got closer to his face, never mind that my heart was pounding. Just because he was gorgeous gave him no right to cause me pain. On the other hand, maybe he was deaf. Whatever, I was ready to forgive him. “Excuse me,” I said much louder.

He didn’t respond in any way, didn’t look at me, didn’t react to the sound of my voice. At this close range, I could see that he wasn’t one hundred percent English. It was my guess that he was from somewhere in the Mediterranean, for his skin was dark and his eyes dark and he had a mop of black hair. Maybe he didn’t speak English.

“Excuse me, but you—” When he still didn’t look at me, I said, “Oh, the hell with it” and turned around to walk off. What did I care if he did or did not speak English? I had more important things to do than pant over the gardener.

But as I turned away from him, he then…I can hardly believe this even now. He dumped the contents of his wheelbarrow on my feet. On my feet, on the bottom of my pretty dress, up the front of my dress.

I just stood there and looked down at the mess that was me. Of course there was no question of what was in the wheelbarrow. Manure. What else? Only it wasn’t good American manure that you buy at the nursery in plastic bags. This manure hadn’t been baked to take bugs as well as the smell out of it. This manure had been hauled out of the stables, thrown in a heap, and allowed to “ripen” for a few years. It was now “ripening” around me.

“Look what you have done to me,” I managed to say. “Look at my dress.”

That man just stood there and looked at me. I could see that he wasn’t deaf, and if he didn’t speak English it didn’t matter because manure is manure in any language. His black eyes were twinkling and he had the tiniest bit of a smile playing on his mouth.

He had done it on purpose! I knew it as well as I knew…Well, better not go into that, since lately I didn’t seem to be too sure of much of anything. Contact through hostility, I thought. He’s some redneck foreigner, fresh off the boat, who has no idea that I am the lady of the house and should be treated with respect. From the look of him he might be from a country where the men think any woman out of the harem is worthy of a man’s abuse. Wherever his origins he seemed to think that his looks allowed him to get away with anything.

When he just stood there looking at me, saying nothing, I decided to forgo my manners. Forget that this was Edwardian England and I was called Lady Something or other. After a quick glance about to see that no one else was within hearing distance, I let him have it. I told him what I thought of him. I used language I’d only heard on cable TV comedy routines and never said out loud before.

From the light that left his eyes, I was sure he spoke English, and I don’t think he knew all the words that I did. I was willing to bet that no woman had ever said anything to him but the word “yes.”

When I felt that I’d told him what I thought of his manners and his ancestors, I finished with a little lesson in democracy. “You’re in England now and this country is almost as free as America. You cannot treat a woman any way you want.” Even to myself this sounded wimpy but I was weak from hunger and fatigue.

To tell the truth, I felt like crying. I was hungry and I was alone, not only in a foreign country but in a foreign time period and I wanted to go home. Where was Jamie? Where was my beautiful Jamie I had written about and had loved for centuries? Why wasn’t he here to rescue me? All my paper heroes were there to rescue the heroine when she needed him.

To my utter horror, I could feel tears prickling behind my eyes. The smell of horse manure wafted around me and this dreadful man was still staring at me in silence. Another second and my tears would be running down my cheeks.

“I’m going to tell my husband about you,” I managed to whisper, knowing I sounded like a child. With my chin held high, I turned away and started to leave.

I’d gone about two and a half steps when the man’s voice stopped me.

“I, madam, am your husband.”

For the second time in one day, I fainted.

10