Her habit of wearing trousers? He’d grinned.
Her interest in science? He’d asked her if she knew anything about chemistry. They’d discussed the various ways gunpowder could be unreliable, and the scientific papers she had read on the subject.
Her past suitors? Her impression of the elderly Swiss count had him crying in laughter.
And this is why I’m on the shelf, she’d concluded.
Some men can’t handle serious weaponry, Christopher had replied, and Angelika had no doubt he could. But as they turned through the manor gates and she guided Percy over the buried pressure plate to signal her approach home, new feelings began to rise up. She’d missed dinner and whilst Victor would be kissing Lizzie in a dark corner somewhere, Will was probably overwrought with nerves. He fretted over the recent disturbances in the village, and the types of people who came out after dusk.
She moved her horse’s pace up. “I’ve probably caused a bother at home. I should have sent a message. I can go on from here.”
“I’d like to meet your brother.”
Angelika arched an eyebrow. “Reeking of ale, with your shirt untucked?” She cackled when he reacted with violence, searching himself in vain, and then gave her a dirty look. “Calm yourself. I would wager my entire dowry that you don’t have a single horse hair on your trousers. Victor is a complete mess, you are forewarned.”
“I’ve heard enough of Victor to know he’s terribly informal, and I shall like him a lot. I may be tidy, but I don’t require others to be.”
Angelika thought with despair that Christopher was very, very, very handsome.
More than his outstanding personal presentation, he was fun, masculine, and had been warm to the barkeeper and kind to a beggar. He had an outdoorsy sun-kissed glow, nice teeth, and a smile that should make her pulse respond. He was technically ideal. Where had he been even a month ago? It suddenly felt absolutely imperative to guard and protect and fight for what she felt for Will, lest Christopher’s thighs weaken her resolve.
“May I ask a somewhat personal question?” Christopher carefully touched the back of her hand with his riding crop to get her attention. “Why did you cry when you held Clara’s baby?”
She asked his legs, “Did I?”
Gently: “You did.”
Angelika’s memory of the moment was being shocked that a baby could be so heavy. The child defied physics. He was like a wet sandbag on her forearm. Clara had shown her how to hold him, and as she and Christopher chatted by the fire—something about Clara’s cottage and how much time was left—Angelika absented herself to stare into the baby’s eyes for an age.
Life and possibility glowed in little Edwin. His skin was perfect and had a smell she liked. His sticky starfish hand pulled her hair. She found herself bobbing from one knee to the other, and when Clara proclaimed her a “natural,” it deeply flattered her, and embarrassed her speechless.
Her hollow insides ached.
It was that thing that Victor was always banging on about: natural science. A lever had been pulled. It was time. There was nothing connected to Will, or her hopes for a future with him, in this memory—it was just the feel of her heavy redheaded friend in her arms.
She needed to answer Christopher now. “I’d never held a baby before.” And she hadn’t wanted to hand him back. In fact, she had already planned in her mind the tartan cloak she would have made as a gift for him, of the softest lambs-wool. Perhaps a matching Scottish bonnet, topped with a pom-pom—wouldn’t that look sweet, set upon his head? Angelika thought about the endless outfits a baby would need for the ever-changing seasons, just extravagant spoiling, for years on end. The finest fabrics and the loveliest colors. Corduroy dungarees with a patch pocket on the chest, in russet tones for autumn—
Cutting into the daydream, Christopher asked, “Do you wish for your own child?”
Angelika contemplated kicking Percy into a gallop in lieu of a reply. But she found herself saying instead, “I think I’ve just realized that I should absolutely love one. But I’ve been a bit disorganized on that front,” she reminded him.
But he did not smile, and confided in return, “I have long given up on starting a family. I am rotated to a new post every two years to train recruits. It’s hard to find someone adventurous who would want to start over in a new town, possibly abroad, again and again. I’m told I am intimidatingly well-ironed, which people mistake for a lack of humor. Also, I am thirty-seven.” He admitted his age as though he were an elderly man.