Living a full life? Marrying the man of her choosing? “Have you talked to Nicholas about this?” There was no way he would approve. “Has he been here?”
The lines between his eyebrows reappeared, and his smile was gone. “Who is Nicholas?”
“I mean Harrington, Duke Harrington.” Nobody called him Nicholas anymore, not even their mother.
“What does the Duke of Harrington have to do with this?”
Patience leaned forward and clasped the elbow of Mr. Woodsworth’s jacket. “Lord Bryant didn’t say anything about him?”
“No, he declared you dead and then left. Why, what does he have to do with His Grace?”
“Nothing, practically nothing.” Was Mr. Woodsworth acting as if he didn’t know who she was, or did he truly not know? “They are friends, I suppose.” She followed the lines of his face, so bold that, at first, she had thought him too rough to be considered handsome. He looked different to her now. The too-smooth faces of the likes of Lord Bryant no longer appealed to her. Unpolished features could be endearing when worn by the right man. “Mr. Woodsworth, could you tell me again what you were talking about before? I believe I have missed something important.”
His face brightened, and he smiled so broadly she thought perhaps his ears lifted a little. Was that possible? He was suddenly like a young boy opening a present. “Come to my desk, and I will show you.”
He reached for her hand, and she let him take it. Once again, she was no longer certain who she was. Was she still a maid? A maid could hold her employer’s hand and speak with him in a closed-off study, couldn’t she?
Mostly likely not.
She didn’t care.
Mr. Woodsworth pulled out his chair and motioned for her to sit. It was sturdy and wooden with a worn-in leather seat. Solid and comfortable, just like its owner. She sat down, and he scooted it in so her legs were tucked neatly under the desk.
He stayed behind her chair but leaned forward to open a drawer. His closeness no longer calmed her. As his chest brushed her shoulder, her breathing caught. He didn’t move away from her. Instead he rummaged through the drawer, still touching her side. Did he even notice the contact that was causing her mind to cloud? Mr. Woodsworth pushed aside some broken and oddly shaped pieces of red sealing wax and grabbed a stack of six or seven pieces of paper.
Why did he still have that terribly ruined wax? He didn’t seem the type to keep something so broken and untidy. It was on top of the papers he was retrieving, as if he had recently used it or held it in his hands. She snuck a glance at his fingertips. Sure enough, there was a slight tinge of red.
“I have spent the last hour formulating a plan. I hope you like it.” His mouth was near her cheek. All she would have to do was turn to the side, and she could repeat her actions of the other day. She focused on the papers in front of her.
The first page had a property listed in Kent. It listed the size of the home and number of rooms as well as the acreage of the property. It wasn’t a large home, more like a country cottage.
“I’ve just purchased this property in Kent.”
“I see.” She didn’t. She really didn’t.
“I will hire servants from the area. No one there knows me or you.”
She nodded as if that made perfect sense.
He reached around her once again, grazing her shoulder, and slid that page to the side.
The next page was the beginning of a timeline divided by weeks. The first step on the list was for Mrs. Jorgensen to outfit Patience with new clothing from a dressmaker she had never heard of in the town of Watford, just outside of London.
“Why is Mrs. Jorgensen buying me clothes?”
“You and your family cannot show up in Kent without proper clothes. We will order them tomorrow, and you should have enough to make the journey in two weeks.” He pointed to the second line.
Remove Patience and her family to Kent and establish them there as a genteel family.
“See?”
Patience didn’t wait for him to turn over the next page. She turned it herself. There were pages and pages of timelines. After the second page, he moved from weeks to months, and on the fourth page, after what must have been over a year, there was a line that read, Woodsworth family comes to Kent for several weeks, and the two families meet.
On the left-hand side, he had written not only which week it was, but also how much time had passed, calculated all together. “One and a half years? You will wait to visit me for one and a half years?”
“I would have liked it to be sooner, but we have to look at this methodically.”
“Look at what, exactly, methodically?”
He leaned forward so his face was next to hers and skipped ahead to the last page. Under the line Two years, six months, and three weeks was a line that made the air in the room seem lighter, as if she couldn’t get enough of it.
Propose Marriage
Three more lines with instructions on banns and trousseau and then,
March 18th, 1847, The Wedding of Mr. Anthony Woodsworth and Miss Patience.
“You are asking me to marry you.”
He pulled her chair out from the desk and turned it to the side so he could kneel down in front of her. “Yes, I am.”
Her fingers ached to trace the smile that was on his lips. He was so earnest.
“You made me another list.”
“It is a very long list, but if we follow every point, I believe we can make it work. I know our relative positions in society, not to mention the fact that you have met some of my friends, may seem like insurmountable obstacles, but I am willing to face them if it means in the end I can be with the one person who believes my smile makes me as beautiful as a duck.”
She closed her eyes and let the soft laugh bubble up from deep inside of her. “But two years and seven months! It is so long. Even if that plan of yours worked.”
“It will work.”
“I don’t know if I am that patient.”
“You are Patience.” He tugged on one of the curls at the nape of her neck. “And I think it is high time I learned of your surname. It was quite strange to write that plan not even knowing your surname.”
“Kendrick.” She waited for his reaction. Patience Kendrick. It wasn’t a common name.
He smiled. “Patience Kendrick. Miss Kendrick. That has a beautiful ring to it. I wish I could have been calling you that all the time we have known one another.”
“No one calls me Miss Kendrick.”
“No, but they will once you are established in Kent.” He took her hands in his, not understanding her meaning. “I know we technically don’t get engaged for another few years, but will you do it? Will you marry me, Miss Kendrick, and allow me to call you Patience, not because you are a maid but because I have the right as your betrothed?”