Free Because of You by Cathy Maxwell Page B

couldn’t hear them?” Mr. Porter demanded. “I’ve never seen the lot of you get together without making a good deal of chatter.”
    “Mr. Porter, he did not know where he was,” Samantha reiterated. These people were going to drive her to madness. “He’d been so sick, hedidn’t even know I’d undressed him.”
    “ You undressed him?” the squire said, raising an eyebrow.
    “Well, how do you think he got undressed?” she snapped. She glanced at Mr. Browne. He didn’t appear to be attending the conversation but stared ahead, as if concentrating on something only he could hear or see.
    “You know, you could be helpful in explaining all this,” she told him.
    “If they won’t listen to you, what makes you think they’ll listen to me?”
    She hated his logic.
    “It doesn’t matter what either of you says,” Squire Biggers insisted. “We are not questioning whether what you did saved this man’s life or not. It did, we all agree. But now we expect him to do what is decent and marry you.”
    Samantha wanted to stamp her feet in frustration. “But he doesn’t have to marry me. We did nothing wrong! ” She spied a thin farmer hovering by the kitchen door in the back of the ever-growing crowd outside her house. “You, Mr. Hatfield. I helped you with the croup when it had left you so weakened you feared you would die. No one expected you to marry me, did they?”
    “I am already married, Miss Northrup,” the farmer answered.
    She blinked and then cried out, “That’s right!” seeing a new way out of this silliness. “And howdo you know Mr. Browne isn’t already married, Squire Biggers?”
    “Because he told me he was not,” Mrs. Sadler said. “When he signed the innkeeper’s book, I asked him. I said, ‘Do you have family in the area, Mr. Browne?’ And he said, ‘No.’ And I said, ‘Well, it is hard to travel away from one’s family.’ And he said, ‘I have no family at all.’ Just like that. Quick and short: ‘I have no family at all.’” She looked to her friends gathered around her. “It is always good to know these things about your guests.”
    Her lady friends nodded agreement.
    The squire smiled benevolently down at Samantha. “Then it appears the two of you can be married.”
    “No, it doesn’t!” she argued.
    But he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Your father would understand the need for urgency. I believe a special license can be arranged. I’ll send a lad on my fastest horse to the bishop. We should have it before dark.”
    Samantha watched the heads of her friends and neighbors agree with him. “This is lunacy. I will not marry this man. I don’t know him. Besides, he is a drunkard,” she added, in a flash of inspiration.
    “Thank you,” was Mr. Browne’s dry response behind her.
    “And he is sarcastic,” Samantha finished without missing a beat.
    Suddenly Mrs. Biggers charged forward, thepheasant feathers on her hat quivering. “This is outrageous,” she told her husband. “Why are you indulging the girl?” She confronted Samantha. “You are the most ungrateful woman imaginable. Do you not see what we are doing for you? Miss Mabel and Miss Hattie do not want you to live with them. They were only being kind, but now that they know you don’t even blush over naked men, they are not even interested…are you, ladies?”
    Miss Mabel and Miss Hattie stood side-by-side next to Mrs. Porter. When Mrs. Biggers had turned her attention to them, their eyes grew round.
    “Well, no, we should not, should we, Mrs. Biggers?” Miss Mabel said.
    “Of course not,” Miss Hattie said. “Not if Mrs. Biggers says it is so.” The sisters huddled together.
    “Our village needs a new vicar, Miss Northrup,” Mrs. Biggers said. “My nephew and his new wife deserve the benefice. Since your father’s death, he has made the trek from Morpeth and back to say the Sunday service. It is past time for you to get out of the vicarage. No one wants to tell you this, but