An Innocent Affair

I

"Youth ends when egotism does; maturity begins when one lives for others." Hermann Hesse, Gertrude

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I.

March 1812

Ashwood, Hertfordshire

"Have you seen this?" Jem asked Adam, his eyes widening as he looked upon the ledger of household expenses. "Have you seen how much sugar and treacle the kitchen ordered in the last quarter?"

Adam lowered his pen and rose from his chair, peering over to Jem's side of the desk. He found the additions that Jem was referring to and he smirked. "Up is it? I would blame Grace for that. She's been practically inhaling sweets throughout this third pregnancy." Adam appeared quite amused.

While Jem had very little experience in his eighteen years in knowing the goings on in the kitchen, he could certainly see that Ashwood had ordered enough ingredients to satisfy the village for the year in only three months. Is that what pregnancy did to women? Did it make them as uncontrollable as a three-year-old staring at a dish of iced biscuits?

Of course, Jem was clever enough to keep that thought to himself. As good as his eldest sister was to him, Jem knew that he would never be too old for a scolding.

"I wouldn't worry yourself over the food spending, Jem," Adam said as he sat back down. "I don't begrudge anyone food, and what we have in excess is directly given to those in our parish in need. You have done a terrific job these last months in helping Ashwood to run more economically. Won't you come here, and I'll explain the rents to you."

Jem was the one to stand now, and he straightened his jacket and pulled at the sleeves. It was the first fine coat he had ever owned that had not been Peter's first or had been specifically for church. When his mother had first seen him dressed as he was, she had cried.

Jem Denham had certainly put in effort to growing up. He would be eternally grateful for the childhood he'd had upon reflection. There was never any expectation upon him. Not in the way that it had been on Grace to provide for them, or Peter to undertake an apprenticeship. As the youngest of the Denham siblings, Jem had been allowed to run about to his heart's content. Even as a teenager, he had rarely been without grass stains upon his knees.

While he knew that he would never lose his childhood spirit, Jem knew that if he ever wanted to be more than the youngest Denham, he needed to make something of himself.

While his family and his in-laws saw Jem's sudden ambition as a sign of his maturity, and indeed it was, there was another reason that no one knew about. No one would ever know about it.

Jem was still haunted by the way he had embarrassed himself in front of Cressie Martin at the Winter Assembly. He had nightmares about it all the time. In his dreams, he saw her laughing at him. He saw it so often that it had tainted the reality. Had she laughed at him? Had she thought him a fool? Had she thought him ridiculous?

Why ever would someone as lovely as her take a boy like Jem Denham? The fifth child of a poor family with a church education and dirt underneath his fingernails.

Jem could not even fathom what had happened in that moment. He could not believe that he had proposed. Was panic proposing something that people could do? Or could it only happen to him? All he had seen was Cressie walking away, and he had been desperate to keep her with him for only a moment longer.

And instead of saying, 'Will dance the next with me?', he'd asked her to do a little more than that.

Jem knew it was all his own fault. He couldn't blame Cressie for being just as sweet and as charming as he had imagined her to be. And when she'd told him about her love for swimming, he had seen her keen spirit for adventure in the depths of her warm brown eyes. Immediately he had sensed a kindred spirit, and it had stirred something inside of him that had excited him beyond measure.