Brynthwaite, Cumbria – Summer, 1880

The Fox and the Lion pub was the center of all male activity in the tiny lakeside town of Brynthwaite, especially on a hot, Saturday night in the middle of summer. Everyone from the shop-owners of Brynthwaite’s High Street to the rascally young men from Brynthwaite Municipal Orphanage—who had snuck out to enjoy the fun of the pub’s raucous crowd—were drinking, laughing, and having a right good time. Some more than others.

“To Lord Basil and Countess Fancy Dress,” Roger Lakes shouted, his words slurred as he stood on a chair in the middle of the pub’s largest room.

Several other drunk or half-drunk men roared their approval, raising their glasses and shouting—young Jason Throckmorton and Lawrence Smith among them. The only one without a drink in his hand, Marshall Pycroft, glared at his friends with all the protectiveness of a mother hen watching wild chicks.

“’Ere,” Bert Norris said, swaying as he stood. “I thought we had to call him Lord Waltham, not Basil anymore, seein’ as he’s a bloody great earl and all now.”

“He always was an earl,” Wat Lakes, Roger’s oldest son hollered back from the table where he sat with his two brothers, Chaz and Billy. “He never minded us callin’ him Basil then.”

“To the bloody earl!” Roger bellowed, raising his glass once again. Another round of cheers followed, then shouts of encouragement as Roger tipped back his mug and swallowed its entire contents in a series of long gulps.

Ted Folley watched the scene with a disapproving frown from behind the bar. In the year and a half since he’d purchased the pub, he’d transformed it from a seedy place for men to drink and misbehave into a neat, orderly, community gathering place. He’d expanded the pub’s menu of drinks and had started serving simple food, and he had plans to do more. He’d given the place a thorough scrubbing, refitted a few of the upstairs rooms to rent for a short or long-term basis, and had tossed out rotting old tables and chairs, replacing them with new, finely-crafted ones. But the one thing he hadn’t been able to do anything about were the rough-and-tumble regular patrons, like the Lakes men, who used the pub as their center for disrupting the peace of Brynthwaite, particularly on Saturday nights.

“To the mad countess,” Roger began a third toast, lifting a foot to the back of the chair on which he stood.

Ted’s heart dropped to his stomach as the chair cracked and the back snapped in two. “Get down from there this instant, Roger!” he shouted.

He wasn’t heard over the roar of laughter, shock, and echoed cheers that followed. Roger lost his balance and tumbled to the side. There were enough men nearby to catch him and stop him from splattering to the floor. In fact, as soon as they broke his fall, they hoisted him back up onto the broken chair. Roger executed a mock bow, wobbling from one side to another and looking as though he might fall over again at any second.

“As I was saying before being so rudely interrupted,” Roger said, waving his empty mug in front of him. “To the health of our very own bondy Miss Bondy bond silly countess of Walthingham!”

The drunk men laughed and cheered, especially when Roger raised his mug to drink, only to find it empty.

“You really shouldn’t insult the countess like that,” Jason Throckmorton called out as the older men drank their toast. His eyes were glassy and his face was red, but he seemed to have at least some of his wits about him. “She’s really quite nice, you know.”

“Nice, is she?” Billy Lakes said, standing unsteadily and weaving his way over to where the orphanage boys stood near Ted’s bar. Billy was only a few years older than the teenage boys. He threw his arm around Jason’s shoulder. “You’d know, wouldn’t you, Throckmorton.” He barely managed to get the long name out in one piece. “You’ve got a reputation with the ladies, you know.”

Jason blushed as the older men teased and ribbed him. Lawrence Smith joined the others in laughing at his friend, but Marshall Pycroft only scowled deeper, crossing his arms. “It’s time for us to go,” he muttered.

“No, it can’t be,” Roger said, pointing at them with his empty mug from atop his chair. “The night is still young.”

“And so are they,” Ted said, joining the scene at last. “I shouldn’t have let them in to begin with.”

“They’re fine, strong men,” Roger insisted. He jumped to the floor, wobbling and nearly falling over before he righted himself, and stumbled through the crowd to slap Lawrence on the back. “Just look at ’em. They’ll be men in no time. We’re just helping the process along.”

A round of laughter followed. Ted scowled and shook his head. He glanced to Marshall, who nodded, as if the two of them were in agreement that it was time for the youngsters to go. Marshall pushed his way to his friends, pulled Lawrence away from Roger, then herded his friends toward the pub’s door.

“Oy! I need another here,” Roger shouted, swaying his way to the bar. He slapped his mug down hard on the surface that Ted had worked all night to keep clean.

“You’re not having another, Roger.” Ted swiped the mug away from him, setting it on the tray of vessels to be washed that he kept under the counter. “You’ve had quite enough already.”

“You hear that?” Roger called over his shoulder to the rest of the room. “This toss-pot thinks I’ve had enough.”

The men behind him laughed. “Ted wouldn’t know what enough looked like if it hit him square between the eyes,” Jerry Root said from the side of the room, where he leaned against the wall, probably to keep from falling over.

“Yeah, have you ever even had a woman?” Chaz Lakes shouted. The obnoxious question didn’t seem to have much to do with the conversation, but Ted knew better. Every night, every conversation, every round of teasing, it all came back to the same thing.

“He’s had your sister,” Bert snorted, bursting into peals of laughter, along with half the rest of the room.

“He ain’t never had June,” Billy yelped, defending his sister in his own, insufficient.

“He wishes he had,” Jerry laughed. “He’s wanted her since school.”

“Oh, June, my love.” Bert launched into the same, tired imitation that Ted was treated to every time his drunken patrons turned on him. “Let me spread my coat in the mud for you.”

Bert swiped a soiled cloth from the nearest table and let it fall dramatically to the floor while the other men laughed. Jerry pushed away from the wall long enough to act out walking over the cloth. Ted frowned. One time. Once, when they were in school, right after learning the story of Sir Walter Raleigh taking off his cloak and spreading it over a muddy puddle so that Queen Elizabeth didn’t have to soil her feet, Ted had tried to imitate the gallant action for June. June had stared at him like he’d grown another head and walked around the wet section of the schoolyard. She’d shown better sense than he had, in spite of the romantic gesture. And his mother had given him a damn good thrashing for ruining a perfectly good coat.

“Oh, sweet June,” Bert and Jerry went on with their entertainment. “Kiss me, my one, true love.”

The men watching roared with laughter, egging Bert on as he tried to catch Jerry in a drunken embrace and kiss him. Ted huffed out a breath, ready to put an end to the whole debacle.

“Don’t let them get to you.” The kind words of advice came from Andrew Noble, who stood at the far end of the bar in the quieter section of the pub. The bar formed the fulcrum between two distinct rooms that were separated by an archway and a corner. Andrew never took part in the mischief run by Roger and his sons and friends, though whether it was because he was too sensible for that kind of fuss or because, as a man born in Africa, he wasn’t welcome by Roger’s lot, was hard to tell.

“They’ve been like this my whole life,” Ted told Andrew with a sigh. He considered himself lucky to have the hard-working and intelligent black man as his friend. “I’m used to it.”

“I wouldn’t be,” Andrew said with a wry grin.

“Oh, June, let me give you something even better than that,” Bert went on with his charade. He’d grabbed Jerry, pinning his arms to his chest, and proceeded to imitate thrusting against him.

“Disrespectful gits,” Andrew grumbled.

“Yeah, well, Bert’s not exactly a stranger to making those same motions in earnest with farmer Evans,” Ted mumbled. “He thinks people don’t know about it.”

Andrew burst into a snorting laugh, shaking his head as he watched the charade through the bar.

Knowing that all of the men making fun of him had their own things that could be made fun of didn’t do much to soothe Ted. He wanted nothing more than to kick each and every one of his mean-spirited patrons out of the pub forever, but he’d purchased the pub with a loan, and that loan wasn’t even close to being paid off. He couldn’t afford to turn away any customers. Paying customers, that was.

“Here, give us another beer,” Roger said, gesturing for Ted to get pouring.

Ted shook his head. “Your tab is high enough as is, Roger. I can’t extend you more credit until you pay what you already owe.”

“Me? Owe money?” Roger reeled back in mock horror, losing his balance. “I can’t think what you mean by that.”

Ted crossed his arms and hissed a breath. “You said you’d pay your tab last Saturday, and the Saturday before that. It’s well over a pound fifty now.”

“A pound fifty?” Roger balked, his eyes glassy with drink and mirth. “It couldn’t possibly be. You’ve done your figuring wrong.”

“I have not.” Ted turned to the side, taking down a small, wooden box where he kept cards for each of his patrons, detailing what they’d consumed and what they owed. He quickly found the Lakes card and pulled it out, showing it to Roger.

Roger swayed and squinted at Ted’s small, neat handwriting. “Let me see that.” He reached for the card.

Ted pulled it out of his grasp. “One pound, seven shillings, and five pennies. I’ve been more than generous with repayment, but that stops now. I’ll need payment in full before I serve you anything else.”

“Aw,” Roger said with a condescending sneer. “Why all this need to act the big man with me? Is it because my sweet little June won’t come over here and rub down your bar for you?”

The men who stood nearby laughed at the crude question. “I bet it’s not much of a bar to rub down in the first place,” one of them snorted.

Ted pressed his lips together and breathed out through his nose. He could take the teasing. He’d taken it his whole life. But he hated when June was dragged into anything. She didn’t deserve it. “Are you going to pay your tab or not?” he asked Roger.

Roger’s mouth formed into a shape that indicated he was about to say “not,” but before he could, all eyes were drawn to the pub’s front door—which stood open to let air into the crowded place in the midst of the summer heat—as June Lakes herself came storming through.

June heard the commotion of the pub long before she reached the bright and active building. She loathed the errand she was on, loathed the disapproving stares of the irritated citizens of Brynthwaite as she marched through the lamp-lit town. Everyone knew where all the noise that kept them awake at night came from, and everyone in town knew it was her kin that caused it. She was exhausted, bleary-eyed from scrubbing the floor of their small house with lye all afternoon, aching from cleaning out the fireplaces, and in a foul temper after her father and brothers had eaten everything she’d cooked for supper without leaving more than scraps for her. So when she stepped through the pub’s door in search of her menfolk, she had nothing but scowls and fury for the drunks inside.

The moment she stepped through the door and planted her fists on her hips as she searched for her father and brothers, the pub went silent. Except for Bert Norris, who was mimicking some sort of inappropriate act with Jerry Root. They continued for a few more seconds, Jerry calling, “Ted, oh Ted!” in imitation of a woman.

June didn’t need an explanation to see exactly what was going on. Her face heated with an awkward combination of fury and embarrassment as she watched them. Jerry was obviously pretending to be her while Bert was playing the part of Ted. It didn’t matter what she did, how infrequently she saw Ted, or how many years had passed. No one in town could forget the way that Ted had fawned over her since they were schoolchildren.

She snuck a quick peek at Ted, where he stood behind the bar. He watched her with guilt, as if he’d been the one to direct the farce Bert and Jerry were playing out, even though she knew Ted would never be a part of anything so crude. Ted was too stodgy, too upright, and too priggish to be the driving force behind anything as cruel or teasing as what Bert and Jerry were up to. Not that his obvious lack of involvement made her feel any better.

She cleared her throat and nodded to him. “Ted. I’ve come to fetch my father and brothers.”

No sooner were the words out of her mouth than the chaos of more than a dozen drunk men crammed in a room together returned. The noise level shot up as the men laughed, slapped Bert and Jerry on the back, and made crude jokes that she refused to listen to while staring and pointing at her and Ted.

“Would you like me to help you scoop them up?” Ted asked her, a thousand times more respectful than anyone else in the room.

“No.” June shook her head, marching boldly into the throng of loud, smelly, hot men to grab her brother Wat—who was nearly passed out from drink—by the arm. “Come on,” she ordered. “It’s time to go.”

Wat stumbled after her, as did Billy when she grabbed him and shoved him toward the door. Gathering up her brothers was like attempting to organize cats. As soon as she had two of them heading for the door, the third would peel away, grabbing for the nearest mug of beer. And she hadn’t even tried to shepherd her father toward the door.

“Really, I can help you with this,” Ted insisted, coming out from behind the bar. “They’re an armful on the best of days.” He grabbed hold of her father.

“Oy! Hands off, you brigand,” her father shouted. “You’ll get your money.”

Face hot with embarrassment, June scowled at her father, then Ted. “What’s he talking about?”

“His bar tab,” Ted told her apologetically. “It’s getting up there.”

June sighed, finally managing to push all three brothers out the door and into the street, where they loitered aimlessly. “Dad, what did I tell you about putting any more beer on credit?”

“You can’t order me around, you young chit,” her father slurred at her.

“We don’t have the money, Dad,” June sighed.

“I don’t mind extending their credit a little more, if it helps you,” Ted said, helping her get her father out the door.

“That’s it, Teddy boy,” one of the drunken men still inside the pub called after them. “You court your sweet June like that.”

“Yeah, court her roughly,” someone else shouted. A round of ribald laughter followed.

June was so embarrassed she was sure even her toes were blushing. She couldn’t look at Ted as she attempted to herd her menfolk into a clump that she could push home.

“Sorry about that,” Ted told her, his shoulders hunched, an apologetic look on his face. “I’ll shut them up.”

“No, no, I’m used to it,” she sighed.

At least, she ought to be used to it. Ted Folley had been in love with her since they were children. She’d been teased about it since she was still in short skirts and braids. Before her mother died, the other girls at Brynthwaite School had teased her and made up songs about June and Ted getting married and having twenty babies. They’d pushed her into his path so that the two of them would collide more times than she could count. And after her mother had died, once she’d been shackled to a life of cleaning up after her father and brothers, well after she’d given up any hope of marriage at all, people had continued to tease her about Ted, calling him her beau and whistling whenever the two of them were in the same room.

But Ted was hopeless. He was overly serious and had no sense of humor. He tripped over his own feet more often than not. He barely ever cracked a smile. His hair was too long and hung in a styleless mass on his head. He was as uptight as the circle of old ladies who sat on Mrs. Garrett’s front porch, criticizing everyone who walked by. In short, Ted was, and always had been, a bit of an embarrassment to her.

“Really,” he said, shuffling closer to her as she grabbed hold of Billy and Wat, praying they would stay upright long enough to get home. “I can help you with them if you’d like.”

“We don’t need your help,” Billy wailed, stumbling. Their father caught him, though he nearly fell over himself in the process.

“It’s no trouble at all,” Ted insisted, staring straight at June and ignoring the others.

That stare pierced right through her. It was too kind, too concerned. He probably would help at that, and June would feel forever guilty. Guilty that she’d never been able to return Ted’s affection, guilty that he’d wasted more than a decade pining for her when she didn’t have anything even close to a life that she could offer him. She was hardly a person, let alone a woman or an object of desire. She was a drudge, nothing more. She was the dog that kept her sheep of a family in line, kept them fed and clean—as much as she could—and got them to their work on time. She’d long since given up telling Ted he needed to find someone else to fall in love with. He wouldn’t listen to her any more than her father and brothers would listen to her when she told them to stop drinking and make something better of themselves.

“Please,” Ted went on. “Let me help.”

“No,” June snapped. “I can manage just fine on my own.” She turned away from him, heart aching over how rude she had to be to make him understand. “Come on,” she snapped at her father and brothers. “Get home so I can get you all in bed. You need to sleep it off.”

“How come you’re the only woman who wants to get me in bed?” Chaz asked, then snorted.

Billy laughed with him, but Wat grumbled, “I wouldn’t even mind her in my bed at that.”

“You try it and you’ll be short one willy,” June snapped at him, though a deep and growing fear that someday Wat would try something she couldn’t stop gnawed at her. “Move your sorry arses,” she shouted, pushing them all along.

At last, her father and brothers all began to move in the right direction, stumbling and swaying on their way home. She didn’t have time to glance over her shoulder to see if Ted was watching. He probably was. All she could do was keep moving forward, pushing her kin on, not thinking of the future. Things had gone too far for too long for her to even imagine that she had a future.