“You and Perdita are close?” he asked, leaning forward slightly.
She nodded. “We are as close as sisters, but without the competition that some sisters have. Neither of us has any desire to marry, and we’ve never been jealous over gentlemen. We just…” She struggled for the right word. “We make sense together. I’m afraid I can’t explain it.”
Ambrose nodded. “I know what you mean. You can sit together in a room for hours in silence and simply enjoy each other’s company. My friend Gareth is like that for me. I could sit late into the night in his evening room with him, drinking brandy and not having to speak a word. But that’s changed…” His face darkened with emotion.
“In what way?” she prompted, wondering if he’d answer or if he’d lock his secrets back up in his heart.
“He’s married now. Wonderful woman, Helen, but it’s not the same when I’m with him. There’s a part of him that misses her even for a moment when she’s out of the room. I can see it in his eyes. It’s not that he’s unnaturally attached, per se…I’m bungling this.” He chuckled wryly. “But it’s more that they so complete each other that they miss the other when they are separated.”
That was something she had understood once, long ago…with Marshall. That need to be with him, even when he was across the room. After he’d left for London, she’d felt as though she’d wasted away without him. But in time, she’d realized she’d been too young, too foolish. A girl of seventeen didn’t always know the difference between infatuation and love. And while one was more lasting and deeper than the other, the pain of the break was same. She had vowed never to let another man hurt her like that again.
Even now she sensed her foolish heart wanting to give Ambrose a chance, let him inside so he might shatter her when he left. It was too dangerous, this sharing of memories and talk of childhoods.
She rose from her chair, and he stood as well. “Please, sit, finish your breakfast.” She gestured to his chair, and he did so reluctantly. Even rakes could still be gentlemen every now and then.
“I’d be happy to go with you to the Darbys’ early,” he offered.
Shaking her head, she backed away. “No, I insist, please stay. I’ll write some directions for you to the picnic spot and leave them with a footman.”
“Very well.” He was still watching her, and she knew that the intimacy between them was thinning again, as though both she and Ambrose were fortifying the walls around their hearts.
She inwardly shook herself at the thought as she slipped from the dining room into the corridor.Who knew I would have so much in common with a rake?
OceanofPDF.com
Chapter 6
Bloody hell.
Ambrose was standing in a cow-covered field.
The sloping hill he stood upon was filled with cows, a breed he recognized from his father’s talk of livestock whenever he came back from school for weekends in the country. White Park cows had curved horns and rich white hides speckled with faint black dots. They were fairly docile beasts, but being in the midst of them was unsettling.
Lifting the scrap of parchment again, Ambrose stared at the directions the footman had provided him. He hadn’t been foolish enough to trust Alex’s word, so he’d asked the footman to confirm the directions.
South down the lane, past the wooden gatehouse, turn right onto the garden path, and straight into the forest for a quarter of a mile…then climb the hill…
He muttered the last few words aloud and wiped at his brow. The hike had brought on a sweat. Not that he was unused to physical exertions—he boxed and fenced regularly—but he wasn’t dressed for walking about the hills and valleys of Lothbrook.
“Where the bloody hell is the picnic?”
“Sir? Are you lost?” A little voice drew Ambrose’s attention, and he found a lad standing at the edge of the field about fifteen feet away. He carried a makeshift fishing pole and a cloth bag full of fish.
“Lad, do you know the way to Darby House?” he asked, walking toward the lad.
Squelch!
Ambrose slid and nearly fell onto his backside. He recovered his balance and stared down to see his new boots covered in cow manure.
The boy chortled and then gasped, covering his mouth. Ambrose almost started laughing too.
“Darby House is…” The boy was holding his stomach now with one hand to keep from laughing. “About a mile in the other direction, sir.”
He should have known. “Of course it is.” Ambrose wiped one boot on the grass, trying to remove the essence of the cows, but it was no use. He was going to show up at the Darbys’ picnic smelling like cow dung.
Had the footman given him the wrong directions? Ambrose searched his mind, playing back that moment when the young man had stared at the directions Ambrose asked him to verify and he’d quickly nodded.
“That looks true to me, sir!” the footman had said before he’d rushed off to his duties.
