Early Evening September 4, the Best Day of My Life
I’m home.
I’m not sure how to describe the day.
First of all, when we gathered in the courtyard, the sky began frizzling (sucha better word thandrizzling), so half the party turned around directly (Feodora in the lead) and returned to the house. Colonel Brandon and Sir William never allow rainwater to stop their pursuit of a fox, so thankfully there was no talk about canceling the hunt, even when it turned out I was the only lady willing to ride.
“You won’t have a chaperone. Besensible, darling,” Marianne said, trying to persuade me to return to the house—which was the final straw.SensibleI shall never be, and the grin on Hugh’s face when Bobbin and I pranced up beside him was worth her disapproval.
I suppose I ought to describe the hunt for my novel, but it’s all a blur, a glorious, happy blur. We began by riding through the woods, the dogs braying like mad, but it turned out they had startled a flock of pheasants, not a fox. We came out onto a grouse meadow with a low stone wall at the far end.
Hugh looked at me, and I looked at him, and then we flew across it. Belial has longer legs, but Bobbin managed to win because she edged up to him and nipped at his ear. Belial turned his head away rather than bite back (a gentlemanly mount, indeed!), which meant we were able to take the stone wall, and of course Hugh had to pull up or run the risk of running into me.
I couldn’t stop myself from laughing as I drew up on the other side. Hugh doffed his hat and counted it a win on my side. Have I noted that instead of a few strands combed across his head, his black hair is wildly unruly? It’s also surprisingly soft, with ringlets like silk.
I’m not sure what sort of novel I’m writing, but I’ll keep that detail for my memoirs.Privatememoirs.
He and Belial backed up and neatly cleared the wall, which is when we realized that the hunt had taken a different route. Off in the distance, I heard the Colonel bellow “Tally-ho!”
“Do you suppose your brother-in-law actually sighted a fox?” Hugh asked, glancing in that direction, although the hunt was out of sight.
I shook my head. “The Colonel feels it’s unsporting to admit that all the foxes migrated to the next county long ago, so he shouts it once or twice an hour to keep people’s spirits up.”
Sure enough, no other voices echoed Colonel Brandon’s. The only sounds in the meadow were a lark singing and our horses snuffling each other in a friendly sort of way.
Hugh leaped off his horse and came over to me. I know I’m under the spell of romance novels, but I am telling the strict truth when I say that the expression in his eyes made me shiver, in a good way.
“May I help you to dismount?” he asked.
A moment of decision.
I suddenly realized that my future hung on my response. Thefuture mehung in the balance. I either climbed down from the horse, or we kept riding, and he would never ask me to marry him again.
Hugh looked up at me without a trace of expression in his face: either I knew what was happening, or I didn’t.
I did know, of course.
All sorts of things were suddenly clear to me: my feelings for him, his for me, and the nature of our love.
He had always been able to read my eyes, so he did this time, too. He reached up and put his hands around my waist, and without a word, I leaned toward him. His hands wrapped around my waist was a sensation that I won’t forget.
He proved to be frightfully strong, because he didn’t drop me to the ground like a lead weight.
“Do you remember how you were always climbing trees when you were small?” he asked, rather surprisingly.
“Of course,” I said—or something like that. I find that my memory is blurred by what happened next. I had a treehouse at Norland Park, and then Sir John had one built for me when we moved to Barton Cottage, because he found out that I was constantly up in trees or under tables.
“You used to curl up in the treehouse and study French in your red boots.”
“Beet-colored boots,” I said.
He frowned at that. We discussed beets for a while, before discovering that he had no memory of calling me a tomato with carrot legs and beetroot feet.
“Do you truly still believe I think of you that way, or even that I thought of you that way back then? I said those things in jest. I was young and stupid and wanted your attention any way I could get it. I’ve always thought you were beautiful.”
I forgot to mention that he had led me over to the old stone wall, and now boosted me on top so that our heads were at the same height. That involved wrapping his hands around my waist once again, which I liked even better the second time. Then we both pulled off our riding gloves, without saying a word about it.
I am beginning to realize that it’s hard to move characters around a space, because you have to constantly be reminding the reader where they are. So: once our gloves were off, Hugh leaned his hip against the wall, standing quite close to me, and I thought my heart would pound out of my chest.
