Poor starved fool, she thought again, and returned to her work with renewed vigor. She would probably not see him again. She doubted that she would be invited to the wedding. And she would not wish to attend even if she were.
He came on the evening of the following day. It was dark already. Zachary was in bed. She was sitting in the parlor working on a shawl for Mrs. Williams, who was old and felt the cold constantly even through the summer months. And she was remembering Valentine’s Day eight years before and the watch case she had embroidered with a red heart for Zach. And the silver heart-shaped locket he had given her and the promise to have his miniature painted as soon as possible for her to keep inside it. It was still empty.
She heard the knock on the door, and her hands paused at her work as she waited for a servant to answer it. It could be any number of people, she told herself, even at this late hour. There was no possible reason for her heart to beat so painfully. There was no reason to believe that it would be he.
But it was. She rose as her manservant announced him and he came striding into the room, smiling at her. He was dressed for evening in a form-fitting coat and silk shirt and elegantly tied neckcloth. He looked quite devastatingly handsome, she thought, inwardly mocking her own reactions. She was behaving like a schoolgirl.
“This is a very improper time to pay a call,” he said. “I came to apologize for my failure to appear either yesterday afternoon or this. I am afraid you were quite right. Almost every minute of each day has been planned for. Boredom will certainly be no one’s worry this week. Having said that, I shall take my leave immediately if you wish.”
She should send him away. His presence alone in her home was improper. But what did propriety matter to her reputation? Besides, she did not want to send him away.
“Will you take a seat, my lord?” she said formally, indicating a chair close to the fire. “I shall ring for tea.”
“Please don’t on my account,” he said. “I have eaten and drunk far too much in the past few days.” But he crossed the room to the chair and waited for her to sit down before doing likewise. “How is Zach? Has he fallen into any lakes in the past two days?”
“No,” she said. “But he has explained at great and tedious length to Ben, our manservant, and to William, early this morning, how you made his boat seaworthy. You have become his great hero, you know.”
He grinned. “It is what comes of having a whole army of nephews and nieces,” he said. “I seem to trip over them wherever I turn during our family gatherings. I suppose because I am unencumbered by wife and family myself I seem fair game to those who cannot attract a mother’s or a father's attention.”
Barbara thought it probably had more to do with a certain kindliness of manner and willingness to treat children as if they were people who mattered, but she did not express her thoughts aloud.
“There are to be charades later,” he explained. “But the ladies had important business to transact after dinner. Something to do with hearts and valentines, I gather, something involving a great deal of merriment and secrecy. The gentlemen were banished to the billiard room. I escaped.”
She smiled. “You do not like a constant round of entertainment, my lord?” she asked. “I thought that was why people spent the Season in London and visited places like Bath and Brighton and went to house parties.”
“But one can be so ferociously enjoying oneself,” he said, “that one has no time to simply enjoy oneself.” He laughed. “And if you can make sense out of that, you must be very clever indeed.”
She laughed too. “I am very clever, then,” she said. “But is it not very wonderful, sir, to be able to ride with other people and converse with them and play games with them and dance with them at will?”
“Yes, it is.” His smile on her was gentle. “The important words being ‘at will.’ I suppose it is no more pleasurable, though, to feel forced into entertainments than to be forced to stay away from them. Is that what has happened to you?”
She drew the shawl toward her and resumed her crocheting. “I am content with my life,” she said. “I have this home and everything I could possibly need. And I have Zachary. I could not give myself over to pleasure when I have a son to bring up.”
“Is that it?” he asked. “Your home and your son?”
She did not think of telling him that his question was impertinent. She thought about it. Was that all? No, there was more. She would soon lose her sanity if there were no more.
“My father allows me to visit his tenants and laborers,” she said. “I like to call on the sick and the elderly. Some of them like to be read to. Some of the older people like just to talk, to remember the old times when they were young. And their own families are often too busy with their daily work to listen. The elderly are often lonely, even when surrounded by family.”
He was smiling when she glanced up at him.
“And yet you want to dance,” he said.
She looked up at him again, startled. “I was foolish to say that,” she said. “I suppose all of us sometimes long for the stars. But that does not mean that reality is unbearable or even unpleasant.”
“When did you last dance?” he asked.
She smiled. “Almost exactly eight years ago,” she said. “At the Valentine's ball at the house. The world was mine, except that Zach was going away the day after and I feared that I would never see him again.”
And so she had gone out walking into the night with him and stepped inside the pavilion on the lower lawn with him to escape the coolness of the night air, and their kisses had grown more desperate until she had been down on the floor of the pavilion, his coat beneath her, and he had been pushing with frantic and inexperienced hands at her skirts and she had reached for him with equal desperation and equal inexperience.
“He must have been dark and handsome.” The viscount was smiling at her. “And tall too? His son is going to be tall.”
“And tall too,” she said. “He was all that a giddy eighteen-year-old found dashing and irresistible. And a cavalry officer to boot.”
“Did he love you?” he asked. “Would he have come back to you?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “He would have come back. He would have been pleased about Zachary, though distressed for me.”
