Her lips compressed in that way she had of looking severe and disapproving and older than her years. “Is that a command, my lord?” she asked him.
She could be intensely irritating. He hated those words of apparently docile submissiveness, which were always accompanied by her look of ice. For one moment he was tempted to tell her that yes, by God, it was a command and that she had better obey it if she knew what was good for her. But he would not give her the satisfaction of being able to look upon herself as a martyr.
“It is arequest, my lady,” he replied with excessive politeness.
She had not come—and he was glad of it. He wanted no repetition of that one afternoon. Somehow he must avoid waltzing with her at the Christmas ball. It should be easy enough. She was quite determined not to dance at all. And there would be plenty of other ladies only too eager to dance.
One day he was so busy that he missed luncheon—and he had breakfasted early. The dancing lesson was to be at four o’clock, as usual. But there was some time left before then that he would steal for himself, his lordship decided, though there were doubtless a thousand and one things he should be doing if he gave thought to the matter. He would not waste part of this stolen time eating. He was not particularly hungry anyway.
He strolled along the wooded bank of the river, which flowed to the east of the house and wound its way behind the hill to the north. He found the gamekeeper’s hut in which he had spent so many hours during his youth. It was unlocked. It was clean and tidy inside and kept in readiness for an inhabitant, with logs piled neatly in the corner by the fireplace, though he had discovered a few days earlier that Pinky no longer lived there all the time—he had taken a small cottage in the village. But the hut, empty though it was, brought back memories—happy memories. The earl sat by the window, looking out at trees and the river for all of half an hour.
Not that he had spent the whole time reliving happy memories, he thought ruefully at last. Or not happy memories from his boyhood, anyway. He had been thinking ofher— of the lovely, eager girl she had been; of the strange something that had happened to her bright, dark eyes when he had first been presented to her, and the corresponding lurching about his own heart; of the way she had always watched eagerly for him at every ball and party after that—she had been too innocent to disguise the fact; of dancing with her until the world receded from around them and there were only the two of them left; of driving her in Hyde Park in a borrowed curricle one afternoon and finding a secluded pathway and kissing her for the first time. She had kissed him back, eagerly, inexpertly—though he had not known the difference at the time—and had rashly gazed into his eyes afterward and told him with passionate conviction that she loved him, that she would always, always love him.
He got up to leave the hut. But he stared for a few more minutes sightlessly through the window to the river below. It had not taken her long to lose her innocence. She had met Gilbert—hehad introduced them—discovered that he was the Earl of Wanstead, was very wealthy, and was in search of a wife. And if Gerard had ever wondered whether she had bitterly regretted her mercenary decision, he had only to look at her now. She had acquiesced in the type of life Gilbert had decreed for them. She still tried to live it. Except when she had waltzed ...
Her spine, usually so stiff, had arched gracefully beneath his hand, her feet had seemed scarcely to touch the floor, she had appeared to take the music inside herself. Her eyes had softened, grown dreamy. Her lips had smiled. No—-her whole face had smiled.
And the world had receded.
He had wondered immediately afterward if she had done it deliberately as punishment for his insisting that she waltz with him. He thought now that it was more likely he had imagined much of it. She had always been a good dancer. It was to be expected that she would waltz well. He had been dazzled by the simple fact of her nearness and the subtle smell of lavender that had always clung about her.
He left the hut and decided to return to the house a different way. He would take the shortcut through the trees and about the base of the hill. The route would bring him within a relatively short distance of the back of the house. But he could hear voices soon after he had left the trees behind— two of them, one shrieking and one laughing. He soon realized where the sounds were coming from.
The hill was wooded, though a scenic walk had been constructed over it, the path lined with flowering trees and shrubs, with seats and follies at appropriate intervals along it and the occasional carefully revealed vista over the surrounding countryside. One part of the slope had been cleared entirely of trees so that the beholder could look down from the path above over the gardens at the back of the house, over the house itself, and along the cultivated parkland in front of it. It was a breathtaking view. The slope itself was thick and beautiful with wildflowers during the summer. But both summer and winter it had always been out of bounds to walkers. Taking a shortcut either up or down the slope had been strictly forbidden. Its wild beauty was to be preserved at all costs.
But down the whole length of that slope, as the Earl of Wanstead watched from the shelter of the trees a short distance away, sailed seven-year-old Rachel, her legs pumping fast, but almost not fast enough for her body, her arms stretched to the sides. She ran in silence and then turned to begin the laborious climb to the top again. And down the lower half of the slope rolled Tess, over and over, shrieking with mingled fright and glee, until she reached the safe haven of her mother’s waiting arms at the bottom. It was the countess who was laughing.
“Caught you!” she said, picking her daughter up and twirling her about, still laughing.
“Again!” The child was all flailing arms and legs. She scrambled upward on all fours as soon as her mother had set her down again.
Ah, his lordship thought, setting one shoulder against a tree trunk, that brought back memories. He had been a sailing ship, a bird, an avenging angel down that slope—until Gilbert had seen him at it one day and had gone off with gleeful haste to report the transgression to his father. One of Uncle’s wild rages had followed. The cane had been brought out.
It was a happy family group that he watched now. He had wondered. He had seen them together only one other time, in the nursery, when the children had been quietly at work under their mother’s serious supervision. He had wondered if those children were to be pitied. But there could be no mistaking the happiness of the scene before his eyes. She gave her attention to both children. She laughed with them both even though the elder played a seemingly solitary game.
Oh, no, he thought with a curious pang about the heart, he had not imagined it. Somewhere behind the dark, cold, puritanical facade of the Countess of Wanstead lurked the exuberant beauty of that girl he had loved—and then hated. She had appeared briefly in the ballroom while she waltzed with him. She was fully present now with her children.
It was a pang of envy, perhaps. They were family. He was the outsider. Always the outsider.
It was Rachel who spotted him. She had just made her third silent, graceful, solemn descent down the hill and had paused to gaze about her. Her eyes alit on him, and she turned to say something to her mother, who had just caught the younger child again.
He strolled toward them and watched them all change. The intruder was coming into the family group, and the family was closing protectively on itself. He did not even attempt to smile.
The countess had put her children behind her and stood before them as if to protect them from harm. She stood straight and dark and—and what? He sensed some strong emotion. He was given the fleeting impression that it was fear. More likely, he thought cynically, it was annoyance that he had come along to spoil the idyll. He should have walked home the more direct way. He should not have come at all—out on this little afternoon escape, to Thornwood in the first place. He had known that memories would be stirred if he saw her again. He had known, surely, that somehow he would be hurt by them.
“It was my fault,” she said quickly and almost defiantly before he could say anything himself. “I did not see any harm in it. Blame me.”
Good Lord! Shewasafraid—for her children. Because they had been breaking what must still be a strict rule. Was she afraid he was about to lay about him with a heavy hand? He clasped his hands tightly at his back.
“It is still forbidden?” he asked. “Racing down that hill merited a caning in my day—bent over the desk in the earl’s study. One hoped to avoid having to sit down for an hour or so afterward.” He leaned a little closer to her when she did not crack even the semblance of a smile or show any other sign of relaxing. “But I have just remembered that I am the one who now makes the rules at Thornwood. Let me exercise my authority, then. This particular rule is rescinded— completely, for all time. The hill is no longer out of bounds to runners or rollers.”
But if he had expected a smile this time, a look of relief, a thank-you, he was doomed to disappointment. “It was made,” she said, “to protect the wildflowers.”
For the space of an hour or two in the library that first morning, when they had planned the house party, there had been some semblance of amiability between them. But there had been none since—he would not count their waltz in that category. She would not allow any pleasantness.
The younger child was clinging to her mother’s cloak and then reaching up both arms. The countess bent to pick her up. The other child stood where she was, not moving, not smiling. She was a thin, plain, solemn little girl. He looked at her, tipping his head slightly to one side so that he could see her around her mother.
“What were you?” he asked her. “A sailing ship?”
