And then, back inside the park, while he strode past the lake, she left his side for the first time in order to go trotting off to some unknown destination. Unknown, that was, until, looking ahead to see if he could spot her, he saw Miss Westcott instead. He could see that she was seated on a flat rock under a weeping willow, where she had surely come for some privacy to read her own letters in peace. She no longer recoiled in terror at the sight of his dog. Indeed, she had already set aside the letter that was in her hand in order to pat Beauty’s head and scratch behind her ear.
Beauty stood there accepting the petting, but without her usual silly look of bliss. Rather, she looked back at him with lolling tongue and pleading eyes.Look whom I have found for you.He had not wanted her to find anyone. He had wanted to be alone, and she had seemed to sense that ever since they left his room. Until now. It felt like betrayal. But it would have been impolite merely to whistle for her and walk on. It would have been equally discourteous to walk on without whistling. Miss Westcott had seen him, and she knew he had seen her.
Damnation!
He had not even begun to deal with the turmoil roiling about in his head. He had not even tried to quell the dizzying spin of emotions that were tumbling about in his mind and the rest of his body. He had not even known where hehad gone or why he was making his way back to the house now. Habit, maybe? Because there was nowhere else to go? Because his room had a door that could be shut and locked, and perhaps mind and emotions could be marshaled into some sort of order in its small, private confines?
He approached Miss Westcott with reluctant feet and apologized for disturbing her. For hehaddisturbed her. Why else would she have brought her letters to such a secluded place if not to enjoy them uninterrupted? He had seen her when she picked them up from the tray in the hall. She had looked from one to the other of them, equally pleased to see both.
Then she asked her question—Did you see yours?
His letter, she meant.
“I saw it,” he told her—and ought to have turned and walked away. It was probably what she expected him to do and what shewantedhim to do. It was whathewanted to do, God help him. But Beauty, rigid in every limb, stood by the stone on which Miss Westcott sat and gave her opinion in that soft, distressed whine again. She was not ready to move on.
Look whom I have found for you.
And so, instead of murmuring some excuse or no excuse at all, calling his dog to heel, and moving on, he spoke again in a harsh voice he barely recognized as his own.
“All lawyers ought to be hanged, drawn, and quartered,” he told Miss Westcott. A wonderful pleasantry to blurt out to a delicately nurtured female.
“Oh,” she said, drawing her knees up before her on the stone and wrapping her arms about them. She was wearing one of her flimsy muslin dresses. She was not wearing a bonnet. She looked young and pretty and innocent, and he had avoided her as much as he decently could since he hadinexplicably told her some facts about himself. He had assumed that was what she must want. He should leave her now to enjoy her letters.
“At the very least,” he added. He turned to gaze out over the lake. There was not a ripple on its surface. He had not noticed that there was no wind today. He had not noticed how warm it was either, how blue the sky. How perfect the day if one was only in the right mood for it.
He heard her draw breath as though to say something. A few moments later he heard the indrawn breath again. And this time she did speak.
“Your letter was from a lawyer?” she asked.
“He came highly recommended,” he told her, “with fees to match his reputation. He is also as slow as a lame tortoise. And he is useless.”
“Oh,” she said again. Perhaps she could not think of anything else to say. How could she? She did not know what the devil he was talking about.
He turned back to face her. The fronds of the willow did not entirely shade her. She sat in dancing, dappled sunlight.Dancing?There must be some small breeze, then. Beauty was still standing beside the rock, still tensely watching him. Finding herself observed, she whined again.
“He has failed in everything I set him to do,” he said. “Even the most modest of those things. All he can report to me is that I am about to be charged with assault.”
She did not even sayohthis time. She gazed back at him, her teeth biting into her bottom lip.
“Assault?” she said at last.
He sighed and went to lean his back against a stout tree trunk, slightly behind her line of vision unless she turned her head. She did not turn it.
“I made a nuisance of myself after Waterloo,” he toldher. “I came home to find Caroline gone. My wife, that is. I did not know where to look for her. I tried her mother’s house in Essex. I thought perhaps she had gone there. Her mother would not even receive me—Lady Pascoe, that is. She sent word down to me that Caroline was not there and that I was not welcome. It was only later, after I had talked to a few fellow drinkers at the inn where I had put up for the night, that I discovered a slightly different truth. Caroline was indeed not at her mother’s house, but Katy was.I went storming—”
“Katy?” Miss Westcott turned her head to look at him. Beauty was seated beside the rock now, her back to the lake, her gaze steady upon him too.
“My daughter,” he told her.
“Oh.” The word made almost no sound. “You have adaughter?”
God, he was making a mess of this. He ought to have held his tongue. Why had he not?
“Caroline had taken her to her mother,” he explained. “I went back to the house as soon as I could the following morning in a white fury. I was prepared to tear the house brick from brick. I demanded my child. I ordered that she be got ready to go home with me within the hour. I was herfather, after all. She was mybaby. I tried to force my way beyond the hallway, into which I had already stepped uninvited.”
“But why,” Miss Westcott asked, “was Lady Pascoe not delighted to see you? Why—”
“I thoroughly frightened all the servants,” he said without answering her first question or allowing her to finish the second. “All the men came into the hall, presumably with the idea of chucking me out of there, but they kept their distance when they saw and heard me. I was ready to takethem all on bare-handed, and I believe they concluded the odds were in my favor—as they were. But then Lady Pascoe came herself—she has courage, I will give her that—and told me that I would gain access to her granddaughter over her dead body. She stood at the bottom of the staircase as though daring me to do it. I could hear—” He paused for a long moment. “I could hear an infant crying upstairs. I left.”
