“I am sure she does,” he agreed. “My sister has a very sensible head on her shoulders. However, most of us slip once or twice in our lives and do—or say—something that is quite out of character and has a long-lasting and sometimes disastrous effect upon ourselves and others.”
She neither looked at him nor said anything for a while. She seemed to have forgotten that she was going back up to the house.
“You are afraid she will fall in love with him?” she asked.
“Afraid?” he said. “Yes, perhaps I am. Afraid that she will fall for him but that he will not fall for her. That is not quite it, though. I am afraid that he will pretend to fall for her. Is it insulting to harbor such a fear just because she is crippled?Shewould say it is, and I daresay she would be right. I suppose I would not be quite so protective of her if she had not suffered that illness when she was a child. Love rips at the heart sometimes, Lady Philippa.”
Neither of them spoke for a while, and he realized with some surprise that the garden party was still proceeding around them with a great deal of noise and merriment and activity. For a few minutes he had seemed to be quite alone with her—and they had spoken about his grandparents and about Jenny and his fears for her very much as though they were friends. He wished they were.
And that, he realized, was what was wrong with all the other women to whom he had been introduced since he came to London, including the few he knew his grandparents would consider acceptable as his bride. All of them were young and pretty and personable. All behaved with perfect good manners and modest demeanor. All would make satisfactory wives and duchesses. None had shown any reluctance to be in his company—or any unseemly eagerness either. He was reasonably sure that any one of them would receive his addresses with some pleasure and agree to an instant betrothal. None of the parents involved would object to his paying those addresses. Quite the contrary. Lady Abingdon, for example, was openly eager to see her daughter so well settled. But...
Well, there was abut.For none of those ladies was a friend. It was a bit unfair to come to such a conclusion, perhaps, when he really had very little acquaintance with them. But he could not even imagine having a close friendship with any of them. He had very little acquaintance with Lady Philippa Ware either. She would seemto be the last woman with whom he would feel able to talk about anything that was close to his heart—including the fear that his sister would fall prey to a fortune hunter and be miserable for the rest of her life. But she felt like a friend. Perhaps it was because they both knew something about deep suffering and about holding it all inside in the form of a secret they could not divulge without hurting those who were nearest and dearest to them.
Or perhaps...
Perhaps the attraction had been there from the start. Theverystart. Why had she been straining her ears in that barn to hear what he and the other men were saying? Why had he singled her out as a possible partner when James Rutledge and the owner of the barn had tried to persuade him to dance about the maypole?
“What did you think the very first time you set eyes on me?” he asked, and then felt idiotic since the question must seem to have come from nowhere. He squinted off into the distance. The dot that was Jenny and Jamieson’s boat was getting larger, he was relieved to see. They were on their way back.
She surprised him by laughing softly. “I fell head over heels in love with you,” she said. “I daresay it was the red hair.”
“I thought you did not like red hair on men,” he said.
“There are exceptions to every rule,” she said. “Or so some people claim when they cannot explain why they have broken one.”
“Hmm,” he said.
“Of course,” she added, “I fell out of love a mere few minutes later. There is nothing so sure to kill one’s dizzy flights of fancy as to be calledsoiled goods.”
“No,” he said with a sigh. “I suppose not.”
Oddly, they seemed almost to bejokingwith each other. But they were no longer to be left alone together. A group of youngpeople had come up to them and stopped to chat. Cousin Gerald was one of their number. He must have arrived late at the party. Lucas had not seen him before now.
“That is Jenny out there in the boat?” he asked, nodding downriver. “If it is not, I will wonder why you are standing here guarding an empty wheeled chair. She is a plucky one. She is with Jamieson?”
“She went out with me first,” Lucas told him. “But Jamieson came along before I could lift her out. She loves the boat.”
“I hope he can swim,” Gerald said, frowning.
“He can,” Lucas told him. “Like a fish apparently.”
Gerald grunted. “I’ll wait and help you get her back into her chair,” he said. “Grandmama is up close to the terrace reminding Grandpapa that he is no longer two years old or even twenty. Apparently he came down here a while ago and gave everyone heart palpitations.”
“Notincluding himself, it is to be hoped,” Lucas said, listening to Lady Philippa laughing with the rest of the group over something he had not heard. She had a distinctive laugh—merry and genuine and infectious. He felt himself smiling though he had not heard the joke.
“He was looking pretty red in the face,” Gerald said.
The boat was pulling to shore and Jenny, Lucas thought, was looking a bit weary. Perhaps two turns on the river had been too much for her. Gerald held the boat steady while Jamieson jumped ashore and turned with his usual smile to lift her out. But Lucas was there ahead of him. She wrapped her arms about his neck as he swung her over to her chair and settled her in it.
“I am guessing,” she said, smiling at him, “that none of us will have any trouble sleeping tonight after all this fresh air.”
“You have not overdone it?” he asked, looking down at her with some concern.
She shook her head. “It is lovely being close to the water,” she said. “Trailing one’s fingers in it. Watching the sunlight sparkle on it.”
“Shall I push you back up to the house?” he asked her. Jamieson was still hovering on the bank.
“Yes, please,” she said. It looked to Lucas as though Lady Philippa was about to move away with the group that had joined them a few minutes ago, but Jenny, perhaps not noticing, stretched out a hand toward her. “Come with us, Pippa?”
