She accepted it and slid from her perch atop the table with remarkable grace, given her precarious position. They stared at each other for what must have been mere seconds but felt far longer.
“You are welcome, Roland.”
At last. ARolandhe did not need to remind her to use. This, too, was progress. All on the first day. Perhaps this venture to Yorkshire would prove even more promising than he had dared to hope.
“Come,” he said at last, tugging her back to the abandoned sideboard. “Let us resume our breakfast before it all grows cold.”
* * *
Sunshine.
She had not forgotten the sobriquet Roland had invented once upon a time at the country house party they had both attended. Nor could she seem to forget the sound of it, uttered in his deep, velvety baritone that morning while he had kissed her senseless in the breakfast room.
But mayhap that was because there was an abundance of it, all around them as she, Roland, and Charlotte walked together in a field of vibrant wildflowers overlooking a stream that fed into a large lake just downhill from the main house.
Charlotte was agog over the flowers, racing about, plucking as many as she could, most of them being mashed in her tiny fist sans stem before Pippa could correct her.
“I do not suspect many of them shall be fit for a vase,” Roland commented, echoing her sentiments aloud.
They stood together, elbows almost brushing but not quite, watching her daughter’s childlike jubilance as Charlotte raided the wildflowers with the aggression of an invading army. The moment, much like the one the evening before in his chamber and this morning in the breakfast room, felt intimate.
Their marriage had happened so quickly that it hardly seemed real.
However, here at his side beneath the warmth of the June rays, she felt the first sense of peace she had since…well, since George’s sudden death. Pippa did not know what to do with these burgeoning feelings inside her. With the physical longing for her new husband, or with the emotions.
“Char-charwovesfwowers!” Charlotte called, smashing a brilliant yellow blossom in her tiny fist as she attempted to pick it and add the bloom to her bedraggled collection.
Gratitude soared within Pippa, mingling with the confused mélange. Charlotte had settled in well. She had not quite understood the concept of Pippa and Roland being married now. But then, Pippa had not expected her to. Charlotte was young; George’s death had happened when she had been so small that Charlotte did not recall her father, nor what it meant to have one in her life. Perhaps when the permanence of this change became apparent, Charlotte would grasp the notion better.
But then, the same could well be said of Pippa.
She slanted a glance toward the man she had married just the day before. The brim of his hat cast his face in cool shadows, but the soft smile on his lips as he watched Charlotte adventuring in the flowers was unmistakable. He seemed to be genuinely fond of her daughter. He had been nothing but kind, compassionate, and charming, and Charlotte had been at ease in his presence from the moment she had met him.
Roland turned to Pippa. “There is something you wish to say.”
His deep voice was definitive. He had not posed a question, but stated an observation, firm and certain. As if he had read her mind.
And she had prided herself on keeping her expression carefully bereft of emotion. Apparently, she had failed.
“You are good with her.” The concession was not as grudging as it may have been before she had realized the manner of man he was. Now, it was pure praise.
A brow rose, his dark eyes unreadable. “You expected an ogre? A monster who would bellow at a small child and treat her cruelly?”
Some time ago, yes. She would have happily believed the worst of him.
Now? No longer.
“I did not know what to expect,” she said carefully. “Part of me did fear you may not have bonded with her because…”
She had been about to saybecause she is George’s daughter, but she thought better of completing the thought.
“Because of who her father is?”
It would seem she had said enough, however. Northwich knew what she had meant. He always knew,curse him.
“Yes,” she admitted.
“What must you think of me, Pippa, to believe I would not care for Charlotte?”
