“It does. And beyond,” she told him. “It is part of the wilderness walk that begins close to the house and extends all about the lake. I have walked along parts of it with Frances, but I have never been to the waterfall. The path is rather rugged in that area and there had been a lot of rain just before I came here last time. The earl thought it might be unsafe.”
He looked down at her thin shoes.
“Is ittoorugged,” he asked, “for someone who just won three separate boat races, including, to my eternal shame, the final one?”
“I have always thought,” she said, “that the walk must be at its wildest and loveliest by the waterfall.”
“We will walk there and back, then,” he said, “and hope that no one else is adventurous enough to follow us.”
She took his arm again, and they proceeded on their way.
Susanna wished as they walked that she could seal up every minute in a jar and take them all with her into the future. She did not believe she had ever been as happy as she was when they turned onto the river path and she could feel confident that they would be alone together for at least half an hour.
She could not think of anyone with whom she would rather share such beauty and solitude.
“Ah, magnificent!” Viscount Whitleaf said, stopping on the path when they were in the shade of a forest of tall trees and looking back to where the waters of the river bubbled and foamed beneath the bridge to join the calmer lake water, which was indeed sparkling in the sunshine.
He was genuinely admiring the scenery. It was something that just a week ago she would not have expected of him. She had judged him to be a man who could be happy only when surrounded by adoring females.
“I think Barclay Court must be one of the loveliest estates in England,” she said. “Not that I have seen many others.”
“Or any?” He turned his head and his eyes smiled at her.
“One other,” she said, stung. “The place where I grew up.”
He raised his eyebrows. “And where was that? You have never spoken of your childhood, have you—except that you missed your mother?”
“It does not matter,” she said.
She wondered what he would say if she told him and he realized that they had once been neighbors of sorts. She wondered if he would have any memory at all of that day by the lake when he had visited with his mother and sisters and they had met briefly. And she wondered if he would remember everything that had happened later.
But a painful churning in her stomach warned her not to say any more—orthinkany more—about that.
“Now, Miss Osbourne,” he said with mock severity, “one of the cardinal rules of friendship is that one withhold nothing from the friend.”
“But that is not so,” she told him. “Even friends need private spaces, if only within the depths of their own soul, where no one else is allowed to intrude.”
He was looking fully at her, obviously pondering the truth of what she said.
“There are deep, dark secrets from your past that you would rather keep, then, are there?” he said, waggling his eyebrows. “Very well, then. But you grew up on an estate, did you? As a daughter of the house?”
“As daughter of a…a servant of sorts,” she said. “He was a gentleman, but he was without property or fortune and so had no choice but to work for a living. And so I suppose I am a lady by birth even if only just. Are you satisfied?”
He smiled slowly, and it struck her that the creases at the corners of his eyes would be permanently etched there when he was older. They would be an attractive feature.
“That I have not made a friend of a chimney sweep’s offspring?” he asked her. “That would have been enough to send me off into a fit of the vapors, would it not? The path slopes upward rather sharply from here, I see, though there are several large, flat stones to act as steps. Are you sure you are up to the climb?”
“Are you?” She laughed at him.
“Earlier on,” he said, “I thought I heard the echo of something you told me several days ago, though it might have been my imagination. You are not agamesteacher, by any chance, are you, Miss Osbourne? In agirls’school?”
“I am,” she said. “I teach games, and sometimes I cannot stop myself from participating in them. I was always good at them when I was a pupil myself. Yes, therearegirls’ schools that teach more than embroidery and deportment.”
“Heaven help us,” he said, wincing. “I was about to play the gallant and offer my hand for the climb instead of my arm. I will still do so, in fact. If I do not need to haul you up the path,youcan haulme.”
He took her hand in a firm clasp and she thought for one absurd moment that she might well weep. It seemed to her that no one had ever held her hand before, though surely her father must have done so when she was a child. There was such intimacy in the gesture, such an implied bond of trust.
His hand was slender and long-fingered. It was also strong and warm and somehow very masculine. Something tightened in her breasts, and her inner thighs suddenly ached though they had not even begun the climb yet. Something fluttered low in her abdomen.
