“I am flattered,” he said.
—
Why did time always seem to speed up when one was enjoying oneself? It was already well into the afternoon, and Nicholas was desperately trying to live every moment to the full and commit it all to memory. Home, family—how infinitely precious they were. It wasnota very original thought, of course. And it was not as though he had not thought it before. He had not neglected either or taken either for granted. He had wanted his own home and his own family too. But while trying to force the issue during the past few months and choosing a woman he had thought would be the perfect wife, he had forgotten that there was something that bound together home and family and superseded them both. He had forgotten love.
He had quite deliberately stopped loving after being hurt so crushingly by his father. Itdidhurt to love. He simply would not do it any longer and so make himself forever invulnerable, he had decided. Oh, he had not done so consciously, but he had done it nevertheless. He had been unable to forgive his father for betraying them so selfishly. He had been unable to forgive his mother for hiding the truth from them all their lives. Or for sending Devlin away, as she had done the night it all happened. He had not been able to forgive his own naïveté.
But love had played a trick on him. For it would not die. It might be denied, pushed deep, replaced by practicality and common sense. It could not be killed, though, like an enemy in battle. It had been needling at him for a while now, especially during thepast couple of weeks. Today, at the summer fete, the occasion that had started it all many years ago—sixteen, to be precise—it had finally burst free. He even saw with new eyes today. Everything seemed brighter, almost as though he had been looking through a veil of gauze and now saw a glorious dazzle of color.
Even before they reached the house on their way back from the poplar alley, he could hear the music. Bright, cheerful, toe-tapping music. The huge lawn before the house was crowded with people of all ages, as it always was at this stage of the fete—children and their parents, older people seated on comfortable chairs about the perimeter so they would not cut into the playing area. The fiddlers who had played for the maypole dancing in the village had come up to the house, bringing their violins with them. It looked as if most or all of the dancers had come too. They were out on the lawn now, surrounded by eager children, who were learning the steps of a simple country dance. The children were dancing with enthusiasm and varying degrees of skill. A few, especially the toddlers, were simply bouncing in place, clapping their hands.
It was something new. Nicholas could not remember it happening at any other fete. The adults were listening and watching, many of them clapping in time to the music. The sun beamed down from a cloudless deep blue sky.
And he felt almost like weeping. Could there possibly be a more perfect moment in an already perfect day?
There was no time to linger, however. The log-hewing contest was due to begin very soon. It was always a popular event. He went back to the stable yard with Devlin and Ben and Owen and Robbie, taking a shortcut through the courtyard and so out through the north wing. The courtyard was crowded with people, mostly women, looking at the displays of baking and needlecraft andguessing who the winners would be. There was a short line of people waiting outside the fortune-teller’s tent in the far corner.
The stable yard was packed with spectators, mostly men but not entirely. Stephanie was there with Winifred and Sarah and Matthew Taylor’s niece. And, Nicholas saw with some surprise, Grace was there as well, with James Rutledge and Bradley Danver and Bertrand Lamarr. She even appeared to be enjoying herself. Indeed, she had looked the same way all day, and very popular she had been too with the single men from miles around.
Had she also been released to love again and enjoy life again and look forward to the future with hope again when she had found the courage to refuse his marriage offer yesterday? And good God, had it really been just yesterday? Was he getting a glimpse today of Grace as she had been as a very young woman? He caught her eye across the yard and smiled at her. She smiled back.
The first bout of the contest was about to begin. Two brawny young men, neither of whom Nicholas knew, wearing only thin white shirts open at the neck with their breeches and boots, sleeves rolled to the elbow, took their places before the massive blocks of wood that awaited them and grasped their axes. Their bare arms and broad chests fairly rippled with hard muscles.
Devlin gave the signal to start.
The two blocks might have been made of butter for all the resistance they could offer the would-be champions. One was hacked through in under two minutes, the other mere seconds later. The winner pranced around the yard, flexing his muscles and celebrating with the cheering crowd. At this rate they would all be hoarse before the contest was over.
There were four elimination bouts before the winners went head-to-head with one another and the number was whittled downto two finalists. They were going to be exhausted afterward, Nicholas thought. There were going to be sore muscles and blistered palms tomorrow.
The eventual winner was a young laborer from David Cox’s farm a mere two miles from Boscombe. The crowd applauded and cheered and whistled over his win, while the loser, in the true tradition of the sport, congratulated his opponent and raised his arm high in the air. He had lost by a mere whisker.
“Next year I’ll get my revenge,” he said with a broad grin. “My block was harder than yours this year, and my axe was blunter.”
Nicholas could hear that the fiddles were still playing at the front of the house. The presentation of ribbons to the winners of the various contests would be made soon, and that would be followed by the picnic tea being prepared in the Ravenswood kitchens. The days when the refreshments and supper for the ball were prepared there too were long gone, however. The planning committee had taken charge of all that, and Jim Berry and his wife had taken it on, with the help of a small army of volunteers.
Ah, the ball. And the first waltz. Would it finally erase the leftover bitterness of that ball sixteen years ago? Winifred had been five at that time and living in an orphanage in Bath, without roots or family or the assurance of unconditional love and a lasting home.
And he had thoughthehad troubles!
But…Inadvertently he had reminded himself of that thirteen-year gap in their ages.
And she still felt an attachment to Owen. She was talking with him now as they made their way back to the front of the house. They looked as absorbed in each other’s company as they ever had.
Nicholas thought back to the fete sixteen years ago, soon after he and Gwyneth had agreed to pull back on their friendship, whichwas being misunderstood by all who knew them. He remembered his surprise, not all of it welcome, at seeing the romance that blossomed between her and Devlin during that day. It had not been exactly jealousy he had felt. It had been more the feeling that he had been set back upon his heels, that he had thought he knew her through and through when he had missed that obvious fact about her. All the time she had been his close friend, she had been hiding an intense attraction to his brother. He had missed all the signs—just as he had missed all the signs that his father was not the paragon of virtue and devotion to family Nicholas had always believed him to be.
Was he just very bad at reading signs?
Would Winifred be laughing if she knew he had fallen in love with her? No, surely not that. She was not the type to ridicule others. There was no cruelty in her. Would she be horrified? That a military man, a killer, who lived and worked in London, expected her to give up the family and the life in Bath she clearly loved so dearly for him?
Not that heexpectedany such thing.
But it was unlike him to be so unsure of himself. He had always been confident in his dealings with women. He had always expected to be liked by men and women alike, and it seemed to him that most people did like him. Perhaps because he liked most people.
But he was as nervous as a schoolboy about his dance with Winifred this evening. Hiswaltzwith her.
Her younger siblings came dashing toward her across the grass when she reached the terrace and bore her off to join the other children in some unidentifiable game. The fiddlers were no longer playing for them. They were moving about the edge of the lawn instead,playing for the older people, who paused in their conversations to listen and tap their feet and smile.
But he must forget about the ball and enjoy the moment to the full, Nicholas decided as he went down on his haunches to talk to his grandparents and Miss Delmont and a few other elderly people sitting with them. He would enjoy every moment as he lived it and let the ball take care of itself.
