“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”
Chapter Twenty
General Haviland had contrived to have a word with Nicholas after tea, when most of the outside guests had disappeared homeward to snatch a bit of a rest before returning for the ball, and most of the family and household guests had gone indoors, some to their rooms, others to the drawing room to relax after what they all agreed had been a crackingly successful day.
The two of them had gone outside to stroll on the terrace.
“It is good to enjoy a bit of quiet time,” the general had said. “We are honored to have been a part of all this, Ware. You have a gracious family.”
They had not had any private conversation since their formal meeting in the library two days ago. Nicholas had braced himself for a blistering condemnation, but it had not happened. Rather, the general had proceeded to apologize for his daughter’s refusal of Nicholas’s very flattering offer.
“Her mother and I were dumbfounded when she told us,” he had said. “It was the very last thing we expected. Grace has alwaysbeen the most biddable of daughters. She seemed to agree wholeheartedly with her mother and me that marrying you would be to her advantage in every way. She seemed fond of you. She insists that she still is, in fact. If only she hadtalkedto us. We would never dream of forcing her into something she did not want. She is all we have, Colonel. This has all been a great humiliation for us. I feel we have been invited here and treated royally under quite false pretenses.”
“No, no, sir,” Nicholas had said, acutely aware of the general’s distress. “Did Grace not tell you that our decision was mutually and amicably agreed upon? Our conversation that day led us to the unexpected conclusion that while we genuinely like each other, and are and will remain friends, neither of us really desires the greater intimacy of marriage. Grace has looked happy today, as though, having faced her true feelings, she is ready to take up her life where she left it off after the terrible double blow of losing men she truly loved. Even Mrs. Haviland, if I may make so bold, has looked happy today. Perhaps it is seeing her daughter released from the numbness of almost a decade of mourning? Those years must have been very hard on both you and her.”
“It is decent of you to understand,” the general had said. “Yes, my ladies have found this day thoroughly enjoyable, with the ball still to come. And I have enjoyed their enjoyment. You have some interesting neighbors. And I cannot say enough in praise of your family. But they must all have been expecting an announcement of your betrothal. I do apologize again, Colonel, for any embarrassment I have caused you.”
Nicholas had felt somewhat guilty, for he had surely nudged Grace toward refusing his proposal. She did not love him, of course. She had not really wanted to marry him. But she would have doneso if he had not encouraged her to look inward to examine the state of her own heart and her dreams of the future. If she had remained firm in her decision to marry him, he would, of course, have honored the commitment.
What a reprieve he had been given, Nicholas thought now. Grace was not the only one who had woken up from a long period of…Of what? Of being almost frozen in place, unwilling to thaw because the pain might be too intense or life too bewildering? It had not been simple mourning with her, he guessed, but a terrible fear of one day being hurt beyond endurance. Better not to feel at all than risk that. And him? He had hardly been asleep or frozen for the past sixteen years. He had done a lot of living in that time, doing what he had always wanted to do, proud of what he had accomplished. But…Once upon a time he had dreamed of love with a woman who was warm and genuine no matter what she looked like or what her lineage. Perhaps he had not found her because he was afraid he would turn into his father. It sounded ridiculous. But certainly he had been afraid to love. And so, by the time he was thirty-four, he had lost the faith and almost settled for a respectable marriage with a beautiful, accomplished woman who would make an excellent wife.
…he had not found her.
Until now. When he had least been looking. Out of the blue. In the most unlikely candidate he could possibly have considered—if the choice had been left to his head instead of his heart.
And tonight, his marriage offer to Grace rejected, his peace made with General Haviland, Nicholas felt fully free to pursue his dream at last. Winifred Cunningham fulfilled everything he had ever hoped for. She had nothing for a pedigree. She had appeared in a basket outside an orphanage in Bath, aged about one month.Nothing was either known or knowable about her origins. Understandably, that mattered to her despite her denials, but it did not affect his feelings about her by one iota. She wasnota beauty. He could confirm that from the memory of his initial reaction to her at Trooping the Colour and the Netherby ball. Now she looked a vision of pure loveliness to him. He loved her open, eager face, with its perfect skin and broad forehead. He even loved the severe way she dressed her hair. He loved her slender figure, which he found very alluring. And she wasgenuine. There were no airs about Winifred, no artifice. If she thought a stranger cruel, judging solely on the set of his mouth during a military parade, she would say so to his face. Not content to describe him and his men as soldiers, she had quite bluntly called them killers—to his face. She loved her family, even or especially the difficult ones among her stepsiblings, not just with vague protestations of sentiment but with practical action. She would give up the pleasure of a picnic at the lake to allow her deaf brother to run endlessly down hills, pretending to be a bird.
Nicholas was not at all sure about the wisdom of what he was doing tonight. There were innumerable reasons he ought not to court Winifred or even consider marrying her. It was an impossibility, in fact. But how could he be sure of such an absolute? Perhaps a more appropriate word wasimprobability. But he did know that if he did not pursue her now, tonight, she would return home on Monday with her family and he was unlikely ever to see her again. Perhaps it would happen anyway, and if it did, well, so be it. But he knew he would never find another Winifred. He suspected he was the sort of man who loved once in his life and would never love in the same way again.
So here he was, leaving the ballroom with her while everyoneelse was heading toward the supper room, from which wafted the tantalizing aromas of the food the Berrys had prepared.
It was cool out on the terrace. But not at all dark. The sky was lit by myriad stars and a moon that was almost at the full. He was about to offer his arm, but he took her hand instead. It was slender and warm and small in his own. She did not immediately snatch it away. After an initial moment, she curled her fingers about his hand.
“Am I taking an unwelcome liberty?” he asked.
“By taking my hand?” she said. “No.” She had turned her head to look at him. But not shyly, peering beneath lowered eyelids as many women would have done. Being Winifred, she looked him full in the face, her eyes wide.
“Perhaps you ought to be offended,” he said.
“But why?” she asked.
He smiled. “Never mind,” he said, lacing their fingers.
There was someone already up in the temple folly, a whole group of people by the sound of it, laughing and joking. They sounded like young people enjoying themselves too much to go indoors for supper just yet.
“There is a quite breathtaking view from up there in the moonlight,” he said, nodding in that direction. “But I am not willing to share you with a group of revelers.”
“And I am not willing to be shared,” she said.
There was another reason too. The hill and temple during the ball at a fete brought back too many ugly memories from sixteen years ago. He led her past the hill and circled around it and back along the north wing of the house in the direction of the poplar alley.
“Will your parents worry about you?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Why would they? I am twenty-one years old, a full adult. They trust me to order my own life.”
“Some parents never see their daughters as adults,” he said. “They shelter them and rule them and never let them out of their sight until they are married to a man of whom they approve, and thenheas like as not rules and shelters them.”
“Ugh!” Winifred said inelegantly. “Then I am very thankful I have the parents I have. They raise us with a great deal of loving care and guidance, but they respect us as individuals, each special and each with special needs and personal dreams. Do you have dreams, Colonel, or have they all been fulfilled?”
