She had not been totally distracted by the kiss.
“Almost five months to choose adress?” she said, drawing back her head and frowning up at him. “And to write invitations? And help Mama with all the rest of the planning.Five months?”
“And to write to me,” he said meekly.
Her eyes narrowed. “I will have my revenge for your saying no to a special license,” she said. “In my letters I will describe each dress I so much as look at—orthinkof—in minute, excruciating detail.”
He grinned at her. “I will look forward to it,” he said. “But no description of the dress you finally choose, if you please, Win. That is supposed to be a wedding-day surprise for the groom.”
“Oh, Nicholas,” she said, suddenly sagging in his arms. “May we talk about something else? Something to take my mind off the fact that I will be in Bath tomorrow, and you will be in London before the end of the week?”
He kissed her again.
Then he took her hand, lacing their fingers as they strolled onward. And they talked—and talked and talked. He spoke of his years in Spain and Portugal. She wanted to know all the details despite her disapproval of warfare and the fact that a gentlemanneverspoke of such things to a lady. He told her of Devlin and Ben being there for a few years, though not in his regiment, but howcomforting it was to see them occasionally. He told her of those long, bleak years for Devlin while he grappled with his estrangement from the rest of his family. And he told her about Ben, who was never a military man himself but who excused his presence in the Peninsula with Devlin by claiming to be his batman. He told her about Ben’s unlikely relationship with a Cockney washerwoman and his insistence upon marrying her when he learned she was with child. He told her how they had named their daughter Joy, because that was what she was to them. And of what a joy she had been to him, a newborn niece in the middle of warfare. Life continuing.
She spoke about her childhood at the orphanage, of how she had tried so hard—and failed—to be perfect and therefore loved until the teacher who became her mama loved her anyway, though Winifred had done nothing particular to deserve it, and how her mother and father had lived up to their promise always to love her. She spoke of her grandmother and uncle and aunts on her mother’s side, who had been disinherited when the discovery was made that their father, now dead, had married their mother bigamously, and of how the Westcott family had absolutely refused to let them go even though her grandmother had resumed her maiden name and gone to live with her brother in Dorsetshire for a while after taking her daughters to live with her mother in Bath. She warned him that he would never be able to work out all the intricacies of the Westcott family, and he was beginning to half believe her.
They sat among the roses while they had their tea, largely in silence and eating with diminished appetites.
“Such beauty,” she said, gazing about. “And it will all disappear within the next month or so, the roses to wither and die, the fountain to be turned off for the winter.”
“But everything will return with spring in the eternal changing of the seasons,” he said.
“Something that can always be relied upon,” she said. “And you will come back to me before spring.”
“In the meantime, I will write to you every day,” he said, reaching for her hand.
“I will hold you to that,” she said.
“Even if it is just a word or two?” he asked.
She laughed.
Chapter Twenty-Three
His work kept Nicholas busy, for which fact he was thankful. Usually, he did not give much thought to the passage of time, but four and a half months was indeed a long time. He missed Winifred. He missed her cheerful demeanor, whether she was playing an energetic game with the children, or sitting patiently watching her deaf brother as he ran down slopes or chiseled away at a large stone for hours on end, or talking and laughing with Owen or Watley or Stephanie. He missed her plain, no-nonsense appearance, absent of all intent to lure or look different than she naturally was. He missed her conversation, whether serious or light and teasing, her very direct way of looking at him as she spoke. He missed her essential beauty, her…Oh, he missedher.
He did not neglect his social obligations. There were not many through the summer, of course. Most people who were fortunate enough to own country homes or were on friendly terms with those who did were happy enough to leave behind the closer confines of London, with its smoke and grime and smells.
He dined a few times with General and Mrs. Haviland. He had feared at first that it might be awkward, though he had told the general about his betrothal. But if they were annoyed with him, they did not show it. They greeted him as amiably as they always had. And he was spared the possible embarrassment of having to spend time with Grace, even though they had agreed that they would remain friends. She had gone to Gloucestershire almost immediately upon her return from Ravenswood to stay with a widowed aunt, who was only a few years older than she. She had not remained there long, however. The two women had embarked upon a walking tour of Wales.
“She is like a new person,” Mrs. Haviland commented. “It is as if she had suddenly woken from a long sleep. I beg your pardon. Is that offensive to you under the circumstances, Colonel Ware?”
“On the contrary, ma’am,” he said. “When it came time for us to decide whether to take the next logical step in our relationship and marry, we came to the surprising and quite mutual realization that it was not what we wanted. We were, and we remain, friends, but it would have been a mistake to try to make something else of it. I am delighted to hear of her transformation. I saw the beginnings of it, I believe, at Ravenswood itself, during the fete.”
“It is good of you to say so,” Mrs. Haviland said. “And of course, we are both delighted by your betrothal to Miss Cunningham. Grace will be happy too when she reads my letter. She actually predicted it when we were on the way home from Ravenswood. Will you convey our best wishes to Miss Cunningham?”
Nicholas did so in the letter he wrote the following day.
It had been a bit rash of him, he thought sometimes, to promise that he would write every day, when every day he must be confronted with a blank piece of stationery and little idea of how hewas to fill it or at least make his mark upon it. However did Winifred manage to write at least one crowded page, often two, sometimes even three, every single day? Women were just better about such things than men, he concluded. They were brought up to it. While men went out for early morning rides and generally made themselves useless, women wrote letters.
He knew how she filled one paragraph each day, of course. She described a dress each time, sometimes in what he suspected was deliberately tedious detail, describing not only the color and the style but also the fabric and the size and manner of the stitches and the number of frills and flounces and ribbons and bows that adorned it. At other times—most times, in fact—he suspected there was no such dress as any of the fantastic monstrosities she described. They included everything from brilliant, bilious mustard in color to rich, see-in-the-dark puce—was there even such a color?—and everything from monstrous skirts or sleeves, or both, to skirts so narrow one had to shuffle along with mincing little steps and did not dare sit down. She was endlessly inventive.
He found himself looking forward to that paragraph each day and having a regular chuckle over it.
Sometimes he would give in to defeat. He would begin his own letter with bold handwriting and something like “My dearest love,” followed by a long blank space and ending with something bold along the lines of “Your ever-adoring servant, Nicholas Ware.” In tiny writing at the bottom, he might add “Nothing happened.”
He did not tell her about the house hunt. He had decided he would not. His brain was addled enough as it was. It might well explode if exposed to her comments and opinions and suggestions and vetoes. After all, he told himself, if he already owned a house of his own, as he had thought of doing a number of times but hadnever got around to actually doing, she would expect to be taken there after their wedding, would she not?
