They turned and linked arms again and set off in the direction from which they had come. But Lizzie was not the only one bubbling with exuberance.
“Walking and running,” Joseph said. “They are tame stuff. I propose that we skip the rest of the way to the blanket.”
“Skip?” Lizzie asked as Miss Martin raised her eyebrows.
“You hop first on one foot and then on the other, all the while moving forward,” he said. “Like this.”
And he skipped along like an overgrown schoolboy, drawing the others with him until Miss Martin laughed aloud and skipped too. After a few awkward moments Lizzie joined them and they skipped along the avenue, the three of them, laughing and whooping and altogether making an undignified spectacle of themselves. It was a good thing any other people in the park were either out of sight altogether or else were so far away that they missed the show. Some of his friends might be interested to see him now, Joseph thought—skipping along a park avenue with his blind daughter and a school headmistress.
Doubtless Miss Martin’s pupils and teachers would be interested too.
But Lizzie’s carefree delight was worth any loss of dignity.
Miss Martin helped Lizzie off with her spencer when they reached the blanket and the shade, and suggested too that she take off her bonnet. She removed her own hat, as he did his, and set it on the grass. She smoothed her hands over her disordered hair, but it was a hopeless task. It would take a brush and a mirror to repair the damage. She looked utterly charming to him nevertheless.
They ate their tea with healthy appetites, devouring freshly baked buns with cheese and currant cakes and a rosy apple each. They washed it all down with lemonade that was sadly warm but was at least wet and thirst-quenching.
All the while they chattered on about nothing in particular until Lizzie fell silent and remained silent. She was curled up against Joseph’s side, and, looking down, he could see that she was fast asleep. He lowered her head to his lap and smoothed a hand over her slightly damp hair.
“I think,” he said softly, “you have just given her one of the happiest days of her life, Miss Martin. Probablythehappiest.”
“I?” She touched her bosom. “What haveIdone?”
“You have given her permission to be a child,” he said, “to run and skip and lift her face to the sun and shout and laugh.”
She stared back at him but said nothing.
“I have loved her,” he said, “from the moment I first set eyes on her ten minutes after her birth. I believe I have loved her even more than I would otherwise have done justbecauseshe is blind. I have always wanted to breathe and eat and sleep for her and would gladly have died for her if it could have made a difference. I have tried to hold her safe in my arms and my love. I have never—”
Foolishly, he could not finish. He drew a deep breath instead and looked down at his child—who was so very nearly not a child any longer. That was the whole trouble.
“I believe that being a parent is not always a comfortable thing,” Miss Martin said. “Love can be so terribly painful. I have experienced a little of what it must be like through a few of my charity girls. They have been so very disadvantaged and I desperately want the rest of their lives to be perfect for them. But there is only so much I can do. Lizzie will always be blind, Lord Attingsborough. But she can find joy in life if she wishes and if those who love her will allow it.”
“Will you take her?” he asked, swallowing against what felt like a lump in his throat. “I do not know what else to do. Is school the right thing for her, though?”
She did not reply immediately. She was obviously thinking carefully.
“I do not know,” she said. “Give me a little more time.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for not saying no out of hand. And thank you for not saying yes before you have considered the matter with care. I would rather her not go at all than for it to be the wrong thing. I will care for her somehow no matter what.”
He looked back down at his daughter and continued to smooth his hand over her hair. It was ridiculously sentimental to think again that he would willingly die for her. The thing was, he could not. Neither could he live for her. It was a terrifying realization.
And yet somehow he was comforted by Miss Martin’s presence—even though she was not sure she could offer Lizzie a place at her school. She had shown his daughter—and him!—that she could have fun and even twirl about in the heat of the sun without holding on to anyone.
“I have often wondered,” he said without looking up, “what would have happened if Lizzie had not been blind. Sonia would have moved on to other admirers and it is altogether possible that I would have carried on with my own life much as before, while supporting the child I had sired but rarely saw—yet I would have believed I was doing my duty by her. I would perhaps have married Barbara and deprived myself of the pull of love to my first-born. But how impoverished my life would have been! Lizzie’s blindness is perhaps a curse to her, but it has been an abundant blessing to me. How strange! I had never realized that until today.”
“Blindness need not be a curse to Lizzie either,” she said. “We all have our crosses to bear, Lord Attingsborough. It is how we bear those crosses that proves our mettle—or lack of it. You have borne yours and become a better person, and it has enriched your life. Lizzie must be allowed to carry her own burden and triumph over it—or not.”
“Ah.” He sighed. “But it is that possibility ofor notthat breaks my heart.”
She smiled at him as he looked up at her, and it struck him that in fact she was more than just pretty. In fact, she was probably not pretty at all—that was far too girlish and frivolous a term.
“I do believe, Miss Martin,” he said without stopping to consider his words, “you must be the loveliest woman it has ever been my privilege to meet.”
Foolish and quite untrue words—and yet the truest he had ever spoken.
She stared back at him, her smile suddenly gone, until he lowered his gaze to Lizzie again. He hoped he had not hurt her, made her believe that he had merely been playing the gallant. But he could not think of a way of retrieving his words without hurting her more. The point was, he did not even know quite what he had meant by them himself. She was not lovely in any obvious sense. Not at all. And yet…
