They were down in the garden, which was not brilliantly lit. He turned them onto a path that wound to the left.
“Good.” He chuckled and patted her hand. “Neither am I. I remember with pleasure and am not at all sorry, though I would make abject apologies if I thought they were necessary.”
“They are not,” she assured him.
He wondered, not for the first time, if she was essentially a lonely woman. But it was perhaps just male arrogance that made him think she might be. She had certainly proved that a woman could lead a full and productive life without a man. But then loneliness was not confined to women, was it? For all the family and friends and friendly acquaintances with whom he was almost constantly surrounded and the busy activities that filled his days, he was basically a lonely man.
Despite Lizzie, whom he loved more than life, hewaslonely. The admission surprised him. He was lonely for a woman who could touch and fill his heart. But it was unlikely he would ever find her now. He was almost certain that Portia Hunt would never fill the role.
“Shall we sit?” he suggested when they came to a small lily pond with a rustic wooden seat overlooking it from beneath the overhanging branches of a willow tree.
They sat down side by side.
“It is blessedly cool out here,” she said. “And quiet.”
“Yes.”
“Lord Attingsborough,” she said, resuming her brisk tone, “Miss Thompson, the teacher you saw the morning we left Bath, the older of the two, is taking ten of our charity girls to Lindsey Hall for part of the summer. She is the Duchess of Bewcastle’s sister, you know.”
“Ah,” he said, the image of Bewcastle entertaining ten schoolgirls at his table dancing across his mind.
“The duchess has invited me to join them,” she said.
He felt instant amusement, remembering what she had told him about her experiences as a governess there. He turned his head to grin at her. Her face was faintly visible in the beam of a lamp hanging in the tree.
“ToLindsey Hall?” he said. “WithBewcastlein residence? Are you going?”
“I have said yes,” she told him, staring at the water as if it had somehow offended her. “Lady Hallmere is going to be there too.”
He chuckled softly.
“I said yes because I had an idea,” she said. “I thought perhaps it would be a good thing for me to take Lizzie there with me.”
He sobered instantly. He felt a sudden chill. He had been hoping fervently that she would consider school a possibility for his daughter. He had also been hoping, he realized now, that she wouldnot. The real chance that he might have to part with Lizzie for months at a time smote him.
“It might be a good trial,” she said. “She needs air and exercise and…fun. She will surely get some of all three at Lindsey Hall. She will meet Eleanor Thompson and ten of the girls from the school. She will be with me daily. It will give us all a chance to discover whether schooling will be of any benefit to her and whether Eleanor and I can offer her enough to make the experience—and the fees—worthwhile. And yet it will all be done in the relaxed atmosphere of a holiday.”
He could not fault any of her reasoning. It sounded like an eminently sensible suggestion. But his stomach clenched with something that felt like panic.
“Lindsey Hall is a large place,” he said. “And the park is large. She would be intolerably bewildered.”
“Myschoolis large, Lord Attingsborough,” Miss Martin said.
But that would be different. Would it not?
He leaned forward on the seat, rested his elbows on his knees, his hands hanging loose between them. He lowered his head and closed his eyes. There was a lengthy silence between them while the sounds of music and voices and laughter coming from the ballroom wafted on the air. She was the one who spoke first.
“You conceived the idea of sending Lizzie to school,” she said, “not because it would solve the problem of who was to take care of her and not because you wished to be rid of her—though I believe those are what you fear are your motives. You need not fear any such thing. I have seen how you love her. No child has ever been more loved.”
She was using her other voice—her pure woman’s voice.
“Then why do I feel I am betraying her?” he asked.
“Because she is blind,” she said. “And because she is illegitimate. And you wish to protect her from the consequences of both by smothering her with your love.”
“Smothering,”he said, a dull ache in his heart. “Is that what I do to her? Is that what I have always done?”
He knew she was right.
