“Claudia…” he said softly.
“Miss Martinto you, Lord Attingsborough,” she said, lifting her chin and looking very much the schoolmistress again despite her disheveled appearance. “We will forget what happened here and what happened at Vauxhall and at the Kingston ball. We willforget.”
“Will we?” he said. “I am so sorry to have upset you like this. It was inexcusable of me.”
“I am not blaming you,” she said. “I am quite old enough to know better. I will never even be able to convince myself that I fell prey to the lures of a practiced rake, though that is what I expected you to be when I first set eyes on you. Instead you are a gentleman whom I like and admire. That has been the whole problem, I suppose. And I am prattling. Let us return or everyone—Miss Hunt in particular—will be wondering what I am up to.”
And yet, he thought as they made their way back to the far lawn, not touching and not talking, they could be no more than a few minutes behind the girls.
Minutes that had done infinite damage to both their lives. No longer could he even pretend that he did not love her. No longer could she pretend that she did not love him.
And no longer would they be able to trust themselves to be alone together.
He felt his loss like a hard fist to the stomach.
16
After their return from Lindsey Hall, Joseph and Portia sat togetherin the formal flower garden to the east of the house. He was feeling mortally depressed. For one thing he had spent very little time with Lizzie, and the deception, though it had seemed to amuse her, had been distasteful to him. For another thing, he and Claudia Martin must now stay away from each other. No longer could he enjoy even her friendship.
And for a third thing he had been able to discover no warmth, no compassion, no generosity, no spark of passion, beneath the beautiful, dignified, perfect appearance Portia presented to the world. And hehadtried.
“I am pleased that you enjoy riding,” he had told her on the way back to Alvesley. “It is one of my favorite activities. It will be something we can do together.”
“Oh,” she had replied, “I will not expect you to be hanging about me all day when we are married, just as I will not be hanging about you. We will both have our duties and our pleasures to keep us busy.”
“And those pleasures cannot be found in each other’s company?” he had asked her.
“When necessary,” she had said. “We will entertain a great deal, of course, especially when you become the Duke of Anburey.”
He had persisted. “Butprivatepleasures? Walking together, dining together, even just sitting and reading or conversing together? Will there not be time for them too? Will we notmaketime for them?” He hadnotadded the idea of making love as another private pleasure in which they might choose to indulge after they married.
“I imagine,” she had said, “that you will be a busy man. I am sure I will be busy with all the duties of being the Marchioness of Attingsborough and later the Duchess of Anburey. I will not expect you to feel obliged to amuse me.”
He had not pursued that line of conversation.
He had tried, now, here in the garden, to get her to relax and enjoy with him the beauty that surrounded them.
“Listen!” he had said just a few minutes ago, holding up one hand. “Have you ever thought about how much we miss in life from being endlessly busy? Listen, Portia.”
There was a stream at the bottom of the flower garden with a rustic wooden bridge crossing it and wooded hills beyond. And, sure enough, the birds in the trees here were as busy with their summer chorus as those in Richmond Park had been. He could also hear the gurgle of the stream. And he could feel the warmth of the summer air. He could smell the flowers and the water.
She had maintained a polite silence for a few moments.
“It is by being busy, though,” she had said then, “that we prove ourselves worthy of our humanity. Idleness is to be avoided, even despised. It reduces us to the level of the bestial world.”
“Like Lizzie Pickford’s dog sitting beside the maypole waiting to take her safely wherever she wished to go?” he had asked with a smile.
It had been a mistake to mention that particular animal.
“That child,” she had said, “ought not to have been rewarded for being so forward when she was in company with her betters. Blindness is no excuse. It was very good of you to go walking with her to the lake, and the Duchess of Bewcastle made a point of commending your kindness and good nature, but she must surely have wondered if you had not shown some lack of discrimination.”
“Discrimination?”
“Her own son, the Marquess of Lindsey, was outdoors with her,” she had pointed out to him, “as were the children of the Marquess of Hallmere and the Earl of Rosthorn and Lord Aidan Bedwyn. Perhaps it would have been more appropriate to turn your attention to one of them.”
“None of them asked me to go walking with them,” he had said. “And none of them was blind.”
And none of them was his own child.
