“You are indeed,” Claudia told her.
“Oh,” Lizzie said softly. And she stooped down and felt for Horace, who was sitting quietly beside her, and took the leash in her hand. “Will he be glad to see me?”
“I expect he is counting the hours,” Claudia said.
“Take me to my room, Horace,” Lizzie said. “Oh, Miss Martin, how many hoursisit?”
Horace, of course, was notthatgood a guide, though he might learn in time. He was always careful to see that Lizzie ran against no obstacle, but he had no particular sense of direction despite Lizzie’s great faith in him. Claudia led the way indoors and upstairs, and Horace trotted after her, bringing Lizzie along behind. But it always pleased the girl to think she was becoming independent.
She could not get to sleep that night. Claudia had to sit beside her bed and read one of her stories aloud and pat her hand while Horace curled up against her.
Claudia doubted she would sleep either. She had decided reluctantly that she must go with the girls to Alvesley—it was too much to expect Eleanor to take the responsibility entirely on her own shoulders. But she really,reallydid not want to go. She had been concentrating very hard on making plans for the coming school year and upon renewing her acquaintance with Charlie, who still rode over to Lindsey Hall every day.
But now she was going to have to see the Marquess of Attingsborough once more. It was pointless to hope that he would stay away from the children’s picnic. She knew he must be pining for Lizzie as much as she was for him.
Was it just her imagination that heartbreak was worse the second time around? Probably, she admitted. At the age of seventeen she had wanted to die. This time she wanted tolive—she wanted her life back as it had been until the afternoon she had stepped all unwittingly into the visitors’ parlor at school to discover the Marquess of Attingsborough standing there.
And she would get that life back. She would live and prosper and be happy again. Shewould. It would just take some time, that was all.
But having to see him again was not going to help.
Joseph’s yearning to see Lizzie again was like a gnawing physical ache. Every day he had been on the verge of riding over to Lindsey Hall. He had restrained himself partly because he would have been unable to think of an excuse to see her even if he did go there, and partly because he owed it both to Claudia Martin and to Portia—not to mention himself—to stay away.
But it was only partly of Miss Martin he was thinking when the carriages from Lindsey Hall arrived all in a cavalcade together on the afternoon of the picnic, and half the guests at Alvesley and almost all the children stepped outside onto the terrace to greet the new arrivals as they began to spill out of the carriages. Soon there was a noisy, shrieking melee of adults and children, the latter darting about among adult legs in search of comrades and potential new friends and addressing one another with the sort of volume they might have used if they were five miles apart.
Joseph, who was out there too, spotted Claudia Martin as she climbed down from one of the conveyances. She was wearing a cotton dress he had seen before in London and her usual straw hat. She was also wearing a severe, almost grim expression, which suggested that she would rather be anywhere else on earth than where she was. She turned back to the carriage to help someone else down.
Lizzie! All decked out in her best white dress with her hair tied high behind with a white bow.
He hurried forward.
“Allow me,” he said, and he reached up into the carriage, took his daughter by her slender waist, and lifted her down.
She inhaled deeply.
“Papa,” she murmured.
“Sweetheart—”
The dog jumped out and ran around them, barking, and Molly came down the steps behind him.
“Thank you, sir,” Lizzie said more loudly, lifting a mischievously smiling face toward his. “Are you the gentleman who walked to the lake with us last week?”
“I am indeed,” he said, clasping his hands behind him. “And you are…Miss Pickford, I believe?”
“You remembered.” She giggled—a happy, girlish sound.
And then other girls came spilling out of the carriage, and one of the older ones took Lizzie by one hand while Molly took the other. They bore her off to another carriage, which held the remainder of their number with Miss Thompson.
Joseph looked at Miss Martin. It seemed somewhat incredible that he had kissed this stern woman on two separate occasions and that he loved her. Yet again she looked the forbidding, quintessential spinster schoolteacher.
And then her eyes met his, and it was incredible no longer. There were depths behind those eyes that drew him instantly beyond the surface armor she had put on to the warm, passionate woman within.
“Hello, Claudia,” he said softly before he could frame an altogether more appropriate greeting.
“Good afternoon, Lord Attingsborough,” she said briskly. And then she looked beyond his shoulder and smiled. “Good afternoon, Charlie.”
Someone was tugging at the tassel on Joseph’s Hessian boot. He looked down to see Wilma and Sutton’s youngest, who proceeded to lift both his arms in the air.
