Eyes on her, questioning, Jack says, “I have on numerous occasions had the pleasure.”
She’s absurdly pleased she’s in her best dress. Then she remembers he has seen her in her underdress. Heat rises between her shoulders, tripping up her neck. “In that case, may you be prevailed upon to take a short turn about the garden with me, sir? I should very much like to see it.”
He catches on, smile breaking free. “I should be delighted. If there’s time before dinner, that is. Lady Darby?”
Harriet looks bemused, but the boom of her husband’s voice distracts her. “Harriet, come and have a look at Tredinnick’s specimens. He’s brought a boxful.”
With a quick shake of her head, Harriet says, “Duty calls, I’mafraid. Please do show her the gardens, Mr. Carlyon; after dinner it will be dark. I believe we shall dine in half an hour; that should be enough for you to ramble about a little, perhaps down to the folly?”
Isabel’s gown whispers across the parquet floor as she and Jack make their way to the door. In the entrance hall, she says, “I can’t believe—”
“Wait till we’re outside.”
A footman opens the door and then they’re among the rosebushes. The air is lightly scented by a few early roses. The path cuts through the flower beds, but Jack takes her arm as if they’re a couple and steers her to the back of the house, saying, “We won’t be overlooked on this side.”
His maroon wool coat is buttoned all the way up, despite the weather, covering the top of his black kerseymere pantaloons and the bandage he must still wear underneath. The wool is of high quality and brushed to the point it’s smooth like a fox’s pelt. She imagines his shirt, under the coat, of the finest cotton or perhaps silk, and winces at the thought of the mended shirt sitting on the table in her cottage kitchen. What possessed her to presume he would occupy such a position in life that he’d want a stained, mended shirt?
The garden at the back of Weatherston is of the parkland variety, with flower beds close to the house and a more natural landscape beyond it. The path runs parallel to a woodland on the right and a small lake on the left. Past this, fields slowly climb to a point in the distance, where a whitewashed folly in the Palladian style straddles the view. Jack slows down the moment they’ve rounded the corner of the house.
“You should sit down,” she says. “The doctor said you ought to have three weeks’ rest.” She draws a slow breath. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“This dinner is too important.”
She looks up at him—he appears serious. She can’t help but scoff. Surely even smuggling wouldn’t be important enough to risk his health for, but a dinner party? She says, “If I’ve learned one thingsince coming here, it’s that a great many things take precedence over a dinner party in terms of importance, no matter how enjoyable the company or food.”
“Such as?” He sounds amused.
She kicks a pebble on the path and watches it skid into a cluster of daffodils. “Getting the dough to rise correctly before baking the bread. Laying the fire so you don’t waste half your tinder lighting it. Not thinking about the eyes when you put fish in the soup…” She stops and adds, “I know it sounds silly, but I used to ask the cook to remove them.”
“What else?”
She hadn’t realized she missed his voice, too. “The right time of day to do the washing, so it has time to dry. Knowing what the sky looks like for rain.” Her hand goes to George’s medal. Her voice drops. “Not being alone.”
He looks as if he wants to reach for her hand, but instead he says, “Are you certain you’re not turning into a bit of a revolutionary, yourself?”
“I’ve turned into a pauper, that’s what,” she says. “But strangely I find I don’t despise doing all of those things half as much as I thought I would. I do very much look forward to dinner tonight, though. It’s certain to be extensive, isn’t it?”
“Sir Hugh lays a good table.”
“Still, there’s something far more important than this dinner and it’s the reason you shouldn’t have come.”
“And what may that be?”
“Your health, sir.” She doesn’t know why she says it like that.Sir.He’s been Jack in her head all this time, but it comes out sounding both natural and distant.
“I’msiragain, Isabel?” he says mildly. “You know I go by Jack to those who know me well.”
Is she one of those? she wonders. She says, “I don’t want to slip up in company.”
“Of course.”
“So why—”
But she doesn’t get to ask him why the dinner is important or tell him she spoke to Tom Holder about hiding contraband in the shed. Nor does she get to tell him that he may well laugh and she doesn’t dispute it’s preposterous, but she has missed him—but then she wouldn’t really tell him that, she would only do so in her mind. A voice cuts into their conversation, coming up from behind: “Mrs. Henley! Mr. Carlyon, sir!”
Lieutenant Sowerby is jogging down the path toward them. He’s red in the face and panting as if he has run the length of the coastal path. He addresses Isabel in puffs: “Lady Darby told me Mr. Carlyon is showing you the gardens. As I have often had the honor of visiting Weatherston myself, I should like to join you. I find the prospects from the back of the house among the best I’ve ever seen—though, naturally, I cannot have visited as many great houses as you, Mrs. Henley. I understand your father was Admiral John Farnworth of Woodbury Hall?”
“Oh, I am sure you have, sir. But yes, Admiral Farnworth was my father.” So this is at the heart of it, she thinks; she must discourage him. “Upon my father’s death, the estate has gone to the eldest of my stepbrothers.” Jaw clenched, she says, “You’re welcome to join us on our walk, of course, though I do believe we shall dine soon.”
