Margaret sat up. “You will do it. I have every faith in you.” She felt his need in the depths of her soul. She didn’t want his dream to die without him ever chasing it.
Which reminded her… “Did you tell your uncle that you are staying?” Feeling insecure suddenly, she added, “I quite understand if you must go. He is your family, after all.”
“Are you trying to get rid of me, Maggie?” He spoke in jest, but she recognized the same insecurity she felt.
She drew her hand along his cheek and jaw. “I’ll keep you a little longer.” For how long though? The thought of him leaving was not a pleasant one. “Penelope thinks you ought to tell George you are staying so that you can search for the ring.”
“Penelope… knows?”
“I am not good at dissembling. Even about the smallest things. But you mustn’t worry, she has promised not to tell my brother.” She trailed her fingertips to softly graze his lips. “I’d rather not see you cut in a duel. You are far too pretty for that.”
He grasped her arms above her head and wrapped her fingers around the wooden rail. “Hold tight, woman, while I make you pay for such an emasculating comment.”
Margaret did just as he asked, and he proved to her that although he might be pretty, he was also depraved. Quite depraved indeed.
* * *
“Areyou sure this is the place?” It seemed like a lifetime had passed since they had last searched for the ring… and yet it had barely been two days.
Sebastian halted and opened his journal. “Three boulders, clustered just so.” He glanced off to the open space over her shoulders. “And the fallen tree facing west.” With that, he snapped the small leather book shut and repocketed it.
“How very clever of you.” Oh, but he’d proven how clever he was a number of times the night before. Today she carried a small basket of food and a blanket while he’d lugged the wooden-handled lawn tools up the hill.
Although she wanted to locate the ring, she felt none of the urgency that she had before.
“Am I a horrible person, do you think, that I won’t be distraught if we don’t find it?”
He handed her one of the rakes. “Not as horrible as I am. Seeing as it once belonged to my ancestors.”
After deciding on a course of action, they both began dragging the lawn tool along the ground, watching carefully for the family heirloom but making comments, some flirtatious and some simply to share a random thought.
After talking about their respective brothers, both of them younger, and deciding they had grown less annoying with age, Margaret glanced up and caught Sebastian watching her.
“What is it?”
“You’re beautiful, you know. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.” It was such a fantastical compliment that Margaret wanted to laugh, but his gray eyes glowed with sincerity—warmth.
“I thought we’d decided you were the beautiful one.” She attempted to dismiss it.
“Not even close, Maggie.” And then he went back to dragging the rake through the grass. “Was there ever anyone else for you, aside from your husband, that is?”
Margaret bent forward to sift through some dirt and then rose again. “I had a few beaus,” she admitted. “One of them the son of one of my father’s tenants. No one I could ever marry.”
“Were you in love?”
She felt her brows furrow. Had she been? “I thought so at the time. But my father nipped it in the bud as soon as he realized how close we’d become.” And he’d been quite successful. She barely remembered what he looked like. “Shortly after, I was betrothed to Lawrence.”
“Were you terribly upset about it?”
“I remember thinking that I ought to be. That it wasn’t fair. But neither did I wish to disappoint my parents.” And then she frowned.
“What is it?”
“I overheard them talking once, shortly after Hugh was born.” She’d been very young and had shoved the memory to the back of her recollections. “My father mentioned that Hugh ought to have been the spare, not the heir. It would have been more convenient if my twin had lived instead of me. I think perhaps this drove me to work extra hard for their approval.”
“But now you require no one’s approval but your own.” He went back to raking.
It was exactly what she’d told him yesterday, in Hugh’s study. “But it isn’t as simple as that. I suppose we must strike the perfect balance.”
