Thoughtful, at times she could stay utterly still and focused. He’d seen her sketch for hours while studying the most minute flower. Yet like a weathervane in a stiff breeze, she could change her manner and shriek over something exciting, running about, arms flapping. Then she would seem exactly like a young girl again.
It was vexing, and yet, he wouldn’t change anything about her.
In fact, Eleanor seemed practically perfect. Gray had only to determine her feelings on certain matters, namely becoming attached to him and living in a small house on the Cambrey estate. She would be the wife of a seamstress’s son, a man in service to the very same earl her older sister had married.
Or was she hoping for bigger, better things?
She was a baron’s daughter, with sisters who hadn’t simply married well. They’d both become countesses.
Would she be content? Or was she eager for next year’s Season?For all he knew, she might have a young man already sweet on her and with whom she, in turn, was enamored. She had said she’d found some interesting men in London.
Perhaps men who were titled or, at least, sons of the nobility.
Men her own age, no doubt. If he thought on it, she was a decade younger than his widow friend, though only eight years younger than him, and a lifetime less cynical than his bluestocking bedmate.
He had no business thinking of her in a romantic way.
The feelings warring within him were like nothing he’d ever experienced. Moreover, he had known this would happen if he ever gave in to the impulse to touch her.
Now, he had to decide if he were going to give in to his baser instincts when the next opportunity arose, or take the high road and treat her as the forbidden younger sister, as he would for any of his close friends. And Cam, Eleanor’s brother-in-law, was the closest of all.
After a restless night, Gray was still pondering the issue of desiring Eleanor, while feeling he shouldn’t want her at all, when he wandered into the morning room, following the aroma of bacon and sausages.
Eleanor wasn’t there, but everyone else was except the two youngest who still ate in the nursery with the nanny.
“Good morning.” Then before he could stop himself, he blurted, “Where is Miss Eleanor?”
“She ate already,” Phoebe said, munching on toast. “She gets up very early for a girl.”
He smiled. “So, she has gone for a walk?” Eleanor had a way of moving quietly, effortlessly across a meadow, her head up watching everything like an observant deer. It was a joy to watch, and he’d done so on many a sunny day at Turvey House while going about his duties.
“No,” Lady Angsley said. “She didn’t want to miss Beryl and Philip’s departure. I believe she is with Beryl even now. You look thin, eat something,” she ordered, changing the subject.
He smiled. Lady Angsley sounded like his mother when she said that, reminding him of his duty.
“I’ll have something light and then go have tea with my mother. She knows I’m on the estate and wouldn’t forgive me not stopping in first thing.”
“You’re a good son,” Lady Angsley said. “Please take her whatever you think she might like from the buffet.”
Thus, after toast and a coddled egg, he found himself heading to the granary lodge with a basket laden with food, both cooked items and some baked goods. He wasn’t avoiding Eleanor, he told himself, as he hurried across the back lawn and then the pasture. He simply was delaying seeing her again, knowing how she affected him.
*
Eleanor watched thecarriage until it was out of sight. It carried away Beryl, Philip, and their curiously personable cat. Grayson had appeared a minute before their departure to hug Beryl and shake the captain’s hand, and then he’d disappeared again while the rest of them said their goodbyes. Young Asher stared after the carriage, looking morose at the sea captain’s departure.
Truthfully, she felt a little at loose ends, too, with Beryl gone.
Sighing, Eleanor thought,Now what?
She hoped she would get a letter from Turvey House with some good news. Meanwhile, she’d put off her walk and now intended to take it. A watery sun was struggling to warm the earth a little, though clouds still hung over the landscape. She thought they looked beautiful.
With a cloak, her favorite straw hat, and her Wellingtons on again, she headed out the back, having got nearly as far as the first copse of trees when a figure seemed to appear from nowhere.
She gasped at the gnarled man who’d stepped from behind a birch, practically into her path.
Chapter Six
“Where are yougoing, missy?” the old man demanded.
