“Have you seen the follies here?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
He pointed them out to her as they rode past, a triumphalarch leading nowhere, a sylvan grotto that had never housed either nymphs or shepherds, a ruined temple.
“All of them afford a picturesque view of the lake when you stand close to them,” he said. “Mr. William Kent had a sure eye for effect.”
As they rode slowly back to the house from the lake, he found himself telling her about Spain and about the army’s crossing over the Pyrenees into the south of France. She was asking him quiet and intelligent questions. He was not sure how the topic had been introduced.
He was more sorry than he could say that those magic moments had been so brief. He wished he could have curbed his curiosity about her identity and history, or at least put it off until another time.
For that half-hour he had felt happier and more carefree than he had felt for years. And she had looked more beautiful and more desirable than any woman he had ever known, her face glowing, her untidy red-gold hair framing her face and half-loose down her back. And her looks and her smiles had been all for him.
No, he thought as they rode into the stableyard and she hastily summoned a groom to lift her to the ground, it was as well that the morning had developed as it had. The situation had been wrong and dangerous. He was being tempted as he had been tempted even at his first sight of her outside the Drury Lane.
She was Pamela’s governess now, his servant. She was under his protection, as he had told her earlier. It was his duty to protect her from lechery, not to lead the attack himself.
“I daresay Pamela has enjoyed her brief holiday,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “We must start lessons early this afternoon.” She stood uncertainly, watching him.
“I have some matters to discuss with my head groom,” he lied. “You may return to the house, Miss Hamilton.”
“Yes, your grace.” She curtsied and turned to leave.
He watched her go, wondering if life ever offered happiness in more than very small, very brief doses.
THEFRENCH LESSON HADgone very well, as had the history lesson, or rather the history story. When Fleur took the large globe from its shelf for a geography lesson, Lady Pamela wanted to know where India was.
“My uncle Thomas was there,” she said, and she traced with a finger under Fleur’s guidance the long sea route that her uncle must have taken in order to come home to England.
“I don’t like my uncle Thomas,” she said candidly.
“Why not?” Fleur turned the globe so that India was facing them again. “You have met him only once, and you were tired.”
“He did not really like me,” the child said. “He was laughing at me.”
“This is probably because he is not used to little girls,” Fleur said. “Some people do not know how to talk to children. They are a little afraid of them.”
“He said I do not look like Mama,” Lady Pamela said. “He said I was all Papa. I wish I looked like Mama. Everyone loves Mama.”
“And you think everyone does not love you because you are dark like your papa?” Fleur asked. “I think you are very wrong. Dark looks can be very handsome. Your many-times-great-grandmother was very dark and very beautiful. She reminded me of you when I saw her portrait downstairs a couple of days ago.”
Dark eyes looked at her critically. “You are just saying that,” Lady Pamela said.
“Perhaps you should see for yourself, then,” Fleur said. “And perhaps you should start to become acquainted with your papa’s family. They go back for hundreds of years, long before you or Papa was ever thought of.”
Most of the ladies, including the duchess, were still in Wollaston, Fleur knew. His grace had ridden away with several of the gentlemen to view his farms, though the drizzle had started to fall again an hour before. It would surely be safe to take Lady Pamela down to the long gallery, as his grace wished her to do on occasion.
They looked first at the Van Dyck portrait of the dark lady who had once been Duchess of Ridgeway, surrounded by her family, including the duke, and by the family dogs.
“She is lovely,” Pamela said, clinging to Fleur’s hand. “Do I really look like her?”
“Yes,” Fleur said. “I think you will look very like her when you are grown up.”
“Why do the men have such funny hair?” the child asked.
They examined the hair and the beards and the clothes of her ancestors to note how very much fashions had changed over the years. Lady Pamela chuckled when Fleur explained to her that men had used to wear wigs, until quite recent years.
