She pointed to the right, to the ruins of another structure on a hill below the one on which they stood.
“What’s that, then?”
“That’s the castle of the White Lady,” he said, his smile beginning from somewhere within him and spreading outward. “I heard about it as a boy. I don’tremember who it belonged to, if I ever knew. But it’s rumored to be haunted by a girl who fell in love with a manservant and was banished to her third-floor bedroom. She threw herself from the window, evidently.”
“Good heavens.”
He reached for her hand again. “You mustn’t be saddened by such an old tale, Sarah. Who knows if it’s true?”
They walked several feet away from the path and the cliff, and only then did she see the blanket and the basket.
He released her hand, and she gracefully settled herself on the corner of the blanket.
“How do you do that?” he asked.
She looked up at him.
“With your skirts. You look like a flower sitting there, and you did it as gracefully as if you were curtsying.”
She looked startled by the compliment.
“I’ve been trained to do it,” she said.
“Do you go on many picnics?”
“I used to,” she said. “My mother and I would take our noon meal beneath the oak to the south of Chavensworth. It’s a lovely place to sit and read or talk.”
“I’m surprised you allowed yourself a respite from all your duties,” he said, sitting on the opposite corner.
“When I was six years old, I began my training. That’s when it first was made clear to me that I was the daughter of the Duke of Herridge, and consequently different from other people.”
He didn’t comment.
“I was encouraged to act in a decorous manner at all times, and remember that people would look to me, the only child of the Duke of Herridge, for clues as to my father’s character. I was never to shame him.Never to embarrass him. I was never to do anything untoward.”
“A paragon of virtue, in other words.”
She smiled faintly. “Perhaps.”
“If I had any questions as to how I should act, my mother was my mainstay. She was a source of information for most things. In London, I had my aunt to consult.”
“Your mother didn’t accompany you to London?”
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “My father didn’t allow it.”
With every conversation, he was beginning to understand her a little better, and as he did so, he realized how very insular a life she’d lived.
“I have no doubt that you were the perfect duke’s daughter,” he said.
“My life has been proscribed by my behavior.” She hesitated for a moment, then continued, “By expectations of my behavior.” She looked directly at him, her gray eyes unflinching. He was reminded of that afternoon in the Duke of Herridge’s study. “But I don’t know how you want me to act, Douglas.”
She began to arrange the food, unwrap the cheese from the muslin and slice it thinly. He was unaccustomed to being waited on, but he found it a heady experience to have his wife serve him.
“You couldn’t have said anything that pleased me more,” he said.
Now she looked confused. Good.
“I want you to act like yourself, Sarah. Not as you think is proper. Not as you believe people would wish you to act, but the way you feel.”
