“Digging through family papers sent here from Kengrove Abbey.”
His father’s papers, she assumed. “You have spent four days here doing this?”
“No, first I opened every hiding place in this pile, to see what they would yield. There are a lot of them.”
“Did you discover any treasures?”
“Not the one I sought.” He took her hand and led her out of the room. “I know you have been out for hours, but I have been buried. Let us take some air.”
A door to the grounds was not far away. It gave off into the grove. Once outside she looked up the severe stone face of the house. “It could use some new decorating.”
“Do you think so? You do not favor my great-grandfather’s taste?”
She laughed. “It is all very dark.”
He shrugged. “It was all but abandoned after my father married. They made their country home at Kengrove Abbey, not here.”
“They did not come here because of us, you mean.”
“Yes.”
She hated how that old argument had hung on for years, affecting not only the generation that started it, but the next one as well. And the current one, she had to admit. She wondered if anything could truly end it. Perhaps if they all agreed to say nothing about it to children born hence, it would eventually die.
He backed her against one of the trees and gave her a long kiss. “How long can you stay?”
“Not long enough for what you are thinking.”
He laughed. “Am I so obvious?”
“I read your mind in your kiss. I promise to ride over early tomorrow so we have many hours with each other.”
He kissed her again as if that hardly mollified him. With a sigh of resignation, he released her and took her hand. “Come inside and I will show you some of those hiding places. There is one that could house several people inside the walls.”
* * *
Jocelyn set out her green riding habit. “This will have to do for today. Or else the black. I need to mend the blue one.”
“This will do.”
Jocelyn began to help her dress. “There is a bit of talk among the servants about you are riding every day, all day. The women fear you will harm yourself somehow, with all the time in a saddle. The men remember how you did this after your father passed, and worry that you are again lost to grief.”
“And you?”
“I think you are not riding all day at all.”
“Just keep those thoughts to yourself.”
“Of course.”
“And reassure the servants that I am healthy and happy and well beyond deep grief. I do not want anyone feeling obligated to write to London with concerns.”
“I will take care of it.”
Dressed and ready, she once more aimed her horse east.
She doubted she would ever again know such grand days. She and Stratton had turned time upside down. They spent the morning in bed and, after the first two days, when late afternoon had found them still there, then dressed and ate and played like children. One fine day he took her to a little lake where they bathed. Another they met in an archery contest. Yesterday they brought pistols and muskets and practiced shooting. And of course they had kissed. Again and again they had kissed.
He told her stories too, about how his father had met his mother when she was a girl, then returned to France to marry her and bring her back before the troubles started there. He showed her the family graveyard where two older brothers were buried. Both had died as infants, which made his survival like a miracle. He described Paris in the years right after the war, when it seemed all of society from all over the world arrived to stroll in the Champs-Élysées.
