Chapter
Seven
“Inever agreed to accompany you on the lilac walk, Lord Windham. Indeed, I don’t believe I’ve even bid you a good morning.”
How could she have done? He’d seen her when she arrived—she was certain of it—but he’d kept as far away from her as possible. He hadn’t spared her a single word or glance all morning, but she’d known where he was at every moment.
The lawn, the terrace, or fetching lemonade. It didn’t matter where he was, or what he was doing. She was as aware of him as she was the warmth of the sun on her face.
It hurt, no longer being his friend. Perhaps she might have learned to live with it in time, though the space he’d once occupied in her heart would never have healed entirely. It would have always remained tender and bruised and achingly empty, but in time she would have reconciled herself to the loss of him.
But now, since she’d come to London they seemed to have somehow become enemies.
Was this how it would end? After twelve years of friendship and dozens upon dozens of letters, was it truly going to end like this?
It might have been easier if she’d understood why it had happened, but he’d simply vanished on her, more than a decade of friendship over in the blink of an eye, and in its place, nothing but baffling silence. He hadn’t bothered to answer any of her letters for months, but all at once he was adamant that he, and only he could escort her through the lilac walk.
His behavior made no sense, and she’d had quite enough of it. She’d simply repeat herself until he answered her. “I never agreed to accompany you?—”
“Yes, I’m aware of that, Lady Harriet, and I beg your pardon, but I won’t leave you at the mercy of Lord Egerton.”
“I’d hardly be at his mercy, my lord. It’s a stroll among the lilacs, not a duel to the death. As for Lord Egerton, he appears to be a perfectly respectable gentleman.”
“He isn’t.” Cass’s voice was flat. “He’s neither respectable, nor a gentleman.”
If he was as wicked as Cass made him out to be, then why was he here at Lady Farthingale’s garden party at all? “Lady Fosberry doesn’t seem to share your opinion. If Lord Egerton is as awful as you say, she would have warned me away from him.”
“I doubt she knows the truth about him. Lord Egerton is a master at dissembling. Trust me when I say you need to keep well away from him.”
She had trusted him, once. There’d been a time when she’d trusted him more than anyone else in the world, a time when he’d been her best friend, but that time had passed.
“I know you don’t trust me anymore,” he added, with that uncanny knack he’d always had of knowing what she was thinking even before she knew it herself. “But I wouldn’t lie to you, Hattie.”
Hattie.Not Lady Harriet, but Hattie.
A crack in his armor, at last! Oh, it was a tiny one, to be sure, but even the tiniest crack eventually gave way to pressure. Thiswas what she’d come to London for, this moment right here. This was a chance for her to talk to him, and she might not get a second one.
But where to begin? What were the right words to say to remind him who he’d once been? “The lilacs are lovely, are they not?” It wasn’t an auspicious start, but their friendship had begun with a daisy crown.
Why should it not resume with lilacs?
“Lady Fosberry said all thetonpants for an invitation to Lady Farthingale’s garden party,” she went on. “Now I’ve seen her lilacs, I don’t wonder at it.”
Cass glanced around them, as if only just now noticing the lilacs. “I’ve always been fond of them, perhaps because they’re one of the first flowers to bloom in the spring. They, ah…they put me in mind of the time I spent in Kent.”
Kent. He was speaking to her of Kent. It was the very last thing she’d expected, and she was obliged to swallow before replying. Even so, when she spoke her voice wasn’t quite steady. “But you’ve never seen the lilacs in Kent, Cass…I mean, Lord Windham. They were finished before you arrived that summer.”
“The bluebells were finished as well. I distinctly remember Sarah lamenting that fact on that first day I spied on you. Neither cornflowers nor bellflowers would do for Lady Sarah, if I recall.”
“No, and she remains quite as imperious as she was then.” She hesitated, but the words were on the edge of her lips, and there was no holding them back. “Perhaps you should visit Kent in the spring sometime.”
“Perhaps I should, but even though I never did get to see the bluebells in bloom in Kent, I can picture the great swaths of deep blue color set against a sea of green grass rippling in the wind. Whenever I see bluebells now, I think of that meadow.”
The longing in his voice, the melancholy there…did he know he gave himself away with every syllable, every sigh, every word? But she wouldn’t say so. The moment was too delicate, a mere wisp of a thing, and the wrong word might send it scattering like dandelion fluff.
“The meadow hasn’t changed much since then. It’s an ocean of wildflowers still.”
“Or as Sarah would call them, weeds.”
