by Jane Ashford
He nodded. “We lost Donald in the war. James lives in London. Your sisters married and moved away.”
“Alistair is still here, and married. His children may use the oak when they’re a bit older.”
“He’s gone stiff and prosy, though.”
Fenella wouldn’t have said it herself, but this was undoubtedly true of Roger’s old crony Alistair Byrne. “I remember when he walked across that gully on a fallen tree trunk. It bent in the middle, and I was terrified he’d drop onto the rocks.”
“By Jove, yes. He did it on a dare. Were you there?” Roger realized at once that the question was tactless. He ought to remember her better from their youth.
But Fenella only nodded. “Among the rank and file, at the back of the audience. How we cheered when he finished.”
“He was vastly proud of himself. Never stopped talking about it. And I do mean never. If I called on him tomorrow, I daresay he’d bring it up.”
“Despite the prosiness?”
She smiled, and Roger was flooded with relief. The ride was going to be all right. He’d feared, at the beginning, that the proprieties would stifle them, a bitter disappointment after that memorable kiss. But she’d come to the oak, he reminded himself. So she didn’t regret it.
They rode up a narrow lane between fields of stubble from the first harvest. The wind rose, bringing a touch of chill. “The days are shorter already,” Fenella said. “Sometimes I think of winter hovering in the north like a Viking fleet, waiting to sweep down on us.”
“And throw you over its shoulder and carry you off?” Roger frowned at this ill-thought-out remark. But then their eyes met, and he wasn’t sorry after all. He was nearly certain that their local historical pageant had set a spark alight in her as well. How to be certain? Macklin had said to ask, but how was he to put the question, precisely?
“It can feel a bit like that when a storm roars in from the sea,” she said. “I know some people find that lowering. But I always loved the wildness. I suppose it comes of growing up here. Long, dark winter nights are as much part of home as a day like this.” She gestured at the August landscape.
That was exactly it, Roger thought. The rhythm of the seasons and the sea became engrained in the spirit. He’d taken his love of his home country for granted until he was faced with Arabella’s hatred of the Northumberland winter. Over and over, she’d urged him to take the revenues his lands generated and move them to a permanent place in London. When he refused, that hatred had been transferred to him, he thought. And her mother had taken it up after Arabella died, as if she owed it to her daughter’s memory to despise him.
Roger didn’t want to think about Arabella here and now, and yet in a way she stood between him and Fenella. His marriage, and its aftermath, had stopped them from speaking to each other for months. It had prevented them from becoming reacquainted on her return. And Fenella had witnessed some of their difficulties. Probably more than he knew, because Arabella had most likely confided in her. She must have a poor opinion of his judgment. “You probably wonder why I married Arabella.”
Fenella blinked at this sudden change of subject. She looked uncomfortable. “It was, and is, not my place to wonder.”
She might feel that, but Roger was determined that there should be honesty and openness between them. He’d learned that the lack of those things brought disaster. “I was herded by her mother like a—”
“Sodding sheep?” she interrupted.
Was she angry or amused or embarrassed? Roger couldn’t tell. He hated that he couldn’t tell. He hadn’t realized until this moment how much he wanted Fenella’s approval. He longed to show her that the wreck of his marriage hadn’t been his fault.
She glanced at him, her blue eyes cool and inquiring. They seemed to look right through him.
He’d seen that expression before, Roger noted. When he’d railed at her about that ill-fated ride in the rain. Skeptical, he thought, and…weary? In a moment of rare insight, he realized that she was waiting for him to bluster and blame someone else for his problems. She’d heard him do that before, to her. And he’d been wrong. Dead wrong.
A flock of excuses rose up to distract him—reasonable, tempting. But under her even scrutiny, Roger had to admit that the core of the matter lay with him. Yes, Arabella’s mother had taken advantage, but his own shortcomings had given her the opportunity. “An exceedingly stupid sheep,” he said finally. “Stubborn as well.”
Fenella cocked her head, surprised.
Roger forged ahead. “I’d been hanging about Arabella at the ton parties, along with a bunch of other fellows. She was—” He hesitated.
“Very beautiful,” said Fenella.
Roger nodded. There was no denying that. Everyone had agreed that Arabella Crenshaw was an absolute dazzler. “There was a sort of competition among us, to get her alone. We didn’t mean anything by it. She was so strictly chaperoned. It was just a lark.”
“Like climbing onto the roof of the castle tower?” asked Fenella.
Her tone was very dry. Roger winced under it. “We were a pack of young fools, me most of all, I suppose. Well, obviously.”
“Why obviously?”
“Because of the result,” he answered. “One day, when I called at her house, I managed it. I saw her alone. I was so pleased with myself, I never wondered how that came about. Imagined it was my own cleverness, I suppose. I tried to steal a kiss. Just one kiss, no more, as Arabella seemed willing. But her mother came in at just that moment. She’d been lying in wait. Like a hunter watching a snare.” Roger couldn’t help that last bit. Mrs. Crenshaw had laid a trap for him. He’d worked out later that he was the one with the highest rank and largest fortune among Arabella’s beaus.
“She congratulated us on our engagement,” he continued. “When I stammered something about not meaning that, tongue practically tied in knots, she called me a libertine. Arabella cried.” Roger still winced when he remembered that scene. “I said of course I wasn’t. And then there was a great deal more scolding.” It had been a veritable flood of words, engulfing him whenever he tried to speak, and Roger had lost his way in the spate. The feelings of chagrin and shame were vivid, however. He’d been made to feel like a deceiver who had trifled with an innocent girl’s affections. The idea that he’d wounded Arabella, so sweet and fragile as she seemed then, had racked him. Of course he’d had to make amends. “Mrs. Crenshaw sent a notice to the papers within the hour, and the thing was done.”
Fenella nodded.
Roger couldn’t tell what she thought of him. He felt his spirits sink as the details brought it all back. Perhaps he shouldn’t have started this story. “My father was so glad,” he added. “We’d been at odds since…” He gestured at Fenella and himself.
“Yes.”
“Mama was happy, too. Which I was glad of.”
“Of course.”
Still no sign of her opinion that he could decipher. “I owed it to the title to marry.”
“And Arabella was so beautiful,” she said again.
Roger acknowledged this with a nod. That had been a point; he admitted it. Seeing her across a crowded drawing room could take a man’s breath away. The announcement of their engagement made him the object of envy in his whole set of young bucks. And he’d reveled in it, popinjay that he was. “I was never alone with her again until after the wedding.” And then, of course, he’d discovered the extent of his folly.
Roger risked a glance at Fenella. He thought he saw sympathy in her eyes. On their last ride together, he’d begun to feel that he could talk to her about anything. But he couldn’t complain about Arabella. That would be ungentlemanly, loutish. He would never do that.
But he yearned to understand, Roger realized. He’d wanted that for months and found no way to achieve it. Macklin had advised asking, and Fenella was the only friend Arabella had made in the neighborhood,
ironically. As they were speaking to each other again, could she enlighten him? Still, it took him a moment to dare to say, “Afterward, I found I couldn’t put a foot right.” He stared into the distance rather than at his companion. “I’m not such a coxcomb as to expect everyone to like me. But I’d never before encountered someone who objected to every single thing I said or did.” Nor had he ever felt such an utter failure, he added silently. He couldn’t bring himself to say that aloud.
In the short silence that followed, Roger had ample time to regret his impulsive confidences. An urge to spur his horse and gallop off washed over him. They could resume their policy of not talking. It was so much easier than worrying that he’d said the wrong thing and ruined all.
“She cared for someone else,” Fenella said.
Roger turned in the saddle to stare at her.
Fenella absorbed his incredulous stare stoically. She’d made up her mind as he spoke, hesitant at first but then increasingly moved by the pain in his voice. Arabella had never sworn her to secrecy, after all. Indeed, she’d been defiantly indiscreet, her need to speak seeming to outweigh all else. Perhaps she’d assumed that Fenella would take her side. She’d certainly vented her spite and resentment of Roger unstintingly, at every opportunity. It never seemed to occur to Arabella that she was burdening Fenella with one of most uncomfortable secrets she’d ever possessed, and straining her affectionate bond with Roger’s mother.
“She told me about him,” Fenella went on. “Not his name, but…other things. They’d met during the season and fallen in love. They wanted to marry, but her parents objected. Particularly her mother, I believe. The match wasn’t grand enough for her.”
Roger scowled like a man who could not believe what he was hearing. “Why did she accept me if that was so?” He put a hand to his midsection as if to ease an ache.
“That was her mother’s doing. She wove a…fantasy of a bright future on one side and doom on the other, with this less wealthy suitor.” Fenella frowned, recalling Arabella’s bitterness toward her parent. She hadn’t really understood why the other girl gave in to this argument. “I gathered that Mrs. Crenshaw is a…strong personality.”
A crack of laughter shook Roger. There was no humor in his face. “A bit like Medusa, actually. One look, and you turn to stone.” He grimaced. “Not fair. And I swear she loved her daughter. If you could see her since Arabella’s death.” He struck his thigh with a fist. “Why the deuce didn’t Arabella stand up to her if that was the way of it?”
“She was young.” Fenella would make no judgments. “And perhaps not well taught.”
“Poor Arabella.” Roger’s expression grew pained. “So there was this other fellow the whole time. The whole time I knew her.”
“Yes.” Fenella hated to hurt him, but there was no other answer.
He was silent for a while. “And she never—” He shook his head. “Still, I needn’t have walked into Mrs. Crenshaw’s scheme.”
Fenella was surprised. She’d rather expected that he would go off on a rant about the Crenshaws ruining his life.
“What a prodigious waste. On every front.” He met her eyes. “Ask,” he murmured.
“What?” This was a different Roger. There was a curious diffidence in his face.
“When you first came back from Scotland and I saw you again, I felt this pull. Like waking up to a…trumpet blast.” He examined her face. “I thought you might have, too. Not sure about that.” He paused, waiting.
After a moment, Fenella nodded. She could admit it now that there were no secrets lying between them. She felt the attraction more today than she’d done then.
Roger’s heart soared. In the face of this confirmation, none of the rest mattered. Old news. Water under the bridge. “Yes.” His exultant tone brought a slight smile to her lips. “If only I hadn’t been a fool back then,” he continued. “But that was rather my forte, wasn’t it?”
She gave him a questioning look.
“I made such a point of refusing to marry you. I railed at my father. Told him he had no idea what he was doing. Was a perfect young ass, in short. I didn’t want him to think I’d been wrong.” Even though he had been, manifestly.
“How to bear the smugness,” she said, nodding. “And the I-told-you-so’s.”
“Precisely. And when I began to suspect that I might have been wrong, I ran off to London rather than consider that fact.” If only he hadn’t, Roger thought. How different his life might be right now.
“Because of me.”
Fenella looked down and away, a shadow passing over her expression. Her jaw tightened. What had he said to make her angry?
“I didn’t send you to London,” she said.
She used the tone that had charged their jousting in recent months. She thought he was still blaming her, Roger saw; just shifting from one cause to another. Not the ride in the rain, but the trip to town. But he hadn’t meant that. Why would she think so? In an unusual flash of insight, he realized that she was accustomed to being blamed for all manner of things. Her father was continually doing it. “No. That was not what I meant.” It came out forceful, but he didn’t care. “I chose to go.”
She looked at him, eyebrows raised.
“I decided to leave. For my own reasons.” It actually felt rather good to say this. And to believe it. He hated feeling that he was at the mercy of other people’s actions. He wasn’t! “However wrongheaded my conclusions might have been,” he added with a wry smile.
The warmth in his expression left Fenella shaken. She’d been braced for blame. She knew how to dismiss unjust accusations, taught by those her father had been tossing at her for as long as she could remember. But not to have to. That was another matter entirely. Relief was a pale word. Her throat thickened with tears.
She looked away to hide them, blinked them back. Their horses had ambled along at their own direction while their riders talked, and she saw that they’d veered closer to Clough House. Before them lay a dip in the land that was filled with bushes. “The raspberry thicket,” said Fenella. “I used to come here and pick berries whenever I could sneak away. How Mama scolded me for spoiling my dresses! But I couldn’t resist. I love raspberries.”
“I’ll pick some for you.”
“The thorns will tear your clothes.”
“No, they won’t. You can sit in the shade over there.” He turned his horse toward a cluster of saplings at the side of the thicket, grinning over his shoulder. An antic mood seemed to have overtaken him.
The breeze carried the scent of sun-warmed raspberries. Fenella’s mouth watered. “I could pick my own,” she said.
“Please allow me.”
He spoke like a knight offering some perilous feat of chivalry. She decided to let him.
They dismounted, leaving their mounts to the rich grass on the side of the hill. Fenella settled in the shade and watched Roger plunge into the raspberry bushes. He pulled out his handkerchief and began to fill it with ripe berries. Stains spread over the linen as he added to his haul. She saw the thorns catch at his coat sleeves and riding breeches. They scratched his glossy boots as well. His valet wouldn’t appreciate that. But Roger didn’t appear to care. He moved deeper into the thicket, until only his hat was visible above the arching canes. And then that too vanished. “Are you all right?” called Fenella.
“Dashed briars snatched my hat,” he replied. “Just a… Got it.” The crown of his hat reappeared above the branches. He was near the center of the thicket, at the bottom of the dip. It was much harder to get out of that little valley than to go in, Fenella remembered. The slant of the bushes seemed to push one back down.
Roger’s face showed above the vegetation. He must be standing on tiptoe. “There you are,” he said. “I got turned around.”
He moved slowly toward her, obviously having to fight his way out. His head, and then his broad shoulders,
came into view. He held one arm in front of his face to stave off the thorns.
“Hotter in there,” he said when he finally emerged. Sweat gleamed on his face. He came over to her, bowed, and set his bundle of berries beside her as if they were indeed the result of a knight’s quest. Fenella noted an angry scratch across the back of his right hand. At least it wasn’t bleeding. She took a raspberry and ate it. The fruit was warm from the sun, sweet and tart at the same time. It melted on her tongue, utterly delicious. “Berries picked here are always better than any others,” she said.
Roger sat down in the grass beside her.
“You must have some, too. You did all the work.”
He ate one. “Very good.”
“Better than that,” Fenella said. “Luscious.” She held out a berry. He bent a little forward and took it, his lips brushing her fingertips, light as a butterfly’s wing, and still it stirred her.
“Luscious,” he agreed.
The word vibrated between them, expanding out to encompass far more than berries. The air was heavy with the hum of bees and the scent of fruit under the heat of the August sun.
They were hidden from the world here, Fenella noted. Even the horses would not be easily visible, due to the dip in the land and the height of bushes. They might have stepped outside of time. Her everyday life seemed far away.
Roger took a raspberry and held it out to her. Fenella leaned forward and opened her lips. He put the berry on her tongue. She bit into it, the intense flavor filling her mouth—piquant, delicious, another dart of pleasure. She held out a berry. He followed her example, bending toward her. She set the crimson fruit in his mouth without touching him. He held her gaze as he bit down.
The sultry atmosphere went to her head—the languorous warmth, the rustle of leaves overhead, the soft grass beneath her, Roger’s lips red with berry juice. Hers must be as well, Fenella thought. The same hue, the same taste. The idea seemed to pull her forward, and the next time he held out a berry, she leaned past it and kissed him.
