“You refer to the family scoundrel.” Gerald Finch was the next in line to the Dalworthy title if Winston failed to provide an heir. Gerald, the son of the third son of the fifth earl, was known as a spendthrift, a drunk and, some said, a coward, too.
“I say, might I offer a suggestion of a lady you could pursue with ease and find her enjoyable company?” She was not proposing Fifi as a ruse, either. No, Winston deserved a real chance at happiness with a good woman. Fifi was that.
“You might indeed.”
“Lady Fiona Chastain is a good friend of mine of many long years.”
“I met her briefly. She is charming.”
But he said it as if Fifi’s loveliness were insignificant compared to others. Mary wondered to whom he might contrast Fifi, but the idea vanished in the need to affirm her friend’s value. “I assure you she is kind, intelligent and—”
He laughed politely and put up a hand. “I am certain she is.”
He was refusing her? “But I will happily take you to her.”
“Good of you, but that lady seems well occupied with Lord Charlton.” He nodded toward the two who suddenly appeared on the threshold. Once more, Lord Charlton, ever attentive to Fifi, carried his patient in his arms. Does he never give over?
“No,” said Winston on a chuckle. “I hear you! And I don’t think the man does. Infantry. Understandable, wouldn’t you say?”
“Do you like her?” She was flummoxed.
“I’m sorry. What?”
“Do you? I mean, could you like her?”
“Well, yes, of course. But Colonel Lord Charlton allows for little advance of an enemy.”
“But he doesn’t like her. Not at all. Don’t you see?”
Winston trained his attention on the couple who now sat on a settee together. “I don’t.”
“They argue.”
He narrowed his gaze. “Not in earnest.”
Was she missing that? She had to talk with Fifi alone somehow.
Blake appeared before them.
“Bridges!” Winston greeted him. “Where’ve you been? I need to talk to you.”
“About that meeting you and I want with Northington? He just arrived. I asked to be told as soon as he had. We’ve spoken and arranged one.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow after the May Pole frolic.”
“You told him about our request?”
“Not entirely. I said it was vital to you and me and his land values. That intrigued him.”
“Good. I’ll be ready. Where is it to be? Here?”
“I asked Lord Courtland to give us the library. Two o’clock.”
“Splendid. I’ll be there.” Winston backed away. “If you’ll pardon me, I’d like to talk to Lady Ivy.”
He hurried away. Had she missed Winston’s interest in Ivy? She felt her face flush. She had lost her touch at this match-making thing. Even fake match-making.
“What’s wrong?” Blake asked her. “You look like you ate a mouse.”
“I think I made a mistake.” Then she glanced at Fifi and Charlton who scowled at each other. Not with them, clearly. But I’ve been wrong about Winston.
“Wrong about Winston?” Blake followed her line of vision. “I don’t understand.”
“I’ve made a mistake. My apologies.” She smiled up at him. “So you have business with Lord Northington?”
“We do. I’ve had correspondence with my estate manager at Lawton Abbey and we have a problem, Winston and I, to repair the footpath along the river and shore up the banks.”
“At its northern bend?” She remembered the sharp curve in the river and how it could overflow its banks, flooding the farmland on either side.
“Yes. It’s in need of repair, has been for years, I understand. I know how to do it, do it quickly and for a fair cost. But of course, I need Northington to recommend it to his father. We need Brentford’s approval because it’s no use to repair Wintston’s and my section if the Duke won’t.”
She pictured the way the river could run its banks so quickly that those who lived in cottages nearby could see their homes, their possessions, their loved ones and crops washed away in the deluge. “My father appealed to his for many years to let him build a dam.”
“Did he? A dam! I had no idea.”
“A good one too. But the duke would refuse.”
“Why?” Blake shook his head. “Better to repair it than to watch crop land go to ruin or see people die.”
“Papa always said the duke hated the cost of repairs.”
“Silly thinking.”
“I hope you can persuade Northington.” She recalled the many times her father complained of the duke’s short-sightedness. An aspect of it skirted the edges of her memory.
“What is it?” Blake considered with a sweep of his luminous eyes that swelled inside her like a tide of yearning.
“I’m trying to remember something about my father’s correspondence with the duke, but…it eludes me.”
“Tell you what we’ll do to elicit those memories?” He wiggled his brows in enticement.
“What?”
“You and I will play a duet.”
“Ho, oh, no!” she said as he grabbed her hand.
“We will!” He tugged her forward.
“We haven’t played together in years!” She tagged behind him as he wove them through the guests. “We’ll horrify them!”
He stood before the huge yellow and green pianoforte and put his hands on her shoulders. “Would you rather I take you to the card room and demand you play a round of vingt-et-un?”
“God, no! I’d lose my corset!”
He grinned. “Right. Sit.”
She shook her head.
He pointed to the bench. “I’ve dreamed of this. For years and years. You were my treble. I your base. Now we’ll do a simple number. Five-fingered exercise.”
She recalled sitting beside him in radiant sunlight in his parlor or hers as dust motes danced around them like tiny gilded fairies. “Can we manage to remember it?”
“You don’t forget something like that. I didn’t. It got me through the nights when all I heard were the cries of men in pain and the howl of wolves.”
His recollections of what they’d done together astonished her. “Blake—”
“I heard us, hell, saw us as we were children, too young to know the savagery that lay before us. I wanted the sounds of notes. Little songs that only children play. And we were good, so good our families applauded us at Christmases and May Days. Please. Sit down. And be my partner.”
She sat. She began, stopped, nibbled her lip and started once more.
He followed.
They played. Picked was really what they did, but then a flow began. Together, they were good, not expert. Their camaraderie brought solace…and curiosity.
At the end in the silence, she was determined to ask for clarity about his feelings for her. “You imply you value what we were as friends. When we danced in London and kissed, I thought we’d become more than friends. Yet you stopped writing to me. Why?”
He met her gaze frankly, but he frowned. “I cannot address this issue in a few minutes. Nor even here among all these people.”
“But you must give me an idea. I cannot continue to enjoy you as I do and not know what you think we are to each other.”
“Yes. I owe you that.” He inhaled as he looked around marking that no one came too close to overhear. “After my brothers died, I knew that when I came home I would have to decide what to do about my future. If I lived that long.”
She grabbed his hand and wrung it. Blast what those in the room might say about her forwardness. “But you are here, hearty and whole.”
“There was no guarantee of that. Not then. Even after Napoleon abdicated in ‘fourteen, we had much to do to administer the land we won. War is grisly work on a battlefield. Restoring it is just as hard.”
“I wanted to hear from you,” she blurted. “What you did. How you did. I missed
your letters.”
“I could not write. Not to anyone.” He broke off and gazed toward the garden. “As well as losing my brothers, I had also recently lost a friend. He was severely wounded and was sent home. Grief ate me alive. I didn’t wish to speak, nor write. Only after I heard your parents died. I apologize that I failed you.”
He turned toward her, his face a panoply of sorrow and demand. “I need to talk to you more privately. Not in a drawing room where others will overhear.”
“Name the hour.”
“Tomorrow morning?”
“Before we go to the village?”
“Yes. Here. Ten o’clock. Bring your maid. We’ll say we practice our musical talents and I will explain more fully why I did not write.”
“Thank you.”
He lifted her hand and kissed her fingers with such ardor that her doubts he cared for her fled.
“Come, you two!” Ivy appeared at her side. “We are to do charades!”
“Tomorrow,” he said to her after they got to their feet to join the others.
“I’ll be here.”
Chapter 7
The next day at ten, Mary sailed into the salon alone. “Good morning,” she greeted him with a wide and winning smile. “Welles arrives soon. She does a few tasks for Fifi.”
Blake stood by the garden doors and took her in as she walked toward him. Aglow in the sunshine, she seemed to have blossomed in the past day. Had their kisses brought out her radiance? God knew, it brought out a lust in him. “You still like lace, I see.”
She cocked a brow. “Mama always said I looked like a doily.”
“Your mother was built differently. Tall and robust. Lace marks you as intricate.” His sentiments were no fluff. She was lovely in her delicate sky blue gown with tiny white lace adornments. He particularly liked the tiny frills at her full and very appealing bodice. “I think you should continue and wear what you wish.”
“One good thing is that at this rate, I keep the lacemakers of Honiton well employed.”
He tugged her along to the piano. Most of the night, he’d thought of playing this piano with her. The endless blather at this event irritated him and he was not certain why save to say he thought it pointless noise. He was most used to men barking orders, roar and thunder that had purpose, destructive of towns and castles and civilians. Drawing room niceties, polite as they seemed, bored him. More than dispensing with the chatter—he wanted to court Mary as she deserved. That meant he had to discuss his uncertain future and confront her about what had happened with his friend Langdon.
He extended a hand to have her take the bench and sat down beside her.
She rubbed her palms together. “All through the night in my mind, I played all our duets. We’ll be superb.”
She danced her fingers over the keys in a trill and tossed him a happy grin. “I chose this piece.” She offered up a few more chords. “Last night, I sneaked down here to look for the score, but the Courtlands don’t have it. I remember it, although not very well since I haven’t played it without you.”
Beside her, he stilled.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “You must recall this.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t played it by yourself.”
“It was ours,” she blurted, her confession burning her cheeks bright pink. “I couldn’t bear to play it alone.”
He caught his breath on a dawn of remembrance. “This piece is the one we practiced for my mother.”
“A birthday present for her.”
“She was shocked.”
“Really? Why?”
“She wondered what would become of me. Her gangly, awkward, bookish third son. The one who was irrelevant, no use to the family. The one who could do maths in his head and was suited best to become some aristo’s estate manager.”
“She loved you!” Mary recoiled.
“That I never doubted. Yet to her and to my father, I was the odd duck. The son they did not need. The one who was not interested in breeding Arabians, sitting in Lords or learning cards. The one who preferred to grow plants, till the soil with the tenants or repair old tack.” He stared at her but saw the past. “After you and I performed this, she suddenly had hopes I might acquire culture. Become a gentleman, if indeed I would be one who never owned a thing but what I earned.”
She took both his hands in hers. His fingers twined with hers in rough urgency. “If they could see you now, they’d know how wrong they were.”
He tried to brush that off with a shake of his head and a dose of humility.
“It’s true, Blake. If they thought you gangly, you were taller than either of your brothers. If they thought you awkward, most youths are, boys and girls. If they declared you bookish, well, they did the right thing and sent you off to the engineers. And look what you did for them, the military, Wellington. For us all.”
“You give me more credit than I deserve.”
“I doubt it. How often did you calculate precisely where a fortress wall should be breached? How well did you plot the shortest and best path for a road meant to carry hundreds of caissons and thousands of tramping men?”
“Others did, too.”
“That does not diminish your service or your excellence.”
“I failed, too.”
She shrugged. “One must often fail to learn how to perfect a task.”
He noted that with a twitch of a brow. But it did not sway him either.
She mashed her lips together. “How often did you fail? Tell me. Where?”
He lifted a shoulder and gazed off to consider a hideous hole in Spain. “I did not do well at Badajoz.”
As if he’d punched her, she sat taller. “You must not take all blame for that battle.”
“We numbered twenty-one engineers leading infantry. Teaching them as we fought hand-to-hand down into the trenches. A nightmare to climb out. My god.” He raked a hand through his tousled hair. “Over our own wounded and dead. The French rained down artillery upon us like a million devils.”
“But in the end, you won that city.”
“I cannot claim success.”
“Then I claim it for you. And praise you for it. Your parents would commend you for what you learned and what you built and what you endured.”
He considered the keyboard, but finally raised his head. “I am proud of what we did, but more of what we learned. After Badajoz, we knew our weak points and how to correct them.”
“And that,” she said as she squeezed his hands, “is what we celebrate the most.”
“Until this moment,” he said as he took in her hair, her eyes, her mouth, “when you and I celebrate what we were and what we can become.”
He put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her.
“I say! Good morning!” Lady Courtland greeted them from the doorway. Behind her came two of her friends and all three took chairs across the room.
“So much for privacy.”
He silently cursed. His agenda would have to wait. To the music then.
Mary cleared her throat as she scooted away from him. “We had a repertoire, as I recall. A very good one.”
“I know.” Hip to hip, he winked at her. “Let’s do the simple Mozart first.”
“Our lullaby.” She brightened as once she did as a mischievous child.
“Ours, yes.” As children they’d chosen one of Mozart’s simpler piano pieces and dubbed it their own. Cooperating at first for their own amusement, they’d adapted his works for four hands. They became so good at their innovations that they performed for their families and for larger gatherings. “Try the first chords. I’ll follow.”
She flexed her fingers as she examined the keys. Then she grinned at him. “A simple round first?”
He nodded, thinking she spoke of their renewed relationship more than of music. “We start slowly.”
Her blue eyes rested in his. “I never thought to see you again…or play the piano with you.”
“We correct that now.�
� He tore his gaze from hers and focused on the keys. “Begin.”
She started off slowly and simply, but as she approached the second refrain, he set his fingers to begin his own accompaniment. He felt, rather than saw her laugh, and they both approached the next with more confidence. The third round was more elaborate, she with the theme, adding as she could, and he creating a new digression. By the fourth round, they played with enthusiasm and an audience of two gathered round. Another approached and yet one more. By the end, they gained hearty applause.
He stood to extend a hand toward her for the guests’ approbation. She rose, curtsied and he led her toward the garden doors. They stood together, perhaps too close, secluded from prying eyes at least partially by heavy drapes. “You were wonderful, Mary.”
“I never would have thought to try it.” Her cheeks were pink, the twinkle in her eyes his reward. “Thank you.”
“Shall we play tonight?”
“During the ball? Oh, no,” she said. “You must dance.”
He could not contain his need of her. “With you, I will.”
“Oh, Blake, I won’t embarrass myself.”
“Let me hold you.”
He heard the breath leave her lungs.
“I need to dance with you, darling.”
She worked at words, blinking.
He chuckled. “Did you think I would not wish it?”
“I—no. I told you I still do not dance. I haven’t had a partner. Not before you. Not after you.” She put two hands to her cheeks. “Oh, I am flustered. You terrible man.”
He caught her wrists and lifted both to his lips. And on each warm and tender pulse, he placed a tender kiss.
She stood, her mouth open.
“I don’t care who sees us, Mary. I want you. In my arms. To dance. To kiss on the wrist and on your pretty lips. I want you. Tonight on the floor. Dance. With me.”
Her lips pursed as if she coveted his proposition. “You make it sound so—”
“Scandalous?” He arched a brow.
A wide smile graced her lovely face. “Delicious.”
Victory! “Good then. Done. Now leave here. Quickly, lest I scoop you up in front of all these curious people and carry you off.”
Lady Mary's May Day Mischief: Four Weddings and a Frolic, Book 2 Page 6
