A gift of daisies

by Mary Balogh

  Mr. Holland and Celia were just appearing over a rise. Rachel waved her hand to them, took Algernon's arm again, and walked on with him. Soon she was talking away happily, much more her usual self again, an uneasy Algernon noticed.

  They reached the Red Fox soon after and were regaled by the landlord's gossip until the other two joined them there. And Rachel was determinedly and loudly gay all through tea and then bore off Raymond Holland for the walk back home.

  Lord Rivers tucked Celia's arm through his and held it comfortably against his side. "Will you be content with a sedate stroll home, Miss Barnes?" he asked with a smile. "Or would you prefer to stride along so that we may keep up with Rache and Holland?"

  "The stroll by all means, my lord," Celia replied, "unless you have an appointment that necessitates our hurrying. Rachel has always been the same ever since I first knew her. She will never walk if it is possible to run. It was a good thing that Mr. Holland and I knew we were to take tea at the Red Fox, or we might have lost the two of you among the hills an hour ago."

  Algernon relaxed somewhat as he matched his pace to that of his companion and listened to her quiet and intelligent conversation. Miss Barnes was not a particularly pretty young lady and her company was not especially exciting. But there was something very comfortable about her presence. He was glad of her company at that moment. She was the sort of person with whom one did not have to make any effort at conversation-not because she was dull, but because her conversation was easy and matched his own thoughts so nearly.

  "Did you find yourself greatly fatigued yesterday?" he asked abruptly.

  "Rather," she said. "We were actually glad of a quiet day at home. I of course took great delight in exploring the house."

  "Rache was tired too?" he asked.

  She smiled. "It is almost hard to believe, is it not?" she said. "I have never known quite such a bundle of energy as Rachel. But she was quite out of sorts yesterday."

  "And today?" he asked.

  She hesitated. "You have noticed it too?" she asked. "She seems almost dangerously high-spirited. And yet not happy." She frowned, her own words making no sense to her.

  Algernon sighed. "I sometimes think Rache is more nymph than woman," he said. "There is no use in our worrying, Miss Barnes, and wondering what we can do to help her. I daresay she will be herself again by tomorrow."

  "Yes," she said, "I do hope so."

  "I thought I might ride over tomorrow and escort the two of you into the village to see if we can find David at home," he said casually, watching her from the corner of his eye. He was satisfied to see her color up and drop her eyes before agreeing calmly that that would be very pleasant.

  Chapter 6

  Oakland looked more festive than Rachel remembered seeing it. There had been formal dinners there before, and even some balls. But there had been nothing on quite such a lavish scale as this. All the neighbors for miles around had been invited, but the big attraction, of course, was the presence at the house of a dozen guests, all freshly arrived from the Season in London. Under the circumstances there was not a single refusal of the invitations sent out. Only a select few had been invited to dinner, but there would be a respectable crowd at the ball, considering the fact that this was not London.

  Rachel was delighted by the diversion. First there had been the day of everyone's arrival, her friends and some of Mama's and Papa's. Indeed, Mr. Jeremy Hart had been invited mainly because he was one of Algie's friends. It had been a day full of busy activity and animated conversation. It was amazing what news could accumulate in a week of not seeing one's friends. And the two days since had been no less active. Rachel had had no time at all for any of her usual activities in the country. She had had almost no time to herself and certainly no time to visit any of her friends among Papa's tenants. In fact, she had not seen any of them since before her journey to London.

  Inevitably, though, there were the moments when she was alone. One had to retire to one's dressing room to change one's clothes at certain hours of the day, and one could not always take someone else with one. One had to retire to bed at some time during the night, and sleep could not always be relied upon to come as soon as one laid one's head on the pillow. In fact it rarely did so.

  She tried to fill her mind with deliberate thoughts. She thought of Algie and how she loved him and felt comfortable with him. She thought of how they would be betrothed in the autumn and perhaps marry before the year ended. She thought about how she would have to remove only as far as Singleton Hall. It would be like living at home for the rest of her life.

  She was very happy. So happy, in fact, that she had been unable to keep her feelings entirely to herself. She had told Celia that Algie was to make her a formal offer once the summer was over and that she was going to accept. She had told Celia that she loved him, a pointless announcement, of course. That truth must have been obvious to Celia since the beginning of the Season. Celia had been delighted. She had hugged and kissed her and promised to return to Oakland for the wedding, probably near Christmas.

  And Rachel's thoughts frequently concentrated on Celia. Happily settled herself, she wanted her friend to be as fortunate. It was a shame that Celia was such a quiet girl. Very few people took the trouble to get to know her, and consequently few people knew what a very beautiful person Celia was. Rachel had hoped that her friend would attach some gentleman's interest during the Season, but there had been only Mr. Paige, who was doubtless too attached to his mother to pluck up the courage to offer for a wife. Rachel had been relieved that he did not offer.

  There were possibilities among the houseguests. There was Sir Herbert Fanshawe, for example. And Mr. Hart was worth considering, for all that he was rather bookish and was reputed not to be able to see a hand in front of his face when he was not wearing his gold-rimmed spectacles. Rachel intended to see to it that these gentlemen had a chance to see Celia as she really was.

  Mama had said on more than one occasion that David Gower was likely to become Celia's suitor. And so he succeeded in slipping into Rachel's thoughts after all. She could not keep him out. Indeed, no matter how busy she kept herself during the daytime or how fast she talked or how gaily she laughed, he was there all the time. And no matter how full of important matters she kept her thoughts when she was alone, no matter how careful the defenses she erected, he was there anyway. She carried David Gower around in her thoughts and in her feelings as surely as she carried around her own heart.

  And it was entirely against her will that she did so. She did not want to think of him. She tried to convince herself that she hated him, that she was indifferent to him, that he mattered not at all to her. She avoided seeing him. When Algie rode over the day after their walk in order to take her and Celia to the vicarage to visit David, she used the arrival of the guests the following day as an excuse not to go. She had seen him at church, of course. She had kept her eyes on her lap, her psalter, her hymnbook. She had tried not even to listen to him, but there was unexpected power in his voice when he spoke, especially when he delivered his sermon. It would have been impossible not to listen. But she had divorced the sound of the vicar's voice from her knowledge of David Gower.

  She blocked him from her life, from her heart, from her conscious thoughts, but he was there nevertheless. And sometimes, all too frequently in fact, he forced his way into her conscious mind, and there was nothing she could do but think of him until something happened to force him below the conscious level again.

  It happened when she was getting ready for the grand dinner before the ball. She was ready far too early as a result of being too excited to rest as long as she should have during the afternoon. She had dismissed her maid and sat idly on the stool before her mirror, twirling her ivory fan in her hands, wondering if her silk gown was in too pale a blue after all. It looked almost white. She looked like a girl at the very beginning of her come-out Season again. It had seemed very delicate when she had chosen the fabric. Ice blue. Paler than his eyes.
r />   David. She had made such a dreadful cake of herself at Singleton Hall. She had asked him to marry her. No, begged him to marry her. How could she have become so lost to all sense of propriety as to ask a man to marry her? She did recall half-guiltily that she had also asked Algie to marry her a few days later, but that was entirely different. Algie would have asked her eventually anyway. There had always been an understanding between them.

  And David Gower had rejected her. When she had confronted him and told him to give her one reason why they might not marry, he had told her quite bluntly that he was not asking her. And she had continued to argue!

  She hated him! No, that was no longer true, Rachel admitted. She had hated him for all of two days, blamed him entirely for her feeling of acute embarrassment and humiliation. She had hated him because only by doing so had she been able to cope with the raw hurt and bewilderment of his rejection.

  And it had been far easier to cope during those two days than it was now. Now she had to face up to what had happened, acknowledge her own responsibility for the disaster, and reassess her feelings for David Gower. And she did not want to do so. It was far easier simply to hate.

  She had thought she had her infatuation under control. It did not seem fair of fate to have thrown them together under just those circumstances. She had been sitting there quite innocently in the rose garden, pulled beyond herself by the beauty and peace, the very sublimity of the night, and then suddenly David had been there too. She still did not know what he had been doing there and why he had not still been with Vicar Ferney in the library. But he had been there, and somehow he had become all mixed up with her mood and her surroundings, with the unreality of it all.

  What chance had she had? She had been in his arms, his mouth on hers, before she had even realized the danger. And once there, then there had been no chance at all to fight. She had been where she wanted to be. Not only that. She had been where she felt she belonged. Truth to tell, she had had no thought of fighting her feelings at that moment. She had only assumed that he must be feeling exactly as she felt, that he too would acknowledge that their love was right and inevitable. She had had no doubt whatsoever that they would marry.

  How very naive she was to assume that when a man kissed one in that way he must love her and intend to make her his wife! She always assumed that she knew so much about life, being all of nineteen years old and having spent a whole Season in London. In reality she knew nothing. She was the veriest child. He did not love her, David had said. He had wanted to possess her, that was all. It had never occurred to Rachel that one could want without loving.

  And David of all people. She had thought him a man of honor. A man of honor would not kiss a young lady in the way he had kissed her unless he had every intention of offering for her immediately after. He had pressed her body against his. His hands had touched her in places where they had no business to be. He had kissed her with open mouth-a type of kiss she had no known of before. And he had used his tongue! He had treated her as if she were a woman of loose virtue.

  She hated him for that. Yes, she still did. She had admired him a great deal even apart from other feelings. And he had destroyed her respect for him. But she hated herself every bit as much. She had thrown herself at him with no pride at all. What if he had asked for more of their lovemaking? What if he had tried to take more than just a very unchaste kiss? Would she have given more? Would she have put up any struggle? She could not answer the question. She wanted to believe that, yes, of course, she would have stopped him if he had tried to take just one more liberty. But she could not honestly, beyond all doubt, say that she would have.

  And if he had responded as she had expected, would she now be happily betrothed to him? Would she be planning to live the rest of her life with David Gower in the vicarage in Singleton? A vicar's wife? Was she mad?

  What had happened was that she had mistaken a strong dose of physical attraction for love, and for one mad night she had been prepared to abandon everything that made her life recognizable for the sake of that attraction. She could not marry David. What she had felt for him had not really been love.

  And so in the final analysis, Rachel thought, giving her fan an extra twirl and pulling a face at herself in the mirror, she was no better than David Gower. She did not love him either, but had merely wanted him for a few mad minutes in the rose garden. And if she were to be charitable and forgive herself, as she must if she were ever going to be able to live with herself again, then she must also forgive David. Perhaps his behavior had been no more calculatedly evil than her own had been.

  If only she could just forget him. If only for one whole hour, or even for one whole minute of her day, she could forget him.

  If only he were not coming to the dinner and the ball.

  ***

  David Gower was not enjoying himself. He really had rnot wished to come, had felt a moment of sick dread, in fact, when he had first read his invitation. But he had decided long ago that in his vocation he would shirk no duties to his parishioners, no matter how undesirable they might be. At the time, he had had in mind duties like visiting a home where there was typhoid. He had not thought that attending a dinner and ball at the home of an earl would be the most difficult part of his job in more than a week of service. And part of his job it was. He did not attend from any personal inclination.

  In the eight days since he had removed from Singleton Hall and gone to live in the vicarage, he had immersed himself in his work. He had visited every member of his parish-except the Earl of Edgeley-and had tried to get to know each as an individual. He had had long talks with elderly people and listened to the memories of bygone years in which they loved to indulge. He had discussed crops and enclosures and the attractions of the wages offered by the factories in the towns with the men. He had helped the women by lifting heavy pots from the fire and chopping firewood and holding babies and bouncing them on his knee. And he had sat in dusty yards talking with the children, examining their humble treasures, letting them play with his watch, telling them stories.

  He had prepared his sermon with painstaking care for the previous week and had felt that his first Sunday services at Singleton Church were well-attended and well-received. He had taken comfort to a sick old cottager in the middle of one night and had left the old man peaceful and recovering after an hour of prayer. He had taken a basket of food to a large family when he had found out that the man of the house had gambled his money away at the alehouse. He had also not neglected to berate the man roundly for his irresponsibility. And he had laughed at his housekeeper when she loudly protested his action and assured her that bread and cheese would make him a perfectly adequate dinner. She might have the meat pasty that had escaped his notice when he was filling the basket.

  It might have be a thoroughly happy week had not this ball at Edgeley's been looming on the horizon. Already, even after a mere eight days, David felt removed in experience from the sort of occasion of which he was to be a part. The prospect of a lavish banquet and an evening of gay music and chatter held out no allure for him. He would far prefer to sit at home with a book or even merely with his own thoughts. There was a great deal to think about-what to do for the children, for example, or for the elderly people.

  Of course, David admitted to himself as he stood inside the ballroom and exchanged greetings with Mr. and Mrs. Price, whom he had visited just the day before, there was the other, far more powerful reason why he had not wanted to attend this ball. And it was the same reason that had been gnawing away at his happiness for the last eight days. The same as had prevented him from feeling total joy on his first Sunday at his new church.

  Lady Rachel Palmer.

  He looked at her now as she stood just inside the doors of the ballroom. She had come from the receiving line. The dancing was about to begin. She was simply sparkling with life and high spirits and was surrounded by the usual cluster of young men, some of whom he recognized as part of her court in London. Some of them were hi
s parishioners. She was fanning herself and laughing and talking.

  She was going to be betrothed to Algie. Miss Barnes had told him that as she sat next to him at dinner.

  David had been feeling slightly sick ever since.

  It would be the best possible outcome, of course. She loved Algie. He had seen that from the start. Nine evenings before, she had been struck with madness. The moonlight perhaps. The smell of the roses. The pensive mood he had unwittingly interrupted. There had been nothing more to that whole embrace and ensuing conversation for her. Miss Barnes's announcement and Lady Rachel's present exuberance proved that fact.

  If only it meant nothing more to him! He was deeply ashamed of his behavior with her on that evening. Yet, shamed as he felt, loaded down as he was by a sense of his own sin and guilt, he could not put her from his mind.

  The first set was forming, and David crossed the room to claim his dance with Celia Barnes. He had engaged her for two sets during the evening. And he was torn by indecision regarding her. He had sat next to her at dinner and had been struck again by her quiet good sense. He should start courting her in earnest. She would be a good wife to him, he sensed. She would keep his wayward thoughts from straying in directions in which they had no business to stray.

  But was it right to pay his addresses to a pleasant and honest young woman merely in order to keep his own inclinations under control? Was it right to offer her a guilty heart? A heart that was not free?

  His heart was not free. He was deeply and hopelessly in love with Lady Rachel. He had known that for certain as soon as he set eyes on her in the drawing room before dinner. And he had known it with even deeper certainty when Miss Barnes had confided her news concerning her friend and Algie. Would it not be almost an insult to turn to Celia Barnes under such circumstances?

  The evening was to begin with a country dance. It was almost inevitable, David supposed, that he and his partner should join the same set as Algie and Lady Rachel. The two ladies had been standing close to each other when the sets began to form. David had to live through the torture of having to dance close to Rachel for all of twenty minutes, and even of having to clasp her hand for one turn every time the pattern was repeated. His eyes met hers once, and she smiled gaily back at him, her face flushed from the exertions of the dance, her eyes bright.