Promise Me Forever

by Lorraine Heath

  She nodded. “Afraid so. Lauren was here quite early this morning to ask me to serve as chaperone. It seems she has a desire to accompany a certain lord to Sachse Hall. And I agreed out of love for my cousin with no financial benefit to me.”

  “She was already here?”

  “Mm-uh. Aroused me from slumber yet again, quite eager to enlist my aid in getting her out of London for a bit. Since Rhys and I desire a little time away as well, I was only too glad to accommodate her request.”

  With a deep breath, he sank back against the chair. “So you’re going to be our chaperone?”

  “Quite.”

  “You might have said something sooner.”

  “But I like to see you squirm a bit. However, make no mistake, I shall take my duties most seriously. I’ve seen cartoons in Punch depicting young people striving to elude their chaperones. I won’t be made a mockery of by being easily evaded.”

  “I won’t take advantage.”

  Rhys coughed and cleared his throat, as though he no more believed Tom’s words than Tom did. Tom had no plans to take advantage of Lydia, but if Lauren were available to him…

  “We can be ready to leave in the morning,” Lydia said.

  “I’ll have my carriage brought around at seven.”

  “Good God,” Rhys barked. “Have pity, man, and select a more reasonable hour.”

  “Ten?”

  “Noon.”

  “Eleven.”

  “Eleven it is.”

  Lydia reached over and patted Tom’s knee. “Now, if Lauren can just have success convincing Aunt Elizabeth that I’ll make an acceptable chaperone during a country visit, we should be all set.”

  Lauren watched as her mother dug the trowel around her precious rosebushes, loosening the soil, removing the few scarce weeds that had dared to invade her domain. She suspected the next few minutes were going to be very difficult, but she was all of twenty-four, old enough to make her own decisions. She was ready to exert her in dependence.

  So why was she trembling? Because she knew she was on the cusp of a battle she might not win, even though she had her arguments lined up in a row like good little soldiers. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she knelt beside her mother, reached out, and pulled up a weed, tossing it aside. “The roses have made a wonderful showing this year.”

  “Indeed they have. I’ve been quite pleased.”

  “As well you should be. You work so hard on them. I swear I’ve never seen a more beautiful garden.”

  “It’s been a while since you’ve given me this much flattery.” Her mother sat back, laid the trowel on the ground, clapped her gloved hands together to rid them of the excess dirt, and slowly peeled them off. “Guilt is an awful burden to bear.”

  The heat suffusing her face, Lauren wondered if her mother could look at her and know exactly what she’d done with Tom last night and how many times. “I’m not feeling guilty.” She grimaced at the squeaky sound of her voice. She sounded like an out-of-tune violin.

  “I was referring to myself,” her mother said.

  “Oh, of course.”

  “I keep thinking if I dig up the garden enough times, it’ll make everything right again, that perfection here is perfection everywhere, but I don’t know if everything will ever be perfect again.”

  “I’m not sure everything was ever perfect. It was simply not quite so bad as it might have been.”

  Her mother turned to her. She looked remarkably young, incredibly vulnerable, with dirt smudged along the side of her nose. Lauren resisted the urge to wipe it away, but in the end, she couldn’t leave it alone for the servants to see—her mother looking less than countess-worthy. “You have a bit of a mess here.”

  Using her thumb, she rubbed away the offending dirt.

  Her mother laughed lightly. “Sometimes I think I like the smell of the earth more than the smell of the roses.”

  “I think it’s the farm girl in you.”

  “Probably. So what brings you to my corner of the garden?”

  “Tom invited me to Sachse Hall, Lydia has agreed to serve as chaperone, and I want to go.” The words rushed out, one right on top of the other, as though she thought if she spoke them fast enough her mother would miss the true meaning of the message: that she was going away with Tom.

  “Do you think this is a wise course of action?” her mother asked softly.

  Lauren studied her dirty thumb. “Probably not.”

  “Well, then be careful while you’re away.”

  Lauren jerked up her gaze, but her mother had already turned her attention back to the soil, using her ungloved hands now to loosen the dirt.

  “You’re giving me permission to go?”

  Lauren wondered if her mother had indeed guessed about last night’s excursion.

  “At least this way,” her mother continued, “I’ll know where you are and I can pretend to believe that Lydia will prove an adequate chaperone. And having her there gives the appearance of propriety. It’s the best I can hope for.”

  “Lydia will be an excellent chaperone,” Lauren said, feeling a need to stand up for her cousin. “She, more than anyone, knows the price of scandal.”

  “You don’t have to convince me,” her mother said. “Go with my blessing.”

  A battle won so easily was certain to be a battle not yet finished.

  “We’ll leave tomorrow,” Lauren said warily, waiting for some sort of indication that her mother was playing a spiteful prank on her.

  Her mother’s hands stilled their seemingly frantic movements. “Take care with your heart.”

  Lauren wrapped her arms around her mother, hugging her tightly, not caring that she might end up equally covered in dirt. “Thank you for not making this moment difficult.” She kissed her mother’s cheek, only then noticing that another smudge had appeared on the side of her nose as well as a damp trail left by a passing tear. She whispered, “I love you dearly,” then rose to her feet and went to prepare for her journey.

  Because Tom and Rhys were good-sized men and because the ladies, even for a short stay in the country, required two trunks of clothing each, they traveled in two coaches, and while it might not have been entirely appropriate, Lauren traveled alone in the coach with Tom.

  “You’ve been awfully quiet,” Tom said, once they were beyond the boundaries of London.

  “My mother was too agreeable about my coming. I don’t quite trust the ease with which she capitulated.”

  His laughter easily traveled to where she sat opposite him. “Maybe she thinks a little time in my company will convince you that you no longer have an interest in me or in Texas.”

  Studying him sitting there with his gray tailcoat with the black velvet collar and gray trousers, the blue waistcoat, and the red cravat, she realized that she no longer expected him to appear in his cowboy garb, that she hardly ever thought of him as being a cowboy any longer. The realization somehow surprised her, saddened her, and in an odd sort of way also satisfied her. Not that she could take complete credit for his transformation. Much of it had begun before she’d agreed to help him, but if he reshaped his mustache just a bit and never spoke, one would never realize that he hadn’t been raised in England.

  “You might consider trimming your mustache a bit,” she offered. “It looks decidedly Western.”

  He placed his thumb and forefinger at the center of the mustache right above his lip and slowly outlined both sides. “You mean make it so it twists up at the end?”

  She nodded. He grimaced. She laughed. “It was only a suggestion.”

  “I like my mustache the way it is.”

  “I suppose you could remove it completely.”

  “I’d look too young.”

  “You are young.”

  “In years, Lauren, not in experience. In some ways, I’m older than a lot of the gentlemen I meet. They’ve had pampered lives.”

  “Lives of excess can age one as well.”

  “True enough.”

  She l
et the silence ease in around them, before saying, “I’ve never been to Sachse Hall.”

  “It needs a good deal of work.”

  “I didn’t realize it was in need of repair.”

  “Not repair so much as redoing. My father seemed to like…” He looked out the window as though searching for the right words, and she could see the red of embarrassment darkening the skin beneath his chin. Or perhaps it was a reflection of his red cravat, but she didn’t think so.

  “What did he seem to like?”

  “Naked statues, that sort of thing. I thought about fixing the place up, but I decided that I should leave that to my wife, let her redo the house to suit her tastes.”

  Lauren’s stomach knotted up at yet another mention of his having a wife. Were his continual reminders deliberate or unintended? Was he hoping to gain some sort of reaction from her, some spark of jealousy? Dear God, as much as she was loath to admit it, she was envious of the woman who would marry him. And surely he would marry.

  “That’s very thoughtful,” she said, striving not to let the moment ruin the collection of wonderful memories she’d hoped to gather so she would have them to carry away with her when she left.

  “I thought it a rather…civilized decision.”

  His perfectly delivered English accent astounded her. She stared at him. “My goodness, Tom, you can speak quite convincingly without a drawl.”

  “Only when I concentrate on it.”

  “I think you’ve learned the secret. All aspects of this life require concentration.”

  He laughed again, and she realized that he laughed much more easily than most of the men she’d been around for the past several years. “It’s more than just getting rid of the slow talking,” he said. “It’s using words in ways I never have before.” He gave her a pointed look. “It’s a…bit of a bother.”

  She smiled warmly. “Frightfully so.”

  “I daresay you’re right.”

  She released a light laugh. “I should be happy as a lark if you learned the proper speech.”

  “Happy as a lark,” he repeated. “It creates a different image than pig in slop.”

  She laughed harder. “Oh, Tom, that’s atrocious! They’re not the same at all. One is refined, the other is crude.”

  “Which is which?”

  “You know damned well which is which. If you’re not careful, I shall become very cross with you.”

  He shook his head. “Very cross isn’t much of a threat. Angry, mad, infuriated, now that might give me pause.”

  “Don’t underestimate the unpleasantness of dealing with a woman who is very cross. I assure you the words used may give a more civilized impression, but they can mask a beastly temperament.”

  “I always thought speaking English was speaking English.”

  “Not quite, but you do speak remarkably well, and you’re picking up on all the small things rather easily.”

  “Nothing easy about it. It’s as hard as sitting on my side of the coach while you sit on yours.”

  “I intend to behave with a good deal of decorum during our time away from London. I don’t wish to put Lydia in a difficult position.”

  Leaning forward, he took her gloved hands. “Define decorum.”

  “I have no plans to be seduced.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “How does one plan not to be seduced? I can see planning to seduce—”

  “I simply meant that I shall be ever vigilant against any sort of inappropriate overtures that you might direct my way.” She wasn’t going to sneak into his bedroom. She absolutely wasn’t.

  Grinning as though he knew she’d have no will to resist, he released his hold on her hands, slid over to the corner of the coach, and stared out the window.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Just watching the countryside. It’s so damned green.”

  “There’s green in Texas.”

  “Not in Fortune, there isn’t. Not like this. Come the middle of summer, everything starts to turn brown.” He shifted his gaze over to her. “Don’t you remember?”

  “I have a vague recollection…” Very vague. Did she even truly remember what it looked like.

  “I don’t think everything will become dry here.”

  “You’re like my mother with her rose garden. She has her little bit of land that’s hers to tend…”

  “Sachse Hall is set on more than a little bit. The tenants are farmers. You’re more than welcome to join me when I ride out to see them.”

  “You’re a man of the land, aren’t you, Tom?”

  “I reckon whether the land is in England or in Texas, it calls to me.”

  He fell silent then, as though he was listening to what ever the green and brown of the earth might whisper to him as they passed by it. She wondered if his father had ever taken him for rides over the land, if he’d somehow managed to instill a love for the land in Tom…whether intentional or not.

  Surely there had to be some evidence of his father’s influence, other than scars.

  It was amazing to watch the light of appreciation in his eyes as he looked out over the passing scenery as though he would never grow tired of it, bored with it, as though seeing it all for the first time when he must have seen it before, on his journey to London.

  “Do you recall your father taking you for rides over the land?”

  His jaw tightened. “No. The memories that come to me”—he shook his head—“I have yet to come across one I’d like to hold on to.”

  “At least you’ll have no bad memories associated with the land.”

  She scooted over to the window so she could have a similar view of what it was that he found so fascinating. She’d never truly bothered to study the countryside, to look at it without resentment because it wasn’t Texas. The rolling hills here had seemed so foreign to her because Fortune was nothing more than good, flat farmland near the Texas coast. She’d seen nothing to remind her of it, and so she’d found fault with all of it.

  It was only while gazing at it through Tom’s eyes that the verdant greens seemed to warrant her appreciation and actually had her feeling a little guilty for her years of harsh assessment.

  Tom got up and moved over to her bench, sitting down beside her, leaning over to look out the window, until his chest was pressed against her shoulder. “I prefer to see where I’m going instead of looking back to see where I’ve been,” he said quietly, the warmth of his breath wafting along the sensitive skin of her neck, sending chills rippling through her until her toes curled.

  “Shall I move to the other bench so you have a clearer view?”

  “No, I like my view just fine.”

  “I’ve never looked at the countryside without a measure of resentment. Don’t you resent it?”

  “How can I resent it when it belongs to me?”

  She twisted her head around. “This is your property?”

  “No, not yet. We have a few hours to go. I didn’t mean I own it. I meant it’s just…beautiful. You can’t resent land for simply existing, not when it gives so much back to us.”

  “It’s in your blood,” she said, amazed by the realization.

  “Sometimes, it seems like it is. When I look out on it, I don’t miss Texas quite as much.”

  Looking out on the land with Lauren’s profile framed in the corner of his vision had probably done a great deal toward making him not miss Texas so much. Dark clouds had moved in, a light rain had begun to fall, and the lullaby of the drops pelting the roof had lulled Lauren into sleep, her head nestled against the nook of his shoulder. His jacket was draped over her to ward off some of the chill. The arm he’d placed around her to hold her steady had begun to go numb, but it was a small inconvenience when compared to the plea sure of having the weight of her body pressed against his side, the fragrance of her hair, her perfume enticing him into taking deep breaths just so he could enjoy her unique scent, memorize it for the times when she wouldn’t be near.

  The trip to th
e country was as much to get away from London as it was to have an opportunity to hoard memories with Lauren. He had estate business that he needed to take care of, but he still planned to find time for her: for walks, and rides, and sitting in the garden, for trying to persuade her to settle for a little bit of Texas, and in the settling, she could settle for him.

  On the estate she’d have a more realistic view of his life. It wasn’t all balls, dinners, operas, and morning rides through the park. As a matter of fact, very little of it truly was. He hoped that she might gain a greater appreciation for him, might begin truly to look at him, not as a cowboy or a lord but as a man.

  The rain, thankfully, had ended by the time they arrived at Sachse Hall. And Tom damned his soul for holding his breath, waiting for her reaction to seeing his ancestral home for the first time. His claim to the place came about only because he’d emerged from the proper womb, and yet, here he was, feeling undeniable pride in being a part of something that until a few months ago, he hadn’t known existed. He hadn’t hammered the nails that held it together or hired the servants who crept around its hallowed hallways or stocked the wine cellar or purchased a single piece of ostentatious artwork that was displayed through the house, and yet, he couldn’t deny that some part of him wanted her to be…impressed.

  He wanted her to look at it, as he did, to see what it was, and to see the potential for what it could be.

  It was only when the carriage rolled to a stop that he realized she was staring at him, not looking out the window at all. She’d removed his jacket from around her shoulders and was holding it out to him.

  “You’re nervous,” she said softly.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” He snatched his jacket from her and leaned back just enough to shrug into it without hitting her in the face.

  “I wouldn’t have thought you’d care about something that you didn’t acquire through hard work.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so either,” he said truthfully. “But I look at everything that I’ve inherited, and it’s humbling to know that there’s a history here that goes back six generations. What I have in Texas, it started with me, and I can’t deny that I take a fierce pride in that achievement, but I’d also like to think that a few generations from now, the men who inherit what I started will feel a reverence and an appreciation for its history. They won’t know me or what I went through to give them the beginning of a legacy, just like I don’t know the men who passed this one down until it came to me. But that doesn’t mean I can’t respect what they accomplished.”