He met her gaze. "I am a happy man, Eleanor," he said. "I want your happiness too, not your fear of disappointing me. You surely cannot doubt that your mother and sisters too want nothing but your happiness."
She drew a slow breath. "I have a potential buyer," she said. "If I sell, I will repay your loan, Wulfric, though I will not insult you by offering any interest on it."
"And what will you do then?" he asked. "Will the new owner wish to keep you on staff as a teacher?"
She had been keeping her mind away from that question. She was not sure of the answer. She was not even sure she would be able to recapture the pleasure she had felt as a simple teacher at the school.
"I do not know," she said.
"Your mother and Christine would be ecstatic to have you live here," he said. "It would please me too."
"Thank you," she said. "Wulfric, I am so sorry. I feel so…defeated."
"Only you can wrestle with that demon," he said. They had been making their way back gradually to where everyone else was thronged. "Christine is wrestling with a couple of her own. She was neatly maneuvered into inviting Lady Connaught and her daughter here, but she swears she would have resisted to the death had she not believed Staunton was courting the daughter. Is it as clear to your eye as it is to Christine's and mine that he is trying desperately not to do so but is perhaps too much the gentleman to be firm with them? The mother is appalling, is she not? One can only hope that the man the daughter eventually marries will be capable of tearing his wife—and himself—from her pernicious influence. However, while they are at my home they must be treated as welcome and valued guests. Will the wilderness walk be too much for them, do you think?"
Was it as clear to her eye? Perhaps her eye had been clouded by her anxiety for the future of the Earl of Staunton's children. Oh, and by her own inappropriate feelings for him. One might as well be honest at least within the confines of one's own mind. Was he trying to avoid Miss Everly?
"Not if you escort them there," she said. "They will see it as an acknowledgement of their superiority over all your other guests."
"Quite so," he agreed, and a few minutes later he was leading them away, one lady on each arm, and Eleanor was moving off in some confusion when she realized she had been left alone with the Earl of Staunton, slightly removed from everyone else.
"Miss Thompson," he said, stopping her. And oh, she knew as she looked back at him that she was doing exactly what Wulfric had just suggested she do. She was dreaming another dream. Very foolishly. Very unwisely. Unfortunately, however, dreams seemed to be beyond the control of the rational mind.
Soon she was strolling away from the crowd yet again, toward the lake this time and on the arm of the Earl of Staunton.
Chapter 6
* * *
"My children have taken a liking to you," he said as he turned their steps in the direction of the lake. "I hope they have not been making a nuisance of themselves." And he fervently hoped Georgette had not told her, as she had Lady Connaught and Miss Everly, that she was to be their new mama, that it was only a matter of time before he got around to asking her.
"I have been touched," she said. "Although I love young children, I have never considered myself good with them as my sisters are."
"But I daresay," he said, "they have never been as good with older children as you are."
"You are kind," she said. "Your son is enjoying himself, is he not? Has he never had children younger than himself with whom to play?"
"All his cousins and all the children of our closest neighbors are older," he said. "Young Tommy was a godsend. He and a few other infants see Robert as an older, bolder boy who will condescend to play with them. And I believe he is seeing himself through their eyes."
"Yesterday," she said, "when several of us climbed the tower folly on the wilderness walk, he took my hand to help me up the winding stairs and then pointed out for my edification all the landmarks we could see from the top."
He wondered why she had never married. Had it been from choice? From lack of opportunity? From an unwillingness to marry just anyone in order not to end up a spinster? Had she held out for love or some other ideal that had never happened for her?
"I am sorry," he said, "for that encounter with Lady Connaught last week. She treated you as an inferior who might be of service to her. I am glad you put her in her place. "
"Did I?" She turned her head to look at him but did not speak. They were crossing the driveway before the large circular flower bed and stopped to look up at the fountain. Lord Aidan Bedwyn had explained to him how it worked so that it could shoot water so high. It was a quite ingenious mechanism.
"I have almost made up my mind," he said, "not to send Georgette away to school. Not yet, anyway, and never just because it would be more convenient to me to have her out of the way. I shall ponder the matter carefully over the next year or two, and I shall consult her wishes. She has had a governess since she was six, though I fear she outstripped her teacher in academic knowledge some time ago and was never much influenced by her in other ways. Fortunately, the lady resigned in London a month or so ago in order to marry a barrister. I will seek another governess, one who can teach both children and somehow serve all their educational needs. It will not be easy to find such a paragon."
"I may be able to help you," she said. "My school always takes in a certain number of charity girls. Part of my responsibility at the end of their schooling is to find them suitable employment. I never turn them out into the world until I am satisfied that they will be happily settled. There is one girl I have been unable to place yet. She is too intelligent and too…oh, talented and full of energy to fit any of the offers that have been made. I have even thought of keeping her on at the school as an assistant instructor until there is an opening for a regular teacher, but…well, I may not be able to do that after all." She did not explain.
"Thank you," he said. "If she comes recommended by you, then I am satisfied. She may not be satisfied, of course, if and when she meets Georgette."
She smiled and changed the subject. "I am always disappointed," she said, "if I come here to find that the waterfall has been turned off, as it is in the winter. It seems to characterize Lindsey Hall. It has grandeur but brightness and fluidity too. Alleyne Bedwyn once told me that when he was suffering from memory loss after receiving a head wound at Waterloo it was the fountain that kept flashing into his mind when all else was blank."
They gazed at the water together and listened to the rushing, soothing sound of it.
"Are you happy?" he found himself asking her and then could have bitten out his tongue. Where had that question come from?
She did not answer for a while and he wondered if she would. He was on the verge of apologizing for the question.
"I have everything I could possibly want," she said. "I have employment that I have enjoyed. It has brought me a sense of worth and has brought me into company with adults and young girls whom I esteem and even love. I have a family I love dearly."
She had not quite answered his question, he thought. Or perhaps she had. Perhaps being independent, doing what she loved and what was important to her had brought her happiness.
"And you?" she asked him. "Are you happy? But you spoke somewhat on the subject when we dined together."
"I had a happy marriage, which was all too brief," he said. "Now I have my home, my friends, and my children. I am well blessed. And at last I am open to future happiness. I have concluded that it is not disloyal to the dead to live on."
She turned her head to look almost fiercely at him. "Oh," she said, "you are so very right."
Their eyes met and locked. And there was a pause in the conversation, charged with something unidentifiable while a flush rose to her cheeks. And he asked the unpardonable question.
"Why have you never married?" he asked her.
They were strolling beside the lake, the wilderness walk above them, trees just ahead of them to offer seclusion from company an
d shade from the sun. Off to one side, beyond the end of the walk, was a round stone building that looked like a dovecote.
She smiled faintly and lowered her eyes. "Perhaps," she said, "because I was too much of a romantic. I was betrothed once upon a long time ago to a cavalry officer. I was head over heels in love with him. No one had ever loved as we loved. Had I been a poet, I would doubtless have filled volumes with flowery verse pulsing with emotion. Though I must not make light of what was very real. He was killed in Spain at the Battle of Talavera, and I really did not expect to live on myself. Or want to. If I could have died of grief, I would gladly have done so—not out of any poetic ideal of sentimental grief but because it was really too painful to be borne. Alas, I could not die. But I would not love again. How could I? The only love of my life was gone forever. Grieving, remaining true to his memory, became a habit with me, a habit I have always thought to be a virtue until recently. But my devotion has not made any difference to him, has it? He has been dead all this time."
They had stopped walking, as though by mutual consent. They were among the trees, though in a grassy clearing. The water here was dark green as it reflected the leaves on the trees. One tree was bent toward the water, a stout branch reaching out over it, and it struck Michael that it would be a daring boy's dream as a diving platform. And a girl's too, he added mentally, thinking of Georgette. An invisible bird was trilling from somewhere among the trees. A distant swell of cheering from the direction of the cricket pitch only accentuated the peace that surrounded them.
"How lovely it is just here," she said. "It is very peaceful, is it not?"
"There is something about water and trees," he said, "that is soothing to the soul."
She turned her head to smile at him and he smiled back—before lowering his head to hers and kissing her. It seemed the most natural thing in the world, a gesture of shared pleasure in the moment and of affection too. When he moved his head back she was still half smiling, and her eyes gazed back into his without wavering. He touched the fingers of one hand to her cheek and moved them down to trace the line of her jaw to her chin.
"I am sorry," he said.
"Please do not be," she told him, her voice a mere whisper of sound.
And he gathered her into his arms and did what he had been dreaming of doing ever since that evening at the inn more than a week ago. He kissed her properly, as a man kisses a woman to whom he is sexually attracted. He parted his lips over hers while her own lips relaxed and her arms came about him, and he teased her lips until they parted and then stroked his tongue into her mouth, exploring its warm, moist depths. She suckled his tongue gently while his temperature rose and he moved his hands down the inward curve of her spine over the flaring of her hips to her bottom. She had a woman's figure rather than a girl's. He hardened into arousal and held her to him, not trying to disguise the fact. She made a sound deep in her throat and pressed closer. Heat flared between them.
He wondered just how secluded this place was. And he wondered if she was a virgin. And he remembered that at least three people were on the wilderness walk not far away and that his children and a host of other people were no great distance from where they were standing and embracing.
She smelled of something subtly and fragrantly feminine.
She was the one to break the embrace, though not hurriedly. She set her hands on his shoulders and moved slightly away from him.
"It is not at all the thing, is it?" she said, smiling apologetically. "I have just admitted to feeling regret over the lost years and to a certain loneliness. But I do not want to give you the wrong idea."
He did not ask what that wrong idea was. He regretted the end of the embrace, but at the same time he was relieved by it. He had just extricated himself from one entanglement. He did not want to land himself in another before he had had time to consider. He had known her for only a week, and during most of that time he had avoided her or she had avoided him. He was not sure which.
"We are in a beautiful place on a warm summer's day," he said, offering his arm and strolling onward with her, "and we are a man and a woman. I think we can be forgiven for a little harmless dalliance. Would you not agree?"
He wished he had chosen a different word. Dalliance sounded trivial, a little sordid.
"I would," she said.
"It is strange, is it not," he said, "how one arrives at adulthood believing that one's childhood and youth have been a journey leading to a fixed destination and a settled and lasting happiness. Happily-ever-after. It is only as one grows older that one realizes that nothing is static, that nothing is assured. All of us suffer the troubles of life sooner or later, no matter how carefully we have planned our lives."
"Ah, but life is not all troubles," she said. "There are delights too, pinnacle moments of extreme joy and longer spells of contentment. Perhaps we need both extremes so that we do not remain the shallow beings most of us are when we first grow up but develop depth of character and empathy with others. Perhaps we would not recognize or appreciate happiness if we did not also know unhappiness."
"Of course you are right." He looked at her and laughed. "And wise."
"This is one of those pinnacle moments," she said—and flushed.
Of extreme joy? Yes, all caution aside, it was.
"Yes," he said.
"And the future always holds endless possibilities," she said. "As Wulfric just observed, we can always dream new dreams to replace the old."
Bewcastle had said such a thing? It was hard to imagine. But Michael's preconceptions of the icy duke had been shaken a few times during the past week.
"And yet," he said, "I suppose most people dream of the same thing in essence—of love and happiness."
"Do we?" She turned her head, frowning slightly as though she were considering the truth of what he had said. "Are we—"
But he never heard what she was about to ask. They had walked almost completely about the lake by now.
"Papa, Papa-a-a, " a voice cried from ahead of them, and they both looked up to see Robert dashing and skipping toward them, exuberant excitement in every line of his body. "Georgie said she saw you come this way. Papa, I hit the ball. I hit it a great whack and that man with lots of hair and a big nose—William's papa—tried to catch it and almost did but dropped it. I scored a run."
He had wormed his way between them and was beaming up at Michael even as his hand found its way into Miss Thompson's.
"What a clever boy," Michael said, ruffling his son's fuzzy blond hair and blessing Lord Rannulf Bedwyn for deliberately fumbling the ball. "My son, the star cricketer. And then you abandoned your team?"
"I came to tell you," Robert said, quite unrepentant, and he beamed ecstatically from one to the other of them.
"I am glad you did," Michael said, smiling down into his face and feeling very close to tears.
"I came to tell you both," Robert said.
"Well, thank you," Miss Thompson said. "I am honored, Robert."
She was smiling at his son. And yes, Michael thought, taking the child's other hand in his own, he was filled to the brim with joy. She had been quite right about pinnacle moments. One must always be careful not to miss them.
* * * * *
Georgette and Robert shared a bedchamber with Mrs. Harris on the nursery floor. Although it was close to bedtime, however, they were both still in the main nursery, Georgette talking with Becky and Lizzie and Becky's older brother Davy, and Robert sitting in a huddle of small children over by the window, all of them listening intently while the red-haired Lady Rannulf Bedwyn read them a story. Michael seized the opportunity to send Georgette to the room while his son was otherwise occupied. There was a screech of laughter from the little ones as Lady Rannulf acted the part of one of the nasty, evil characters—she was, Michael had gathered, something of an actress.
Georgette was sitting cross-legged on her bed when he entered the room and nodded to Mrs. Harris to leave them for a few moments. He sat down on the edge
of the bed and patted one of his daughter's knees. She favored him with one of her dazzling guilty smiles.
"Just a one-word, question," he said. "Why?"
"Why what, Papa?"
The smile turned to a wide-eyed innocent look, which disappeared when he merely waited quietly for her answer. He was surprised and not a little alarmed when tears welled into her eyes. This was not one of her usual tactics and was perhaps not a tactic at all. He waited nonetheless.
"They would send me away, Papa," she said. "I don't mind so much being sent to school. I might enjoy it though I think I would rather stay at home. But they would not really be sending me to school, Papa, but away from you and Robbie. And then they would insist that he be a proper boy like all others and that he stop sitting on your lap and cuddling up to you and lifting his face at night for you to kiss him. They told me how surprised they were that you allowed such unmanly behavior in your son and heir. And before you know it, they will be sending him away too to a school that will toughen him up, and we all know how boys get toughened up in the schools that are supposed to be for the education of gentlemen."
Good God!
"Georgie," he said, unconsciously using the shortened form of her name she had asked him two years ago to stop using, "do you really believe I would allow any lady—or her mother—to dictate to me what I do for and with my children? Do you really believe I would send either you or Robert away from me, to use your own emphasis?"
She stared at him with her tear-filled eyes. "She is beautiful, Papa," she said, "and I know gentlemen admire beautiful ladies and sometimes lose their wits over them."
Oh, Lord, where the devil had she heard that?
"I have a daughter and a son," he said. "I lost my wits to them when they were born, Georgette, and have not recovered them since. Nor do I wish to. Do you not know that you and Robert are all in all to me? Yes, I admire beautiful ladies, especially those who also have beautiful characters and like my children. I may even marry one such lady one of these days. But only if I believe I can make her happy and make my children happy as well. I would never put my own happiness above yours and Robert's."
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