by Nikki Poppen
“Of course I am happy. Why shouldn’t I be?” Audrey turned her head to look at him. “You should be too. We’ve accomplished what we set out to do. You have the money you need for Camberly, and . .
“And you have your freedom,” Gannon said tersely. “Although for the life of me, I can’t fathom precisely what you need your freedom for,” he groused moodily.
Audrey turned her gaze back to the road. She couldn’t tell him what she needed her freedom for. The best she could do was to let him sulk if that was what he wanted.
Gannon pulled the buggy up to a quiet meadow and came over to help her down. The field was sprinkled with wildflowers, and Audrey picked a few as they walked. Still, Gannon said nothing.
“Are you always this peevish when you make money?” Audrey asked, unable to stand the silence any longer.
“I am lost in thought, I suppose,” Gannon confessed. “I hadn’t expected to hear good news on the investment. My head is swimming with ideas about how best to use the money, what to do first”
“And what else?” Audrey pressed, intuitively feeling that he was telling her only half of the truth.
“Well, here it is August. The summer has sped by in a flurry of luncheons and balls. We have what we want, as you pointed out. But that also means it’s time to say good-bye, Audrey. Our agreement is at an end, and I find that I don’t want to say farewell to you”
They’d come to a stream surrounded by shady trees. Gannon bent down to grab up some pebbles and toss them errantly into the rushing water.
“Now who is the one being plainspoken?” Audrey tried to jest. His confession had certainly taken her by surprise. There was a depth of meaning behind his simple declaration, and she was moved by it.
Gannon tossed another pebble. “I can give you your freedom, Audrey. Marriage is quite liberating for English women. It’s not like here in America. A married Englishwoman can hold political salons and run charities that help people. Times are changing in Britain; a new age is upon us. You could become a patroness of the arts, sponsor a school. Anything you wish.”
Except be a concert pianist. She was pretty sure noblemen drew the line there. “Gannon, stop. You don’t have to list your assets,” Audrey said. “I am touched you feel this way, truly I am. But it can’t change anything. I told you from the start, I don’t wish to be married to anyone”
He was withdrawing from her again. She could see it in the set of his jaw as he tossed his pebbles. She didn’t want that. There were still four weeks until they had to say good-bye. She couldn’t bear his stoic rejection that long. An audacious plan blossomed in her mind. They only had four weeks left. Nothing could change the quantity of time remaining to them. But she could change how that time was spent.
Gannon was throwing rocks at a knothole in a tree across the river now with a large amount of accuracy. Audrey picked up a small rock and threw it, coming close to the target, close enough to get his attention. When he turned to look at her, she said, “We can sulk away the next four weeks with remorse over things we can’t change, or we can celebrate what our friendship has achieved. We can’t simply start ignoring each other.”
“What are you saying, Audrey? Is this another of your plans?” There was a ghost of a smile on his lips.
Boldly, Audrey stretched up to twine her arms about his neck. “I am saying we might as well enjoy each other while we can.” It made sense to her in her desperate bid to get what she wanted. She was going to Vienna, and he was going back to England, free to marry whomever he wanted. Why not seize the moment and indulge, within reason, the attraction they’d fought so hard to keep in check?
“I think that’s a very dangerous idea, Miss St. Clair,” Gannon teased, but she noticed he didn’t make an effort to disengage her arms from about his neck. “Let me get this straight. Seems while you’re not the marrying kind, you are the kissing kind.” His eyes laughed down at her, and it felt good to fall into their easy comaraderie again.
“Apparently so, when it comes to the earl of Camberly” She laughed with him just before he decided to test the hypothesis.
“She’s refused you?” Lionel asked later that night, his blond eyebrows knitted together in consternation, his eyes latched onto Gannon’s pacing form as Gannon walked the length of the Carrington library and back.
“No, not exactly,” Gannon said, turning to do another lap on the perimeter of the large Persian rug.
“Then she’s accepted your proposal?” Lionel said, his confusion growing.
“No, not exactly.”
“It has to be one or the other.” Lionel blew out a frustrated breath and took a sip of his brandy.
“No, not exactly,” Gannon said for the third time. Audrey had him spinning, there was no question about it. For a woman who didn’t want to marry him, she certainly exhibited a fair amount of passion when they were together. She was as honest in her ardor as she was with her plainspoken frankness. That was where the confusion existed. How could she say she didn’t want to marry him and then kiss him as if their very souls were entwined? Such a juxtaposition made no sense.
Stella popped her head into the room. “Am I interrupting?”
“No,” Lionel drawled lazily from his chair. “We’re trying to figure out why Audrey St. Clair won’t marry Gannon.”
Stella fixed him with a considering look, her eyes mirroring something close to pity. “She’s refused you, Camberly?”
Gannon felt ridiculously awkward. It was embarrassing discussing his love life with his friend and his friend’s wife. He was a grown man, for heaven’s sake. He offered the only defense he could summon. “No, not exactly”
Lionel groaned. “Stop saying that” Lionel shifted in his seat toward Stella. “She won’t marry him, but she will kiss him. In fact, we were just discussing her exuberance in that area”
“That’s enough, Lionel,” Gannon growled.
Lionel let loose a loud laugh at his friend’s distress.
“Enjoying this, are you?” As Gannon ran a hand through his hair, a small smile made a fleeting appearance at his mouth. If it wasn’t happening to him, he’d find the whole situation comical too.
Stella put a hand on Lionel’s shoulder. “He’s just remembering what it was like when he fell in love with me” She gave her husband a warm smile.
“I seem to recall that too” Gannon grinned, ready to get a little of his own back. “He spent a week deciding how to approach you”
Lionel began to protest. “I’d heard that English women were a bit on the snobby side. I wanted to make sure I impressed you, dear.”
Stella warmed to the opportunity to tease. “It took a week to come up with, `Hello, I am the American shipper in town’?
“In my defense, I had something much better to say, something about your eyes being the color of river agates, but I was rendered speechless by your beauty up close, darling. I was lucky to get that much out”
Stella patted Lionel’s sleeve affectionately. “Well, it all turned out all right in the end for us, and I am sure it will turn out for Camberly too. Here, I almost forgot. This is what brought me up here” She handed Gannon a heavy white envelope. “A messenger brought it from Briar Cliff.”
Gannon opened it. It was a check for his amount of the railroad profits. The amount would cover this year’s shortfall and expenses for the following year with a little left over. Camberly would have time to get back on its feet and make adjustments.
“What is it?” Stella asked when he said nothing.
He managed a smile, trying to master the emotions set free within him at the news. “It’s a check. Camberly is saved”
“Congratulations,” Lionel said.
Stella moved to hug him, her face wreathed in a joyful smile. “We’ll celebrate with Champagne tonight!”
Gannon accepted their good wishes. Empirically, he knew he was thrilled. Camberly was saved. The point of his mad gamble in America was achieved, even if it was by different means than he had envisioned
. But in spite of the facts, true elation escaped him in the flush of his triumph. His victory was oddly empty, knowing that at the end of the summer, Audrey would not be at his side when he crossed the Atlantic and returned home.
In that moment, he knew he’d trade the check for Audrey at his side. Not because she represented an infinite source of wealth but because he loved her. She cared for him, but she loved her freedom more.
Unless he could change her mind.
He had four short weeks to do it. But Gannon was not a man to back down from challenges of any sort. From bad harvests to poor finances, he’d overcome plenty of obstacles to make it this far. He’d wagered his fortune to save Camberly. Now he’d make one more gamble, this time with his heart.
In the privacy of her bedchamber, Audrey sat at her white Louis XV writing desk, turning the page of her lady’s calendar, a daintily flowered pink notebook of dates that she used to keep track of important reminders. Such organization was a useful habit, even if her mother had been the one to suggest it.
However, her mother might be surprised to see the kinds of things Audrey wrote down in the date book. Since March, the calendar had become a countdown to Vienna. She’d written down the application deadline in April. She’d written down speculative dates it would take the application to travel from New York to Vienna, possible dates by which a response would be likely. Since her acceptance into the conservatory, she had new dates to write down. She was expected at the school by September 20. Classes started on September 22.
It didn’t leave her much time to make the necessary arrangements. Audrey blew out a steadying breath. After such a long period of waiting when it seemed as if time stood still, there was suddenly not enough time.
Today was the sixth of August. Crossing the Atlantic was a two-week affair. She needed to book passage soon. She made some notes in the margin of the page. She needed a ship that left during the first part of September, giving her enough time to complete the overland journey to Vienna. Ideally, she’d prefer a ship that docked in Amsterdam, making a shorter journey by train to Vienna. But a ship to Cherbourg, France, would do as well. Under the circumstances of such late notice, Audrey was prepared to be flexible.
There were other, more immediate considerations before she could worry about the ship’s destination and what to do once she arrived in Europe. Before she could even speculate on those details, she had to find a way to book passage, and that required getting a hold of a sailing schedule and some money. It was the epitome of irony that she, an heiress, had no money of her own. She couldn’t very well ask her parents for funds. They’d want to know what it was for. Neither could she ask her father for a sailing schedule. He’d want to know why she wanted it.
Audrey drummed a hand on the desk. Perhaps she could say the schedule was for Gannon, that he needed it to plan his return trip to England. She discarded the idea. It would seem odd that Gannon hadn’t bought round-trip passage already. In all reality, Gannon already knew when he was returning, and he might have mentioned it in passing to her father. No, pretending it was for Gannon was too risky.
But maybe she could ask Gannon to get one for her. Maybe she could go so far as to ask Gannon to book passage for her. But then she’d have to tell him about her plan. Audrey bit her lip. Could she trust Gannon to keep her biggest secret?
Audrey flipped ahead through the pages and marked the days on which she’d prefer to sail. She flipped back, counting the weeks. Four weeks. Four weeks until she embarked on her dream. Four weeks until she and Gannon parted ways.
The prospect of leaving Gannon dimmed her excitement over Vienna. She would miss him. He’d become a good friend over the summer. They were more than merely co-conspirators. Perhaps more than friends. None of her male acquaintances had ever kissed her the way Gannon kissed her. To be honest, only Daniel Sutherland had ever tried to kiss her, and that had been a furtive peck on the cheek at a birthday party. The few suitors she’d bothered to encourage had not dared. She didn’t have anything to measure Gannon’s kisses against. But intuitively she doubted that any kiss, irrelevant of its source, had the power to render her so weak in the knees, or to fill her stomach with warm heat, as did his.
More than friends or not, her association with Gannon would come to an end in a few short weeks, she told herself firmly. It wasn’t the right time in her life for a romantic entanglement. She would look back on her time with Gannon over the years and remember his kisses fondly.
Audrey shot a quick glance at the little clock sitting atop her desk. Eleven o’clock! She must have been daydreaming about Gannon longer than she’d thought. Gannon was supposed to be at the house at eleven-fifteen to take her and her mother shopping. She was helping Gannon pick out gifts for his family back in England. She wasn’t even dressed. She was still in her dressing gown, having taken breakfast in her room in order to write in her date book.
Audrey rang for her maid and strode to her wardrobe, a room devoted entirely to her clothing and accessories. No mere carved wooden cabinet for her-such a piece of furniture would hardly begin to hold her gowns. She picked a carriage gown of lightweight blue fabric trimmed with white ribbons and lace, fresh and simple.
Her maid turned her out in record time, sweeping her hair up into a simple chignon that lay at the base of her neck beneath the wide brim of her hat. Audrey grabbed up a matching reticule and gloves and shot another glance at the clock. Eleven-forty. She wasn’t too late, although her maid informed her that the Earl of Camberly had arrived punctually at eleven-fifteen and was downstairs in the front drawing room with her mother.
“Go on ahead and tell them I am coming,” Audrey said, looking around for a parasol and debating whether she needed one, since she had her hat.
By the time she made her way down the hall to the main staircase, parasol in hand, Gannon and her mother had ventured out into the foyer to wait. “I’m sorry to keep you so long,” Audrey called from the top of the stairs.
Gannon turned to look up at the sound of her voice, and her heart nearly stopped at the sight of him, although she couldn’t figure out why. There was nothing different about his appearance. It was as immaculate and conservatively stylish as it always was; his hair, dark and sleek, his shoulders still as broad, his legs still as long, his bearing still as confident. Yet there was an aura about him when he smiled up at her that was utterly riveting. Perhaps it was only because she’d been thinking about his leaving and the recognition that they had only a few weeks together left.
“Beauty in any form is worth the wait,” Gannon replied easily, offering his arm to her at the bottom of the stairs. “You look ravishing. Blue becomes you,” he said quietly for her alone.
Audrey couldn’t tear her gaze away from his face. Il-logical thoughts of kissing those lips, of feeling his arms about her again, tumbled through her mind. Where had such images come from? She felt her cheeks heating. Would the simplest comment from him always conjure such remembrances? It was hard to look at him with such things running through her mind, and yet it was too hard to tear her gaze away.
In that moment, Audrey made an impulsive decision. If she had only four weeks left with Gannon, she would make the most of them, starting today.
The day was bright and warm. In Gannon’s borrowed open carriage, Audrey snapped open her parasol, glad she’d spent the extra minutes searching for it. She sat next to her mother, and Gannon sat across from them, his back to the driver. “How old is your sister, Camberly?” her mother asked by way of small talk.
“Moira is fourteen” Gannon smiled fondly at the mention of his sister. It must bode well that a man cared so much for a younger sister as Gannon obviously cared for his.
“She’s so much younger than you. Is your brother closer to your age?” Violet probed.
“No, Andrew is seventeen. My father and mother were blessed later in life. I was away at school during their early childhood, but that didn’t stop us from becoming close”
“What’s the difference in y
ears, then?” Violet mused out loud. “You’re what? Thirty-two, Camberly? You were in your late teens when they were born. And when did you inherit? I was under the impression you’d inherited at quite a young age”
“Mother, I hardly think discussing age is appropriate,” Audrey gasped, aghast at her mother’s audacity. Did she think they were such bosom beaus with the earl now that she could invade his privacy?
“Camberly doesn’t mind, do you?” Violet said to Gannon.
“Not at all,” Gannon replied. “I am actually thirtythree. I did inherit quite young, at twenty-two. Andrew was barely ten when Father died, and Moira was eight.”
Audrey hoped that would be the end of the inquisition. But her mother wasn’t done yet. “What about your mother, Camberly? Does she live in London or on the estate?”
Audrey thought a brief shadow passed across Gannon’s face. “She didn’t live long after my father passed. She died two years later for no apparent reason except a broken heart.”
“So you became a father figure of sorts at the age of twenty-four,” Violet mused. “That’s very admirable of you, Camberly.”
Gannon managed a tight smile and called to the driver to pull over to the curb. Audrey breathed easier. The ride to the Casino shops had seemed interminable. She’d never noticed how long the short drive could be.
Gannon leaped down and handed her mother out first. He reached for her, and Audrey leaned close to whisper, “I am sorry. She was out of line.”
Gannon kept a gentle hand under her elbow. “Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing.”
“Nothing? Is that what you think? It will be all over Newport by the time dessert is served this evening what a gallant fellow you are,” Audrey said sardonically.
`By dinner? Shall we bet on that? If the rumor is your mother’s doing, I’ll wager we hear of it before we even sit down for dinner.” Gannon’s teasing tone was back, whatever shadow she’d imagined now banished.
“What shall we bet? Twenty pounds?”
