“It’s fine – thank you.”
“I owe you my life.”
Selena flushed.
It sounded ridiculously dramatic.
“I did nothing – all I wanted to do was push you out of the way.”
“As I said, I owe you my life. I will see that Lord Taverner answers for his actions. Now, Jemima, do you have any brandy?”
“Afraid not, Alex, we drank it all the other night.”
“I’ve got some in the kitchen,” called out Martha.
The Earl looked askance at the bottle she proffered and frowned.
“Well, I suppose it’s better than nothing!”
He now poured out a small glass, slipped his arm beneath Selena’s good shoulder and helped her to half sit so that she could drink the spirit.
Selena so wished that he would speak endearments to her, the way he had right after Lord Taverner had fired, but it seemed as if he regretted the impulse that had made him call her “his darling”, for his manner was now distant.
There was no trace of the passion he had so briefly shown in the barn workshop.
As she finished drinking, the Earl gave a satisfied nod and then retreated to the window.
Selena lay back on the hard table, aching for words of affection from him.
Instead Jemima came and stood beside her.
“Stripey is safely back in the orchard. He has been able to work his way out of the netting George left around him and he has eaten all the meat.”
She looked towards the Earl.
“Were you pleased with the inaugural flight of your glider, Alex?”
A brief smile lit his features.
“It could not have gone off better. The machine did everything I wanted. I left Morland guarding it and Sam is taking the horse and cart to retrieve it. I now need to refine the controls and landing gear as well as work on a means of power.”
There was a quiet knock on the door and the doctor, fetched by Joe, entered.
“I’d better leave you,” mumbled the Earl.
Selena wanted to cry to him to stay, but managed to control herself.
Dr. Mason was courteous and efficient but, despite the painkilling dose he gave her before proceeding, Selena spent an uncomfortable time as he examined her shoulder, then cleaned and bound up the wound.
“You were lucky that the bullet went clean through your shoulder without causing great damage. I commend you for your courage,” he said as he completed his task and arranged her arm in a sling.
“There, this will make you more comfortable. You must rest and I suggest light meals until you feel yourself again. If your shoulder pains you too much, a dessertspoon of this should help.”
He produced a bottle from his case and placed it on a side table.
The rest of the day passed in a blur for Selena.
She sat in one of the wing chairs and felt depressed.
Jemima said she should go to bed, but she wanted to see the Earl.
She so wanted him to tell her that she was beautiful and wanted to hear from him all the compliments that other men seemed so eager to give her.
Instead he remained in the barn, checking over his machine with Sam.
Eventually at teatime, he did appear.
For Selena, however, it was almost worse than him not coming at all because he stood by the window, drinking a cup of tea and chatting to Jemima about the plans for the gardens.
Beyond asking how her shoulder felt, he hardly addressed a word to her.
Eventually she put her legs to the ground and said,
“Jemima, I think I would now like to go to bed.”
Immediately the Earl was at her side.
“Are you feeling worse?”
“No,” she replied, in what was almost a sharp tone. “Just very very tired.”
“Let me carry you upstairs,” offered the Earl. “It is the least I can do.”
It was what Selena wanted most, but his attitude was so distant that the feel of his arms around her was almost painful.
Jemima went ahead of them and opened the door to Selena’s bedroom.
He placed her gently on her bed and stood looking down at her for a moment.
“Sleep well, Selena I shall look forward to seeing you tomorrow and I really hope you will be feeling much better by then.”
There was something a little stifled about the way he spoke.
He left and Selena felt so bereft she burst into tears.
Jemima returned from seeing the Earl out and held her close, being careful not to press on her shoulder.
“It is just a reaction to the shock,” she muttered soothingly.
“I don’t understand! Why is he behaving like that?”
“Who, Selena?”
“Alex – the Earl. It’s as if I mean nothing to him.”
Selena’s tears increased.
“Oh, my dear. I had no idea you were so fond of him.”
“I’m not fond of him – I love him. I love him more than anyone in the whole wide world.”
Jemima stroked her forehead.
“I’m afraid Alex is a law unto himself. Caroline often said that she never understood him. But, then, theirs was just a marriage of convenience more than one of passionate love.”
Selena’s tears suddenly stopped.
“You mean, he has not been mourning her all this time?”
“He was very fond of her, of course, and they were very well suited. But they actually married because – well – because they both more or less grew up together and their families seemed to expect it.
“Alex could boast the title and Caroline would have inherited a very large estate. As it is, it has now passed to her younger sister as there was no child of hers to inherit.”
Selena stared at Jemima.
“Was he very disappointed? Not to inherit, I mean.”
Jemima laughed.
“Alex has never cared much about money. Caroline was always trying to get him to understand what could be done for the Wakefield estate. That is why she asked me to redesign the gardens.
“I wonder sometimes,” she added, “what with his excessive interest in aeronautics and his ability to close his mind to the outside world, if Alex isn’t a bit of a cold fish.”
“No!” burst out Selena. “He’s not cold.”
But even as she spoke, she was remembering the stiff way he had stood at the window, not saying a word to her.
Whatever had happened to the warm relationship she had been so certain existed between them?
She had valued the friendship because she thought that she stood no chance of being loved by the Earl since he was in such deep mourning for his wife and baby.
But now Jemima was saying that she did not think he had been passionately in love with his wife.
Selena recalled the way the Earl had embraced her in the barn and had called her “darling” and now she could make no sense of his behaviour.
She felt thoroughly confused.
It was just as if she had entered a deep fog – signals could be heard, but the fog distorted their meaning so that it was impossible to tell which direction they came from.
The pain in her shoulder combined with the misery in her mind until all she could do was cry.
Jemima held her gently until sheer tiredness meant Selena’s sobs gradually ceased and then she helped her into bed and gave her a spoonful of the doctor’s painkiller.
By the time Martha brought up a bowl of chicken soup, she found that Selena was fast asleep.
*
Next morning when Selena awoke, she lay back in her bed for a moment disorientated.
Gradually the events of the previous day came back to her and so did the pain in her shoulder.
Jemima came in and suggested she stayed in bed.
“No, I am feeling all right,” protested Selena. “I do want to see Stripey and George, and I must get back to the gardening.”
Jemima was shocked.
“Not until that shoulder is better
,” she scolded.
Despite Jemima’s obvious concerns, after breakfast Selena set off to see George and the menagerie.
Marie was dressed in her tights and a tiny skirt and was practising her bareback riding routine.
Selena admired her grace on the back of her white horse as she galloped round a makeshift ring of old bricks from one of the broken-down garden walls.
“I wish I could do that,” sighed Selena as Marie did a beautiful somersault.
“Marie could show you, if you like,” said George, as he looked her up and down. “You’ve got a neat enough little figure all right. Once the sling’s gone, you must ’ave a go.”
Selena laughed and walked over to look at Stripey.
She talked to him for a little while, loving the look in his golden eyes as he stared at her – just why couldn’t the Earl look at her like that?
On her way back to the garden Mr. Preston, the journalist who had written the successful article about the garden and menagerie, stopped her.
“So it’s true!” he boomed triumphantly.
“What?”
“Why, that you were shot while hunting an escaped tiger!”
He gestured to her sling.
“Where on earth did you hear that?” Selena looked startled.
“Oh, the neighbourhood is rife with rumour.”
The journalist took out his notebook and pencil.
“There is a story of an escaped tiger, an astonishing flight by a glider and someone driven into a tree by a man-eating tiger and shooting at anyone who came near!”
Selena managed a laugh.
“What a ridiculous story!”
Mr. Preston looked at her with an alert expression.
“Why don’t we sit somewhere and you can tell me exactly what did happen? It could make an excellent story that would attract more visitors to this place.”
She thought frantically, as she could see at once that she dare not tell him the full story.
“Shall we go through to the gardens and find Miss Jerrold? She will be able to tell you everything.”
But she could only find Joe, who told her that Miss Jerrold had received an urgent summons to go off and visit someone about one of her garden designs.
Selena looked towards the barn.
She should, she decided, bring in the Earl to help deal with this reporter.
“Why don’t we go to my home and let Martha give you a cup of coffee,” she suggested easily, “and I’ll try and find the Earl. He will be able to tell you all about the flight and the tiger.”
Mr. Preston seemed happy with this suggestion.
No doubt he would attempt to squeeze information from Martha, Selena reckoned, as she went in search of the Earl – but she could be trusted not to divulge anything to a reporter.
The Earl looked up immediately as Selena entered the barn and for one heart-stopping moment she thought he looked delighted to see her.
Then his expression lost any emotion as she came towards him.
“Yes?” he rasped impatiently, not even asking how her shoulder was feeling this morning.
Speaking calmly, Selena greeted him and told him about the reporter.
“I thought it would be best if you spoke to him.”
The Earl put down the tool he was holding.
“You did quite right, Selena. Leave him to me and it would be better if you were not there while I tell him as much as I think is suitable.”
She could appreciate the sensible reasoning behind his request but, nonetheless, it hurt that he should exclude her from the meeting.
She watched him stride off towards the cottage, her heart aching.
Next Morland appeared holding a large bouquet of flowers in his hand.
“These have just come for you, Miss Norton.”
The bouquet was of long-stemmed hothouse roses and lilies. Their scent rose up into the air and Selena could not resist burying her nose in them for a moment.
Could they, she wondered for one blissful moment, have come from the Earl?
Then she found the card.
With one arm in a sling, it was somewhat difficult to extract the card from its little envelope.
“Deepest apologies,” it read. “I am leaving for the Continent today, but hope I may call on you when I return.
These cannot match your beauty, but they come with all my admiration.”
It was signed,
Percy Taverner.
Selena almost dropped the bouquet in disgust.
Then she thought that the flowers could well adorn the entrance hall for the next Open Day.
Mrs. Cropper was in raptures with the bouquet.
“Do you really not want it, Miss Norton?”
Selena shook her head.
“Then I’ll take it with pleasure.”
Once again left with nothing to do, Selena drifted over to where Joe was digging in what was to be a secret garden, hidden behind high brick walls accessed through an arched wooden gate.
“There’s a whole lot of plants bin delivered what I put in one of them banquetin’ ’ouses,” Joe told her, resting on his spade.
“Be an ’elp if you could sort of put them in plantin’ order, like. Oh, and do be careful if you sit on the bench. Some rascals that come to the last Open Day were jumpin’ up and down on it and broke one of the stones. Bin there for hundreds of years those stones ’ave and them ne’er-dowells ’ave to do that!”
Selena cheered up a little. There was something she could do and someone who needed her.
She started to line up the plants in the arrangement she and Jemima had designed.
It was slow work with only one hand.
After a little she realised that she was not as strong as she thought so she sat down heavily on the stone bench and then found herself sitting on the ground.
By a stroke of bad luck she had chosen to sit on the broken stone and her weight, slight though it was, had slid it onto the ground, taking her with it.
Her shoulder began aching again and after a minute she picked herself up.
She sat down again, this time testing that the stone slab beside the one that had slipped was firmly fastened in place.
She closed her eyes for a moment, relaxing against the wall.
When she felt a bit better, Selena looked at the gap in the bench beside her.
The hole it revealed was full of debris – lumps of ancient stone and mortar, no doubt dumped in there by the original builders some four hundred years ago.
The thought that it had been left undisturbed all that time intrigued Selena.
She plucked a stick out of one of the plant pots and began to poke through the rubble.
Then her eye was caught by something that was not either a piece of broken stone or mortar.
A few more pokes and she was able to lean over and rescue what looked like a very ancient leather drawstring purse.
Excited, she gently pulled the strings and examined the contents.
Hearing footsteps approach, she quickly closed the bag and tucked it into the pocket of her skirt.
It was the Earl.
“So here you are,” he called out.
“As you see,” replied Selena, trying to contain her excitement. “Did you tell the reporter what happened?”
“I gave him the version I considered fit to publish –accidental release of the tiger, my record-breaking flight in a glider – he loved that bit – the sighting and capture of the animal with an accidental discharge of a rifle which sadly caught you by mistake.
“Preston seemed to swallow all of it and says the public will now flock to Wakefield once they have read his story. The numbers we have had already, he says, will be nothing compared with what will come.
“Oh, and his editor wants Jemima to write a regular gardening column for them!”
He leant against the door, his expression once again remote.
“I heard a bouquet was delivered for you.”
She nodded and reached
into her pocket, fished out the card and held it out to the Earl.
He read it briefly.
“So the coward just runs away rather than face up to retribution,” he mumbled, giving her back the card.
“What retribution were you thinking of?”
The Earl shrugged his shoulders.
“I have been thinking carefully about it.”
Then he looked at Selena and his eyes widened.
“I can tell there were lilies in the bouquet,” he said, as he leant forward and, with his hand, gently brushed her nose.
“They’ve left pollen – like heavy freckles!”
She looked up at him, visibly moved by the touch of his fingers, her eyes wide with the force of her love for him.
The Earl gave a sudden groan and drew her up to him.
“Oh, my darling,” he sighed and kissed her gently on the lips.
Electricity fizzed through all Selena’s veins.
He was hurting her shoulder, but she did not care – the sharp pain gave an added depth to her excitement at his unexpected kiss.
Almost immediately he pulled away.
“I should not have done that,” he scolded himself, his body held rigidly as though under great stress.
This time Selena refused to be upset.
She was sure that his feelings were as strong as hers, but for some reason he wanted to reject them.
But she was not going to let him.
“Why ever not?” she demanded, smiling up at him.
“Because I have nothing to offer you,” he muttered.
“What do you mean?”
“I am the almost bankrupt Earl of Wakefield who, if he is very lucky, will earn just enough through opening his ancestral home to the public to allow him to eke out a meagre lifestyle and if even luckier be able to continue his aeronautical experiments.
“I cannot expect any girl, especially one as beautiful and rare as you, to share such a sparse existence with me!”
“Don’t you think I might be allowed to make up my own mind as far as that is concerned?” Selena responded to him lovingly.
“You are far too young to comprehend what awaits you,” he murmured desperately.
He thrust his hands into his pockets, as though he could not trust himself not to take her into his arms again.
“I thought I was safe from passion. I had a gentle, kind friendship with Caroline. We enjoyed being together, but we never deceived ourselves into thinking that we were deeply in love. I did not think I was capable of it and then, when she died, I felt guilty I had not been able to offer her more.”
Love Came From Heaven Page 13
