The children arrived at one o’clock, an hour earlier than expected. Timothy and Deborah had yet to return, so Maryann suggested a walk through the woods. Anna stayed close to Maryann’s side, holding her hand, as the boys—Frank and Claude—ran back and forth from the stream to the trail. She felt calm in their company and enjoyed the summer sunshine as she exclaimed over the treasures the boys brought her—a stick in the shape of the letter Y, a rock, a leaf the size of Claude’s hand. The boys were running back to her on the path when they both came to a stop, looking past her in a way that sparked her protective instincts.
She tightened her hold on Anna’s hand and turned to see none other than Timothy coming toward her with long strides, his coat billowing out behind him. Her heart skipped, and she swallowed the nervousness that sprang into her belly. She would need to welcome him as a friend to cue the children not to be afraid of this stranger. She smiled as he came closer.
“Good afternoon, Timothy.” Gracious, but he cut a fine figure in the dappled sunshine.
The boys came to stand behind her, cautious but curious. Anna pulled in closer, hiding in the folds of her skirt. Maryann bent down and picked her up. Anna curled into Maryann’s side and put her fingers in her mouth. So much for Deborah’s warning to Timothy that they were wild children.
“Boys, this is my friend, Timothy Mayfield. He’s visiting from London and is a good friend of Uncle Lucas.” She gave each boy an encouraging smile. “Timothy, these are my nephews, Frank and Claude.” She nodded to each boy in turn, then bounced the hip holding her niece. “And this is Anna.”
Timothy bowed deeply and then offered his usual smile and sparkling eyes. “A pleasure to meet you all. Deborah thought you might have taken this route, and I fairly ran to catch up. I love nothing more than to be out-of-doors on days with such exceptional weather.”
“The boys like to play in the stream,” Maryann said.
“As do I,” Timothy said with a nod, looking to the boys. “My brother and I would make boats out of sticks and leaves and such. Have you ever done that?”
The boys nodded, though neither spoke up. Timothy was not dissuaded by their hesitation, and within minutes, the boys were sitting on their haunches watching as he crafted a vessel from leaves, cinched together with sticks speared through the layers like toggles.
When they had made four vessels—one for Anna and for each of the “boys”—they headed toward the stream and set them to floating. Within minutes, Maryann was alone on the path while Timothy held Anna on one hip and the boys ran ahead, cheering for their individual boat to win. One would think they had known Timothy all their lives, they were so easy in his company. Her heart asked who would not want a man who was so good with children? But wanting him had never been the issue. Trusting him had.
The boys were completely soaked by the time they returned to the garden. They’d insisted on saving their boats, and Maryann had not argued fast enough to keep them out of the stream. She helped them remove their muddy shoes so that the mud might dry and the shoes could be cleaned before James and Adele returned.
The children were the perfect bridge between Maryann and Timothy, and she was grateful not to have the tension, but the lack of it also made her feel vulnerable. The more time she spent in his company, the more her refusals to accept what she’d dreamed for so long to hear him say faded away.
Timothy suggested they play tag while waiting for the shoes to dry. “The running shall dry your clothes as well so long as you run very, very fast,” he said as he tapped Frank on the shoulder and took off on a run. Anna was on the ground, and she ran after Timothy with a happy shriek. The man was magic.
“Tag Aunt Maryann,” Timothy called over his shoulder.
“Oh, no,” Maryann said with a laugh. The children were well tended enough that she could make her escape. “I shall order tea.” She managed to run through the kitchen door before anyone caught up with her. A quick peek through the kitchen window assured her that boys had turned their attention to Timothy. She watched for a few more seconds and then ordered a tea tray for the children before making her way to the parlor.
When she saw Deborah there, she paused. Deborah merely glanced at her, however, then went back to the book she was reading. Maryann came into the room, glanced out the window, and then settled onto the settee where she’d left her sewing basket. She’d not made a single stitch since returning home. There had been too much work to do.
“Did you have a good time in Dunster?” she finally asked when the silence had chipped away at her resolve.
“We did,” Deborah said and gave a short summary of what they’d done: driven around town, mostly, had tea at Geary’s Inn, and visited the dry-goods store where Deborah had purchased some lavender candles. She said nothing about the oak tree or Mr. Greyson’s lending library. Or the sea.
“I’m glad you had a nice afternoon,” Maryann said when Deborah finished.
“I’m glad that you’re glad we had a nice afternoon.” She gave Maryann a sardonic smile and then went back to her book.
Maryann couldn’t sit still—which was very Timothy of her. She put down her sewing and went to the window, then leaned forward when she couldn’t see the children on the grass. A sound behind her caused her to turn.
Timothy held Anna on one hip in the doorway and the boys, still barefoot, ran forward. Frank had a vase half filled with water, and Claude held a handful of daisies. The boys handed their items to Maryann, looked to Timothy, who nodded his approval, and then they both scampered out of the room. Timothy caught her eye before leaving the room and winked.
She blushed despite herself.
With Deborah watching, Maryann put the flowers in the vase and set it on the table in front of the window. She stared at them until the boys racing back onto the lawn caught her eye again.
“Oh, yes,” Deborah said, an exaggerated evenness in her tone. “A man like that should be avoided at all costs.”
Maryann turned from the window to face her sister. “You told him my preference for daisies.”
“No,” Deborah said, turning another page. “You asked me about that the first time he sent you daisies, and my answer is the same now as it was then. No one is trying to manipulate you, Maryann.”
Maryann stared at the flowers again. Timothy had only ever given her daisies, but it couldn’t be a coincidence. He knew, somehow. “Two weeks ago, he was completely dazzled by Miss Shaw.”
“And now he is here. Confessing his love for you.” Deborah sighed, a touch of irritation in the sound. “He realized that he wanted you, not her, Maryann. He came from London to say it.”
“You speak as though I should believe his confession despite his shallow fickleness. His feelings toward me are not trustworthy.”
Deborah set her book aside, not even taking the time to mark the page. “And you speak as though he should be shackled to that silly list forever. What of becoming wiser through the experience life has given him? His choices were limited, then they were not, and through that, he learned what he truly wanted. He doesn’t even need your money now, and yet you continue to paint him with the ugliest brush you can find and hold him in the smallness of one poor choice. Why won’t you allow yourself to see more than that?”
Maryann said nothing, her gaze fixed on the flowers picked from the same woods where she had picked daisies all her life. Many were missing a petal or two, one had browned edges, and another’s stem had been broken so that the flower hung down like the head of a dejected child.
“You won’t answer me?” Deborah asked.
Marianne looked up, not understanding the reprimand.
Deborah repeated the question. “Why won’t you let him in, Maryann? Is it because of Colonel Berkins? Is that what has shut you off?”
“No,” Maryann said. She could be honest about that much. “I simply do not believe that Timothy feels what he thinks
he feels.”
“And what of your feelings?”
“My feelings are irrelevant.” Maryann turned away from the flowers and her sister.
“He will keep you warmer than your pride ever could.”
“Deborah!” Maryann said, whipping her head to look at her sister, her cheeks hot.
Deborah smirked and stood, holding Maryann’s eyes as she stepped closer. “Have you ever known Timothy to be insincere?”
“Yes,” Maryann said without hesitation.
Deborah cocked her head to the side. “When?”
Maryann opened her mouth to reply but then could not think of an example. He’d been sincere in the drawing room the day he confessed himself in need of a rich wife but determined to marry a woman he could love as well. He’d been sincere when he ticked off the items of his list. He’d given her honest feedback regarding the women he’d met and found lacking, and he’d shared the insecurities of his childhood and his fears of taking on the responsibilities of a married man.
“You cannot think of a single instance?” Deborah pressed.
Maryann’s shoulders fell. “He is not false,” she finally said. He never had been. “But he feels things one moment and then feels differently the next. There is no way of knowing that what he thinks he feels right now will last.”
Deborah put a hand on her belly, which did not yet push against her dress, though Maryann could see the outline when she emphasized it. “If you are determined to know his heart better than he does, then I suppose no one can talk you out of it.” She rubbed her hand over the mound beneath which her child grew.
Maryann knew what she was doing. She’d lost a child already. It had broken her in hundred pieces, but despite the fear of another loss, she was trying again. Her hope was greater than her fear.
Deborah began to walk toward the door. “He has come from London to tell you he loves you, yet despite him always being upfront and honest and sincere, you refuse to believe him. Is that not shallowness on your part?”
Then she left Maryann to her thoughts, from which Maryann could no longer hide.
They had tea—or rather, lemonade—outside. Maryann forced herself to stay even though she wanted very much to lock herself in the study. She watched Timothy with the children and found herself wanting to cry. Was her fear, or pride, or both so much stronger than the feelings she’d had for him all these months? Yet, how did she simply step over those stumbling blocks when they felt like the only protection against her heart being broken?
After tea, they retrieved brushes and helped the children clean their shoes. They went inside and put together a wooden puzzle Maryann had done as a child. When James and Adele arrived—surprisingly on time—to pick up the children, Maryann invited them to stay for an early dinner, then watched as Timothy asked James about estate management, and Adele about where she’d grown up. Her mother had died when she was a child, a detail Maryann had always known, but it sounded different when she talked about the solitude that had followed her mother’s death. And the way she’d felt put away when her father remarried a year later.
After dinner, James took his family home, leaving Maryann, Deborah, and Timothy alone for the third evening in a row. They entered the drawing room together, and Maryann gazed out the window that overlooked the woods separating the estate from the part of the seashore she had always thought of as theirs. The evening light was bright gold, foretelling a beautiful sunset.
Deborah and Timothy conversed behind her as she took a deep breath, pulling every bit of courage she possessed tightly to her.
“Would you like to come to the seashore with me?” she asked, still staring out the window.
The conversation behind her stopped. She hadn’t said his name, but they would know who she meant. She could not look at him, not after all but ignoring him these last two days. As it was, her heart thumped like a drum against her chest.
“I would like nothing better than to go to the seashore with you, Maryann.”
His words rolled over her like waves onto the shore. She nodded, then turned. “Let me change my shoes,” she said.
They met in the foyer a quarter of an hour later. Deborah did not see them off, but as they made their way toward the path that would lead to the small bay, Maryann knew her sister stood by the parlor window, watching them, smiling hopefully and wishing them well. Maryann did not know what she was expecting from this excursion and tried to keep her mind from creating a dozen possible ways it might go.
“Does your father’s land extend all the way to the sea?” Timothy asked.
“No, but this particular bit of shoreline has limited access, so I’ve always felt as though it belonged to our family,” she said.
“Do you ever swim?”
“The current is too strong,” Maryann said. “Though we wade in to our knees when the tide is out.”
He continued to ask questions, and she continued to answer, feeling more and more comfortable. As the sound of the sea drew closer—breaking waves and the calls of seabirds—she felt herself relaxing. When they stepped out from the tree line, she took a deep breath, held it, and then let it out. She turned to smile at Timothy, meeting his gaze and holding it. “Here we are.”
Maryann sat on a rock in order to remove her shoes. She had taken off her stockings at Orchard House, knowing she would not be able to resist walking in the shallows. As soon as she could, she walked past Timothy, lifting her skirts a few inches—not as far as she would have if she were unattended—and waded into the water.
The chill of the water took her breath away, but when the wave pulled back, she could swear it took some of her tension with it. Ebb and flow. In and out. Inhale. Exhale.
Timothy stepped beside her, inhaling sharply when the wave came in and washed over his bare feet. She looked down to see his feet also bare, his trousers rolled up to the knee. She laughed, and he grinned back at her. His face was filled with a pure and rapturous joy. After a moment, they both looked out to sea again. Timothy ventured forward, and Maryann wished she could join him, but it would require her holding her skirts up even higher than was already appropriate.
The splash of water in her face made her gasp even as she realized she should have expected it. Without thinking twice, she kicked water back at him. Her years of practice left him wide-eyed and dripping. She turned to run, which did not spare her from his retaliation, but the water only splashed the back of her dress. He chased her from the water and caught her arm. She spun around to face him, laughing, and they both froze. Stared.
Maryann swallowed as his smile softened. He did not take his hand from her arm, but the grip loosened while the breeze stirred her hair that had escaped the pins.
“Maryann.”
Did her name ever sound as lovely as when he said it? Her heart was caught, and she didn’t know what to do.
“I owe you an apology,” he said. “When I first came here and declared myself, I was not very considerate of your feelings. I’m sorry.”
“I forgive you, Timothy.” She made to take a step back, but his grip on her arm tightened, then loosened. Then let go. She looked at him standing there with the sun at his back and his arms at his sides. Was she disappointed that he had not restrained her? Be still, a voice said in her mind. It sounded like her mother, and she felt herself relax enough to let this moment, whatever it might be, happen.
“I spoke with my brother,” he said, his voice as soft as the waves behind him. She stared at the trees that separated her from the safety of her father’s house. “He advised me to seek a woman who made me a better man. That was you. He told me to seek a woman who made me feel things—body and soul—that I didn’t feel with another woman. That was also you. He told me that nothing would be more important in a partner than someone who would weather the storms beside you. He told me that imperfections did not eclipse the whole.”
She t
urned away and braced herself to hear him say that he’d decided he could accept her imperfections.
He continued. “I am hoping with all my heart that you can see past mine.” He put his hand on her arm again.
She closed her eyes, and when he pulled her gently toward him, she walked backward until she stepped on his feet, pushing them further into the sand. She could feel his breath on the back of her neck. She waited. For what?
“I am not a perfect man, Maryann. I am excitable, and I talk too much. I am not good at sitting still, and I am, as you have repeatedly said, silly. I am so eager to see the good in a thing that I don’t always grasp the gravity of a situation or understand how other people feel, but I never intend to hurt anyone. When I realize I have, I am sincere in my apology. I know that I’ve hurt you. I have made you feel diminished. I am so sorry for that, Maryann.”
“I already said I forgive you,” she whispered.
“Thank you,” Timothy said.
He ran his hand down her arm until his fingers wove between her own. “You do not trust me when I say that I love you. You do not think that I know my own heart in this.”
Ah, there was the rub. “I’m not anything you want in a woman, Timothy.”
“Thought I wanted.”
She looked over her shoulder, and her eyes had to travel up until they met his. They were the same color as the sea behind him. The sun stretched toward the horizon, emphasizing the gold of his hair as the sea breezes swept across her skin. “And what if you change your mind, again?”
“I won’t,” he said, smiling. He brushed his fingers along the back of her neck, evoking a delicious shiver.
“How do you know?”
“Because I danced with and walked out with and flirted with a hundred women, and not one of them lit the room the way you did every time you entered. I never craved their company the way I did yours, even though I did not understand why.”
She couldn’t look at him and closed her eyes. Did he know his heart in this? Could either of them trust it?
Daisies and Devotion Page 24
