But Lord Wetherby caught the direction of his thoughts and returned them to the girl on his arm and the conversation in which they were involved.
Annabelle tried to reorganize the way they were to divide themselves into two groups when they came to the boats, he noted with interest. When Josh mentioned that he and Rosamund would come with them, she spoke up.
“Perhaps Aunt Rosa and Valerie still wish to talk,” she said.
Valerie laughed. “I think we are talked out for now,” she said. “And we have been unsociable to everyone else for long enough.”
“You will wish to be with your sister,” Annabelle said, turning to the earl.
“We see quite enough of each other every day of the year in town,” Lady Sitwell said, punching her brother playfully on the arm.
The arrangements remained the way Josh had organized them. He could have wished Annabelle had had her way, Lord Wetherby thought as he handed first her and then Rosamund into the boat—Josh was busy teasing Valerie about something. But what had been the girl’s reason? Did she not like her aunt for some reason? Did she suspect the truth?
No,it could not be that. Neither of them had given the smallest sign except that conversation at the pianoforte the evening before. But then it would have seemed perfectly natural for him to talk with Rosamund for a few minutes. They were guests at the same house party.
It was decided that Lord Wetherby would row along the lake and Josh row back later. It was a very beautiful setting, the earl thought, looking about him at the long, narrow lake and the high wooded banks that almost surrounded it. The trees were in delicate bud. The water was a darker shade of blue than the sky.
“Why is it, I wonder,” Lord Beresford said, “that for cows the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence and for humans the banks are always more picturesque on the other side of the lake? Shall we land and climb to the top?”
“Will you not tire your leg too much?” Rosamund asked.
He laughed. “Can’t you tell that Rosamund has been a wife, Justin?” he said. “She is just like a mother hen.”
“Pardon me for trying to be the voice of reason,” she said. “By all means let us land. Perhaps you would care to climb the bank and run back around to where we started, Josh.”
“A tempting idea,” he said, “but it is my turn to row back.” He turned to hail the other boat and point to the bank.
A few minutes later they were all stepping out onto dry land again.
Valerie and her betrothed decided not to climb, but to stroll along the bank beside the water. Lord and Lady Sitwell took a blanket from the bottom of their boat, spread it on the bank, and sat down to admire the view. Annabelle joined them.
“What?” Lord Beresford said. “Too aged to join us in a climb, are you, Annabelle? I never heard the like. Perhaps we should have a litter brought from the house to carry you back home from the other bank, should we?”
“The view is very lovely,” she said. “I want to sit here and enjoy it.”
“I shall stay with you,” Lord Wetherby said with a smile. For some reason Annabelle was not enjoying herself. He wished that he had refused to join the boating trip and arranged to spend some time alone with her. “You are right about the view. It is quite magnificent.”
“No,” she said, “please don’t stay on my account. I know you wish to climb, my lord. I shall be quite happy here, conversing with Lord and Lady Sitwell.”
He looked down at her, considering. Was it his presence that made her uncomfortable? It was something he must find out within the next few days. Though what he was to do if it really were so he did not know. “Very well, then,” he said. "We will not be long.”
Lord Beresford had taken Rosamund’s arm through his. “You know,” he said, “the time was when I would have challenged you to a race to the top. I would have beaten you, too, but I would have had to run the whole distance to do it. Now of course, you are no longer a young hoyden but a dignified lady. I daresay you will have to be helped inch by inch to the top. Take her other arm, Justin, in case she drags me to the bottom with her.”
“If it’s a race you want, Josh,” she said, drawing her arm away from his and gathering up her skirt, “you have it.” And before he could realize her intention, she was on her way, running up the bank, dodging trees and concentrating on not losing her footing.
Lord Beresford passed her eventually, but only when they were almost at the top. They both collapsed onto the coarse grass there, laughing and panting and gazing down on the Earl of Wetherby, who was striding up toward them.
He was feeling like a staid old man, he thought, and like a jealous schoolboy who has been deliberately excluded from a game. He thought back to a certain snowball fight—only a month before. And he closed his mind to the memory again.
“Look at him,” Lord Beresford said. “He is approaching his thirtieth birthday, I have heard, Rosamund. Poor gentleman. It shows, doesn’t it?”
“But the lady did not challenge me to a race,” the earl said, seating himself at Rosamund’s other side. “For which I shall be eternally thankful. You missed seeing all the snowdrops and primroses among the trees.”
“Oh, did we?” Rosamund said, looking at him wide-eyed and with genuine sorrow.
“We will view them on the way down,” Lord Beresford said. “At the moment I am concerned with the painful necessity of trying to pump all the missing air back into my lungs.”
“It was a good idea of yours to come up here,” the earl said. “I’ll wager that if we stood on that higher piece of ground over there we would be able to see the house.”
