“Do you know,” Lord Beresford said, drawing up one knee and resting his forearm across it, “that girl ought not to have been allowed to get away with it—sitting on a blanket for all the world like a sedate and middle-aged matron. We should have insisted.”
“I find it hard to justify insisting that someone else enjoy herself,” the earl said. “Annabelle probably gets no joy from feeling hot and sticky and breathless.”
“Well, she should,” Lord Beresford said, rising resolutely to his feet. “I’m going back down for her. I’ll pick her some primroses on the way back up.” He grinned and was gone before either of his companions could protest.
“Oh, dear,” Rosamond said, “Annabelle will not like this.”
“Fortunately,” the earl said, “my brother-in-law is down there to wrestle Josh to the ground or toss him into the lake if he tries to use coercion.”
Despite the chorus of bird song, the silence around them suddenly seemed very oppressive. Damn Josh, Lord Wetherby thought. This was the very type of situation that he had most wished to avoid.
He looked at her tentatively, to find her looking back at him. They both smiled rather ruefully.
“Would you say it is a conspiracy?” he asked.
“It seems very like it, doesn’t it?” she said.
There was a disturbing sense of familiarity, just as if there had been no intervening month since their last meeting. He looked down to the lake below them. “You found your brother quite quickly,” he said. “You arrived home safely?”
“Yes,” she said. “And you? How long did you stay?”
“I left the following day,” he said.
“You had been intending to stay for a week,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “I did not want to see the snowmen melt away or the snow angel disappear.”
In fact, he had been very careful not even to glance their way except that once after her departure.
That was the worst aspect of the whole episode, he thought. If there had been only the lovemaking, it would have been easy to put it in the past—a memory to be set beside many such memories. But there had been so much more than the lovemaking.
There had been that silly snowball fight and the foolish competition with the snowmen. And her careful angel and his failed one, and her laughter. There had been a great deal of laughter.
“Let’s go and see what can be seen from that higher point, shall we?” he asked, getting to his feet and reaching down a hand for hers.
Her hand was warm. Her fingers curled firmly about his. He had been wearing gloves when he had pulled her up from the snow after exerting the penalty of a three-minute kiss. He released her hand almost as an afterthought.
Oh no, he did not want this. He had come to Brookfield in all good faith to focus his mind and his attention and his affections on Annabelle. He had fought a hard and painful battle for a whole month to persuade himself that what had happened with Rosamund had been merely what they had intended it to mean. It had been a brief and pleasurable affair. And he had won that battle, or had been winning it. He neither needed nor wanted this.
They walked side by side along the top of the bank until they came to the higher point. He looked back across the lake, shading his eyes—and forgot again.
“Yes, I thought so,” he said. “Look, Rosamund.” He set one hand on her shoulder, his head close to hers and pointed across the lake and between two large clumps of trees to where the house was nestled in a hollow, surrounded by green grass. The formal gardens could not be identified from that distance.
“That means,” she said, “that from the house we could see this exact spot.”
Only Rosamund could even consider something so absurd. He grinned. “Something we would all wish to do,” he said. “It is such a distinguished spot. A little piece of unmarked wilderness.”
And a place where they had stood together, his hand on her shoulder, surrounded by spring and the singing of birds. He knew suddenly what she had meant.
“Actually,” he said, the smile gone from his face, “it is a little piece of wilderness that I am glad I have not missed.”
He wanted to turn her into his arms, to hold her against him. Not with passion. Just for the feeling of closeness again. The way he had held her on his lap that last evening when all her memories about her husband’s final illness had come pouring out. He had felt closer to her on that occasion than he had ever felt to any human being. He wanted to hold her like that once more. Just for a few minutes.
He removed his hand from her shoulder and turned around.
And the next moment he had forgotten again. Both his hands came back to her shoulders and turned her.
“Look, Rosamund,” he said.
