He wondered why she had never married. Had it been from choice? From lack of opportunity? From an unwillingness to marry just anyone in order not to end up a spinster? Had she held out for love or some other ideal that had never happened for her?
“I am sorry,” he said, “for that encounter with Lady Connaught last week. She treated you as an inferior who might be of service to her. I am glad you put her in her place.”
“Did I?” She turned her head to look at him but did not speak. They were crossing the driveway before the large circular flower bed and stopped to look up at the fountain. Lord Aidan Bedwyn had explained to him how it worked so that it could shoot water so high. It was a quite ingenious mechanism.
“I have almost made up my mind,” he said, “not to send Georgette away to school. Not yet, anyway, and never just because it would be more convenient to me to have her out of the way. I shall ponder the matter carefully over the next year or two, and I shall consult her wishes. She has had a governess since she was six, though I fear she outstripped her teacher in academic knowledge some time ago and was never much influenced by her in other ways. Fortunately, the lady resigned in London a month or so ago in order to marry a barrister. I will seek another governess, one who can teach both children and somehow serve all their educational needs. It will not be easy to find such a paragon.”
“I may be able to help you,” she said. “My school always takes in a certain number of charity girls. Part of my responsibility at the end of their schooling is to find them suitable employment. I never turn them out into the world until I am satisfied that they will be happily settled. There is one girl I have been unable to place yet. She is too intelligent and too...oh, talented and full of energy to fit any of the offers that have been made. I have even thought of keeping her on at the school as an assistant instructor until there is an opening for a regular teacher, but...well, I may not be able to do that after all.” She did not explain.
“Thank you,” he said. “If she comes recommended by you, then I am satisfied. She may not be satisfied, of course, if and when she meets Georgette.”
She smiled and changed the subject. “I am always disappointed,” she said, “if I come here to find that the waterfall has been turned off, as it is in the winter. It seems to characterize Lindsey Hall. It has grandeur but brightness and fluidity too. Alleyne Bedwyn once told me that when he was suffering from memory loss after receiving a head wound at Waterloo it was the fountain that kept flashing into his mind when all else was blank.”
They gazed at the water together and listened to the rushing, soothing sound of it.
“Are you happy?” he found himself asking her and then could have bitten out his tongue. Where had that question come from?
She did not answer for a while and he wondered if she would. He was on the verge of apologizing for the question.
“I have everything I could possibly want,” she said. “I have employment that I have enjoyed. It has brought me a sense of worth and has brought me into company with adults and young girls whom I esteem and even love. I have a family I love dearly.”
She had not quite answered his question, he thought. Or perhaps she had. Perhaps being independent, doing what she loved and what was important to her had brought her happiness.
“And you?” she asked him. “Are you happy? But you spoke somewhat on the subject when we dined together.”
“I had a happy marriage, which was all too brief,” he said. “Now I have my home, my friends, and my children. I am well blessed. And at last I am open to future happiness. I have concluded that it is not disloyal to the dead to live on.”
She turned her head to look almost fiercely at him. “Oh,” she said, “you are so very right.”
Their eyes met and locked. And there was a pause in the conversation, charged with something unidentifiable while a flush rose to her cheeks. And he asked the unpardonable question.
“Why have you never married?” he asked her.
They were strolling beside the lake, the wilderness walk above them, trees just ahead of them to offer seclusion from company and shade from the sun. Off to one side, beyond the end of the walk, was a round stone building that looked like a dovecote.
She smiled faintly and lowered her eyes. “Perhaps,” she said, “because I was too much of a romantic. I was betrothed once upon a long time ago to a cavalry officer. I was head over heels in love with him. No one had ever loved as we loved. Had I been a poet, I would doubtless have filled volumes with flowery verse pulsing with emotion. Though I must not make light of what was very real. He was killed in Spain at the Battle of Talavera, and I really did not expect to live on myself. Or want to. If I could have died of grief, I would gladly have done so—not out of any poetic ideal of sentimental grief but because it was really too painful to be borne. Alas, I could not die. But I would not love again. How could I? The only love of my life was gone forever. Grieving, remaining true to his memory, became a habit with me, a habit I have always thought to be a virtue until recently. But my devotion has not made any difference to him, has it? He has been dead all this time.”
They had stopped walking, as though by mutual consent. They were among the trees, though in a grassy clearing. The water here was dark green as it reflected the leaves on the trees. One tree was bent toward the water, a stout branch reaching out over it, and it struck Michael that it would be a daring boy’s dream as a diving platform. And a girl’s too, he added mentally, thinking of Georgette. An invisible bird was trilling from somewhere among the trees. A distant swell of cheering from the direction of the cricket pitch only accentuated the peace that surrounded them.
“How lovely it is just here,” she said. “It is very peaceful, is it not?”
“There is something about water and trees,” he said, “that is soothing to the soul.”
She turned her head to smile at him and he smiled back—before lowering his head to hers and kissing her. It seemed the most natural thing in the world, a gesture of shared pleasure in the moment and of affection too. When he moved his head back she was still half smiling, and her eyes gazed back into his without wavering. He touched the fingers of one hand to her cheek and moved them down to trace the line of her jaw to her chin.
“I am sorry,” he said.
“Please do not be,” she told him, her voice a mere whisper of sound.
And he gathered her into his arms and did what he had been dreaming of doing ever since that evening at the inn more than a week ago. He kissed her properly, as a man kisses a woman to whom he is sexually attracted. He parted his lips over hers while her own lips relaxed and her arms came about him, and he teased her lips until they parted and then stroked his tongue into her mouth, exploring its warm, moist depths. She suckled his tongue gently while his temperature rose and he moved his hands down the inward curve of her spine over the flaring of her hips to her bottom. She had a woman’s figure rather than a girl’s. He hardened into arousal and held her to him, not trying to disguise the fact. She made a sound deep in her throat and pressed closer. Heat flared between them.
He wondered just how secluded this place was. And he wondered if she was a virgin. And he remembered that at least three people were on the wilderness walk not far away and that his children and a host of other people were no great distance from where they were standing and embracing.
She smelled of something subtly and fragrantly feminine.
She was the one to break the embrace, though not hurriedly. She set her hands on his shoulders and moved slightly away from him.
“It is not at all the thing, is it?” she said, smiling apologetically. “I have just admitted to feeling regret over the lost years and to a certain loneliness. But I do not want to give you the wrong idea.”
