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But what if he were not ready to move on? It required but a moment to conclude she’d welcome him back as a lover. More than that, she couldn’t yet envisage. Would he be content for long with such a restricted offering? A man who should command not just the passion, but the unrestrained love of any woman lucky enough to be chosen by him?
She wouldn’t think about that now.
Though slowly coming to believe she was truly freed of her prison, she hadn’t yet untangled the twisted threads of her thoughts, desires and still-repressed emotions to figure out who she might become—whether it would ever be possible for her to love again with the passionate intensity she’d been capable of before Graveston. She hadn’t the energy to contemplate her life beyond tomorrow. All she could manage at the moment was to begin working on dismantling the automatic ban she’d imposed over things which gave her pleasure, lest the Duke take them away.
The most important barrier to dismantle, before she could consider what might develop between herself and Alastair, was the one she’d been forced to erect between herself and the small boy whose emotional future depended upon her. With that thought, she set off for the nursery.
Chapter Seventeen
Diana found James rearranging the soldiers staged on shelves in the nursery. A delighted smile sprang to his face when she walked in. ‘Mama, see what wonderful soldiers Minnie found for me! There’s twice as many as my army!’
‘So I see. Do you want to play with them, or go into the garden with me?’
James set down the soldiers at once. ‘I should like to go outside, if you please.’
‘Then outside we shall go. Minnie, if you’ll get his jacket while I fetch my cloak?’
Diana hurried back to her bedchamber, gathering up a warm hooded cloak and her heaviest gloves. When she arrived back at the nursery, she noted approvingly that James was also warmly attired.
‘You needn’t go with us, if you’d prefer to remain inside,’ she told the maid. ‘I promise I won’t get him too untidy.’
For a moment, the girl hesitated. ‘Very well, ma’am, I’ll stay here and catch up on my mending.’
Diana felt a little glow of satisfaction, as if she’d passed some sort of test. In the few short weeks since she’d begun making overtures to her son, this would be the first time she would spend time with the boy without Minnie hovering nearby.
‘Are we going to a park?’ her son’s piping voice interrupted.
‘To a garden,’ she answered as she ushered him out and down the hallway. ‘We’re going to hunt plants.’
‘Plant hunting? Is that like the fox hunting Papa used to do?’
Her jaw automatically tightened at the mention of his father. He can’t touch you any longer, she told herself, pushing aside the reaction. ‘No, it’s the sort of hunting your grandfather, my papa, used to do.’
‘The papa who taught you to paint?’
‘The very one. We’re going to find some flowers for Mrs Ransleigh’s tables—giving flowers to your hostess is a very good idea, even if the flowers come from her own garden—and we’ll look for some of the little plants my papa used to paint, too. I’ll show you how later, or perhaps you’d like to make a portrait of some of your new soldiers.’
‘Can I do both? I like painting.’
‘And you are quite good at it, too.’
The child glowed at the compliment, and Diana felt a stab of regret. Her father had been lavish with his praise, whether complimenting her skill at reading and letters, or offering encouragement and advice as she began to experiment with paint and brush. James needed appreciation, too, and from more than just his doting nursemaid.
After asking direction of a footman, they set out for the cutting garden behind the kitchen garden. As Mrs Ransleigh had promised, the autumn flowers were reaching full bloom: chrysanthemums in rust and orange, asters in lavenders and whites, and Bourbon roses in the final flush of beauty.
After obtaining scissors and a trug from one of the gardeners, Diana let James carry the basket and helped him cut an assortment of the vivid blooms. They then returned to the kitchen garden, where she wandered among the rows to add sprays of mint, tansy, and rue to add a variety of green hues and a piquant aroma to the bouquet.
In between cutting the flowers, she allowed James to hopscotch down the flagstones of the back terrace, toss some pebbles from the gravel walk surrounding the herb beds into puddles left from the previous night’s rain, and make friends with one of the kitchen cats sunning itself on a bench.
When at last the trug was full, she said, ‘We’ll arrange the flowers and greenery into vases when we go back to the house.’
His smiling face sobered. ‘Must we go in already?’
She smiled at his disappointment. ‘It’s a lovely day, isn’t it? No, I don’t suppose we must return to the house yet. Would you like to walk some more?’
‘Oh, yes! I can see woods from the schoolroom window. Could we walk there?’
‘It might be too far away, but we can walk in that direction.’
So they set off, James full of curiosity, commenting on every wall, bench and tree, noting its similarities or differences from those in the gardens at Graveston Court.
‘Why aren’t there any stone people, Mama?’ he asked suddenly.
She suppressed a smile at her son’s description of the valuable antiques her husband had placed along the series of descending terraces that led away from the house at Graveston Court, where visitors could see them and be suitably impressed. ‘Not everyone likes a very formal garden with statues,’ she replied.
He nodded. ‘Some of them were scary. I like this garden better.’
Smiling as she recalled some of the classical themes—the Rape of the Sabine Women, for one, which could in no way be considered appropriate viewing for an impressionable young boy—she said, ‘I prefer just plants, too.’
Around a turn bordered by a wall of boxwood, they reached the end of the gravel walk. Beyond a wide expanse of grass stood a field of wheat, the long tassels nodding in the breeze, and at a good distance beyond that, the woods James had seen from his windows.
‘Mama, it’s so pretty—the tall grass that’s all gold!’
‘Part of that pretty grass is ground into flour to make your bread,’ she told him.
‘Really? Can I go see it?’
She tensed, wondering whether the watchers would allow them to cross the lawn to the edge of the estate’s working fields. A second later she remembered: there were no watchers, ready to herd her back to the house—or drag her there, if need be—if she strayed too far.
A heady sense of freedom filled her, made her feel as light as if she were floating above the earth in one of those new Montgolfier balloons. ‘Yes, let’s go see the wheat.’
James set off at a trot, and she kept pace beside him. After a moment, tentatively, she reached for his hand. Eagerly, he grasped her fingers and together, they skipped over the uneven surface towards the golden sheaves beckoning in the distance.
Arriving, James realised the stalks blocking their path to the far-away tree line were nearly as tall as he was. ‘Look, Mama, it’s like the maze in the park we went to in the city.’
The Sydney Gardens maze had fascinated James and his friend Robbie, who had been taken there by kindly Uncle Alastair.
‘Can we walk through it?’
‘It’s not cut in a pattern like the one in the city,’ she explained. ‘But I suppose we could walk down some of the rows, as long as we’re careful not to harm the plants. This part...’ she pulled a stalk closer and showed the kernels to James ‘...is ground into flour for bread.’
‘Come, Mama, you walk down that row and I’ll walk down this one.’
Amused by his imagination in turning a common farm planting into a playground, Diana agreed. For a few moments they walked parallel, before with a giggle, James darted several rows away. ‘Come find me, Mama!’ he shouted.
Warmed by the afternoon sun and her son’s innocent enthusiasm, Diana walked along, peering through the sheaves and calling his name, pretending she couldn’t find him, then bounding across the few rows separating them to seize him. His shrieks of laughter as she caught and released him made her laugh, too.
‘Again, Mama!’ he pleaded.
For a surprisingly enjoyable interval, Diana searched and pounced as James ran about, hiding among the wheat. When at last she told him they must return to the house, so they might arrange the flowers they’d picked into vases before they wilted, he’d protested.
She’d given him no more than a warning look before he instantly capitulated. ‘Don’t get angry, Mama. I’ll go back. Minnie says I mustn’t tease you, and I don’t mean to.’
Another pang of sorrow for time and circumstance lost went through her. She couldn’t ever remember worrying about ‘teasing’ her father with her questions or her presence—he had always had time for her. How many years had the nursemaid been protecting her son from the seemingly harsh scrutiny of his parents?
