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“Good girl.” Patterson gestured like a commander ordering his troops forward.
Roger bent, set his shoulder in Fenella’s midsection, and lifted. His arm went around her knees for balance. Her hip rested against his cheek.
“You’ll have to move faster than that,” said the colonel. “You’re not lifting a fragile piece of porcelain, Chatton. You keep forgetting you’re a ferocious raider. And Miss Fairclough, you should kick and beat your fists. Not too hard, of course. Give the effect, as with the broom.”
Light blows fell on Roger’s back. Feet pumped. Fenella’s frame shook against his shoulder. Was she afraid? No, she was laughing.
The boy ran in again. “The monks found the ale barrel! They’re bunging it open.” He beckoned urgently. With a muttered curse, Patterson hurried out after him.
Roger was left with a lithe, sweet-smelling young lady over his shoulder.
“I must be heavy,” she said. “You can put me down.”
She wasn’t. Roger felt as if he could hold her forever, even though the feel of her body was making his head spin. He set her down. She took a step and stumbled. He steadied her.
“Hanging head down makes one dizzy,” she observed.
“I know.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” He’d felt this strong pull of attraction before, Roger recalled. When she first returned from Scotland to care for her father, there’d been an evening at Chatton. He’d laughed with Fenella over some jest, and the heat had risen between them, intense, surprising. And then he’d glimpsed the avid speculation in his father’s eyes, which made him angry, and he’d gone haring off to London the next day to avoid any revival of the old matchmaking scheme. Yes, and he’d fallen into Mrs. Crenshaw’s toils almost at once. So his disastrous marriage had been Fenella’s fault. Everything was Fenella’s fault from the very inception to Arabella’s last ill-advised ride.
Except. With her standing before him, pleasant and assured, he had to acknowledge that this was a load of pure rubbish.
Fenella hadn’t sent him to town. And of course she hadn’t been able to keep Arabella from doing whatever she wished. Arabella had been one of the stubbornest people he’d ever encountered. She’d never listened once she made up her mind. He remembered an evening when his wife had stalked out of a dinner party, declaring that she couldn’t bear it a moment longer. In the silence that followed, he’d suspected his neighbors pitied him, which had been humiliating. Roger had told everyone that Arabella was referring to a terrible headache, but he was fairly certain they’d known she meant the dullness of the company. In her opinion. The incident had occurred just a few weeks before her fateful ride in the rain. But it was best not to think of that.
Roger felt the mixture of anger and guilt that had been with him since his wife died. Pain lanced through his stomach. He pressed a hand against it.
“Are you all right?” asked Fenella.
He gave her a curt nod. “We’ll have to come back to this later,” he said. “I have an appointment.” He walked away before anyone could question this lie.
* * *
“Those two have hit it off,” said Arthur as he and his hostess watched Tom and young John Symmes trot through the stone arch that led from Chatton Castle’s courtyard into the countryside. The boys disappeared into the tunnel under the wide wall. Arthur offered his arm, and the two of them moved in the opposite direction, into the walled garden at the back of the castle. A riot of flowers filled this sizable space. The walls met sheer cliffs that fell to the sea.
“I like Tom,” said the earl’s companion, the former Miss Helena Ravelstoke, dowager Marchioness of Chatton, and an unexpected element of his northern visit.
“Nearly everyone does,” said Arthur.
“Is he an eccentricity?”
“What?”
“I’ve heard that it’s fashionable to have one,” she added. “A quirk. To make one stand out in society.”
“Tom is not that,” replied Arthur. “He is, oddly enough, a friend.”
“That is rather odd for the distinguished Lord Macklin.”
She smiled up at him, and Arthur was once again reminded of a London season more than thirty years ago, when they’d both been young and she’d been dazzling. Helena, as she’d insisted he call her now, had cocked her head in just that way back then. Arthur and his friends had vied with each other to evoke her silvery laugh. He was happy to see that she’d kept her blithe spirit through three decades. “Tom is a miraculous triumph over his background,” he answered. “Circumstances that might have, should have, ground him down or embittered him, didn’t. I was struck by his intelligence and good humor when I met him. I found him good company. And I would like to give him the chance he deserves.”
“Chance to do what?”
“That is the question.”
His hostess looked inquiring. She’d raised a rose-colored parasol against the sun, and the tinted shade was kind to her face. Not that it needed a great deal of help, even now. “Send him to school?” she suggested. “Set him to a trade?”
