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“I observe your actions,” she answered, moving away from him. “Where has Tom gone?”
“I have no idea.”
“Tom?” she called. “Where are you?”
“Here,” came the reply from downstream. “Come and see. There’s a waterfall.”
Señora Alvarez walked away. Arthur paused to master his annoyance. It took a few minutes. Perhaps he had mistaken her reaction. Though she’d looked… But she said he had, and that was that. He was sorry. He would apologize more fully if she allowed it. But honest mistakes did not deserve such complete contempt. She must know him better than that by now. Yet it had seemed that nothing he could say would change her mind.
There was worse, however. He still wanted desperately to kiss her again. He wanted more than that. She’d set him afire, as he hadn’t been for years. If she felt nothing for him, his prospects were melancholy. The situation seemed all difficulties and little hope.
When he finally made his way down the stream bank, he found her with Tom, admiring a small cascade in the stream. She did not look at him, and Arthur’s spirits sank further. “I meant no insult,” he murmured as they walked back toward the carriage.
“We will not speak of it again,” she snapped and hastened away.
He could only follow.
At Tom’s urging they went on to Penn Ponds, two small lakes in the middle of the park with water birds nesting in the reed beds and groves of massive oak trees nearby.
“This old fellow’s been through a bit,” said Tom, running his fingers over a lightning scar in a huge oak’s bark. “How old do you reckon it is?” he asked Arthur.
“Four or five hundred years, I expect,” he replied absently.
“Here before Mr. Shakespeare then?”
“I would say so. It might have witnessed the Wars of the Roses.”
“Does England have fighting flowers then?” Teresa heard the anger in her voice when she spoke, but she couldn’t help it. Shewasfurious—with the earl, with the world, but mostly with herself. How she had wanted to kiss him! He hadn’t been wrong. Pressed against him, feeling the lean length of his body on hers, she had longed to do more than that. She was still flushed with desire. The mere touch of his lips to hers had told her that lovemaking would be intoxicating with thispeligrosoearl. Intoxicating and disastrous. It would wreak havoc in her safe, settled life. This was very bad.
“Warring roses, battles among the bluebells,” said Lord Macklin.
Was hejokingabout it?
“Battles?” asked Tom.
As of course he would, after that remark. And of course he would look from Macklin to her and back again, wondering. Teresa imagined pushing them both into the stream and leaving them to drip their way back to the carriage. Boots full of water, squelching. Hair streaming onto damp and bewildered faces. An imagemuy agradable. But then Tom would want to know why she had donethat.
“A duel at least,” said the earl.
What was he going to say?
“I came upon one, in a bluebell wood a bit like this, when I was nineteen,” he continued. “I’d almost forgotten.” He glanced at Teresa as if she’d made him remember.
“With pistols?” asked Tom.
Naturally he would want all the gory details. Men loved such things.Idiotas.
“Swords,” replied the earl. “Though neither of the fellows really knew how to use them. They were dancing about, waving cavalry sabers like carriage whips. I’ve always wondered where they got the weapons. Because those two were definitelynotarmy officers.”
Yes, that was the important thing, thought Teresa. Where had the sabers come from?
“Their seconds were twittering about in the most distracting way. Obviously they’d never been present at a fight before, but they all looked even younger than I was. I never learned their names.”
“Oh, everyone didn’t pause to exchange bows and visiting cards?” Teresa asked.
Her companions looked at her. “I was on horseback,” said the earl, as if this actually answered her question.
A thread of amusement snaked through her anger.
