AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The carriage had grown unbearably hot in the quarter hour that he had been inside. Arthur was growing more and more irritated and he didn’t know where to direct it.
One of the footmen came around to the door. “Do you want to go back to the manor, my Lord?”
“No,” Arthur bit out. He absolutely hated to be out in the open, but he didn’t want to be cooped up inside anymore. In the distance he could see Mrs. Cooper and Carmen sitting side by side on the blanket, but Nora was nowhere to be found. His heartbeat spiked. Had they let her out of sight then? How careless could they be?
He immediately rushed out of the carriage and hurried towards them. His feet almost sank into the wet Earth. Arthur remembered belatedly that it had rained last night. He cursed under his breath as he covered the rest of the distance. Carmen heard him and turned to him, her brows raised, and her lips curved up in a smug smile.
“Where is Nora?” he demanded. Instead of answering, she simply pointed ahead. Arthur followed her gaze to see Nora playing with two children and extremely dirty dogs. What if she fell in the mud and dirtied her frock or worse yet, hurt herself? He began to signal to her with his hands in order to get her attention. Immediately Carmen stood up and held his wrist, pulling it to herself so that his fingers accidentally brushed against her bosom. She didn’t seem to notice it. “No, let her play,” she insisted.
Shock rippled through him at the contact and he was immediately transported back to the moment when she lay pliant in his arms. He was hard instantly, and he knew that there was a good chance he would expose himself in front of the entire park and all the families there. He immediately dropped to the blanket and tried to calm his racing heart.
Carmen looked at him with concern. “Are you alright, Your Grace?”
“No,” he said. He most definitely wasn’t alright, and it was because of her. A simple touch was all it took for him to start wanting her again. He had been wrong to think otherwise.
“Oh dear, he may have caught the sun,” Mrs. Cooper said.
“But he just came out,” Carmen pointed out. But Mrs. Cooper paid no heed to her words. She fished out a flask of water from the basket. “I’m going to fill this up with cool water,” she said and left.
Carmen knelt down beside Arthur. “I thought you didn’t like to be outside.”
“I don’t,” he said. “I came here for Nora.”
“She was playing, and I didn’t want to say no to her. But don’t worry, I was keeping an eye on her,” she said. “And look, she is very happy.”
Arthur looked up where Carmen was pointing and sure enough, Nora had the biggest smile on her face as she played with the children. Nora was a sunny child and she always had a smile for him. But he could tell the sadness that lay behind that. Now, however, she was completely transformed. She looked like a seven-year-old having the absolute best time of her life.
“When was the last time she played with children her age?”
Arthur shrugged. “When her cousins come along or when some of her mother’s friends came to visit and they brought their children along.”
“And when was the last time that happened?” Carmen asked.
Arthur sighed. “I haven’t entertained a single guest in my house since my wife passed. She was the one responsible for all the social gatherings and events. Every ball she threw became the talk of the town.”
“I see,” Carmen said. Arthur looked up when he thought he caught a weird tone in her voice. But nothing was amiss.
Arthur looked up to see Nora bounding towards them. She was sweaty and tired, but her face was lit up with the biggest grin that he had ever seen.
“Did you have fun?” Carmen asked.
“Very much,” Nora said.
Carmen beckoned her to come near and when Nora did, she took one of the ribbons that had come undone from her plaits and began to tie it. Arthur watched them. Nora was babbling to her in excruciating detail about her playmates and how many times each dog had licked her nose. Carmen was attentively listening to her and asking the right questions even as she fixed her hair.
Arthur couldn’t help but smile. His stomach rumbled and he could feel his anxious thoughts begin to crowd his head, but he firmly pushed them away. He tried the trick that his physician had told him and found little things to ground him to the present. He clutched at the grass near his feet, not caring when dirt dug into his fingernails, he breathed in deeply and smelled the sun and flowers, he focused on Carmen and Nora as they laughed and spoke with each other. He felt his heartbeat slow down.
Mrs. Cooper came back, and they got busy passing sandwiches amongst themselves. Carmen even cut up a few fruits, crackers with cream cheese and they had a small but a hearty lunch. After they were done, Arthur felt calm and sleepy. He wanted to lay down on the blanket and close his eyes. He hadn’t been out for a long time and he wanted to bask under the sun even though it had grown unbearably hot despite the shade from the trees.
But Nora had other plans. “Let’s take a walk. I want to get a closer look at the ducks.”
Arthur almost groaned out aloud but the ladies agreed to her plan and he had no choice but to follow them. They walked amongst the row of trees and planted shrubs to slowly descend to the narrow path that snaked around the lake. The water was blue and calm, and many people had gathered to feed the ducks and swans in the lake. Nora ran ahead of them, followed by Mrs. Cooper leaving Arthur to walk alongside Miss Black.
At first, neither of them spoke. He chose to stare mutely at the lake while Carmen was visibly fascinated by a couple of snails crawling on the ground. Finally, Carmen seemed to run out of patience. “Are we going to ignore each other?”
He gave her a puzzled stare. “I thought we had agreed to that.”
“When had we decided to ignore each other?” she said. She almost sounded…irritated at the prospect. He didn’t know what he had done that seemed to chafe at her.
