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With a sigh, Freddie flicked away the dregs of destroyed daisy. “Lady Treadgold found them before I finished sewing them and took them away.”
“You ought to take them back again.” At Arabella’s meaningfully raised brows, Freddie’s expression brightened. “I’ll speak to Holly about arranging that. And if you can spare a few coins, I daresay Holly can find a maid willing to finish sewing them somewhere Lady Treadgold cannot see.”
A grin spread over Freddie’s face as they turned back to study the walls. Guy leaped across a gap and landed effortlessly. How lovely it would be to take an action with such easy confidence and without first having to consider the forty-seven different ways it might be done. How lovely if she had the right to explore his body again. How lovely if he searched for her, smiled at her, acknowledged her as special to him.
“It’s like doing a puzzle, choosing where to put one’s feet, calculating the leap,” Freddie said. “But it’s better than a puzzle, because one’s whole body is involved, and the risk of falling makes it more fun.”
“That’s the kind of thing Guy says,” Arabella pointed out. “The two of you are very similar, you know.”
Freddie didn’t respond, behaving as if she wasn’t listening. Arabella suspected Freddie heard everything and only pretended not to.
“You would know that about Guy if you spent more time with him, instead of riding off alone,” Arabella added. “And he wants to spend more time with you.”
Freddie shrugged. “What’s the point? I’ll hardly see him.”
“He’ll make time for you. He is trying to win custody.”
“He’s only trying to defeat Father. He doesn’t really care.”
“But he does. It matters to him, Freddie. Truly. For so many years, he has been horribly alone.” She sought the words, needing Freddie to understand, needing to give Guy this one gift: the happiness he sought from family. “He’s all heart, you know. Heart and muscle. He believes in things. He believes in them so fully he doesn’t have to think about them first. He already knows what to do.”
Her eyes followed him as he trod the wall. He would never be hers. How long would she be haunted by this strange nostalgia for a future she could never have?
She turned back to Freddie. “He believes in you like that. In family, in looking after other people. He’ll fight for you, with all his heart and muscle. He’ll fight for you to be happy.”
Freddie was looking at her oddly. “He doesn’t know what makes me happy.”
“Then tell him.”
What a hypocrite she was! Easy advice, when she had no idea how to speak her own truths to Guy, when she wasn’t even sure what they were. But if only she could touch him, as he had touched her last night, and then…
Seduce him. There was an idea. Would it be such a terrible thing to do? In less than a week, he would be gone, and they both understood the rules of honor no longer applied; he would feel no obligation to her, and she would feel no shame. A passing pleasure. A souvenir. To let herself pretend that he was hers, if only for one more hour. Of course, if he rejected her, thatwouldbe terrible.
Freddie beheaded another hapless daisy and set about shredding this one too. “I told him I don’t want to marry, but he just said of course I want to marry, but that I could choose to whom.”
Arabella considered. “You’re wealthy enough not to marry if you don’t want to, but you don’t have to decide yet. Married women have more freedom, and you might yet find a man you like. You said no one has even tried to court you.”
“It wasn’t that great.”
Arabella looked at her sharply. “Who was it?”
“Who was what?”
“Who courted you?”
“No one. It’s nothing. I’m fairly sure I don’t want to marry.”
Guy bounded off the wall, landing easily on the grass and exchanging a friendly word with one of the other men.
“You know yourself best,” Arabella said to Freddie, as Guy rounded the wall and disappeared from view. “Only… Don’t be so sure that you miss a wonderful opportunity, or say the wrong thing at the wrong time, and ruin something that might have been precious.”
* * *
Guy was not entirelysure how he came to be traipsing down the worn, uneven stone steps into the abbey crypt, with a lantern held aloft and four ladies in his wake.
“I do hope there are no ghosts!” he heard Miss Treadgold call from somewhere further up the stairs, her voice tremulous.
“If there are, they are very friendly,” came the amiable assurance of Mrs. DeWitt, who carried the other lantern. Guy had met her husband in London, a magnetically energetic man who had deftly managed to offend everyone in the room. Odd pair, Mr. and Mrs. DeWitt. No wonder they lived apart.
