A Lady's Choice

by Donna Lea Simpson

  Colin, Andromeda and Belinda were kind enough to remain, though, bearing them company until nearly the time when they would leave. Rachel found that though with the exodus of many of the better families to the country her invitations to the ubiquitous balls and routs were more sparse, they were replaced by interesting things to do, places she had never been, sights she had never seen. There were literary afternoons and a bird-watching expedition with Andromeda’s eclectic group of friends, met in her wandering; though Rachel was not terribly interested in birds, it was a joy for the country air, and a lovely respite from London. And there were city joys to take part in, too. A boat trip on the Thames, that while odorous was at least interesting in its scenic diversity. Chelsea, especially, viewed from the river was fascinating.

  And one memorable day she, Andromeda and Belinda went to see a balloon elevation. The dashing French pilot invited her to climb in and enjoy a tethered ride. Belinda came with her, but Andromeda resolutely refused, saying that heights made her uncomfortable. It was thrilling, the feeling of going up causing an odd fluttering in her stomach like the flight of a hundred butterflies. The pilot, gallant and courteous though he was, had pressed himself a little too close, but did not take other liberties. Belinda, her brown eyes shining, was enraptured by the experience and begged to accept the pilot’s invitation to go for a real balloon ride, but that Rachel and Andromeda would not allow.

  And yet all the while, Rachel was aware of a frisson of unhappiness behind it all. She could not be comfortable while she and Colin were on such bad terms, especially since she must see him often. Why it bothered her she was not sure; he had been abominably managing, and she would not climb back into the velvet-lined box from which she had escaped.

  But at last, as June turned to July, it would soon be time to go back to Yorkshire. Grand was recovering apace, and she and Rachel’s mother had made a strange kind of peace and were even undertaking the redecoration of Haven House together. It was all a jumble of wall coverings, bolts of fabric and splashes of paint, and new furniture would appear and disappear on a daily basis.

  It was a good time to be out of the house and the weather was agreeable, so Rachel welcomed a proposed day trip to an estate that Sir Parnell was considering purchasing, even though it would necessitate spending more time in Colin’s company than she was comfortable with. It was strange; they were at odds, and yet she had never been more aware of him than she now was. She told herself time and again to just ignore him, but it would not do. Inevitably he would take her arm to help her over a rough spot or a step, and her elbow would tingle from the contact. Or their eyes would meet, and she would find it impossible to just look away.

  He was a dark-eyed, silent stranger now, where in past he had always been smiling, always obsequious. Now he watched her, but it was with a serious expression, not the moony, calf-love look she had come to know and despise. And with his regard came a nervous twitch in her belly and an odd yearning for more of his touch, just that hand on her elbow or the brush of his fingertips.

  She resigned herself to more of that same awareness—what could not be explained must be ignored—and readied for the journey with some excitement, wearing her favorite rose-striped carriage dress and a new bonnet, bought for a fetching display of ripe cherries that nodded cunningly over the brim. She took great pains with her hair and every other detail of her appearance. She had a feeling about this day, that it would prove to be a day of revelations. Reflecting on it later she realized that she had been right, but not in any way she could have foreseen.

  It was a gorgeous early July day with mare’s tail clouds high in the azure sky. The ride, in the Strongwycke carriage, was surprisingly comfortable, the roads dry and reasonably smooth. Colin and Sir Parnell rode their horses while the ladies traveled in the open carriage, their journey only lasting an hour, with no need for any stops along the way, and conversation flowed. Belinda was becoming more knowledgeable about the countryside under Andromeda’s expert tutelage, and joyed in pointing out larkspur and juniper, alder and hawthorn stands. The estate was a pretty gray stone house set on a hillside and looking over an ornamental pond. Though the gardens were neglected, thickly overgrown with wild roses and briars, they showed great promise; Andromeda and Sir Parnell, walking arm in arm, exclaimed over every detail, from the dovecote to the immaculate stables, but especially the house.

  There was still a housekeeper resident, though the former owner had died two years before, and she was able to tell them much about the estate and its history. Sir Parnell already knew much about the estate because the inheritor was a planter in the Caribbean, a friend of his for many years, and had often told the knight tales of the house. As the fellow never intended to come back to England he was willing to sell it at a reasonable price just to be clear of its upkeep, which was draining his purse with no return, as he did not like to rent it.

  Rachel, still not talking to Colin, strolled arm in arm with Belinda while Colin shot her earnest looks. She had the sense that he wished to speak to her, but she was not sure she wanted to talk to him. Life had changed; she had changed. What was there to speak of?

  They went inside to a cold luncheon, followed by dessert out on the terrace. As the housekeeper set out a dish of late strawberries, culled from the shady bramble-covered gardens of the estate, Sir Parnell invited Andromeda to walk in the garden with him, and Rachel noticed Belinda hugging herself with excitement.

  “You are almost floating off your chair, Belinda. What has got you so happy?”

  “I know a secret!” she said, brown eyes shining.

  “You will never keep a secret if you taunt others with it,” Colin said with a smile. He dipped a strawberry in sugar and clotted cream and was about to pop it into his mouth, but instead offered it to Rachel, with a lift of his eyebrows.

  “A peace offering?” she murmured, accepting it from him, her lips closing around the tips of his naked fingers as she took the succulent berry. If he was willing to grovel a little, she might consider accepting his apology.

  “Consider it what you will,” he said coolly.

  She gave him a challenging look. So, no apology, though he was making peace in his own way. Not the Colin of previous years, then, who would prostrate himself before her to beg for her favor. She rather liked the new Colin, oddly. He was more of a man for refusing to be subjugated. But she was more of a woman for her fresh independence, she felt. So they were equal.

  She noticed that he watched while she ate it, though, despite his casual tone; she became preternaturally aware of every one of her actions, even down to licking her cream-smeared lips. He looked away with a tight frown on his face and swallowed hard, squinting into the distance. Now what was wrong with him? He was unfathomable.

  Rachel turned back to Belinda, who was watching them both with a peculiar look of disgust. “What is your secret?” Rachel asked, dismissing Colin’s odd behavior.

  “It is not a secret if I tell anyone else. And I don’t know for sure. It’s just something I’ve guessed.”

  “That isn’t a secret then,” Colin said. “A guess is not a secret.”

  They bickered like siblings while Rachel watched Andromeda and Sir Parnell, alerted that something unusual was happening by their stance, closer than necessary, and their stillness. If she did not know better . . .

  Sir Parnell was looking down at her with his hands on her shoulders and she was gazing steadily up at him, her hat off and hanging down her back by the ribbon. And then, extraordinarily, he kissed her, just once and briefly, but definitely on the lips. Rachel glanced over at Belinda, her mouth open to exclaim at such odd behavior, but she saw the look of knowing exultation on the girl’s face.

  “Do you think . . . ?”

  Belinda nodded, her smile breaking into a broad grin.

  “Really?” Rachel gasped. “How did this come about?”

  Colin looked from one to the other with a frown. “What are you two talking about?”

  “If you can�
��t guess, then I shan’t tell you,” Belinda said with a saucy bob of her head. She turned back to Rachel. “Well, you see, Sir Parnell has been over a lot lately, teaching . . .” She glanced over at Colin, then moved closer to Rachel and whispered, “Teaching Miss Varens to box!”

  “Really?” Rachel was stunned, and puzzled that Andromeda had kept the lessons a secret.

  “Yes! It was wonderfully funny at first, you know, for Miss Varens would dress in breeches and square off with Sir Parnell. But he taught her everything, and she has gotten quite good at it. Have you not noticed lately that she no longer talks of making Sir Colin stop?”

  “That’s true. Why?”

  “She said the other day that it truly is a science; if you learn how to box properly, then you need never fear being hurt, because you know how to be hit.”

  Rachel shook her head. “That sounds very unlike Andromeda.”

  Belinda shrugged.

  “But how did this start?” Rachel asked, indicating with a nod of her head the couple, now strolling back toward the terrace.

  “I was there every day, for Sir Parnell insisted I be ‘propriety,’ as he called me. After the lesson, he would stay for luncheon sometimes, or they would talk. And when we have all gone out they are together almost always, have you not noticed?”

  “How blind I have been! Now that you say it, I can see it, but I never would have suspected otherwise. How self-centered I have been!” Wistfully watching the couple approach, she saw a radiance on Andromeda’s handsome face, and a quiet satisfaction on the knight’s. “How wonderful this is for them both; it could not have happened to two more deserving people. And this, I would imagine, is why he is now thinking of buying an estate when he has been hitherto perfectly comfortable in his London rooms.”

  Belinda nodded. “Isn’t it wonderful? I like him. He is a very clever gentleman. He used to own slaves, you know, and he told me all about life in the Caribbean. He is now an anti-slaver and has come to London to try to end the practice. He told Andromeda a shocking story one day about a man who used to beat his poor slaves, and how it made him sick to his heart.” She frowned thoughtfully. “I think that is when Andromeda really knew how she felt about him, for he was so horrified, and you could see in his eyes how determined he is to change things. She just stared and stared at him, and he stared back. I felt like I should slink away, they gazed into each other’s eyes so long.”

  “I have never heard before of such an odd wooing, to be sure,” Rachel said. “Boxing lessons and reform talk. He shall set a precedent among the gentlemen.”

  “What are you two talking about?” Colin asked, finally mystified beyond endurance.

  “We are speaking,” Belinda said archly, “about the likelihood that—”

  “We are getting married,” Andromeda said, beaming, held close in Sir Parnell’s arms as they made it to the terrace and joined the company. “We are getting married and we will live here.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Rachel and Belinda leaped up to congratulate the couple, hugging them both in an extravagant display of emotion. But Colin sat, staring off over the gentle decline toward the garden, misty in the midday heat of the English countryside. He could not quite take it all in. In one moment every element of his life had changed.

  “Colin, are you not happy for me?” Andromeda said.

  “Of course I am,” he said, rising and holding out his hand to his friend, Sir Parnell. He glanced from one to the other, the handsome though brown knight and the woman who would never look like a blooming twenty-year-old again, his beloved sister. Almost his conscience, he would have said. “I am happy for you if this is what you really want. But you need not marry, you know, Andy. I only joke about you being an old maid. I never meant it.”

  “But I want to marry,” Andromeda said, coloring.

  He heard the hurt in her voice and stood, approaching her. Damn his clumsiness anyway! He would not injure her feelings for anything. “Then I am happy for you.” He hugged his sister.

  In truth, he was shaken, this one event rocking his world more than he would ever admit to anyone. It had never occurred to him that Andromeda would marry. When he had imagined, in years gone by, marrying Rachel and taking her to Corleigh, it was always knowing in the background that Andromeda would stay, keep house for them, and Rachel would not need to care for all the petty details of running an estate. He had wanted her to be able to just sit in the parlor, embroider or net, and go for the occasional walk with him. Andromeda and he would take care of all the mundane details of life so she could just concentrate all her efforts on staying the perfectly lovely, perfectly delicate English rose she was.

  This day had changed many things, and made him wonder about many more. Was no one whom he had thought? Was he doomed to find, through his life, that his judgments had been pretty far from reality all through the years? Pamela, little imp-wanderer and eternally youthful boyish girl-child, had captured and married the sophisticated, intelligent Earl of Strongwycke. Rachel—cool, pragmatic, icy calm beauty expected to marry well—had rejected an eligible marquess for no good reason that anyone could imagine, except that she did not love him and he did not love her. And Andromeda, devoted sister, lifelong spinster, was engaged to marry a Caribbean nabob.

  As they returned home, he let his horse take him far ahead of the others, needing some time to adjust to the changes in his life. No Rachel, ever. That was the hardest thing, and perhaps he had only just accepted it, finally and for good. Watching her eat the cream-dipped strawberry, he had felt that old rush of physical longing that was more than mere sexual desire. It radiated from some core of him that was so saturated with Rachel that her name was engraved on his heart. As much as he tried to eradicate it, it would not go away.

  He was in love with her. Even this new Rachel, the one who had adventures, and rode in hot air balloons and acted the hoyden on occasion; he still loved her. It should have given him a disgust of her. It truly should have been what erased his emotional attachment to her once and for all, for she had exceeded the boundaries of what he had always thought of as ladylike. She was not the Rachel he had fallen in love with.

  Or was she?

  She was still as lovely as ever, but her beauty was only a small part of what he had always believed he had loved about her. He still saw her in pensive moments. There was a vulnerability in her that he had sensed from a very young age; it had attracted him, had created within him his powerful urge to shelter and protect her. She had, since her father died, cloaked her emotions within a hard shell, turning away any tender sentiment. But he had felt her pain and shared it, remembering how it hurt to lose his mother when he was about the same age. And he had wanted to protect her from any more pain in her life, however unrealistic that had been. He wanted to be her guardian, her valiant knight protector.

  Now she was coming out of that shell, and he had seen how her vivacity and new liveliness had attracted a different sort of man than had courted her in past. Yarnell had thought she would be a doll to put up on a shelf and admire: perfectly gowned and coifed, perfectly lovely, and perfectly cold. But hadn’t he been treating her much the same as the despised marquess? Hadn’t that very expectation, that he could keep her cloistered and protected, leaving to Andromeda all the real work of running an estate, been an insult to her strength and independence?

  She had been right to tell Yarnell to release her, and she had been right to say no to his own proposals all those years. Whatever her reasons had been, she had been absolutely right. There was more to her than the brittle, beautiful shell. She was emerging, like a butterfly from a chrysalis, to use a hoary old metaphor for a lady of her loveliness. She was shedding her fears, leaving behind her vulnerability, showing her strength of character, and yet he could not cast off his emotions for her as easily.

  She was still precious to him, and he still wanted her in every way a man could want a woman.

  So he truly did love her, bone deep. He longed for her even more,
humbled by her strength, attracted by her new boldness in a way he never would have believed. And yet his chances to attach her were just as remote, or perhaps more so, especially with the grim way he had been treating her lately, stubborn boor that he was. Many men would seek her out. One of them would surely capture her heart, for he instinctively knew that with the changes in her there would be a warming of the frost that had encapsulated her for so many years. And some lucky man would find a way to turn that flicker of warmth into fire.

  With that glum thought he came to the London turnoff and waited for the carriage and Sir Parnell. He must concentrate on his sister’s marriage. He owed her much for years of patience and companionship, love and nurturing. Without even thinking about it he knew they would be happy. It had only ever needed a man who could appreciate the unique woman she was, and he could not have hoped for a better brother than Sir Parnell Waterford.

  Tamping down his own unutterable sadness and plastering a fraudulent smile on his face, he called out, “I propose that we stop at the White Hart and send the innkeeper out for the best bottle of champagne he can find. We have something truly wonderful to celebrate in the marriage of my sister to a man who almost deserves her.”

  He was rewarded for his effort with a radiant smile from his sister, who had needed only his blessing, he realized, to make her completely happy. They had only two weeks left in London before they must go north, returning Belinda to her uncle and new aunt. He suddenly realized that the trip home would likely be made without his sister, who would be preparing to marry, or perhaps be already married. He must make the most of the next two weeks, for he doubted he would be back down to London any time soon.

  As they entered the tavern, and he stepped back to allow Rachel and Belinda to advance ahead of him, he decided that he would stop letting his expectations rule him and would just let each day come and go. It was the only thing he could do.