"Did they now? Does that seem right to you, Miss Helen?"
Helen's bow lifted and she pulled the string tight as though preparing to loose the arrow. But she gave a comical grimace and let her arms fall again. "Perhaps it's because I'm accustomed, but I can't see the advantage in it." She laughed again, the sound of it pouring like honey into his ears. "Unless the Amazons were extremely well endowed."
This was met with laughter from her companions, hidden from his view, and they began once again to insist on a demonstration of her prowess with the bow. "Well, the target is set up anyway, and we must keep Emily entertained. Shall I show you how the archers in Roman times did it?"
At their approval, she pulled arrows from a quiver that was slung on a branch and began burying the tips in the soft ground at her feet until a line of eight stuck straight up from the earth. He forcibly reminded himself to breathe, watching her careless movements.
She lowered herself into a crouch. "Ready for it, Emily?" she asked with a glance toward her unseen friends. Then she released her first arrow. Before the sound of it hitting the target reached him, she had already notched another, and the entire line was rapidly deployed in what seemed to be one long smooth movement. She straightened in the midst of applause and bid her friends to see how well she'd done. They came into view at last, Marie-Anne ducking beneath branches to seek out the target and the maid stopping in front of Helen with a look of sudden look of worry.
"Oh, I've been forgetting to watch out for visitors!" she exclaimed.
Stephen heard no more, instinct and a kind of shame at himself pulling him back from his hiding place. He moved to the front of the house as quickly and quietly as he could. The sound of footsteps rustling through the fallen leaves behind him forced him to re-evaluate his intention to leave altogether. The maid would see him there, dismounted at the corner of the house. He turned as if just arriving and hallooed loudly around the corner. If there was one talent he possessed, it was the ability to act as if he had not heard or seen something that was not meant for him to know.
"Is anyone there? I thought I heard voices," he called.
The maid was wholly surprised at his appearance but bobbed a quick curtsy, keeping her head bowed. He went forward as if to move past her to the back of the house, looping his horse's reins over a stout branch, but the little maid stepped into his path.
"Begging your pardon, milord, but Miss Helen's not taking callers just now," she announced in a loud voice.
He directed a pointed look at the other horse, hobbled and cropping the grass beside her. "It would seem otherwise," and he stepped around her quickly through the screen of trees to see what would await him. In the same way that he had raced down the road to get here, he could not seem to pause in the path that led to her.
Helen Dehaven stood shielded from him, with Mme de Vauteuil spreading a long cloak around her. He saw only her arms raised high and working furiously, he assumed, at her hair. The air of carefree gaiety was gone among the women, replaced by a stifling politeness. Marie-Anne turned to face him, blocking his view of the cloaked figure at her back, with a shocked look that gave way to a tentative but not unwelcoming smile.
"You have come to us again, my lord." She offered her hand for him to bow over briefly, and seemed ready with more of her practiced small talk to distract him from Lady Helen, but he cut her off before she could get started.
"A delight as ever, madame. Is that you, Lady Helen?"
She murmured his name in greeting but came no closer, so that he was forced to walk around Marie-Anne and into the hush that surrounded Helen. Her arm extended automatically to him, a slim whiteness out of the dark cape she held closely about her. He lingered over her hand too long as he tried in vain to forget the little she wore beneath the threadbare cloak, not knowing why he hadn't given her the time she so obviously wanted to compose herself. Her hand was warm in his, delicate. He held it as he looked up at her. He should release her hand; he should. He didn't. The hair that had flowed in bunched waves down her neck was now tightly bound as ever.
She would not look at him, her eyes lowered and her cheeks flaming with color. He felt the fear in her then, the tension, in the way she pulled her hand out of his as she stood frozen for a long moment and breathed shallow, stilted breaths.
"You will excuse me, my lord." She moved quickly away from him to her waiting maid, and disappeared around the corner of the house like a startled doe.
Watching her sudden retreat and feeling suddenly bereft at her absence, he at last noticed the other visitor seated against the side of the cottage. Her riding habit was a rich blue, and the sketchbook in her lap identified her as the resident artist.
Not a gentleman caller. A woman, another of her many friends. She made no move to greet him, only continued to scribble on the pad with a sharpened stick of charcoal. He walked forward with Mme de Vauteuil following alongside him, the other girl not looking up at the sound of their approach.
"This is Emily, a friend," she had time to say before the girl ripped a corner of the page and handed it up to him, smiling. I am Emily, a niece to the Marquess of Rothebury, he read. I cannot hear. Please write me your name so that we are acquainted.
He was pleased to do so, taking the charcoal she offered and ignoring the protest Marie-Anne was making at his side. "She told you, I'm sure. Emily, you must have a care for your reputation!" Exaggerated facial expressions and much finger wagging accompanied this admonishment. The girl Emily waved her hand eloquently, as though shooing away a fly, and reached for the scrap of paper that now bore his name and a brief message of greeting.
Marie-Anne gave a quick huff. "Her uncle would have the apoplexy if he knew she came here, and she tells you who she is without any thought! You must think us the strangest lot of ladies you have ever met, my lord."
He looked at the women before him, a ruined Frenchwoman and a deaf young woman of noble birth. He thought of the little Irish maid who was clearly pretending to be no more than a servant, who had disappeared into the house with Lady Helen. The target had been pulled forward and a cluster of arrows bristled at its center. Glancing to the sketchbook, he saw it held only a drawing of the trees that surrounded them, no sign of a scantily clad goddess on the open page.
The slow uncurling of some nameless restriction in his chest released a smile across his face.
"On the contrary, madame, I find you all delightful. Really, quite..." he almost laughed at his own understatement, "fascinating."
Upstairs, Maggie buttoned the dress at the back while Helen reached for her stockings. She should have known he would come today, when the skies were clear and the wind not yet crisp. They saw Emily so rarely, though, that she hadn't given much thought to other visitors, only put on the ludicrous costume and posed for her friend.
"Maggie." The maid stopped in the midst of retrieving Helen's shoes. "He did not see me. Did he, Maggie?"
There was no hesitation in the answer. "He was coming round the house, just as I come out from the back. Sure, he didn't see anything, Helen."
She stepped closer and touched Helen's hair in a soothing gesture before pulling out the hastily placed pins and redressing the chignon. The soothing words and the capable hands, engaged in such a practical activity, immediately helped the beating of her heart to subside to a normal pace. Helen closed her eyes briefly and envisioned Katie sat amongst them in the back garden. She would sketch with Emily. She would learn archery. She would laugh with them, be with them. This was what her future, Helen's future, would be.
It worked, as it always did. Now she could breathe easily again, and she opened her eyes. There was nothing to be afraid of. Nothing. The Earl of Summerdale was an honorable man, a gentleman, who had so far shown her only kindness.
When Maggie had finished with her hair, she slipped to the window and reported that Lord Summerdale was writing a conversation with Emily. "And he's trying to learn her hand signals, I think," observed the maid. Helen felt a resurgence of fear f
or a moment, before she remembered that discretion was the word most associated with the man. She hoped to God he had not learned Emily's name, else the poor girl would be ruined indeed. As it was, Emily was merely an embarrassment to her family – an unwanted burden, not fit for society because of her supposed inability to communicate. But if she was known to associate with the likes of Helen and Marie-Anne, her horrible uncle would likely lock her in a garret for the rest of her life.
Emily had never been the least concerned with that, Helen was reminded as she stepped outside to join her guests. Lord Summerdale was absorbed in mimicking a familiar gesture, his fingers curled to meet his thumb in a circle before flicking apart like a bursting bubble. He looked thoughtful as he brought the fingers together again and rubbed them lightly against his thumb. Emily's hand waved in front of him and caught his attention as she performed the same gesture more slowly, bringing her hand closely to her ear as though to listen to her fingers rub together.
She looked at him meaningfully until his face brightened with discovery. "Bubble and squeak, is that it?" He bowed to Emily's delighted applause. "Do you mean to tell me it's the bubble and squeak at the pub house that brings you here?"
Just then, Emily spotted Helen and gestured that she should explain. "She loves it, Lord Summerdale, and never misses a plate of it when she comes through town."
He turned to her immediately as she approached the group. There was a pause as he looked to her waistline, where the bunched fabric of the dress thickened her middle. She stood waiting for his frown, but he looked into her eyes and gave a splendid smile, the white of his teeth a flash in his face, stealing her breath for a minute. He was really so very handsome, in a way that she would never have expected to appeal to her. The clean lines of his face held nothing of the artistic beauty that was so prized. He had an almost boyish look to his features, but there was nothing at all boyish about him. When he smiled at her like that, there was an intensity to him – not the dark magnetism that had drawn her to men in her youth, but the intensity of his pleasure, like the sun shining full on her.
Something had changed. He had spoken to Marie-Anne, and now he smiled openly at her with an expression akin to wonder. She struggled to recall what they were speaking about, but thankfully Marie-Anne had caught the thread of conversation and carried on with only a moment's pause.
"It is almost time for luncheon. I shall ask Emily if she plans to leave us in favor of the pub's fare."
Lord Summerdale was still looking at her, the ghost of a smile lingering on his face. "If Lady Helen does not object to my intruding on her plans, might I suggest a picnic?"
She was flustered in the face of his solicitude. There was some bread and hard cheese in the larder, she quickly calculated, but it would barely be enough to feed three of them. As she struggled to find the proper words to inform him that it was impossible, he saved her by smiling in that damnably charming way.
"I've brought a few things in anticipation."
Before Helen could quite recover from the groove in his cheek that had appeared with his grin, Maggie was bustling back to the house to find a cloth to spread on the grass and Summerdale – Lord Summerdale, she reminded herself emphatically – was fetching forth a variety of items. The abundance was startling. If he had originally intended to share his lunch only with her, he had wildly over-calculated her capacity. She held back from the little tableau of Maggie spreading cloths on the ground, Marie-Anne clutching the wine, Emily examining the grapes he held up. He suddenly seemed more a part of the group than she. So quickly, so easily, did he become part of her circle that she tried to remember why he should not be welcomed so unreservedly.
He knew everything before it happened, her friend had written, and what was there to know about any of them that was not already old news? They had little to hide in that respect. Emily was the only one of them who…
The unfinished thought brought her forward to Marie-Anne's side. "Marie-Anne, he does not know who Emily's family is, does he?" she queried quickly in French.
The annoyance on Marie-Anne's face was a clear answer, and even as she responded with a quick "Oui," Helen had swung around to the foolish girl in question.
"Why in bleeding hell would you tell him?!" she burst out, reaching for the paper to begin a written tirade. Emily's response was a confused stare, and it took Helen only a breath to realize what she'd said. Her hands clapped over her mouth in mortification as she dared a look at Summerdale.
He looked truly shocked – almost as shocked as she was at herself. As she madly began to formulate an apology for her crude language, his expression changed, the grin appearing again. His laughter rumbled out and over her until a warmth spread throughout her. She should not; she told herself she should not. But soon she was laughing with him, Marie-Anne gasping with mirth behind her and Maggie explaining to a baffled Emily precisely what was causing so much amusement.
Helen at last caught her breath enough to say, "Pardon me, my lord, but you cannot expect delicacy if you choose to pass the time with ladies who are not ladies, you know."
And with that, he was firmly established as a friend to them all.
After nearly every scrap of the excellent picnic had been consumed, Helen found herself seated next to him and talking of archery. He was quite impressed with her aim even when she told him the target had not been set as far back as she would have liked, and she protested a further demonstration with the bow. Maggie had gone to her job at the Hawkins, never once abandoning her deferential attitude to Summerdale. Marie-Anne and Emily wrote to one another where they sat a little way off in the shade of a tree.
Several times throughout the afternoon she had felt his gaze rest on her, but each time she raised her eyes to him he was looking elsewhere. Her thoughts revolved almost entirely on what she would do if she caught him in his stare: would she hold it, or look away?
He seemed so different. Each time he came here, he had become more civil, and now he emanated a relaxation and satisfaction that pleased and puzzled her, leaving her filled with an awareness of him that was more acute than ever.
"You appear content to mingle in such questionable company, Lord Summerdale," she observed with what she hoped was a lighthearted tone.
"Will you do me the honor of calling me by my Christian name? My title is most recently inherited and I find it difficult to accustom myself to it." He looked almost sheepish at this admission, keeping his eyes trained on his fingers as they twisted a stem of grass. She forced herself to look away from the line of his jaw where it sloped into the softness of his throat.
"I think it entirely too familiar, my lord." Perhaps he thought she would disregard all rules of society, but she could not relinquish the exacting standards with which she was raised. Not with him.
"Of course." His voice was barely audible, but he carried on as though the breach of formality had never been proposed. "I am content here, as you say. You'll think it fanciful of me, but your household feels rather like something from a storybook," he smiled. "Like an enchanted glade, or a private Avalon. I've never seen the like, and I have seen much."
She gave a huff of laughter at that. "An enchanted glade of the forgotten ones, I suppose." She looked at Emily writing furiously with Marie-Anne watching the pen's movements. A sudden dread for the girl stole over her. "Enchanted glades should remain secret, my lord, don't you agree?"
He looked at Emily, then back at her. "I had heard of the Marquess's niece before. I was given to understand that she was an idiot, incapable of caring for herself. I am delighted to find that report false."
The letter from Joyce flashed before her mind's eye again. "You know many secrets."
"I do. And I keep them, however sordid as they may be. It is no hardship to keep one that would only bring pain in the telling."
It was a promise she believed utterly. She knew something about secrets and pain, and the desire to keep both hidden. He made a motion as though to stand, but she stayed him with a hand on
his arm. Snatching her fingers back as he stilled, she looked away from his intense look, curling lingering warmth of him into the palm of her hand to hold it there.
"Wait, please," she almost whispered, desperately flustered by his look and the heat of him tingling on her fingers. "Don't draw their attention to you. Emily is upset over something, you can see by the way she writes. She will finish soon, but not if she is interrupted. Marie-Anne will calm her, I think."
He stayed beside her, and she suddenly felt that she was too close to him. Entirely too close. His voice broke through her nervousness, taking up the teasing tone again. "Are there many more of your social circle I should be aware of? I wouldn't want to look shocked at the wrong moment."
She pressed the smile from her lips. "No, this is all."
"Is it Emily who provides you with your scandalous literature?"
"Ah. That is Georges, a friend of Marie-Anne. He is somewhere in the Iberian Peninsula now. He is rarely in England though, and we never see him anymore." She cleared her throat and bit her lips to keep from laughing, wondering if he could still be shocked. "His sin is to be a bastard, you see. And lover to a German duke."
His eyes widened minutely, but he did not sneer. He only chuckled along with her soft laughter at his reaction as Emily and Marie-Anne approached. "I believe our little party is breaking up," he observed. Emily, lacking her usual cheeriness, was gathering her things together. It would appear that she was distraught over Mr. Tisby, according to Marie-Anne.
Naturally Lord Summerdale would know of the man. Tisby was an excellent sort, a naval officer who had no claim yet to riches, raised not far from here. Emily was completely taken with him. Helen couldn't dream of why they should confide all this to Summerdale, yet before she could utter a single protest Marie-Anne was twittering on about their romance, explaining to Summerdale about Emily's fear that the dreaded Marquess would never allow a marriage.
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