by Mary Balogh
The morning clouds had moved off by noon. As a result several other people decided to ride with Joseph and Elizabeth from Alvesley to Lindsey Hall—Lily and Portfrey and Portia and three of Kit’s cousins. Lily tried to persuade McLeith to come too, but he had been over during the morning. A large number of people were out of doors at Lindsey Hall, Joseph could see as they rode up the driveway, including surely all the children—and the visiting schoolgirls. His eyes searched their number eagerly even before he was close enough to distinguish individuals. He left his horse at the stables, as did all the others, and walked across the lawn with Portia, Lily, and Elizabeth while the others made their way toward the house. The schoolgirls were dancing about a makeshift maypole, to the accompaniment of vocal mu sic by one of their number and a great deal of laughter and confusion. Joseph could see no sign of Lizzie until he realized with a start that she was one of the dancers. Indeed, it was she who was causing the confusion—and the laughter. She was clinging to one of the ribbons with both hands, and she was dancing about the maypole with vigorous, ungainly steps while Miss Martin moved behind her, her hands on Lizzie’s waist. She was laughing too. She was also bonnetless and disheveled and flushed. Lizzie was shrieking with louder laughter than anyone else. “How very charming,” Elizabeth said without any apparent irony. “Is that the blind girl I have heard about?” Portia asked of no one in particular. “She is spoiling the dance for the others. And she is making a spectacle of herself, poor girl.” Lily was simply laughing. She clapped her hands in time to the music. And then several of the girls noticed the new arrivals and the dance came to an end as they all stopped and stared and then bobbed curtsies. Lizzie clutched Miss Martin’s skirt. “Maypole dancing in July?” Lily cried. “But why not? What a grand idea.” “It was Agnes’s idea,” Miss Martin explained, “instead of the ball game we were going to play. It was her way of including Lizzie Pickford, who has joined us for the summer holiday.” Her eyes met Joseph’s briefly. “Lizzie has been able to hold on to the ribbon,” she continued, “and dance in a circle with everyone else without colliding with anyone or getting lost.” “She ought to be taught the proper steps, then,” Portia said, “so that she may look more graceful.” “I thought she was doing remarkably well,” Elizabeth said. “So did I,” Joseph said. Lizzie cocked her head and her face lit up, and he almost wished that she would cry out his name and reach out her arms to him and put an end to this distasteful charade. But then she smiled and raised her face to Miss Martin, a look of gleeful mischief there. Miss Martin set an arm about her shoulders. “Do carry on,” Elizabeth said. “We did not mean to disturb you.” Some of the younger children, Joseph could see—not the schoolgirls—were tackling Hallmere on the grass and shrieking with delight. Lady Hallmere was egging them on. The dog, tethered to a tree close to the maypole, was sitting and placidly watching, his tail thumping on the grass. The duchess was hurrying toward them from a distant cluster of infants. “I believe we are all out of breath,” Miss Martin said. “It is time for something less strenuous.” “Ball?” one of the older girls suggested. Miss Martin groaned, but the lady Joseph recognized as Miss Thompson, the teacher who had appeared outside the school in Bath, had come up with the duchess. “I will supervise a game for anyone who wants to play,” she said. “Horace has a new collar and leash,” Lizzie announced loudly. “I hold on and he takes me about and I don’t run into things or fall down.” “How very clever, dear,” Elizabeth said kindly. “Perhaps you could show us.” “That child,” Portia said sotto voce to Joseph, “ought to learn to speak when she is spoken to. Blindness is surely no excuse for bad manners.” “But perhaps childish exuberance is,” he said, watching as Lizzie turned and groped with one hand until Miss Martin untied the dog and set the loop of the leather leash in her hand. It took all his willpower not to rush forward to help. “I will come walking with you if you wish, Lizzie,” a girl about her own age said, taking her free hand. Lizzie looked in his general direction. “Would you like to come too…sir?” she asked. “Well, really!” Portia exclaimed. “What impudence.” “I would be delighted,” he said. “Miss…Pickford, is it?” “Yes.” She laughed with glee. “And Miss Martin must go too,” Lily suggested. “The rest of us will remain here and be lazy,” the duchess said. “And then we will go into the house for tea. How delighted I am to see you all.” The dog moved off at a trot and Lizzie and the other girl shrieked with laughter again as they set off in his wake. But he seemed to understand the charge with which he had been entrusted and slowed to a walk as he made his way toward the driveway and then crossed it, making a wide loop about the large stone fountain that stood before the main doors. He also steered well clear of all the trees, leading them toward the other side of the house. “I hope, Miss Martin,” Joseph said, clasping his hands at his back, “you are not too attached to that dog. I cannot see Lizzie being willing to part with him at the end of the summer. He is looking remarkably healthy. Has his weight doubled, or is that just my imagination?” “Your imagination, thank goodness,” she said. “But his ribs are no longer visible, and his coat has acquired a sheen.” “And Lizzie,” he said. “Can that possibly be her, walking hand in hand with another girl, being drawn along by a dog? And dancing earlier about a maypole?” “And knitting this morning,” she said, “though I believe she dropped more stitches than she worked.” “How can I ever thank you?” he asked, looking down at her. “Or I you?” She smiled back at him. “You have challenged me. Sometimes one becomes blinded by routine—ah, pun unintentional.” They were making their way, he could see, toward a largish lake. He lengthened his stride, but Miss Martin caught his arm. “Let us see what happens,” she said. “I think it very unlikely that Horace will march straight into the water, and if he does, Molly certainly will not.” But the dog stopped well short of the bank, and the girls stopped too. The child called Molly then led Lizzie forward, and they both went down on their knees and touched their hands to the water, Lizzie tentatively at first. Joseph moved up beside them and squatted down next to his daughter. “There are some stones along the bank,” he said, picking one up. “If you toss them into the water, the farther out the better, you can hear them plop. Listen!” And he demonstrated while Molly looked at him with fright and Lizzie turned her head and inhaled in such a way that he knew she was breathing in his familiar scent. But she smiled when she heard the stone plop into the water and reached for his hand. “Help me to find a stone,” she said. He squeezed her hand and she squeezed back, but from the mischievous smile on her face he knew she was enjoying the game of secrecy. For the next few minutes she hurled the stones he helped her find. The other girl overcame her fright and threw some too. They both laughed whenever a stone fell with a particularly loud plop into the lake. But finally Lizzie had had enough. “Shall we go back to the others, Molly?” she asked. “Perhaps you want to join in the ball game. I don’t mind. I’ll sit and listen.” “No, I’ll watch it with you,” Molly said. “I can never catch a ball.” “Miss Martin,” Lizzie said, “will you and P—and this gentleman stay here while we go? I want to show you that we can do it on our own. Do you think we can, sir?” “I shall be vastly impressed if you can,” he said. “Off you go, then. Miss Martin and I will watch.” And away they went, the dog in the lead. “Is she sprouting wings so quickly?” he asked ruefully when they were out of earshot. “I believe she is,” Miss Martin said. “I hope she does not grow overbold too soon. I do not expect it, though. She knows she needs Molly or Agnes or one of the other girls—and Horace, of course. This summer will be a very good experience for her.” “Let’s sit for a little while, shall we?” he suggested, and they sat side by side on the bank of the lake. She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms about them. He picked up one more stone and bounced it across the water. “Oh,” she said, “I used to be able to do that when I was a girl. I still remember the memorable occasion when I made a stone bounce six times. But I had no witness, alas, and no one ever believed me.” He chuckled. “Your pupils are fortun
ate indeed to have you for a headmistress,” he said. “Ah, but you must remember that this is a holiday,” she told him. “I am rather different during term time. I am a stern task-mistress, Lord Attingsborough. I have to be.” He remembered how all the senior girls had fallen silent as soon as she stepped out onto the pavement just before she left Bath with him. “Discipline can be achieved without humor or feeling,” he said, “or with both. You achieve it with. I am quite sure of that.” She hugged her knees and did not answer. “Do you ever wish for a different life?” he asked her. “I could have had one,” she said. “Just this morning I had a marriage offer.” McLeith! He had ridden over here this morning to call on her. “McLeith?” he said. “And could have? You said no, then?” “I did,” she said. He was damnably glad. “You cannot forgive him?” he asked. “Forgiveness is not a straightforward thing,” she said. “Some things can be forgiven but never quite forgotten. I have forgiven him, but nothing can ever be the same between us. I can be his friend perhaps, but I can never be more than that. I could never trust that he would not do something similar again.” “But you do not still love him?” he asked. “No.” “Love does not last forever, then?” “He asked me the same thing this morning,” she said. “No, it does not—not love that has been betrayed. One realizes that one has loved a mirage, someone who never really existed. Not that love dies immediately or soon, even then. But it does die and cannot be revived.” “I never thought I would stop loving Barbara,” he told her. “But I did. I look upon her fondly whenever I see her, but I doubt I could love her again even if we were both free.” She was looking directly at him, and he turned his head to look back. “It is a consolation,” she said, “to know that love dies eventually. Not a very strong consolation at first, it is true, but some comfort nevertheless.” “Is it?” he asked softly. He did not know if she was talking about them. But the air suddenly seemed charged between them. “No,” she sa id, her voice almost a whisper. “Not at all really. What absurdities we sometimes speak. Future indifference is no consolation for present pain.” And when he leaned toward her and set his lips to hers, she did not draw away. Her lips trembled against his and then pressed back against them and parted as his tongue pushed between them and into the warm cavity of her mouth. “Claudia,” he said a few moments later, closing his eyes and touching his forehead to hers. “No!” she said, withdrawing and getting to her feet. She stood looking out over the lake. “I am so sorry,” he said. And he was too—sorry for what he had done to her and for the disrespect he had shown Portia, to whom he was betrothed. Sorry for his lack of control. “I wonder if it is a pattern doomed to repeat itself every eighteen years or so of my life,” she said. “A duke and a duke-in-waiting choosing a bride for her suitability for the position and leaving me behind to grieve.” Oh, dash it all! He drew a slow breath. “And what have I said?” she asked him. “What have I just admitted? It does not matter, though, does it? You must have guessed. How pathetic I must seem.” “Good God!” he cried, getting to his feet too and standing a short distance behind her. “Do you think I kissed you because I pity you? I kissed you because I—” “No!” She swung around, holding up one hand, palm out. “Don’t say it. Please don’t say it even if you mean it. Either way, I could not bear to hear it spoken aloud.” “Claudia…” he said softly. “Miss Martin to you, Lord Attingsborough,” she said, lifting her chin and looking very much the schoolmistress again despite her disheveled appearance. “We will forget what happened here and what happened at Vauxhall and at the Kingston ball. We will forget.” “Will we?” he said. “I am so sorry to have upset you like this. It was inexcusable of me.” “I am not blaming you,” she said. “I am quite old enough to know better. I will never even be able to convince myself that I fell prey to the lures of a practiced rake, though that is what I expected you to be when I first set eyes on you. Instead you are a gentleman whom I like and admire. That has been the whole problem, I suppose. And I am prattling. Let us return or everyone—Miss Hunt in particular—will be wondering what I am up to.” And yet, he thought as they made their way back to the far lawn, not touching and not talking, they could be no more than a few minutes behind the girls. Minutes that had done infinite damage to both their lives. No longer could he even pretend that he did not love her. No longer could she pretend that she did not love him. And no longer would they be able to trust themselves to be alone together. He felt his loss like a hard fist to the stomach. 16