by Mary Balogh
He mingled with a few other groups before eventually strolling alone down to the water’s edge. The garden had been artfully designed to display flowers and a riot of color close to the house while nearer to the water there were more trees, and everything was varying shades of green. The upper garden was not even visible from down here, and only part of the roof and chimneys of the house. He could still hear faint strains of music, but the sounds of voices and laughter were muted.
Most of the guests had remained close to the house and the company and the food. A few people, though, were out on the water, having taken the small rowing boats from the jetty. A young couple awaited their turn. One lady walked alone a short distance away, in the shade of some willow trees.
She was wise to have escaped from the direct heat of the sun for a while, Joseph thought, but surely she did not need to be alone—not at a party, at least, where the idea was to mingle. But then, of course, he was alone. Sometimes a brief respite from the demand of the crowds was as good as a breath of fresh air.
She was Miss Martin, he realized suddenly as she stopped walking and turned to gaze out across the water. He hesitated. Perhaps she would prefer to remain alone—after all, he had taken a good deal of her time this morning. Or perhaps she was feeling lonely. There must not be many people here that she knew, after all.
He remembered the laughter they had shared outside the supper room last evening and smiled at the memory. Laughter somehow transformed her and stripped years off her age. And he remembered her at Gunter’s this morning, eating her ice slowly in small spoonfuls, savoring each mouthful and then going on the defensive when she realized he was amused.
“You must understand,” she had explained, “that this is not something I do every day—or even every year. Or every decade.”
He turned his steps in her direction.
“I see you have found some shade,” he said, raising his voice as he approached, lest he startle her. “May I be permitted to share it?”
She looked startled anyway.
“Of course,” she said. “I believe the outdoors belongs equally to everyone.”
“Doubtless that is the creed of all trespassers and poachers,” he said, grinning at her. “Are you enjoying yourself?”
Any normal woman would have smiled politely and assured him that indeed she was, and the conversation would have moved on to predictable insipidities. Miss Martin hesitated and then spoke what was obviously the truth.
“Not really,” she said. “Well, actually, not at all.”
She offered no explanation but regarded him almost ferociously. With her neat cotton dress and hair dressed severely beneath her hat, she could easily be mistaken for the housekeeper—or for the headmistress of a girls’ school.
Honesty in polite conversation was rare in ladies—or gentlemen, for that matter. No one could admit to being discontented without seeming ill-mannered.
“I suppose,” he said, “that when you are in your usual milieu at your school no one ever imposes social obligations upon you or bullies you into enjoying yourself. I suppose you usually have a great deal of freedom and independence.”
“And you do not?” she asked him, raising her eyebrows.
“Quite the contrary,” he told her. “When one is in possession of a title, even if it is only a courtesy title, one is under an obligation to be available to help fill every ballroom or drawing room or garden to which one is invited during the Season so that the hostess will be able to claim that it was a veritable squeeze and thus be the envy of all her acquaintances. And one is obliged to be courteous and sociable to all and sundry.”
“Am I all?” she asked him. “Or am I sundry?”
He chuckled. He had seen flashes of her dry humor before and rather liked it.
She was looking steadily at him, the light from the water dancing in patterns across one side of her face.
“And that is all you do?” she asked him without waiting for a reply. “Attend parties and make yourself agreeable because your rank and society demand it of you?”
He thought of the time he spent with Lizzie, more than ever since Christmas, and felt the now-familiar heaviness of heart. He would have introduced a new topic of conversation then, one he certainly meant to raise with her before she returned to Bath, but she spoke again before he had found the right words.
“You do not sit in the House of Lords?” she asked. “But no, of course you do not. Yours is a courtesy title.”
“I am a duke in waiting,” he told her, smiling. “And I would prefer to keep it that way, given the alternative.”
“Yes,” she said, “it is not a happy thing to lose a parent. It leaves a great yawning, empty hole in one’s life.”
Her father’s death had disinherited her, he realized, whereas the opposite would happen in his case. But when all was said and done, a human life mattered more than any fortune. Especially when it was the life of a loved one.
“Family always matters more than anything else,” he told her.
“I thought I would enjoy a couple of weeks here with Susanna and Frances,” Miss Martin said with a sigh as she turned her face to look across the water. “And indeed it has been lovely to see them. But being with them means also being at events like this. Now I think I would like to return to Bath as soon as I may. My life is lived in a very different world than this.”
“And you would prefer your own,” he said. “I cannot blame you. But in the meanwhile, Miss Martin, allow me to do what I do best. Allow me to entertain you. I see that there is no one in line for the boats at the moment. And it appears that Crawford and Miss Meeghan are on their way in. Shall we take their boat?”
“On the water?” she asked, her eyes widening.
“The boat is small,” he said. “I suppose we could hoist it up over our heads and run about the garden with it. But our fellow guests might think us eccentric, and I for one have to associate with them in the future.”
She dissolved into mirth, and he regarded her with a smile. How often did she laugh? He guessed that it was not often enough. But it certainly ought to be. It was as if a whole suit of armor was shed from her person when she did so.
“It was a foolish question to ask,” she admitted. “I should love a boat ride of all things. Thank you.”
He offered her his arm and she took it.
She sat with rigidly straight back and severe demeanor after he had handed her into the boat as if she felt she had to atone for her earlier laughter and ardor. She did not move a muscle while he rowed out into the center of the river and then along it, passing by other grand mansions with lavish gardens and willow trees draping their greenery over the water. She kept her hands in her lap, cupped one on top of the other. She did not have a parasol as most of the other ladies did. But her straw hat was wide-brimmed and shaded her face and neck from too much exposure to the sun. The hat had seen better days, but it was not unbecoming.
“Do you go boating in Bath?” he asked her.
“Never,” she said. “We used to go boating when I was a girl, but that was a long, long time ago.”
He smiled at her. Not many ladies would have added that extra long to imply an advanced age. But she seemed to be a woman without vanity.
“This is heavenly,” she said after a minute or two of silence—though she still looked like a teacher keeping a watchful eye upon her students as they worked. “Absolutely heavenly.”
He remembered something she had said last evening—A long time ago. A lifetime ago. She had been speaking of her acquaintance with McLeith.
“Did you grow up in Scotland?” he asked her.
“No, in Nottinghamshire,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
“I thought perhaps you grew up in the same neighborhood as McLeith,” he said.
“I did,” she told him. “In the same house actually. He was my father’s ward after losing his parents when he was five. I was very fond of him. He lived with us until he was eighteen, when he inherited his titl
e quite unexpectedly from a relative he hardly even knew of.”
She had been fond of him and yet had avoided his company last evening?
“That must have been a pleasant surprise for him,” he said.
“Yes,” she agreed. “Very.”
Pleasant for McLeith, he guessed. Not necessarily for her. She had lost a lifelong friend. Or had she had tender feelings for the man? He was at the garden party. He had arrived late, but Joseph had seen him just before he strolled down to the river. McLeith had been talking with the Whitleafs. He wondered if he ought to tell her but decided against it. He did not want to spoil her enjoyment of the boat ride. And she must be enjoying it. She had called it heavenly.
What a disciplined, restrained woman she was. And yet again he thought of the image of armor. Was there a woman behind the armor? A woman of warmth and tenderness and perhaps even passion? Yet he already knew that she possessed at least the first two.
But passion?
It was an intriguing possibility.
She lifted one hand away from the other after a while, slipped off her glove, and touched her fingers to the water. Then she trailed them through it, her head turned to the side, all her concentration upon what she did.
He found the picture she presented curiously touching. She looked lost in her own world. She looked somehow lonely. And even though she lived at a school surrounded by schoolgirls and other teachers, he supposed it was altogether possible that she was lonely. The Countess of Edgecombe and Viscountess Whitleaf were her friends, but they had married and left both her staff and Bath.
“I suppose,” he said at last, surprised by the reluctance he felt, “we had better turn back. Unless, that is, you would like to row past the city down to Greenwich and on out to sea.”
“And away to the Orient,” she said, looking up at him as she brought her hand back inside the boat, “or to America. Or simply to Denmark or France. To have an adventure. Have you ever had an adventure, Lord Attingsborough?”
He laughed and so did she.
“I suppose,” she said, “the adventure would not seem such a magical thing when night came on and I remembered that I do not have my shawl with me and you developed blisters on your hands.”
“How very unromantic of you,” he said. “We will have to save the adventure for another time, then, when we can make more sensible plans. Though romance does not always have to be sensible.”
The sun shaded her face less efficiently as he turned the boat in the middle of the river. Somehow their eyes met and locked and held before she looked away rather jerkily and he looked away just a moment later.
There was a curiously charged feeling to the air around them.
He was almost certain she had been blushing as she looked away.
Good Lord, what had that been all about?
But it was a redundant question. It had been a moment of pure sexual awareness—on both their parts.
He could not have been more astonished if she had stood up and executed a swallow dive into the river.
Good Lord!
By the time he looked back at her, she had donned full armor again. She was stiff and stern and tight-lipped.
He rowed the rest of the way back to the jetty in a silence she did not attempt to break and he could not think of a way of breaking. Strange, that—he was normally quite adept at making small talk. He tried to persuade himself that nothing untoward had happened after all—as indeed nothing had. He hoped fervently that she was not feeling as uncomfortable as he.
But, good Lord, they had merely been sharing a joke.
…romance does not always have to be sensible.
His sister was standing on the riverbank close to the jetty, he could see as the boat drew closer. So were Sutton and Portia Hunt. He had never been more glad to see them. They gave him a way of breaking the silence without awkwardness.
“You have discovered the best part of the garden, have you?” he called cheerfully as he tied up the boat, stepped out onto the jetty, and handed Miss Martin out.
“The river is picturesque,” Wilma said. “But both Miss Hunt and I are agreed that Mrs. Corbette-Hythe’s gardener has been remiss in not having planted some flower beds here.”
“May I present Miss Martin?” he said. “She is owner and headmistress of a girls’ school in Bath and is staying with Viscount Whitleaf and his wife for a short while. My sister, the Countess of Sutton, Miss Martin, and Miss Hunt and the earl.”
Miss Martin curtsied. Wilma and Miss Hunt favored her with identical gracious nods, while Sutton, not to be outdone in cold civility, inclined his head just sufficiently to indicate that he did not choose to insult his brother-in-law.
The temperature must have dropped at least five degrees within the minute.
Wilma and Sutton would not enjoy being introduced to a mere schoolteacher, Joseph thought with what would have been wry amusement if he had not been concerned for the lady’s feelings. She could hardly fail to notice the frostiness of her reception.
But she took matters into her own hands, as he might have expected she would.
“Thank you, Lord Attingsborough,” she said briskly, “for rowing me on the river. It was very obliging of you. I will go and join my friends now if you will excuse me.”
And she strode off in the direction of the house without a backward glance.
“Really!” Wilma said when she was scarcely out of earshot. “A schoolteacher, Joseph! I suppose she hinted that she would like to go out on the river, and you could not bring yourself to deny her the treat. But you really ought to have done so, you know. Sometimes you are just too good-natured. You are easily imposed upon.”
It often amazed Joseph that he and Wilma could have been born of the same parents and raised in the same home.
“I escorted Miss Martin up from Bath last week when I came back to town,” he said. “I did it as a favor to Lady Whitleaf, who used to teach at her school.”
“Yes, well,” she said, “we all know that Viscount Whitleaf married beneath him.”
He was not about to wrangle with his sister at a garden party. He turned to Portia Hunt instead.
“Would you care for a turn on the river, Miss Hunt?” he asked her.
“Yes, I would, Lord Attingsborough,” she said, smiling and allowing him to hand her into the boat. She raised a white lacy parasol above her head, angled just so to shield her complexion from the sun.
“It was extremely kind of you,” she said after he had pushed off, “to bring that teacher out here. It is to be hoped that she is properly grateful, though to her credit she did thank you.”
“I enjoyed Miss Martin’s company,” he said. “She is an intelligent woman. And a very successful one.”
“Poor lady,” she said as if he had just told her that Miss Martin was dying of some incurable disease. “Lady Sutton and I were speculating about her age. Lady Sutton declares that she must be on the wrong side of forty, but I could not be so cruel. I believe she must be a year or two under that age.”
“I think you are probably right,” he said, “though one can hardly be blamed for one’s age whatever it is, can one? And Miss Martin has much to show for the years she has lived, however many they are.”
“Oh, absolutely,” she said, “though having to work for a living must be unpleasantly demeaning, would you not agree?”
“Demeaning, no,” he said. “Never. Tedious, possibly, especially if one has to take employment at something one does not enjoy. Miss Martin enjoys teaching.”
“Is this not a delightful garden party?” she said, twirling her parasol.
“Indeed it is,” he agreed, smiling at her. “Was the soiree enjoyable last evening? I am sorry I had to miss it.”
“The conversation was very agreeable,” she said.
He tipped his head to one side as he rowed. “Am I forgiven, then?” he asked.
“Forgiven?” Her eyes widened and she twirled her parasol once more. “Whatever for, Lord Attingsborough?”
“For going to the Whitleafs’ concert instead of the soiree,” he said.
“You may do whatever you wish in life and go wherever you please,” she told him. “I would not presume to question your decisions even if I had some right to do so.”
“That is kind of you,” he said. “But I assure you I would never demand so compliant a companion. Two people, however close they are, ought to be able to express displeasure openly with each other when provoked.”
“And I assure you, my lord,” she said, “that I would never dream of expressing displeasure with anything a gentleman chose to do—if that gentleman had some claim to my loyalty and obedience.”
Of course, there was more than one way of expressing displeasure. There was open, forthright speech, or there was something altogether more subtle—like introducing the topic of bonnets into the conversation when the only man present was the one to whom one owed loyalty and obedience. Not that Miss Hunt owed him anything yet.
“The weather is almost perfect for a garden party,” she said, “though it is perhaps a little on the hot side.”
“But heat is preferable to rain,” he said, his eyes twinkling.
“Oh, absolutely,” she agreed. “But I do think some clouds and some sunshine in equal measure make for the perfect summer day.”
They fell into an easy conversation in which there was not a moment’s silence though nothing of any significance was said. That last fact did not particularly concern him. It was no different from a dozen conversations he held with various people every day. Not all persons could be Miss Martin, after all.
Miss Hunt looked even more lovely out here on the river, the white of her apparel and the delicacy of her complexion in marked contrast with the deep green of the water. He found himself wondering—as he had with Miss Martin—if there was any passion underlying the inbred elegance and refinement of her manner.