by Ayles, Abby
“I see we are here,” Cora said, pointing at the entrance to the park.
Regina had never been to a park before. They were novelties in her world. Country houses had their grounds and gardens that you could walk through. Otherwise there was just the English countryside itself.
The English countryside was beautiful. Regina could admit that. But it was beautiful when gazed at from inside a house window or a carriage rather than when one was riding or walking through it.
As for the gardens of a house, she liked those. They were pleasant and carefully cultivated. But their own house did not have grounds that were so pleasant. It was all hills surrounding them. And she did not get invitations to other houses often enough to be able to take advantage of their lovely grounds.
But this—this park, apparently, anyone could use it. Anyone could go in and walk about and then leave. So long as it was from sunrise until sunset, that is.
“It’s like the gardens of a country house,” Regina said, although that wasn’t quite accurate. There was a different style to this.
“Yes, but it is for the masses,” Harrison said. “I think that is nice. Everyone deserves a little green in their lives. In the city one does not often get it. It was the one downside to my city home. But now I can come here and relax and feel as though a part of the countryside has come back to me.”
Regina let Cora take her arm and guide her around. Cora was adventurous. She wanted to smell every flower and gaze up at every tree.
Harrison seemed amused by it all. “I see that you now have a puppet to drag around with you,” he told Cora.
“Hush. Miss Regina here is far better company than you are,” was Cora’s reply.
She got to walk with Harrison as well. He asked her about what books she had been reading and actually listened when she talked about them. He never interrupted. He asked her questions with the intent to understand more of her thought process.
“You cannot honestly be intrigued by all of this,” she said at one point as they strolled up a lane. Cora was avidly talking to a groundskeeper about something regarding birds.
“I am,” Harrison replied. “Part of it, I admit, is so that I can understand you and your thought process. That will help me in training you. But it is also because I genuinely like hearing you talk.”
Regina gaped at him. Nobody had ever said that before. Nobody had ever seemed content to simply listen while she prattled on.
“Are you in jest, Oberon?” She said at last.
Harrison shook his head. “I am serious. I would never jest about something like that. To joke about something like that would mean I was insulting you and calling you boring. I would never do that.”
“But I am boring,” Regina protested. “I do needlework and read all day. I do not go riding and I hate balls.”
“I know plenty of people who love to ride and go to balls and they are incredibly boring,” Harrison replied. “It is not what activities you engage in that makes you interesting. It is how you think. It is how you engage with the world around you.
“You have worthwhile thoughts and so therefore you are interesting. If your head was filled with nothing, or if you thought only of what ribbon to put in your hair, then I would find you boring.”
“You must never meet my sister Natalie,” Regina said, infusing her voice with a great deal of solemnity.
Harrison laughed. “You see? Things like that. Those are the things that keep you from being boring.”
Regina wanted to believe him but she was not sure that she could. But the walk through the park was far more pleasant than she had expected.
She kept making Harrison laugh, for one thing. Each time it seemed startled out of him as though he couldn’t believe that she was actually the one who was speaking.
He teased her, as well, but in such a gentle and loving way that she could not find it in herself to feel angry or put out. He would point out plants and such to her and explain what they were.
“Everyone knows that roses are for love,” he explained, “But different colors signify different sorts. Pink is for young love, while yellow is for the love between friends.”
“I would give you a black rose if such existed,” Cora muttered.
“Sometimes I do not think your parents spanked you enough as a child,” Harrison replied mildly.
“Then it would be possible to send someone a secret message using flowers, would it not?” Regina asked. “If certain kinds mean danger, or all hope is lost, or freedom?”
“They certainly could,” Harrison agreed. “I rather like that idea, Puck, that’s quite clever.”
“Do not tell it to Eliza, or she will start doing it,” Cora warned. “We’ll all be getting bouquets as dinner invitations instead of cards.”
Regina laughed. She was bent over a flower when it happened, a red rose that had been particularly gorgeous. She’d just had to take a sniff. The petals were soft and velvety against the pads of her fingers.
As she finished laughing, still bent over the flower, she looked up. Lord Harrison was staring at her. His jaw was slack and his eyes were a little wide. He was staring at her as if he had never seen her before.
It made a shiver shoot up Regina’s spine, but not in an unpleasant way. She straightened up. “What?” She asked. “What is it?”
“You looked like a picture just then,” Cora noted. “I should have liked to paint you if I had any talent at it.”
“Does anybody have any real talent at it besides artists?” Regina asked. “I know that we are all supposed to learn drawing and such but I do not know a single lady who is actually accomplished at it who was not also pursuing it as a profession.”
Harrison shook himself, as if he had been in a daze. “Yes, well. Perhaps it is time that we retire? I think that some tea will be in order and then we shall get started on the cards again.”
“Cards again, Harrison, you will run the poor girl ragged,” Cora protested. “Is there not some other way that you two could occupy your time together?”
“Miss Regina asked me to teach her,” Harrison replied. Was it just Regina’s imagination or was his tone a little rougher than usual?
“Very well then,” Cora said, giving in. “Lay on, Macduff.”
They walked back through the park. Harrison commented that he should like to make this a daily thing. They could go to the colleges and the art museums, and other places besides the park. But an outing, yes, an outing a day would be good for Regina, it was agreed.
Regina tried to figure out what had changed about him. It wasn’t something that she could easily put a name to. It was simply as if, for a moment, a veil had been lifted. The veil was back in place now but the fact that she had seen it at all and now knew that it was there made her see him differently.
She shook herself. She was being ridiculous. What kind of flights of fancy was she giving herself over to? Time to focus back on the cards.
If only she could erase that one expression from her mind: the moment when she had bent over the flower and had been laughing. The look on Harrison’s face in that moment…
She could not forget it. No matter how hard she tried.
Chapter Twenty-One
Thomas braced himself against his dresser and tried very hard to remember the reasons that he was a good person.
He had never murdered anyone, that was a start. Otherwise he was having a hard time coming up with reasons.
He could not be falling for Regina. He could not.
For one thing, how could he possibly be falling for someone who was eight years younger than he was? Eight!
Yes, of course, he knew men all the time that had fallen for much younger women and married them. He knew of a gentleman of ten thousand a year who had recently married a woman seven years his junior. It was not at all uncommon.
But Thomas had never been fully comfortable with the idea, personally. It was part of why he had liked Bridget so much. Like. Likes her, present tense!
H
e liked that Bridget was much closer to his age. He had been surprised that nobody had managed to capture her attention yet. He was sure that there were plenty of eligible men who would make good partners that had shown an interest in her.
Still, one man’s loss was another man’s gain, and he had been eager to make himself known to her.
Regina, though… he was finding that he liked her more than he had ever liked any woman before. It concerned him, how much he enjoyed her company. He was happy when she was happy. Her unhappiness magnified his. It gnawed at him like an empty stomach when he hadn’t eaten all day.
It was why he took her on long walks through the park and to the theatre. He knew that he didn’t have to. It wasn’t at all a part of their bargain.
He did it because he wanted to introduce her to the world. He wanted her to smile and to indulge in arts and culture and life. It was clear to him that despite the best intentions—for he knew that someone such as Bridget Hartfield could only have had the best of intentions—Regina had gotten the short end of the stick.
Someone like Regina needed to be introduced to people slowly and in intimate settings. The way to make her enjoy society was to take her to outings that piqued her interest such as the College of the Masters where people studied drawing.
Taking her to balls where she became easily overwhelmed did her more harm than good. It made her panic. She was either too overwhelmed to speak or blurted out the wrong thing.
Then to compound that, the natural gossip mill did its work. People spoke about her. They talked of how quiet she was or how awkward she was. And so Regina grew more afraid and more quiet in response.
It was a vicious cycle.
Thomas, however, had seen Regina blossom. She grew happier and more confident each day. He took her to Miss Eliza’s house, or Lord Quentin’s, and watched her converse easily.
She had firm opinions about the theatre and the plays they saw there. She was beginning to enjoy opera although that had taken some work. And she loved learning about art.
He was even getting her to enjoy their walks in the park. Regina had been right in protesting that she was not an outdoors sort of person. But the parks, Thomas had reasoned, were more contained and better kept than wild fields in the countryside.
He loved watching how she grew happier and more confident. It made him happy to see her.
But the more happy it made him, the more aware he became of their connection. He was more intimate with her than he should be. She relied on him too much.
It scared him, honestly. He had not truly given his heart to anyone since he had lost his parents—first his mother and then his father. He hadn’t had time for one thing.
Now that his fortune was back and he could move about society freely, he knew that it was expected that he take a wife. And he had been planning to take one.
He had thought that he had found the perfect companion in Bridget. He had thought that he loved her. And now he was starting to realize that he’d had no idea what love was.
How could he have confused simple attraction and regard for love? How could he have thought that his enjoyment of Bridget’s company and his respect for her accomplishments were anything close to the intense pleasure that he felt when around Regina?
Regina, of course, must never find out. It would put her in a most cruel position. He wouldn’t be accepting Bridget as payment of course. Now that he knew he did not love her then he could not propose to her. He would force neither of them into a loveless marriage.
But if Regina found out… she would feel beholden to him. He knew that she admired him and looked up to him. He knew that he must be as a brother or father to her. Regina’s father hadn’t, as far as he knew, been all that hands on with her.
It was a pity. The poor man was clearly entrapped by his addiction. Hopefully all of this would help to cure him of it. But it would take time and diligence.
Regina, though, had no real father as consequence. She had no real mother either but only Bridget as a substitute. It was natural that she would look up to Thomas when he was taking care of her and mentoring her like this.
If he told her about his feelings, she would feel as though she had to marry him. It would be out of a sense of duty. For how could she love him?
How could she love a man who had accepted her sister’s unwilling hand as payment for helping her? It was a cad move. A rake’s move. And he had done it.
To say that he felt shame was like telling a dying man that he was feeling poorly. Not even having to play cards in order to win his family’s fortune back had brought shame upon him in this manner.
No, Regina could not love him. But she was an honorable girl. She would marry him out of duty. And then where would they be? She would grow to hate him in time. He was certain of it.
She might even find another. She would find another and not be able to have them. He knew that Regina would never even think to cheat upon her spouse. She was loyal and followed the rules. The fact that she was skirting so close to disaster to save her family was eating her up inside. He could see it in her eyes.
No, he wouldn’t trap her in a loveless marriage… loveless on her part, at least… and then keep her there, unhappy, resenting him.
But God, how he longed for her. He wanted to be able to kiss her hand. He wanted to tell her how he loved it when she opened up and teased him. He wanted to tell her that she looked beautiful.
He knew that Regina didn’t think that she was beautiful. He could see why she had come to that conclusion. Her quiet personality and subdued posture meant that people did not immediately notice her. She tended to withdraw into herself around people.
But while Bridget was a beauty, and he had seen Natalie and Elizabeth and knew that they were also lovely, Regina could stand shoulder to shoulder with them and feel no shame. She actually looked a lot like Bridget, except for her eyes.
Regina had warm, solid brown eyes. They looked like the kind that you could just sink into. When you looked into them you knew that you could trust her.
Her pale skin and darling freckles only added to it. She looked decadently elfin. He loved it, far more than he had liked any other more statuesque beauties. And that included Bridget.
If only he could say the things to her that bubbled up in his chest. If only he could find a way to tell her that he would always keep her safe. That he would do any number of ridiculous things to make her smile.
He would keep taking her to the park and the museum for the rest of his life if that was what would please her. He would buy her dresses and shower her with jewelry. But most of all he would make her feel confident.
Thomas wanted Regina to see herself as he saw her. And he wanted her to be able to walk into a room with her head held high because of it.
He wanted more intimate things as well of course. He especially wanted to show her the Sky Room, the master bedroom. It was done up in blues all over and was so calming. He knew that Regina would love it. He wanted to kiss her everywhere and dance with her and hold her in his arms.
But above all of that, yes, he wanted her to have confidence.
Thomas stared at himself in the mirror above the dresser. His hair was in disarray from running his hands through it in frustration. He set about fixing it. He must look presentable.
If he could end this whole affair with Regina possessing the confidence that she deserved then he would be content. Would he be happy? No, he didn’t think so.
He rather suspected that since it had taken love so long to come, it would take a long time in going away. Perhaps an even longer time in coming back in a different form.
But it didn’t matter about him. He didn’t have to marry. Regina did. She would need to find someone.
With her newfound confidence, he was sure that she would. He hoped that she would. He wanted her to be happy even if that meant she wasn’t by his side.
His Puck. Did she know that he truly meant it when he said that? That he meant mine? That he meant stay b
y my side, little fairy?
She could not. How could she? She saw nothing in him but a careful guardian and that was how it should be.
Yes, if he could end this with Regina confident in herself, then he would be content. Satisfied, even. He could watch her from the sidelines. And he’d find someone else in time, someone he could tolerate well enough who could bear him a child to continue the family line.
Now was the time for setting aside his torment. He was a man. Not some Gothic hero or the star of a play. He was a regular man and he did what was needed and he certainly did not waste his time pining over things that could not be.
Just as his father could not handle finances better. Just as his mother could not live longer. So Regina could not be his. It was simple. It was fact.
Crying over it wasn’t going to solve anything, so why bother? Actions were what mattered.
He had bargained her sister for his aid and that had been wrong. Furthermore, Regina only saw him as a brother. Those two facts could not be denied so why bother with denying them?
Enough, now.
Thomas composed himself and left the room.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Regina was starting to hate shuffling cards.
In fact, whoever had invented shuffling cards could be run over in a carriage accident and she would be perfectly happy.
As the deck once again spilled out of her hands, she let out a swear.
“Now where would a sweet girl like you learn a word like that?”
She startled, turning to find Harrison lounging in the doorway. He had changed into another pair of trousers and a shirt, although he still did away with his jacket and waistcoat.
“I can’t seem to keep them from falling out of my hands,” she admitted.
“It can be hard, with your smaller hands,” Harrison admitted. He walked over and sat down next to her. “Here, I’ll show you.”