“Yes, it can.”
They sat a moment in silence. A light, cool breeze rustled the trees outside the sitting room window. The weather was pleasant and the sky clear. It was not unlike the afternoon he’d spent looking out over the grounds of Lampton Park, imagining life in such a peaceful place. He would not have imagined then that his own home would have begun to feel so tranquil.
Without warning, the dowager spoke again. “Have you told Arabella that you are in love with her?”
“In love?” The words sputtered out.
She gave his hand a maternal pat. “I have seven sons. I know all too well the symptoms of a young gentleman in love.”
Would his own mother have seen the state of things so clearly? He imagined she would have. And she might have offered him a bit of much-needed advice. Perhaps the dowager would be willing to fill that role, at least for the moment.
“When I left the house party, I knew I had grown very fond of Arabella. Not until her arrival here did I truly realize the depth of my feelings.”
She nodded slowly. “And you haven’t told her as much?”
“That is a task easier said than accomplished. There is a risk there.”
“I know,” she said. “My dear husband and I wasted a great deal of time when we were young not telling each other how we felt. It seemed to us too great a risk.”
“You are telling me to be brave?”
“I am telling you that it is worth it.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Arabella sat on a rough-hewn stone bench a few yards from the road, resting after hours spent walking. She’d doubled back on her path a few times, chosen narrow footpaths, sometimes walking alongside the larger roads. This had always been her escape, her way to breathe. Her troubles never magically disappeared or resolved themselves simply because she’d been away, but being out of reach of those people and circumstances with the power and ability to hurt her was a welcome gift. So she walked. Sometimes all day, and she pretended there was no pain to return to.
The strategy was not proving as effective this time. Her worries were not coming at her from without but from within. Her heart and her mind were at war, and she hadn’t the first idea how to reconcile the very strong arguments they both made.
She loved Linus Lancaster and had reason to believe he might feel the same. Again and again her heart insisted upon that.
Then her mind interrupted with an equally inarguable fact: she had loved a gentleman before, though not at all in the same way as Linus, and what she had needed most from him he hadn’t, in the end, been able to give her. Family stays with family.
The earl had had a family of his own to look after, an estate to run, obligations in London and at his many holdings. That he had made time for her was both a kindness and a sacrifice.
But I needed so much more than his time. She had prayed for an escape more permanent than her daily walks. She’d needed to be able to leave and not return to a home where she was neglected on the best of days, made miserable on the rest. She had been too young and too powerless to save herself. She’d looked to him. But he hadn’t been able to help.
She wondered in all the years since then how much she dared trust the people she cared about, how much to lean on them in her difficulties. If even her beloved earl, who had loved her as no else had, hadn’t helped her when she’d needed him most, however unavoidable that disappointment had been, then whom could she possibly rely upon?
She wiped away the moisture on her cheeks, forcing herself to take a deep breath. These were insecurities she had struggled with all her life. How did one go about shaking free of them? She needed to be able to trust her own judgment but didn’t know how.
She took a long breath, deep enough to lift her shoulders. She straightened her spine. A bit of courage and determination ought not be impossible to come by. The past weeks had seen her face any number of unexpected situations, none of which she’d proven truly disastrous at facing. She could confront her current uncertainties as well.
Yet when she considered the possibility of ending her walk for the day and returning to Linus’s home, her stomach clenched.
It seems I am not as brave as I’d like to believe.
Nearby, a twig snapped. Footsteps crunched the first of the autumn leaves scattered about. Frustration bubbled. It was, no doubt, Dr. Scorseby. He had run her to ground the day before, waxing long and insistent about the inadvisability of her long excursions. He had insisted she cut her walk short. No amount of persistence on her part had been sufficient. In the end, she had done as he’d bade simply to stop the debate. She was not, however, ready to return yet today.
Dr. Scorseby was not the one who stepped into view.
“Linus.” Only his name emerged in her surprise.
“You are a difficult lady to track down.” Without preamble, he sat beside her on the bench. “I have had report of you passing by nearly every home, cottage, shop, and barn throughout the area. You’ve covered miles and miles.”
Her fingers clutched at one another. Her heart hammered against her ribs. “I like to walk.”
He set his hand atop hers, wrapping his fingers around hers, halting their nervous movement. “I know why you walk,” he said quietly. “That is why I have been trying to find you this past three-quarters of an hour.”
“You have been looking for me?”
His gaze held hers for a long moment. “Why does that surprise you?”
“Because . . . because few people ever have.”
He moved his hand enough to intertwine his fingers with hers, and every bit of her melted. “Did the earl?”
She shook her head. “He was always welcoming. If I happened upon him along the river or sought him out after services, he was unfailingly kind and attentive. But I don’t remember him searching me out.” Oh, it hurt to admit it out loud. “It was not a matter of unkindness on his part,” she was quick to specify. “I am simply not the sort of person one thinks of when I am not present.”
“I can assure you that is not the case.”
She wanted to believe him. How did one stop wondering about one’s value when life itself had infused that doubt into nearly every moment?
“Why have you begun walking again?” Linus asked. “The dowager said you had not undertaken such long outings lately.”
“I am attempting to sort through some things.”
He looked straight ahead, though she did not think he was truly focused on anything. “Do those things involve me? Because I have a terrible suspicion that they do.”
“They mostly involve me,” she said.
“Will you come back home, Arabella? The dowager is worried. I am worried.”
Her heart dropped to her feet. “I am causing trouble, aren’t I?”
“Not at all.” He turned and faced her. “We care about you, Arabella. Sometimes caring means worrying. Sometimes caring means chasing after someone when they run away.”
“I’d like to keep walking.”
“You’ve been walking for hours,” he said.
She stood, pacing away from the bench, her hand pulling free of his. “Dr. Scorseby already scolded me for this. Please don’t you do so as well.”
“I wasn’t scolding.” He rose but did not close the distance between them. “I simply don’t wish for you to walk so long and so far that you are too exhausted to return home.”
Home. What home did she truly have? The Park had not proven the place of refuge she had expected. The dower house did not entirely feel like home either. Linus spoke of his home, but it was not hers.
“Arabella?”
As always, her emotions betrayed her. Why was it she could never seem to keep her thoughts and feelings hidden? “I am going to walk a little more.” She didn’t wait for a response but took up her trek again. To her great surprise, Linus walked alongside her
. She eyed him sidelong, unsure what to make of his continued presence. “Are you walking with me?”
“If that is acceptable to you.”
Though solitude had always been an integral part of her daily walks, she found herself perfectly content with this unusual arrangement. “I don’t mind.”
“I am glad.” He smiled at her. “So long as I am out here, I can ignore the ledger that is awaiting me at the house. Balancing the books is not at all my idea of an enjoyable pastime.”
“You will likely think me the strangest creature in all the world, but I do enjoy balancing ledgers.” She glanced at him long enough to catch his look of shock, which brought a laugh bubbling to the surface. “Mine was not an extensive education, but I was taught to keep household accounts. I quite unexpectedly discovered that I liked the undertaking.”
“It seems you and Charlie are cut from the same cloth. That boy is enamored of mathematics.”
“And you are enamored of the sea.” She sighed as if it were a great tragedy. “We all have our oddities.”
“Oddities?” He chuckled low. “A love of the sea is not a quirk; it is an inevitability.”
“I would not know,” she said. “I have never seen the sea.”
Again, his gaze turned surprised, only this time without the theatricality. “Oh, Arabella, you simply must see the ocean. To stand on the shore and look out over the vast expanse of water. There is something both humbling and exhilarating about it. While I was always anxious to board and launch, Evander loved to stand on the shore and simply breathe it all in.”
She knew how difficult speaking of his brother was for him, not unlike her struggle to reflect on the earl and all he’d meant to her. Not wishing for him to be disheartened, she slipped her arm through his as they continued to walk. The physical connection proved comforting to her as well.
“What was it Evander liked most about watching the sea?” she asked.
“The sound of the waves crashing against the shore.” His smile was a fond one, though a little sad. “‘It is as if the ocean is announcing its long-awaited arrival home,’ he would say. I imagine that is why he liked the sound so much. It was a promise that those things that sail out to sea can and will return again.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder, not knowing what she could say to counter the heartache she heard in his voice. His brother, after all, had not come home. “Does the ocean make that same crashing sound when one is out in the midst of it?”
“During storms, it is quite loud,” he said. “But, no, the sound is not the same as it is on shore.”
“The sound of home.”
“No.” The single syllable emerged with almost no volume. “The sound of home was always my family’s voices. It filled my mind and my heart during long voyages. It was what I dreamed of hearing again. But those voices are gone now.”
“Home, for me, was always the sight and sound of the Jonquil brothers larking about on the back lawn of the Park while the earl joined in their fun.” She pushed down the lump in her throat. “Even more so when they invited me to be part of it.”
“If you had lived in this neighborhood, I would have made certain you were part of every bit of mischief my siblings and I undertook.”
Oh, how she adored him. He soothed her worries without being suffocating, knew what she needed to hear without being patronizing. Returning to Nottinghamshire meant likely never seeing him again. The idea pained her deeply.
“And would you have walked with me?” she asked.
“Perhaps you wouldn’t have needed to walk so much. You wouldn’t have been so lonely.”
She wrapped her arm more tightly around his arm, nearly embracing it. “I will be lonely again when I return to the Park. I rather dread it.”
“You will have the dowager for company and Lord and Lady Lampton.”
“It will not be the same,” she whispered.
“No.” He spoke as quietly as she did. “No, it will not be.”
“Will you miss me?” The question would likely have been viewed as overly bold by most of Society, but she knew too little of attachments and fondness to be at all able to guess at his feelings. A direct question seemed her best option.
“I missed you when I left Nottinghamshire,” he said.
“I missed you before you left Nottinghamshire,” she countered.
“Before?” He clearly didn’t understand.
She threw caution to the wind. “You sat with me every day when I was ill. You talked with me and laughed with me. Then, suddenly, I was more like a stranger than a friend. You seldom spoke with me or sat near me. I was the poor relation in the corner again.”
He stopped walking, so she did as well. He moved to face her. “People were gossiping. They were speculating about you and me.”
Oh, the misery of that explanation. “I realize I am comparatively insignificant, but I didn’t think I’d given you reason to be ashamed of me.”
“Arabella.” He took her hands in his, his gaze earnest and pleading. “I could never be ashamed of having you my life. I consider it an honor.”
She struggled to believe that. “Why, then, did the whispers drive you away?”
“I know the power of rumors. If the gossip took hold, we’d have had no choice but to . . . I did not wish for either of us to be forced into a situation not of our choosing.”
That was a better explanation than the one she had imagined. “You didn’t object to me personally?”
He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers. “I didn’t object in the least.”
She tried to breathe but wasn’t entirely successful. She had dreamed of his affection. The realization of those hopes was proving almost overwhelming.
“I have something for you,” he said.
“You do?”
He released her hands and fished about in the pocket of his outer coat. They’d stopped beneath the wide branches of an old oak tree. The air was cool. Tiny pockets of light broke through the leaves above. After a moment’s searching, he presented her with a small drawstring bag made of simple muslin. It was tiny enough to fit in the palm of her hand.
“This is for me?” Her heart thudded against her ribs. “Thank you.”
“You don’t even know what it is yet.”
She lifted a single shoulder. “I happen to be very fond of muslin bags.”
Linus leaned one shoulder against the thick tree trunk and watched, waiting.
The bag was light and nearly flat. Whatever was inside was not large. What could it possibly be? She tugged the top of the bag open and glanced inside. She couldn’t see anything.
She met his eye once more. “Is it really just the bag?”
He laughed. “No.”
Arabella turned up her palm and tipped the contents of the bag onto her hand. Two beads, deep green and no larger than the tip of her smallest finger, poured out.
“They’re jade,” he said. “I saw them in a shop years ago in a port in the east. I can’t say exactly what I, a then fifteen-year-old boy, saw in a pair of jade beads, but I returned to them again and again. Most of the baubles I picked up over the years were subsequently gifted to my sisters.”
“But not these?” Had his sisters not wanted them? Arabella couldn’t imagine they wouldn’t; the deep-green stone beads were gorgeous.
“There was always something special about these beads, though I never could say with certainty what.”
She closed her fingers around them, pressing the spheres into her palm. “I can’t possibly accept them.”
“Why not?”
She set her fist, the beads clasped inside, against her thudding heart. “They are special to you.”
He pulled away from the tree and closed the gap between them. He leaned close and dropped his voice to a whisper. “You are special to me, Arabella Hamp
ton. You have been from the moment I met you. I suspect you have been since before I met you, since I was fifteen and standing in a shop on the other side of the world knowing without realizing that somewhere, someday I would meet you.”
She looked up into his eyes, very nearly the color of the beads. Sincerity filled his gaze. He ran his hand the length of her arm. “I am not good at expressing what is in my heart—I never have been—but these were always meant for something greater than a mere token. I held on to them for years, waiting . . . for you.”
He slipped his hand around hers. “I missed you while we were apart. And when you return to Nottinghamshire, I will miss you again until I am able to be there with you and see you again.”
“You would come to Nottinghamshire?”
He raised her hand to his lips. “If need be, I would sail the world to be with you.”
“And would you walk with me?”
“Every day.” He kissed her fingers. “And would you make paper boats with me?”
She laughed lightly. “Every day.”
His arms wrapped around her, pulling her fully into his embrace. “Will you wear my beads?”
“People might whisper,” she said.
“We’ve time yet before you must return, time enough to decide our own futures. Then they can whisper all they’d like; we will know what we want.”
Arabella leaned into his embrace, fully wrapped in his arms. They had time, yes, but she already knew her heart.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Arabella eyed her reflection in the mirror hanging in her bedchamber. On either side of the earl’s bead were Linus’s. She ran her fingers over all three. Life had left her so often questioning if she was loved or even cared for. Yet here was a reminder of Linus’s affection.
She smiled to herself. The man she loved cared about her in return. Years of heartache eased at the simple but profound realization. She, who had always longed to be loved, could clearly see that possibility in her future at last.
“Shall we go down to dinner?” Mater stood in the doorway.
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