Chapter 9

The marchioness thought the idea of a boat ride on the lake a quite splendid one.

“I would not have thought of it so early in the year,” she said. “Though I don’t know why not. It is a beautiful day, and it is not as if you are planning to swim. At least, I hope you are not planning to swim.” She looked at Lord Beresford.

He grinned. “Someone might be pitched in headfirst if he misbehaves,” he said. “But no, Aunt, we are not planning to swim.”

“Anyway, Joshua,” she said, “it is good of you and Rosamund to agree to go along to chaperon Annabelle and Justin.”

He laughed. “It is the other way around, actually, Aunt,” he said. “They are to chaperon us.”

“Then they have my sincerest sympathy,” the marchioness said. “They never used to arrive home, Justin, without a couple of torn sleeves or hems between the two of them and an assortment of cuts and bruises and some guilty confession to make. Once they had chased a poor sheep into a hedge and could not get it out again.”

“I suffered a great deal more pain than the sheep,” Lord Beresford said, “when my father got hold of me. I remember quarreling with Rosamund because all she got from March was a scolding.”

“But I would not have dreamed of tormenting the poor creature without you to egg me on, Josh,” Rosamund said, batting her eyelids at him.

“Oh, no,” he said, “never. I hear you are a candidate for instant angelhood when you die, Rosamund.”

“From the same source as you heard of Leonard’s age, I suppose,” she said.

It was decided at the breakfast table that Valerie Newton and her fiancé, Mr. Michael Weaver, would go boating too so that they could take two boats instead of loading down the one.

Annabelle did not really want to go, Rosamund discovered when they went upstairs to get ready. The girl wandered into Rosamund’s bedchamber when the maid was still dressing the latter’s hair.

“It is far too early in the year to go boating,” she said.

“But it is a lovely day, Annabelle,” Rosamund said, “and quite calm.”

“There is a walk of a whole mile to the lake,” Annabelle said.

Rosamund laughed. “I think I can drag my aged bones that far,” she said. “I’m sure you can too.”

“I have never really enjoyed boats,” the girl said.

Rosamund dismissed the maid and turned around on the stool to look at her niece. She frowned. “For a girl who is to be betrothed in less than a week’s time,” she said, “you do not seem very happy, Annabelle.”

“Because I do not want to go boating?” Annabelle said. “How silly.”

“He is a very handsome man,” Rosamund said, “and very amiable. You do like him, don’t you?”

“Lord Wetherby?” Annabelle said. “Of course I do, Aunt Rosa. And even if I did not, I trust the judgment of Mama and Papa and Grandmama and Grandpapa.”

Rosamund did not pursue the point. She drew on a warm pelisse and a bonnet and led the way downstairs. It was just Annabelle’s nature, she supposed, to show very little enthusiasm. She had scarcely seen the girl smile since her return from Lincolnshire.

And yet she was to marry Justin. How could she not smile every moment of every day? But it was not a thought to be pursued.

Valerie linked her arm through Rosamund’s as they left the house. “Do walk with me, Rosamund,” she said, “and tell me what you have been doing for the last eight or nine years. Goodness, is it really that long? I’m a veritable old maid, aren’t I? It’s a good thing that Michael did not realize that.”

The sky was a clear blue. The grass had lost its winter lack of luster and was a fresh green. Trees were budding into the bright green of early spring. The sun gave warmth, tempered by the freshness of the season. It was a perfect day for the outdoors. A perfect day in which to be in the country walking and boating and conversing with friends. It was a day to be enjoyed.

Rosamund ignored her tiredness. She had slept only in fits and starts the night before, and when she had dozed off she had had vivid and bizarre dreams. But she felt better this morning. She had adjusted her mind to the situation in which she found herself.

She had considered leaving Brookfield in order to return to Dennis’s house or to go somewhere else—anywhere else. But she could not do so. Dennis had come all the way to Lincolnshire to fetch her home so that she would be able to be part of these celebrations. And if she avoided the awkwardness this time, it would have to be faced numerous times in the future. Besides, she could not afford to go somewhere like Bath or Tunbridge Wells.

She had to stay. And if she had to stay, then she would have to see Justin daily. And soon—in less than a week, in fact—she would have to listen to the announcement of his betrothal and probably the plans for his wedding. Those were simple, unchangeable facts. There was no point at all in fighting against them or in giving herself sleepless nights or in pining and remembering and indulging in what-ifs. No point at all.

And so that morning she had smiled at him and bidden him a good morning and taken a seat across from him at the breakfast table. She had looked directly into his eyes whenever she had spoken to him or he to her. She had conversed determinedly with everyone else and even flirted a little with Josh. And she had survived. The worst was over and she would continue to survive.

The Earl of Wetherby walked with Annabelle.

“Early spring,” he said. “Is it not a lovely thought that winter is over at last?”

“Yes,” she said.

“The trees are in bud,” he said, “and the birds out in force.”

“Yes,” she said.

A one-sided conversation always lacked a great deal in profundity, he thought, looking down at her. He wondered if after a few days she would relax enough to smile at him. Strangely, he thought suddenly, he could not remember ever seeing the girl smile.

She looked up and met his eyes, seemed to realize that there was a conversation to sustain, and began to talk.

“Yes, I do love spring,” she said. “Aunt Rosa and I found some snowdrops in the grass before we came to Grandpapa’s. I love the roses later in the year. I wish it could always be summer and the roses blooming.”

She was really very lovely, he thought, as they chattered on about nothing in particular. More classically beautiful than Rosamund, with a fuller figure. But then, of course, she did not have that intriguing upper lip that Rosamund had, the first feature that had attracted him to her. And she did not have Rosamund’s dancing eyes and ready tongue and ever present humor. She was far more dignified than her aunt— and far less fun.

But Lord Wetherby caught the direction of his thoughts and returned them to the girl on his arm and the conversation in which they were involved.

Annabelle tried to reorganize the way they were to divide themselves into two groups when they came to the boats, he noted with interest. When Josh mentioned that he and Rosamund would come with them, she spoke up.

“Perhaps Aunt Rosa and Valerie still wish to talk,” she said.

Valerie laughed. “I think we are talked out for now,” she said. “And we have been unsociable to everyone else for long enough.”

“You will wish to be with your sister,” Annabelle said, turning to the earl.

“We see quite enough of each other every day of the year in town,” Lady Sitwell said, punching her brother playfully on the arm.

The arrangements remained the way Josh had organized them. He could have wished Annabelle had had her way, Lord Wetherby thought as he handed first her and then Rosamund into the boat—Josh was busy teasing Valerie about something. But what had been the girl’s reason? Did she not like her aunt for some reason? Did she suspect the truth?

No,it could not be that. Neither of them had given the smallest sign except that conversation at the pianoforte the evening before. But then it would have seemed perfectly natural for him to talk with Rosamund for a few minutes. They were guests at the same house party.

It was decided that Lord Wetherby would row along the lake and Josh row back later. It was a very beautiful setting, the earl thought, looking about him at the long, narrow lake and the high wooded banks that almost surrounded it. The trees were in delicate bud. The water was a darker shade of blue than the sky.

“Why is it, I wonder,” Lord Beresford said, “that for cows the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence and for humans the banks are always more picturesque on the other side of the lake? Shall we land and climb to the top?”

“Will you not tire your leg too much?” Rosamund asked.

He laughed. “Can’t you tell that Rosamund has been a wife, Justin?” he said. “She is just like a mother hen.”

“Pardon me for trying to be the voice of reason,” she said. “By all means let us land. Perhaps you would care to climb the bank and run back around to where we started, Josh.”

“A tempting idea,” he said, “but it is my turn to row back.” He turned to hail the other boat and point to the bank.

A few minutes later they were all stepping out onto dry land again.

Valerie and her betrothed decided not to climb, but to stroll along the bank beside the water. Lord and Lady Sitwell took a blanket from the bottom of their boat, spread it on the bank, and sat down to admire the view. Annabelle joined them.

“What?” Lord Beresford said. “Too aged to join us in a climb, are you, Annabelle? I never heard the like. Perhaps we should have a litter brought from the house to carry you back home from the other bank, should we?”

“The view is very lovely,” she said. “I want to sit here and enjoy it.”

“I shall stay with you,” Lord Wetherby said with a smile. For some reason Annabelle was not enjoying herself. He wished that he had refused to join the boating trip and arranged to spend some time alone with her. “You are right about the view. It is quite magnificent.”

“No,” she said, “please don’t stay on my account. I know you wish to climb, my lord. I shall be quite happy here, conversing with Lord and Lady Sitwell.”

He looked down at her, considering. Was it his presence that made her uncomfortable? It was something he must find out within the next few days. Though what he was to do if it really were so he did not know. “Very well, then,” he said. "We will not be long.”

Lord Beresford had taken Rosamund’s arm through his. “You know,” he said, “the time was when I would have challenged you to a race to the top. I would have beaten you, too, but I would have had to run the whole distance to do it. Now of course, you are no longer a young hoyden but a dignified lady. I daresay you will have to be helped inch by inch to the top. Take her other arm, Justin, in case she drags me to the bottom with her.”

“If it’s a race you want, Josh,” she said, drawing her arm away from his and gathering up her skirt, “you have it.” And before he could realize her intention, she was on her way, running up the bank, dodging trees and concentrating on not losing her footing.

Lord Beresford passed her eventually, but only when they were almost at the top. They both collapsed onto the coarse grass there, laughing and panting and gazing down on the Earl of Wetherby, who was striding up toward them.

He was feeling like a staid old man, he thought, and like a jealous schoolboy who has been deliberately excluded from a game. He thought back to a certain snowball fight—only a month before. And he closed his mind to the memory again.

“Look at him,” Lord Beresford said. “He is approaching his thirtieth birthday, I have heard, Rosamund. Poor gentleman. It shows, doesn’t it?”

“But the lady did not challenge me to a race,” the earl said, seating himself at Rosamund’s other side. “For which I shall be eternally thankful. You missed seeing all the snowdrops and primroses among the trees.”

“Oh, did we?” Rosamund said, looking at him wide-eyed and with genuine sorrow.

“We will view them on the way down,” Lord Beresford said. “At the moment I am concerned with the painful necessity of trying to pump all the missing air back into my lungs.”

“It was a good idea of yours to come up here,” the earl said. “I’ll wager that if we stood on that higher piece of ground over there we would be able to see the house.”

“Do you know,” Lord Beresford said, drawing up one knee and resting his forearm across it, “that girl ought not to have been allowed to get away with it—sitting on a blanket for all the world like a sedate and middle-aged matron. We should have insisted.”

“I find it hard to justify insisting that someone else enjoy herself,” the earl said. “Annabelle probably gets no joy from feeling hot and sticky and breathless.”

“Well, she should,” Lord Beresford said, rising resolutely to his feet. “I’m going back down for her. I’ll pick her some primroses on the way back up.” He grinned and was gone before either of his companions could protest.

“Oh, dear,” Rosamond said, “Annabelle will not like this.”

“Fortunately,” the earl said, “my brother-in-law is down there to wrestle Josh to the ground or toss him into the lake if he tries to use coercion.”

Despite the chorus of bird song, the silence around them suddenly seemed very oppressive. Damn Josh, Lord Wetherby thought. This was the very type of situation that he had most wished to avoid.

He looked at her tentatively, to find her looking back at him. They both smiled rather ruefully.

“Would you say it is a conspiracy?” he asked.

“It seems very like it, doesn’t it?” she said.

There was a disturbing sense of familiarity, just as if there had been no intervening month since their last meeting. He looked down to the lake below them. “You found your brother quite quickly,” he said. “You arrived home safely?”

“Yes,” she said. “And you? How long did you stay?”

“I left the following day,” he said.

“You had been intending to stay for a week,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “I did not want to see the snowmen melt away or the snow angel disappear.”

In fact, he had been very careful not even to glance their way except that once after her departure.

That was the worst aspect of the whole episode, he thought. If there had been only the lovemaking, it would have been easy to put it in the past—a memory to be set beside many such memories. But there had been so much more than the lovemaking.

There had been that silly snowball fight and the foolish competition with the snowmen. And her careful angel and his failed one, and her laughter. There had been a great deal of laughter.

“Let’s go and see what can be seen from that higher point, shall we?” he asked, getting to his feet and reaching down a hand for hers.

Her hand was warm. Her fingers curled firmly about his. He had been wearing gloves when he had pulled her up from the snow after exerting the penalty of a three-minute kiss. He released her hand almost as an afterthought.

Oh no, he did not want this. He had come to Brookfield in all good faith to focus his mind and his attention and his affections on Annabelle. He had fought a hard and painful battle for a whole month to persuade himself that what had happened with Rosamund had been merely what they had intended it to mean. It had been a brief and pleasurable affair. And he had won that battle, or had been winning it. He neither needed nor wanted this.

They walked side by side along the top of the bank until they came to the higher point. He looked back across the lake, shading his eyes—and forgot again.

“Yes, I thought so,” he said. “Look, Rosamund.” He set one hand on her shoulder, his head close to hers and pointed across the lake and between two large clumps of trees to where the house was nestled in a hollow, surrounded by green grass. The formal gardens could not be identified from that distance.

“That means,” she said, “that from the house we could see this exact spot.”

Only Rosamund could even consider something so absurd. He grinned. “Something we would all wish to do,” he said. “It is such a distinguished spot. A little piece of unmarked wilderness.”

And a place where they had stood together, his hand on her shoulder, surrounded by spring and the singing of birds. He knew suddenly what she had meant.

“Actually,” he said, the smile gone from his face, “it is a little piece of wilderness that I am glad I have not missed.”

He wanted to turn her into his arms, to hold her against him. Not with passion. Just for the feeling of closeness again. The way he had held her on his lap that last evening when all her memories about her husband’s final illness had come pouring out. He had felt closer to her on that occasion than he had ever felt to any human being. He wanted to hold her like that once more. Just for a few minutes.

He removed his hand from her shoulder and turned around.

And the next moment he had forgotten again. Both his hands came back to her shoulders and turned her.

“Look, Rosamund,” he said.

He could feel her draw in a deep breath and let it out on an “Ooh. ” She leaned back against him. There was a grassy clearing among the trees on the downward slope behind them. The clearing was carpeted with blooming daffodils.

“ ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud,’ ” he said. “ ‘That floats on high o’er vales and hills.’ ”

She turned her head and looked into his face, smiling brightly. “Mr. Wordsworth,” she said. “You know his poetry?”

He smiled back at her. “ ‘When all at once I saw a crowd,’ ” he said, “A host, of golden daffodils.”

“ ‘Beside the lake, beneath the trees,’ ” she said, “ ‘Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.’ ”

“Except that they are not exactly beside the lake,” he said, “and there is no breeze today. You like his poetry too?” 

“Leonard bought me a volume,” she said, “and then laughed at me because I loved the poems so much that I learned many of them by heart.”

He released her shoulders and took her by the hand so that they could run down the slope together. She was laughing. When he let go of her hand, she stooped down to cup a bloom in her hands and to bury her nose against the golden trumpet.

“Oh, the smell of spring,” she said, closing her eyes and lifting her face. “I have never seen so many daffodils all together, Justin. Have you?”

“No,” he said. “But this must be nothing in comparison with Wordsworth’s ten thousand.”

“I think perhaps he exaggerated,” she said. “I can imagine looking back on this and remembering that there were thousands of daffodils here.” She held both arms out to the sides and twirled about, her face held up to the sun.

“Perhaps there are,” he said. And he began to pick some of them and lay them in her arms. Gold against the blue of her pelisse and dress. Sun against the sky. He wanted to load her down with them until she collapsed beneath them. And he would follow her down and kiss her amongst all the blooms and all the smell of spring.

“Oh, glorious,” she said, smelling them again and reaching out her free hand for more. And then she sobered, and her hand fell to her side. “These are for Annabelle, are they?”

He paused in the act of picking another bloom, his back to her. God! “Those are yours,” he said. “The ones I am picking now are for Annabelle.”

“Thank you,” she said.

Where were Annabelle and Josh? It seemed that he and Rosamund had been alone for a long time, though he supposed that in reality not many minutes had passed.

Rosamund returned to the top of the rise and looked back along the bank. She raised her free arm.

“Over here,” she called. “Come and see what we have found.”

Suddenly, and quite beyond reason, the Earl of Wetherby almost hated her. Or himself. Yes, it was himself he hated.

Annabelle had asked Lady Sitwell about her two sons, both of whom were at school. She was listening carefully to the description of the two boys who were to be her nephews.

“Gracious!” Lady Sitwell said as there was a loud crackling of twigs and undergrowth from behind them. “Are they back already? It was hardly worth going.”

But it was only Lord Beresford who came striding down to them. His hand was outstretched to Annabelle.

“Come along,” he said. “We decided that no one below the age of thirty should be allowed to go without exercise. Up you get, Annabelle.” He grinned at her.

“Thank you,” she said, “but I am talking with Lady Sitwell.”

“You can do that for the next two weeks,” he said. “Besides,” he winked at Lord Sitwell, “even couples who have been married forever occasionally like time to themselves.”

Annabelle flushed slightly and allowed herself to be helped to her feet.

“Take my arm,” Lord Beresford said with a mock bow. “I promise not to let you fall off any precipices.”

“I am not afraid of falling,” she said gravely. She ignored his arm and began to climb the slope.

Lord Beresford looked after her, shook his head, and followed.

“Annabelle,” he said, “have you ever in your life smiled?”

“Of course I have,” she said.

“Let me see, then.” He caught her by the arm, stopping her progress, and turned her to face him. “Let me see you smile.”

“Oh,” she said, “one cannot smile for no reason at all.”

“I can,” he said, suiting action to words. “Let me see yours. Come on, Annabelle. There is only me to see.”

“Please let go of my arm,” she said, her eyes on his hand.

He sighed and let her go. “You are by far the prettiest of my cousins, you know,” he said, “or second cousins, to be quite accurate. I have a feeling you could be a staggering beauty if you smiled.

“How absurd!” she said. “I do smile.”

“When?” he asked. “When you see something pretty? There are some primroses, look. Justin said there were some. Rosamund and I were too busy racing each other up to notice. Shall I pick you some? Will you smile at me if I do?”

“Don’t be silly, Joshua,” she said. “I am not a child to be coaxed.”

“When someone tells a joke?” he asked. “I have a storehouse of them. If I dredge up one suitable for a lady’s ears, will you smile?”

“Are we going to stand here?” she asked. “I thought we were going to the top.”

“When you are tickled?” he said. “Do you smile then?” He reached out for her.

But she jumped back and held out her hands in front of her. “Don’t touch me!” she said.

He set his head to one side and regarded her closely.

“What is it, Annabelie?” he asked her quietly, serious for once. “Are you unhappy about something?”

“No,” she said.

“Don’t you like this marriage that has been arranged for you?” he asked. “You have had forever to get used to the idea, haven’t you? How old were you when your grandmother matched you with Justin?”

“Nine years old,” she said. “And of course I do not dislike the idea.”

“Look,” he said. “There are some snowdrops. Sit down for a minute and I’ll pick you some.”

She sat.

“I’m surprised she hasn’t had her eye on me before now,” he said. “Me being her husband’s heir and all that. I have been in fear and dread for the last few years that she is going to notice that Christobel is growing up and in need of a husband.”

“Don’t you like Christobel?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I used to think it unfair that she was not the one to be matched with Justin,” he said. “I wouldn’t have minded you, Annabelle. However, as it has turned out your grandmother has not yet come to realize how splendid it would be to marry me off to one of her granddaughters. Perhaps her matchmaking urge came to an end with you.”

Annabelle looked down at the fragile white flowers he had picked for her. “Yes,” she said.

“Count your blessings,” he said, sitting beside her and reclining on one elbow. “If it had not been Justin, Annabelle, you might have been landed with me. Then you would have had something to mope about. I teased you to death all through your childhood and girlhood, didn’t I? You never could stand me.”

She touched the petals of one of the flowers with one light fingertip. “I was so much younger than you,” she said. “Does your leg still hurt?”

He laughed. “A diplomatic change of subject,” he said. “Sometimes. In cold or damp weather. When I abuse it.”

“Like today?” she asked.

“I will probably have to return to my room when we get back to the house to bite on a bullet,” he said, grinning at her. He watched her touching the flowers for a few silent moments. “Why did you ask?”

She shrugged. “We were here at Grandpapa’s when word came that you had been wounded,” she said. “More than a month passed before there was further word.”

“And you wept the month away in agonized solitude, did you?” he said.

“I was concerned about you,” she said, “of course.” 

“Of course,” he said, his eyes twinkling at her. “My injury was minor, Annabelle. Very minor.”

“And yet you still limp,” she said.

“To attract the sympathy of ladies like yourself,” he said, getting to his feet. “Justin will think I have run off with you. And he will be planning to abscond with Rosamund just to spite us both.”

“I don’t think his lordship would think any such thing,” she said, “or do any such thing.”

He smiled down at her and helped her to her feet. “One day,” he said, “I am going to make you smile, Annabelle. I have just made it the goal and ambition of my life.”

“How absurd you are,” she said.

“How absurd you are,” he mimicked, taking her by the chin and laughing down into her face. “I wouldn’t mind having a guinea for every time you have said that to me during our lifetime, Annabelle.”

They reached the top a short while later and were immediately hailed by Rosamund, who was standing on a higher rise a short distance away, her right arm loaded with daffodils.

Annabelle lost no time in hurrying toward her.