“Now if I just had two arms,” he said, “I could play the complete gallant and lift you down.”
“But then,” she said, placing her right hand in his left and holding up her skirt with the other, “I would miss the chance of descending like a queen, Mr. Butler.”
She became a very undignified queen, though, when the bottom step wobbled precariously under her weight and she came rushing down to the ground and stopped only just in time to prevent herself from colliding headlong with him. She laughed and looked up into his face-only a few inches away from her own.
Deja vu struck hard, like a fist to her lower abdomen. It was like the scene up on the rocks between two beaches all over again.
His left eye looked very dark, very intense, his unsmiling mouth very beautiful. She could feel his breath against her face. She could feel his heat along the full length of her body. For one dizzying, mad moment she swayed a little closer to him. She half closed her eyes.
And then she pulled sharply away and laughed again, removing her hand from his as she did so.
“Thank you, sir,” she said lightly. “I would doubtless have come to grief if you had not been holding on to me. I suspect my pride and my dignity would have been hurt more than any other part of me, but pride and dignity must also be preserved.”
“I must have that step seen to,” he said.
They were seated side by side in the gig a few moments later and proceeding down into the shallow bowl that held the house and park of Ty Gwyn.
She had almost touched him again, Anne thought-not just his hand, but him. She had almost kissed him-and he had known it. He was seated rigidly beside her now, aware that she had shrunk from him. But he would have misunderstood the reason.
It was not him. Not really.
It was her.
She was terrified of physical intimacy.
But perhaps he was as relieved as she that she had turned away. She was not a virgin. She had been raped. She had a child. All of those facts might well make him feel a revulsion quite equal to anything she could feel about him.
But she did not believe he felt revulsion.
She looked about the meadow and ahead to the house and gardens and tried to feel simply happy again.
There were no servants resident at Ty Gwyn. Sydnam did see to it, though, that the garden was regularly tended and the house aired and cleaned. As the Duke of Bewcastle’s steward he would have done so even if he had had no personal interest in the property. But perhaps he would not have come so often in person to see that the work had been done.
He drove the gig into the stable block, unhitched the horse, and gave it oats and water while Miss Jewell looked on-he had declined her help. He left the picnic basket where it was-they could decide later where they wanted to take it.
He felt curiously reluctant to take her into the house. Or perhaps it was just the opposite. He badly wanted to show it to her, but he wanted the time to be right. When they first arrived, he was still feeling somewhat discomposed after the incident at the stile, when he had almost kissed her. What a horrible faux pas that would have been. Even as it was he had felt her withdrawal and had been powerfully reminded of how foolish it would be to allow himself to fall in love with her.
Sometimes, because they had grown to be friends, because he was generally so comfortable in her presence, he forgot that there could never be anything but friendship between him and any woman.
For the present he did not want to be alone inside any building with Miss Anne Jewell, who looked more than usually appealing today in her sprigged-muslin high-waisted dress and her floppy-brimmed straw bonnet, both trimmed with blue ribbons, though he had seen both before on a number of occasions. And she was looking bronzed and healthy from her weeks at Glandwr, though she might be less than delighted if he remarked upon the fact-ladies generally did not like to have bronzed complexions. He did not believe he would ever forget the sight of her, standing on the bottom bar of the gate as it swung open and looking up to laugh at him, like a carefree girl.
It had torn at his heart.
He took her walking about the park, along the rustic trail through the trees, across the open meadow, avoiding sheep and sheep droppings, admiring the daisies and buttercups and clover that were absent from the more carefully cropped lawns above the ha-ha, across the lawns themselves, first to the back of the house, where rows of vegetables grew even though the house was empty, and then to the front and the colorful flower beds, in which he was pleased to observe that there were no weeds, and the rose arbor.
He was glad to sit down there-his right knee was aching after walking almost nonstop for more than an hour. The air here was heavy with the perfumes of dozens of roses that grew in beds and trailed over trellises. He could hear the low droning of bees.
She did not sit down, though. He would not have seated himself if he had realized it, but he did not get up again. He sat and watched her as she bent over the rose beds to take a closer look at some of the more exquisite blooms, to touch them lightly, to smell them.
She looked contented and relaxed, he thought. She looked as if she belonged here as he belonged…
He did not know how he would be able to support the disappointment if Bewcastle should refuse to sell to him. He did not believe he would be able to remain in this part of the world. It was an alarming thought, since there was no other part of the world he wanted to be.
But if he did ever live here, if he ever sat here again on another hot, drowsy summer afternoon, he would be alone.
There would be no woman beautiful among the flowers.
“You may cut some roses if you wish,” he said, “and take them back to Glandwr with you. I can fetch a knife from the house.”
“They would wilt,” she said, turning toward him. “I would rather leave them here in their natural setting to live out the natural span of their lives. But thank you.”
He stood as she approached him and then sat again after she had seated herself. But he should have moved over, he thought belatedly. She was seated on his blind side. He was not usually so clumsy.
“When I was forced to leave my employment as Lady Prudence Moore’s governess,” she said, “I moved into a small cottage in the village of Lydmere. I eked out a living by giving private lessons, though I was also forced to accept the financial support Joshua offered me. I had my few pupils and my young son to keep me occupied almost every moment of every day. But I was still very aware of my aloneness. When I shut the cottage door behind any pupil who happened to come, there were just David and me. I sometimes found it…hard.”
“It was a good thing for you, then,” he said, “that you were eventually offered employment at a boarding school.”
“Yes,” she said, “it was the best thing that had happened to me in a long while. Do you like living alone?”
“I am never quite alone,” he told her. “There are always servants. I almost always have friendly relations with them, especially my valet.”
He could not see her unless he turned his head right about. He felt at a distinct disadvantage.
“Will you like living alone here?” she asked him. “Will it bring you the happiness you crave?”
Just an hour ago, when they had stopped in the gig at the top of the hill, she had assured him that he could be happy here. During the past hour they had walked with a spring in their step and talked and laughed and sometimes been comfortably silent with each other. They had been warmed by sunlight and summer. When had melancholy descended upon them both?
He had been trying all afternoon not to think about the fact that this was her last day at Glandwr-that tomorrow she would be gone, that everyone would be leaving before another week had passed. At first he had counted days in his eagerness to have them gone again. Now he was counting days unwillingly and for a different reason. But for Miss Anne Jewell he had just run out of numbers. He thought ruefully of all the wasted days when he had not seen her. But even if he had been with her every moment of every day, this would still be the last one.