Chapter 14
CAPTAIN JOHN CALDER
I slowed slightly, letting Charlie run ahead. Miss Blackwell soon caught up to me with her marching pace.
“I would like it known,” she huffed, “that I did not want to show you the estate.”
“Oh,” I couldn’t help the smile in my voice. “I can see that quite clearly.”
“My parents thought it would be best if I did.”
“You are very kind.”
She groaned. “How do I keep landing myself in these positions where I am forced to be unwillingly kind to you?”
I turned to study her, wondering how she could be so different from the woman who’d cared for me. “I didn’t realize you were unwilling during our time together in the croft.”
Miss Blackwell’s frown disappeared when her jaw dropped open. Her foot caught on a tree root or a stone and she tumbled forward. I reached back to steady her by her arm, but she pulled away. “I’m all right.”
Her face was flushed and she wouldn’t meet my eye.
“Are you certain?” I asked. Something seemed wrong. Had I mentioned something I shouldn’t? Charlie was far ahead of us and out of earshot.
“I’ve been walking this path from the time I was seventeen, so yes, I’m certain.”
We walked several more feet in silence. “I came outside hoping to find Harriet.”
“Well, then. I suppose it is a good thing you found me and my family instead.”
“I didn’t mind. Your brother is endearing, and of course I’ve always respected your father.”
“And apparently my mother already dotes on you.”
“She does?”
“You didn’t notice?”
“She did seem quite pleased to see me, although I have no idea why.”
“She listens to my father as much, or I suppose, even more than anyone else does.”
I couldn’t help my chuckle. As long as the two of us didn’t discuss Harriet, Miss Blackwell was pleasant enough. “Your father is a giant of a man. He shaped me more than my own father did.”
Charlie turned around without stopping and waved for us to walk quicker. I had kept up with her marching pace for a moment, but we’d slowed significantly since then.
Miss Blackwell sighed, but she didn’t quicken her pace. “Charlie is pleased you’ve offered to join him. It is lonely to be the only one his age. It seems you have now enraptured the whole of the Blackwell clan.”
Was that a compliment? From Miss Blackwell?
“The whole of it?” I raised my eyebrows at her, knowing her response would be negative, even though I still couldn’t understand exactly why. I wasn’t usually a person people disliked.
Her eyes went to the sky. “I don’t doubt you were a good soldier. Perhaps you are even a good man, although that has been harder to discover. But I don’t want you distracting Harriet.”
“Why do you see me as only a distraction for her? Perhaps you are keeping her from her best chance at happiness.”
She snorted.
That smarted.
“Have you seen her since breakfast this morning?” I asked, even though she was the last person I should try to get help from.
“She went into town with her family. I don’t think she will be back until it is time to dress for dinner.”
She was in town? I’d been biding my time for good weather so we would have a chance to speak privately and the moment that was possible she’d gone into town? “Just her family?”
She tipped her head as if she were trying to remember. “No, I believe both your lieutenant friends and the Howards joined them.”
I narrowed my eyes at Miss Blackwell. “So everyone?”
“No, Mrs. Gwendowen stayed behind.”
“Ah.” It was impossible to outmaneuver this woman.
My plans to see Harriet had been thwarted once again.
If Miss Blackwell wasn’t the daughter of a man I respected, I would— I rubbed a hand down my face.
I didn’t know what I would do, but hopefully something different from what I had been doing, which was losing to her every day.
“And these plans were made . . . when?” Not at breakfast—I would have heard.
“Just after you left breakfast, actually. It was rather spontaneous.”
“And I didn’t hear of it because . . . ” My voice was guttural—a low, menacing timbre I’d never had cause to use before I met Miss Blackwell.
Her eyes widened in innocence. “Because you get gravely ill in a carriage, of course.”
“I get what?”
“Violently ill. I went into detail. Would you like to hear it?”
“I would not.”
“That’s for the best. Hattie didn’t enjoy hearing about it either. What an unfortunate ailment. It must be a struggle for you.”
My jaw clenched. “Davis and Brookhouse know that isn’t true.”
“Do they?” She blinked innocently. “They didn’t contradict me.”
“And this is why I found myself unchaperoned by you after breakfast?”
“Yes,” she said with the slightest hint of a pout. “And I was thoroughly enjoying the reprieve.”
I motioned behind us with one hand. “By all means, return to your parents.”
“No, now that you know where Hattie is, I will need to keep an eye on you. You don’t get sick on horses, after all.”
I shook my head. What had I ever done to her to make her my keeper? “I don’t? Well, thank you for that at least.”
She turned up her head and grinned at me. “You’re very welcome.”
I blinked. That smile of hers was forced at best and, at worst, it was a smile that took pleasure in tormenting me, and yet it somehow drew me in nevertheless. I pulled my gaze from hers and looked for Charlie.
He’d reached a turn in the path, but instead of continuing, he’d stopped and waited for us, waving us on and hopping from one foot to the other in anticipation.
The closer we got, the more energy seemed to course through him.
When we were within a few feet, he pointed down the path in front of him.
“It is just this way.” He grabbed my hand once again and tugged me forward, skipping more than walking.
I laughed and quickened my pace until I was jogging behind him.
The gentle murmur of water over stone was soft at first, but grew until the rushing sound of it surrounded us.
I looked up at the terraced land in front of us, and there, tumbling down the rocks, was a small waterfall jutting out from the top level of the terrace and splashing down the side of the cliff-like drop.
We soon came to a bridge that crossed over the stream produced by the falling water.
Charlie continued over it, and just ten feet beyond we were standing directly under the waterfall but several yards away from the face of it.
A light mist coated the rocks on the cliff side, but only a few droplets reached as far as the path.
A few more feet down the path, there was another bend and a stone bench sitting in a shady copse of trees.
Miss Blackwell came up behind me. “Mama loves to sit on that bench and read with the sound of the falls behind her when we have target practice. She says the waterfall drowns out some of the noise.”
“She loves to sit here even when there isn’t target practice,” Charlie added. “I do, too.” Charlie moved behind me and pushed me forward to the bench. It looked as though my search for Harriet was going to be paused so I could sit and listen to water sliding down rocks.
I didn’t have time for this. If I wasn’t careful, this house party would be over and I would be no closer to an engagement than I had been when I arrived.
But one look at Charlie’s face, and I knew I wouldn’t be escaping Miss Blackwell—not until I spent at least a few minutes here with her brother.
I sat on the edge of the bench, thinking Charlie would take the place next to me, but instead he stepped back to Miss Blackwell and pushed her onto the bench.
She sat, leaving a good two feet of space between us.
But Charlie, fool that he just might be, settled down on the other side of his sister, wriggling in until Miss Blackwell was forced to slide so close to me the barest of movements would have us grazing elbows.
Her nearness brought with it the sharp, sweet smell of citrus—her scent, the one I’d been wearing after having spent a night in her dressing gown.
What an unmitigated disaster.
I’d been far too long out of the company of women, and while sitting this close to one was bound to happen in carriages or on settees, I hadn’t yet adjusted to that newfound reality.
Miss Blackwell leaned toward me and, sure enough, her elbow grazed mine. “This and the summer house are some of the best parts of the estate.”
I turned to look at her, only to find her closing her eyes and leaning her head back. Charlie was doing the same. They looked so alike in that moment, not only in their coloring with their dark hair and thick dark lashes closed over their high cheekbones, but in their whole demeanor.
This wasn’t the first time they’d done this.
It was obviously a Blackwell family ritual, and somehow I’d been invited to join it.
It was a small ritual, one I wasn’t even certain they knew they were performing.
It was a habit—a choice made over and over by the members of the Blackwell family whenever they sat in this spot.
And I was intruding upon it.
I didn’t belong here with this brother and sister, any more than I belonged at the summer house with them and their parents. I pushed myself carefully up from the bench, not wanting to disturb Miss Blackwell and her brother any more than I already had.
Miss Blackwell’s hand snaked up to my elbow and pulled me back down. She opened those gray eyes, so unlike the ones I’d dreamed about for six years, yet somehow already familiar. “Stay. This is not a place for quick stops and rushed visits. Give it time and let it overcome you.”
Being overcome was about the last thing I wanted at the moment. I needed to be in complete control of my faculties to accomplish my goals. I didn’t have time to sit and listen to a waterfall with the woman who was actively trying to thwart them.
I wasn’t going to have the things the Blackwells had—loved ones, special places, even groans that accompanied activities done so often to have them become mundane—without working for them. This was no time for distraction, or relaxation, for that matter.