Chapter Five #2
DURWARD RETURNED SLOWLY to the kitchen and sat down at the table, frowning at Carina’s back while he wrestled with his inner demons of temptation and selfish desires.
“I’m sorry,” he said abruptly. “My presence here can be doing your reputation no good. Your neighbours were out on their doorsteps, with their ears flapping and their noses stretching over the fence.”
Her shoulders lifted in a careless shrug. “My father’s presence still protects me.”
“I’m not sure it will once they know I’m Durward.”
She cast him a quick, half-teasing look over her shoulder that threatened to deprive him of breath. “Are you so notorious?”
“Yes,” he said frankly. “I have an appalling reputation, topped by having to flee the country over an idiotic duel.”
“Nonsense,” she said lightly. “You are a friend of Sir Hugh and Lady Mansel and therefore above reproach. On the other hand, you are quite right and must leave us after breakfast, taking with you our sincere gratitude. I believe our crisis is past.”
Until the next time. Shrugging off the bleak thought, he exerted himself to make her laugh instead and succeeded so well that he was almost sorry to hear the approach of her father, who entered the kitchen like a ghost and dropped exhausted into the vacant chair.
“Papa,” Carina said fondly, immediately pouring him a cup of tea before she served breakfast.
Durward, seeing no reason to change his manner, merely included the older man in his badinage.
Jasper, however, remained morose, whether through shame or illness or some combination of the two.
Durward hated the anxiety in Carina’s face whenever she looked at her father, an anxiety it would take more than a few jokes to banish.
After breakfast, Carina took Jasper’s arm and led him to the parlour. She even swiped up the newspaper Durward had bought that morning and took it with her too.
Electing to be useful, Durward collected the dirty dishes and put them in the sink. He worked some water over them from the tap and wrinkled his nose at the feel of the greasy water. Carina came back and laughed at him.
“You’ll need warm water and soap,” she said, going to the large cauldron-like pot on the fire.
Durward was before her and carried the hot water to the sink.
As he washed and she dried the dishes and pans, he thought of what his friends would say to see him performing such tasks and almost laughed aloud.
Mostly, though, he just enjoyed her company.
Away from her father and immediate worry, she was different, allowing him a glimpse of the girl she had been, and the woman she could be.
He wanted to take her away from all this mess.
Not that she would go.
And not that he had anywhere to take her. Disgrace and exile awaited him.
Still, he found himself smiling at her as she put the last of the dishes away, just because she was there. She closed the cupboard and caught his gaze.
“What?” she demanded, blushing, her hand going instinctively to her hair to see if it had tumbled loose.
He wished it had for she was even more beautiful when it was loose. When he had carried her to bed... Not a good time to be thinking of that, even though at the time he had acted from tenderness rather than desire. The wretched girl inspired all sorts of unusual emotions in him.
“What you need in your life is some fun,” he pronounced.
“Don’t we all?” she asked lightly.
He took the frying pan and hung it on its hook. “No. Some of us should have a little less. But I am prepared to make the sacrifice. I shall call for you at two this afternoon.”
“Why?”
“For fun.”
She stared at him. “What sort of fun?”
“Whatever you like.”
Her lips parted and he knew that she would blister him, more from habit than genuine anger with his suggestion. Then she closed them again. Her brow twitched.
“No,” she said firmly. “I shall meet you outside the Black Lion. But I can spare only half an hour.”
“Me too,” he said, and strolled away to the sound of her surprised laughter.
On a tide of euphoria, he could have left the house singing. Instead, he walked into the parlour and pulled up a chair opposite the captain who sat hunched over the folded newspaper. He eyed Durward with a kind of wary hostility.
“I knew there was a reason we got along so well,” Durward remarked. “We’re both utterly selfish bastards.”
Jasper sat up, straightening his shoulders. “Young man, I don’t appreciate your manners or your language.”
Durward shrugged. “I don’t appreciate dragging you out of the sea and all but carrying you home because you were so drunk you couldn’t stand.
I’m damned sure your daughter doesn’t appreciate being worried sick every night and digging you out of taprooms she shouldn’t even see, let alone enter.
I doubt she appreciates starving because you’ve drunk the housekeeping money and are too idle to get out of bed in time to get any work.
She must hate seeing what’s become of you. ”
Jasper half-lunged out of his chair with a spurt of fury—the first sign of spirit Durward had seen in him that morning. But then he fell back, even paler than before. “I hate it.”
Durward understood that. Some of it was the inevitable remorse of too much alcohol. Some of it was a glimpse into a person you did not like and did not want to think about, let alone be.
“Then stop it. Will you teach me to sail your little boat?”
“What?”
“Teach Carina too. I think she’d like it. You’re still the captain.” Durward stood up. “Tomorrow, then. It’s past time, captain. You know it is.”
He left the house, closing the door behind him, and saluting the shadowy face behind the net curtain next door.
CARINA ALMOST DIDN’T go to the Black Lion. She couldn’t think why she had agreed in the first place, except that meeting in public seemed safest. Only, she shouldn’t be meeting him at all. The last thing she needed was more gossip.
And then there was the fact that she was afraid to leave her father in case he sloped off to the alehouse as soon as she was out of sight.
But then, Papa spoke to her at luncheon.
“I’m sorry,” he said abruptly. “I don’t know how you’ve put up with me. I’m going to do better.”
She had heard it before, of course, but surely there was new sincerity, new determination in his voice this time. “I know you will, Papa.”
“I gave you a fright last night. I finally frightened myself. No more, Carina. I promise. Tell, you what, if the weather is fine tomorrow, and I’m feeling up to it, I’ll take you out on the boat. Providing I’m not at work.”
She hung on to that new sincerity, deciding to trust him.
She wondered what Lord Durward had said to him in the parlour that morning, and if that was what had made the difference.
Curiosity and eagerness to impart such good news to Durward combined with a sense of well-being that was only partly due to her father’s change of heart.
And so she walked out with her basket, as though shopping, and walked casually past the Black Lion Inn. She only half-expected him to be there, and she had no intention of going inside to inquire for him. It made no difference to her life. And yet there he was.
Leaning one shoulder negligently against the gatepost, his tall beaver hat tipped at a rakish angle, he stood in the glow of the afternoon sunshine.
He looked handsome, elegant, and slightly dangerous, as though a part of Bond Street had been somehow transported to a busy working port and blended with it.
Inevitably, he drew the eyes of passers-by.
Several women of varying classes ogled him from both sides of the road, some openly, others more covertly.
He seemed oblivious, until he saw Carina and smiled, easing his shoulder off the post and raising his hat as he came to meet her.
“Miss Jasper. Allow me.” Taking the basket from her, he offered her his arm.
It was a long time since anyone had treated her as a lady. She placed her hand gingerly, almost experimentally, on his sleeve and suddenly felt as though she were basking in his sunshine.
“Whatever you said to my father this morning,” she said at once, “he is promising to turn over a new leaf.”
“Good.”
“Did you ask me to come this afternoon to see if he would stay in?”
To her surprise, he seemed to think about that. “No,” he replied at last, almost ruefully. “It was an entirely selfish request.” He stopped by a flower seller’s barrow, and picked out the loveliest of posies, which he presented to her.
Blushing, she thanked him and placed it in the basket.
It set the tone for a light-hearted half hour—that turned into an hour—with just an edge of awareness that added excitement to her pleasure in his company.
They walked to Dovercourt Bay and since it was quiet, he spread his coat on the sand for her to sit.
Then he lowered himself beside her and began to take off his shoes.
Her breath caught. Childhood memories of running in the sand, with her parents, with friends who had drifted away... Barefoot, he rose, holding down his hand to her.
“Turn your back,” she said primly, so that she could hastily remove her stockings as well as her shoes.
Only then did she take his hand, and he pulled her up and straight into a run.
She gasped, laughing, as they ran hand-in-hand down to the sea.
She swept her skirts up in one hand to splash in the rippling waves, and then they ran back to the abandoned basket and collapsed laughing onto his coat.
Happiness hit her like a blinding light.
And it was all centred on him. And yet he turned his back again, the perfect gentleman, as she replaced her stockings and shoes.
Apart from holding her hand in that mad run, as though they were children at play, he did not touch her.
And though she was conscious of an improper urge for him to do so, the fact that he didn’t added to her trust and her respect for him.
There was only one serious moment as they walked sedately back into Harwich.
“Don’t expect too much of him, just at first,” Durward warned. Although they hadn’t been talking of her father, she knew exactly who he meant. “He may stumble a little. But it’s important you don’t give in. Keep to your own promises to yourself and to him.”
“He wants to take me sailing tomorrow.”
He smiled. “Good. I might tag along.”