Chapter 5 #2
“Bowing to Papa.” Roger stared at him, struck by this new approach to life.
Tio appeared even more confused.
“Come along, boys.” Winn took up the reins. “I will explain. We must go find blades.”
* * *
Their carriage ride was a happy affair, the boys chattering about the wonders of snow and ice.
“Angles, Miss?” Tio flapped his arms wide as if he were in a snow mound. “We’ll make angles!”
Bettington chuckled.
Winn thrilled to the fact that Bettington’s youngest boy had one thing he loved doing with her and he had to do it soon.
“We will,” she said. “I promise.“
“Today? Please, pease, pease!”
“If we have good snow at the pond.”
But the pond was surrounded by icing mounds of old snow. Two other groups of four each were also skating there, and they seemed proprietary about their stretch of pond perimeter.
“We will do that at home,” she told all three when it was clear they should think only of skating not making angels.
“Tomorrow?” Roger and William were in on the chorus now.
“Tomorrow.”
“Come,” Bettington told them all, “let’s get our skates tied on.”
He did his quickly, helping Roger and William. Winn was still trying to get Tio’s on him.
Bettington approached them as she bent before Tio. “You left breakfast before I could speak with you.”
She could not care. She had work to do here to get these little boys on the ice.
“I did. My apologies. I wanted to get the boys ready for skating.” She raised her brows, triumphant in that, and avoiding him once more by trying to tie on Tio’s blades to his pattens.
“Tell me now. What else do you require?”
“We have a dinner party next week. The night before Christmas. I want you to send out the invitations.”
Her mouth fell open. But she caught herself and went back to her work. “Surely, you are joking.”
“Not a bit.”
She looked like a snow queen in a pretty pale blue velvet bonnet trimmed in pale green piping.
The blue matched her long wool coat. She was pretty as candy, but that color was all wrong for her shining golden hair with its vibrant red strands.
She pressed her lips together, her anger burning color onto her already pink cheeks. “I will not do it.”
“You can.”
“Can but will not. Anyone who received such an invitation would either laugh and consign the card to the trash or—”
“Realize that I raise you up to a higher status.” He smiled to himself. “Then they will happily attend.”
“They will attend only if you write the invitations, sir.”
“To you, I am Walter.”
“To me, you are my employer. For six more days only.”
He sighed.
She had to find some peace when she was with him. She focused on the boys. Roger was already spinning around like a top. William had fallen a few times, but true to his need for success, he made a go of a few long strides. Tio took baby steps onto the ice, laughing all the way.
As for herself, Winn was a disaster. She had never been good at this.
Going along at a rate that even Tio could beat, she clung to an old rough log railing along the edge of the pond.
Afraid to let go, she either waddled along on the toe of the blade or spent her time bending her arms in shapes they should not go just to keep hold of the rail.
She is so ungainly, even a puppet could do better.
Bettington skated up to her, graceful as a bird and stopped before her with a flourish.
“Showing off, I see,” she sniffed.
“Come dance with me.” He offered a gentlemanly hand.
“We will both go down.”
He merely arched his brows, indifferent to her prediction.
She wiggled her nose. “Very well. I warned you.”
But he circled one mighty arm around her waist and urged her to put out one foot and glide with him. “Let me lead us where we’re going.”
Exactly what I must not do. To her surprise, she traveled with him. “You are not falling.”
“I have you. You surrender well, and so we make a fine circuit.”
His words seemed so prophetic that she grew uneasy. “How are you so sure of yourself?“
“In skating, I found my abilities early in life.”
“I didn’t.”
He took her around in small circle, both her hands in his. “You did not go out to skate with your friends?”
“I didn’t have any friends for many years.”
He shook his head. “I am surprised. I did not know.”
“You wouldn’t. You were away at school and Cambridge.”
“True. I did not notice the charming girl with regally gold hair and tawny green eyes until she looked at me when she was…what? Sixteen?”
He swept her along and she followed him easily, though she did not look at him.
“Winn?”
“Concentrate on not letting me fall.”
“I am. Now tell me was I right that you cared for me when you were quite young?”
Oh, why not admit the truth? “Very young.”
“Sixteen?”
“Precisely.” She did not like this questioning. She tried to slow him down and only fumbled. “Stop now. I’ve had enough.”
He kept going, leading her out in a long smooth sail in one straight line across the glittering pond. “I wish I had presence of mind to wait until you were older to explore your feelings and mine.”
His? He had liked her when she was a youth? No. Impossible. Oh, why did they have to discuss the past? “You were on a path different from mine. What would a young girl’s desire for you mean when you were meant for ladies more prominent than I?”
“I learned all too painfully what prominence merited a lady and a man.”
“Society teaches you to stay within your class.” Those were her father’s words. He had drilled them into her. Whenever she rushed home crying from the cruelty of other children or once, from the vicar’s wife who called her a tramp, her father would promise her relief in years to come.
“They will forget how your mother ran off with a duke’s younger son,” Papa would say. “They will learn how kind and smart and sweet you are. What’s more, they will see how upright and moral you are. Your future will be grand, my girl. Very grand.”
Bettington had brought them to a stop.
She took a step backward, wishing to end this topic. But she was not sure-footed without him. She started to rebuke him, whipped out a hand to catch the railing when suddenly her arms were windmilling.
He caught her to him, his body long and strong, and her heart pounding.
“Listen to me, please, Winn. I saw that you cared for me when you were young. I was flattered and took it only as a feather in my cap. And you are right, I was told to look among certain others for a wife. But I have learned from my own experience and from those of a few of my friends, that staying within your class, merits you nothing if there is not mutual respect. Without that, there can be no love. No joy.”
“I agree.”
“For once, we find common ground.” He gave her one of his glorious smiles.
She had to give him her own. “We do.”
“Not just on ice.”
“On ethics.”
He hugged her close and they both chuckled.
Breaking apart, she cleared her throat. Looking around she was happy the other two groups had left. She was here alone within the arms of the man she adored—and they had stopped their arguing.
But she was not certain what peace had gained her.