Chapter Twelve
He was enjoying himself far too much, Nicholas thought uneasily as he gave her a hand to help her step out of the boat and onto the island.
He wondered if he would be having nearly as much enjoyment if this were Grace instead of Winifred Cunningham, but the stabbing of guilt he felt at the thought was pointless.
It never would be Grace, not, at least, until after they were officially betrothed.
That had become perfectly clear to him. She seemed not to feel any necessity to get to know him better.
But even after they were betrothed or even married, would she ever be as openly happy as Winifred seemed to be now?
That was surprising, if he thought about it.
Winifred had always avoided him and felt intensely uncomfortable with him when she was forced into his company.
There had been signs of it today too—when he lifted her from Flora’s back, when he grasped her hand tightly to help her into the boat and then out of it a few minutes later.
She had withdrawn her hand as soon as she was able.
But what if the discomfort had a different cause than what he had always assumed?
What if, even as far back as the Netherby ball, it had been an uncomfortable…
awareness of him? It almost certainly had been that today when he lifted her down from the horse’s back.
And by God, he had felt it too. It had been unpardonably careless of him and certainly not deliberate to allow her to half fall against him and slide all the way down his body to the ground until she had her feet under her. Even then…
Well, even then he had found it difficult to let her go. He had come very close to kissing her. The very thought that he might have done so turned him clammy. Would she have resisted? Slapped his face? But he suspected she had felt it too for a moment.
It was a dashed good thing they had both resisted. Giving in would have hopelessly complicated both their lives.
Good God!
“I can fetch a couple of chairs if you like so we can sit awhile in the pavilion,” he said. “Or I can give you the grand tour first. Which would you prefer?”
“Oh, the grand tour by all means,” she said, turning to look back over the stretch of water they had just crossed to the bank and the park beyond it, with the house in the rather distant background. The horses were grazing contentedly on the grass close to the carriage path.
“I used to believe there was no lovelier place on earth than Ravenswood,” he said.
“I had nothing with which to compare it, of course. I did not believe I needed anything else. Though I did spend a great deal of my time over at Cartref, playing with Gwyneth, talking with her, dreaming with her. Devlin often came with me, but he spent his time with Idris and stayed away from us.”
“I love to stand in the garden at home,” she said, “and look at the view—hills all around and Bath spread below, the buildings all appearing pure white, especially when the sun is shining. I always think it must be the loveliest place on earth to live. I suppose there are thousands, even millions, of such places, but for many of us there is one that is lovelier than all others because we feel it with the heart as well as experiencing it with our senses.”
And the thing was, when she said such things they were said with conviction, not, he was sure, out of any desire to impress.
“I can understand why this is one such place for you,” she said.
“Come,” he said, and without realizing what he was about to do until he did it, he grasped her hand in his again.
Then it would have been even more conspicuous if he had dropped it.
She did not snatch her hand away either.
After the first moment her fingers curled about his. “I will show you the beach first.”
It was at the opposite side of the island.
“A beach?” she said.
He laughed. “It is a pretentious name for a stretch of land that does not boast even a single grain of sand,” he said.
“It is actually a grassy bank that slopes into the water and keeps on sloping very gradually for some distance out, so that by the time the water reaches to the level of one’s chest, one almost needs a telescope to see back to the island. ”
She laughed as they came up to it—it was really a very small island. “You do like to exaggerate, do you not?” she said. “I do not need a telescope to see all the way over to the far bank.”
“Our mother used to bring us here when we were very young,” he said.
“We could all pile into the water here and splash around with very little danger of getting out of our depth and drowning, and none while her eye was upon us, as it always was. She taught us all to swim. One needs to row a boat with care when passing here. More than once as a boy I got hung up on the shallow bottom and cursed and swore when I had to jump in to heave it off.”
“Are not cursing and swearing the same thing?” she asked.
“If there is a difference,” he said, “then I did both.”
They both laughed.
“You had a happy childhood,” she said. It was not a question.
“Until I was eighteen,” he said.
“You have said that before,” she said. “Until you went away to join your regiment, then? Did that put an end to your happiness?”
“No,” he said, annoyed with himself for answering as he had. “That was not what I meant. Shall we explore the forest?”
But she did not immediately respond to the suggestion.
“Yet your tone when you said it implied that something did happen,” she said.
“Something painful. Something more than just a reluctance to leave your home behind and launch into a new chapter of your life. Oh, I do beg your pardon. Sometimes I let curiosity get the better of me. It is none of my business what happened, if anything did. None whatsoever.”
He never spoke of it, even to his own family, who knew all the facts.
He did not want to speak of it. It was a pain he would always carry with him, he supposed, pushed deep, where it belonged.
He almost never even thought of it. What was the point?
The past could not be changed. He guessed that they all still suffered too, in their own ways—Devlin, Pippa, Owen, Steph.
Ben. His mother—though somehow she seemed to have dealt with it.
She had all her family back, though it had scattered at the time amid great bitterness.
Several years after their father’s passing she had married Matthew Taylor, who, Nicholas guessed, had been her girlhood sweetheart. She was undoubtedly happy now.
“My world came to an end,” he said lightly, and turned to her with what he hoped was a grin. “What more melodrama could you possibly ask for?”
“I do not ask for melodrama,” she said. “Or for any other explanation, Colonel Ware. But you did somehow induce me to share my pain last week, and your answer then has given me great comfort.”
He winced. “About remembering the happiest day of your life when you are feeling down about your basic lack of identity?” he said.
“Yes, that,” she said. She smiled brightly. “I would indeed like to explore the forest. Is it a magic place?”
He sighed. “Let us sit here awhile,” he said.
He shrugged out of his coat and spread it on the grass for her to sit on.
She sat in what was becoming a familiar pose, knees raised, arms wrapped about her legs, and gazed out over the lake.
He sat beside her a short distance away.
He could not believe he was about to do this, but apparently he was.
“I was always very like my father,” he said.
“More so than any of my brothers and sisters.
And it was not just in looks. I had his nature too—outgoing, fond of talking with other people, sunny natured.
I was what people called charming. I was aware from a very young age that I was well liked, that I never had to try hard to be noticed in a roomful of people or to draw smiles my way.
People used to call me a young replica of my father, and I basked in the comparison.
He was loved wherever he went and adored by people of all stations in life.
He was the proverbial life and soul of every gathering he was in, small or large, but he did not seem self-centered.
He liked other people and was willing to talk with anyone.
He was good-looking, warm, and vital. There was no falseness in it at all, no insincerity.
And it all came naturally. He was specially gifted.
“His family all adored him too, me most of all. I loved to believe that I was just like him, that I always would be. He could do no wrong in my eyes. I thought I was the most fortunate boy in the world, and the happiest, to be his son and just like him.”