Chapter 11
“You have been steering me toward him for the last forty minutes.”
Oliver’s stride did not falter. He walked beside her across the broad sweep of lawn at Hartfield Park, where Lady Dalton’s annual country picnic sprawled beneath a cloudless June sky.
Blankets dotted the grass in a patchwork of tartan and linen.
Servants moved between clusters of guests carrying trays of cold meats, strawberries, seed cake.
A croquet game had erupted near the ornamental lake, where shouts of triumph carried across the water with the sharpness of a cannon report.
“I have no idea what you mean,” he said.
“You suggested I fetch lemonade at the exact moment Frederick was standing beside the lemonade table. You pointed out the roses along the south terrace where Frederick happened to be admiring the roses along the south terrace. You told me Lady Dalton’s collection of botanical prints was extraordinary, which led me directly to the library, where Frederick was examining Lady Dalton’s collection of botanical prints. ”
“What a marvelous coincidence.”
“Oliver.”
He stopped. He turned to face her. The afternoon light fell across his features with the generosity of a season that had not yet tipped into the cruelty of August, catching the bronze in his hair, the fleck of green in his hazel eyes.
“I prefer to think of it as strategy,” he said. “You had a successful conversation with the man two nights ago. He listened. He asked questions. He told you your eye was remarkable. The momentum is there. I am simply ensuring it does not stall.”
She studied him. “You are remarkably invested in another man’s courtship of me.”
“That is precisely the arrangement we made. I am fulfilling my end of it.”
“With suspicious enthusiasm.”
His mouth curved. “Would you prefer I drag my feet? I can look extremely reluctant, if it helps. I have been told my reluctant face is quite convincing.”
“I have never once seen you look reluctant about anything.”
“Then you have not been paying sufficient attention.” He tilted his head toward the ornamental lake, where Frederick stood with Lord Ashton beside the water’s edge.
Frederick’s profile was sharp against the glitter of the lake.
He was laughing at Lord Ashton’s anecdote, his posture easy, his attention absorbed.
“He is alone now. Lord Ashton has been called away by his wife. This is your opportunity.”
Louisa smoothed the front of her dress.
“What do I say?”
“You do not need a script. You proved that two nights ago.”
“That was different. There were walls. There was a soprano providing noise. This is outside, in full sunlight, with half of London watching.”
“Half of London is watching the croquet. Lord Tyndale has just struck his ball into the lake. Nobody will be looking at you.”
She glanced toward the croquet lawn. Lord Tyndale was, indeed, wading into the shallows in his stockings while his wife shouted instructions from the bank. Several ladies had turned their parasols to observe the spectacle.
“Go,” Oliver said. “Ask him about the prints he was studying. Ask whether he prefers landscapes or portraits. Build on what he tells you. You know how to do this.”
She went.
She walked across the lawn with the careful composure of someone proceeding toward an examination she had revised for but still feared she might fail.
Frederick noticed her approach. He turned from the lake.
His smile was warm, genuine, the kind of smile that had lived in her thoughts for four years.
“Miss Fairchild. How fortunate. I was hoping to continue our conversation from Mrs. Alderton’s musicale.”
“As was I. I understand you have been studying Lady Dalton’s prints?”
“I have. A rather fine Stubbs in the library, actually. A mare with her foal in a landscape I could swear is meant to be the South Downs.” He gestured toward the bench beside the lake. “Would you care to sit? The shade here is quite pleasant.”
“You are remarkably knowledgeable about art,” he said. “I had not realized.”
“There is quite a lot you have not realized about me, Lord Langley.”
She had meant it lightly. The words came out with an edge she had not intended, sharper than flirtation, closer to truth. Frederick’s expression shifted. He opened his mouth.
“Langley!” Lord Ashton’s voice cut across the lawn. “We need a fourth for croquet. Tyndale has ruined his shoes, his wife is furious, the whole thing is descending into farce. Come and restore order.”
Frederick glanced toward the croquet lawn. He hesitated. He looked at Louisa.
“I shall only be a moment.”
“Of course.”
He rose. He crossed the grass toward Lord Ashton quickly. Louisa watched him go. She folded her hands in her lap. She waited.
The moment became five minutes. Five became ten. From across the lawn she could hear the crack of mallets against wooden balls, the scattered laughter of spectators. Frederick’s voice carried above the rest, confident, at ease. He had joined the game. He had forgotten her.
She looked down at her hands. The familiar weight gathered behind her ribs: the pressing, heavy sensation of being set aside without anyone noticing they had done it. She breathed through it. She had years of practice.
“Is this seat claimed?”
Oliver stood over her, his coat slung across his arm, his cravat slightly loosened in the heat. He carried two glasses of lemonade. She had not seen him approach.
“It was.” She took the glass he offered. “Briefly.”
He sat beside her on the bench. The wood was warm from the sun.
He stretched his legs in front of him, crossed his ankles, tilted his face toward the sky.
He said nothing about Frederick. He said nothing about the croquet lawn or the empty seat beside her or the ten minutes she had spent watching another man walk away.
“Lady Dalton’s cook,” he said, sipping his lemonade, “has committed an act of genius with the seed cake. I may propose marriage to her before the afternoon is finished.”
“You would be her fifth husband. She buried the fourth in March.”
“I admire her efficiency.”
Louisa pressed her lips together. A laugh escaped. She covered her mouth with her hand.
“That is wicked.”
“Accurate, though. Lady Dalton told me herself during the first course at the Thornbury dinner. She said four husbands had taught her the importance of short engagements.” He glanced sideways at her. “I believe her exact instruction was, ‘Marry in haste, bury at leisure.’”
The laugh broke free properly this time. She shook her head.
“You are terrible.”
“I am entertaining, I believe.”
“The distinction escapes me entirely.”
He smiled. The real smile, the one that started slowly, reaching his eyes before it reached his mouth. He settled against the bench. The lemonade sweated in his glass. From the croquet lawn, a shout erupted as somebody hit somebody else’s ball into the flowerbed.
“Tell me about your childhood,” he said suddenly.
She blinked. “My childhood?”
“Everyone talks about the Season. Dresses, dances, who will marry whom. Nobody ever talks about what came before. I want to know what you were like before London got hold of you.”
She turned the glass between her palms.
“I was unremarkable.”
“I do not believe that for a second.”
“I was. I was quiet. I read too much. I followed my older cousins about the garden pretending to be their servant because they told me I lacked the imagination to play a princess.” She paused.
“I stole jam from the larder with dedicated regularity. Mrs. Pritchard, our cook, caught me every single time. She would stand in the kitchen doorway with her arms folded, watching me eat it with my fingers directly from the jar, saying nothing. After I finished, she would hand me a cloth for my face.”
“She never stopped you?”
“She told my mother, years later, that any child willing to eat gooseberry jam with such commitment deserved to finish the jar.”
Oliver laughed. The sound was open, unguarded, free of the careful modulation she had come to recognize in his public manner. It carried across the water. Two ladies on a nearby blanket glanced over.
“Your turn,” Louisa said. “What were you like?”
The laughter faded slowly from his face.
“I climbed things,” he said with an edge of melancholy in his voice. “Constantly. Trees, walls, the stable roof. I drove my nanny to the edge of her sanity. She once found me on the roof of the east wing because I wanted to see whether Hampshire looked different from above.”
“Did it?”
“It looked exactly the same, except farther away. I was deeply disappointed.” He traced a line through the condensation on his glass. “I collected tin soldiers. I had dozens. I arranged them on the windowsill of my bedroom in precise formations. I knew each of their names.”
“You named them?”
“Every single one. The general was called Horatio. His second-in-command was called Biscuit, because I was seven years old.”
She turned on the bench to face him. “Biscuit.”
“He was the bravest soldier in the regiment. Despite the name.”
“Because of the name, surely. Any soldier called Biscuit has already survived the worst humiliation war can offer. He has nowhere to go but up.”
Oliver’s eyes met hers.
“That,” he said, “is the finest military analysis I have ever heard.”
“I have hidden depths. You told me so yourself.”
“I am beginning to suspect I underestimated the depths considerably.”
She looked away first. She drank her lemonade. She watched the croquet game, where Frederick was now advising Lady Ashton on her stance with absolute authority, as though his opinion on all matters was both welcome and correct.
“What else?” she asked.
“What else what?”
“What else did you do? As a child. Besides climbing rooftops.”
He leaned back. He crossed his arms behind his head. The posture was boyish, younger than his years, as though the question had unlocked a door he rarely opened.
“I had a pony called Sovereign. He was too fat for his name. He bit the stable master twice a week without fail. I loved him desperately.” He tilted his head toward her.
“I tried to teach him to bow. I saw a circus horse do it once, at a fair my mother took me to. I spent the entire summer in the paddock, pushing his head down with both hands while he tried to eat my coat.”
“Did he ever learn?”
“He learned to steal apples from my pockets. Which I chose to interpret as affection.”
“A generous interpretation.”
“I am a generous man.”
She smiled. He smiled. The silence between them was not the kind that needed filling.
It sat comfortably, occupied by the drone of bees in the lavender border, the distant splash of oars on the lake, the rustle of poplar leaves in the warm breeze that moved across Hartfield’s grounds like a slow exhalation.
“This is easy,” she said.
He turned his head. “What is?”
“This. Talking to you.” She set down her glass on the bench between them. “I never run out of words. I never rehearse what I am going to say next. I never worry that I have said the wrong thing.” She hesitated. “I do not know why it is so different.”
The observation hung in the air. She had not meant to voice it.
She had been thinking it for weeks, turning it over during carriage rides, examining it in the quiet of her bedroom at night.
The ease of him. The way she could say the first thought that entered her mind without filing the edges smooth.
Oliver did not answer immediately. She watched him process her words, watched the careful neutrality assemble itself across his features.
“It is because we have nothing at stake,” he said. “There is no courtship. No performance. You are not trying to impress me.”
“No,” she agreed. “I suppose I am not.”
He held her gaze for a beat longer than the sentence required. Then he looked away, toward the lake, where the sunlight broke across the surface in scattered coins of gold.
“Frederick is finishing his game,” he said, suddenly curt. “He will be looking for you.”
She followed his gaze. Frederick had set down his mallet. He was scanning the lawn, searching for her among the blankets.
“Yes,” she said. “I suppose he will.”
She did not move. Neither did Oliver. Frederick’s eyes found them on the bench. He raised a hand in greeting, a smile forming. Louisa lifted her hand in return.
She stood. She smoothed her dress. She picked up both empty glasses.
“Oliver.”
He looked at her, then flashed a small smile. “Yes?”
“Thank you. For the lemonade.”
She walked toward Frederick. The grass was warm beneath her shoes. Frederick met her halfway across the lawn, apologizing for the delay, explaining that Lord Ashton had been impossible to refuse, that croquet had never been his strong suit, that he hoped she had not waited too long.
“Not at all,” she said. “I was well looked after.”
She took his arm. They walked toward the refreshment tent. He told her about the croquet, about Lord Tyndale’s ruined shoes, about the afternoon’s remaining entertainments. She listened. She nodded. She made the appropriate sounds in the appropriate places.
Behind her, on the bench beside the tree, Oliver sat alone with two empty glasses. She did not look back.