Chapter 8- Callum
The following day, Callum arranged for them to take a ride through the park in the most casual manner he was able. Ellis had let it slip that many ladies gathered for promenades and picnics in the park even before the Season officially began.
Of course, Callum desperately wanted to see one lady in particular.
Miss Margaret Preston. The name rang through his mind what felt like every other moment like wind through silver chimes.
If there was any possibility of catching a glimpse of her before the Season started, Callum would grasp at it, however slim the chance.
Though he knew it was shallow of him, he couldn’t help but remember the second-to-last entry that firmly stated she was ugly compared to her seven sisters.
He hardly knew what that meant. Did she have an unsightly mole?
Or several? Did her teeth point in such different directions that eating was an embarrassing difficulty?
He didn’t know, but Callum was certain that even if the worst his imagination could produce came to fruition—if Margaret Preston was balding, with a hump back, misaligned teeth, and eyes that pointed different directions—he was still determined to woo her.
Her personality was lively enough to attract him, and once they had established an intimacy, he reasoned that he might find a way to politely figure out which eye was actually looking at him.
The day was lovely. Fluffy clouds were escorted lazily across a bright blue sky by a gentle wind.
The new grass was just coming in, adding the particular bright green unique to fresh growth.
The flowering trees were not yet in bloom, but they were readying themselves—leaves and tender buds sprouted and spoke of the promise of beauty yet to come.
“I confess I’m a bit worried about you,” Ellis said. He steered his horse across a charming wooden bridge over a small creek. The horse’s hoofbeats sounded like drums on the planks.
“With all the care and concern you’ve exerted in my direction, one would think you were my chaperone for the Season,” Callum said lightly.
“I rather think I am.” Ellis grinned in that endearing, boyish way of his. “I’m here to keep your honor intact so that you have a choice of whom to marry. But that’s not why I’m worried. At least, not at the moment.”
“What is it, then?” Callum ducked beneath a low-hanging branch, one hand clasping his hat to his head. Being tall had its advantages, but it also had drawbacks.
“Are you feeling all right?”
Callum sighed and wished his cousin would get to the point. “I’m very well. Why do you ask?”
“I read the book you sent me.” Ellis’s eyes slid his direction.
Callum did his best to suppress his smile. “By your tone, I take it you didn’t enjoy it as much as I did?”
“I certainly didn’t find it as riveting. In fact, I wonder if we read the same book.”
“I found it an interesting exploration on the intersection of the themes of morality and sciences, myself.”
Ellis’s forehead wrinkled. “Truly? Lessons for Children? It’s a children’s book.”
“From the mouth of babes comes great wisdom.”
“I don’t think children wrote it.” Ellis frowned.
Callum shrugged and tried not to be too obvious about searching the ladies around them, wondering if he’d already seen Miss Margaret Preston without realizing it.
Ellis shook his head and squinted at him. “That’s the book that captured your attention for three days straight? Are you quite certain you’re feeling well?”
“Better than I have in a long time.”
“You do look remarkably cheerful. Why is that?” He narrowed his eyes.
“No particular reason.” Callum lifted one of his large shoulders in a casual shrug, hoping that would be the end of the discussion.
If anything, his innocent tone seemed to plunge his cousin deeper into suspicion. His eyes squinted as he leaned forward in his saddle to inspect Callum more closely, a frown firmly entrenched on his features.
Finally, he leaned back and gusted a sigh as his entire body wilted. “Oh no,” he said with deep despair. “The Season hasn’t started yet, and already I’ve failed in my task.”
Callum turned to him. “Whatever do you mean?”
“Some enterprising lady has sunk her claws into you, hasn’t she?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” He did his best to keep his words light, his tone casual, but he wondered how on earth his cousin knew.
“You have that look about you—the look of a man who’s made a matrimonial decision.”
“Certainly not.”
It wasn’t precisely a falsehood. Callum would never make such a decision without the enthusiastic participation of the other party. However, he definitely had a target in mind for his affections.
Ellis squinted at him anew. “Do you promise?”
“I promise that I have not yet met the lady I plan to make my wife.”
Callum had chosen his words carefully. He didn’t enjoy lying, nor did he wish to hide the truth from his cousin, who—despite his sometimes odd way of showing it—only had his best intentions at heart.
Still, this was a private matter, and as the lady in question wasn’t aware that Callum had already set his sights upon her, he thought it best to keep it secret.
His promise seemed to pacify the man for the moment. At the very least, Ellis stopped frowning at him and continued his presentation of the young ladies of the ton. As far as tour guides went, Ellis was excellent—discreet, with a thorough knowledge of every single lady under the age of forty.
“Oh, there’s Miss Ballingstone,” he said, doffing his hat in her direction.
The next moment, he nodded toward a colorful picnic blanket in front of a copse of trees.
“A lovely little grouping there—Miss Evans, Miss Henry, and Miss Cunningham. Shall we ride a little too closely to their blanket by accident so that we must stop and offer our apologies for raising dust?”
Callum agreed every time Ellis suggested such a thing. He didn’t wish to raise his cousin’s suspicions. Besides, there was no telling whether such a detour would eventually lead to the one young lady he hoped most to meet.
Though every young miss was dressed in fine fabrics and ribbons, with curls and the latest fluttering decorations in her hair, Callum barely noticed.
To him, they looked like an arrangement in a florist’s stall—colorful and lovely, but of little particular interest to one who was shopping for a dictionary.
Callum forgot the names as soon as Ellis spoke them.
The book he’d bought to jot down ladies’ names had turned into a journal of his own—he’d taken notes on Margaret’s diary entries, jotting down his reactions to each as he had them, as well as detailing facts he could use to find her.
He hardly saw the point in trying to remember other ladies’ names now that he had Margaret in mind.
They rode through two parks with numerous detours toward young ladies perched just so on little garden chairs or picnic blankets.
Callum smiled through it all, even though it felt as if Ellis were showing him off.
Or more precisely, that his cousin was using Callum’s presence as some sort of attractant to entice the ladies closer, much like how unscrupulous poachers sprinkled salt on the ground to attract deer.
The sun had come from behind a cloud; Ellis shifted and frowned. “I think our horses quite well exercised.” He swiped his brow. “Besides, I’m getting rather hungry.”
“No surprise there,” Callum said lightly. “I could set my timepiece to your stomach.”
His eyes still roved the green space before them.
He had been so hopeful at the start of their outing, but it had been nearly an hour with no sign of any of the Preston ladies, let alone the only one who interested him.
Apparently, Ellis had been mistaken, and not all of the fashionable young ladies would be out in the park today just because it was one of the first pleasant days before the Season.
Perhaps the Preston sisters had been invited to a garden party or some such. Still, Callum wasn’t about to give up just because he was sweating a bit beneath his jacket.
“Are there only two parks in London, then?” he said, canting his voice to sound far more jovial and energetic than he felt. Truthfully, he was beginning to feel like some sort of strange scientific display with the way the ladies stared at him.
“I always thought you were a humble fellow, but this parade has me reconsidering,” Ellis grumbled. He put a gentle heel to his horse. “Follow me, then.”
The third park was smaller than the others, more private, with small lawns enclosed amongst stands of trees.
Callum’s hopes weren’t high as their horses crunched in the gravel path.
It was not the sort of place Callum would have expected to find ladies who wanted to see and be seen—and such was the nature of the fashionable promenade, or so Ellis had explained.
It had taken them a quarter of an hour to reach the place, and Ellis’s grumbling had grown more pointed all the while.
“Finally,” he said in a gust when they rounded the corner to see a few colorful quilts spread out on a grassy knoll near a charming pond. “There’s the last of the ladies in London, Callum. Let’s charge our horses through their midst so that they might admire you like all the others did.”
Callum sighed and wished, for the hundredth time, that he’d thought to put a dinner roll or a piece of fruit into his jacket so he could offer it to Ellis—or at least shove it into his mouth to shut him up. His cousin’s mood had deteriorated swiftly as the luncheon hour approached.
“Those ladies have a picnic,” Callum pointed out with an arched eyebrow. “Would you like to stop and see if they’ll offer you some sustenance?”