Carolina's Walking Tour (3 page)

"I?" She sounded as bewildered as she felt, she knew it. "I...don't know. How can I
know? I never know what to do..."

"You do, you know." He contradicted her with the ease of friendship. "You knew what
to do that day we found the injured dog in the Orange Grove. And also the day the child fell in
the canal at Sydney Gardens. You even knew exactly what to do when we found that young
woman thinking to cast herself from Pulteney Bridge. You are exceptionally capable, and
remarkably unaware of it."

"We have had our adventures, have we not?" Carolina ignored his last words and
recalled some their more extraordinary experiences.

"Well, those were the most dramatic, but yes, our walking tours have
been...stimulating." He hesitated, bowing and smiling to acquaintances while Carolina did the
same. He paused before the wide windows that overlooked the street. "My mother tells me that
our excursions have excited comment. I hope I have not caused you any difficulty..."

Carolina was horrified to think that he might feel under some obligation, some duty to
her. "No. Oh, no! It has been a pleasant diversion, nothing more...and people will always
talk...no where more so than Bath..."

"Lady Chersham has expressed no concerns?"

Carolina crossed the fingers of her left hand behind her back. "No, none."

"All is well then," he said in a strained voice.

Carolina risked one quick look at his thoughtful face, but could not read his expression.
They returned to the older ladies without delay, and he was all amiability for the rest of the
morning. Nevertheless, she had the notion that somewhere in that conversation she had said the
wrong thing. But try as she might, she could not think where, or what.

* * * *

He was gone no more than three days, but those days were interminable to Carolina.
Her heart, she realized, was his, though he had never looked to attach her. She discovered that
her future--if it was to be spent without him--terrified her. She expressed nothing of her emotions
to her grandmother, but spent her time in careful consideration and deliberate thought.

Her conclusions gave her little joy. She could not, after examining every conversation
and every meeting that they had shared, believe the baron had any interest in her beyond
enjoying her company on his walks.

When Lord Quainton returned to Bath to close up his mother's house, he dined with
them in Queen Square. Carolina had herself well in hand, and ultimately bade an unemotional
farewell to the gentleman who had been for weeks her most constant companion. The baron
seemed equally unaffected by the parting.

"You are a cold-blooded pair, I'll grant you that," Lady Chersham remarked as she
parted from Carolina in the upper corridor later that night. "I would have thought you perfectly
suited." She was still shaking her head when Carolina saw her into her chamber.

In the haven of her own bedchamber, Carolina thought long and carefully. She
determined that Alexander Quainton should not finally depart from Bath without knowing the
impact he had made upon her. As well, she had decided--upon admittedly slim evidence--that
Alexander considered himself damaged beyond use to society and without attraction to the fairer
sex who might otherwise be supposed to ease his life in matrimony. Carolina believed those to
be groundless suppositions. She knew she could not say good-bye without attempting to disabuse
him of such notions. In fact, she waited only on the morning to call upon him and speak her
piece.

She slept a few hours, rose early and, refusing any chaperon, walked to Gay Street in a
driving rain. Without hesitation and with uncharacteristic bravado, she called at The Bell Inn and
requested a disapproving landlord to show her to Lord Quainton's chamber.

Astonishment was written on Quainton's face when he opened the door of his private
parlour--astonishment and a flicker of something Carolina thought he would rather have
concealed...joy. There was possibly also relief in his reactions.

His words were however, discouraging. "We have discussed your belief in your lack of
allure. I had thought I might have convinced you that you are not so insignificant that you can
attend single gentlemen at their chambers in a public inn."

She stared at him, scarcely regarding his words in her delight at seeing him again. She
no longer noticed his eye patch or his scars, and his useless arm was a nothing compared to his
tall, well-made figure. He swung away from her scrutiny into the plainly decorated room.

Stirred to speech, she said, "While you were away, I came to the realization that I have
no future." She followed him into the chamber and gingerly closed the door. Then she removed
her wet cloak and laid it on a nearby chair without taking her gaze from him.

He turned back to face her. "You cannot say so! I have more excuse than you to express
such a daft idea."

"I think not. Whereas I have little to recommend me, you have strength and courage, an
heroic record of service, something of fortune and a proud name." She cleared her throat; tears
threatened her carefully composed speech. "I wanted you to know that I have come to love
you."

He backed away from her, his composure dissipating, consternation obviously his
overriding emotion.

"I expect nothing from you, require nothing." She strove to quiet the fears she expected
he might experience.

His reaction was not what she anticipated. "Stop! Be silent! You vastly undervalue
yourself." He crossed the room to stare from the window at the grey Bath day. "You speak
nonsense of my many 'attributes'. It was clear that last morning in the Pump Room that you were
horrified by the thought of being obligated to me. You were terrified that our constant company
might require a...a betrothal...or some such commitment to a cripple."

"I was not!" She was astonished. "I was terrified that you might feel you had to make me
an offer...might have to tie yourself where you had no inclination."

"That was why you lied about Lady Chersham's misgivings?"

"Of course." She coloured painfully. "How did you know I lied?"

"You have a transparent face, Caro--a crystalline honesty."

"Then you must know that I admire you. To endure what you have endured, to live with
disability and pain...to persevere...takes great fortitude. You look forward, and you have told
me--though you were unaware of it--that you care for your family, your estate, your workers."

"Any man would do the same. You are overimpressed by my heroic injuries." His
sarcasm was vicious.

She removed her gloves, and fiddled with her bonnet strings. "Indeed I am not. And any
man might not do the same. Some would drink to excess, others would hide in illness or
depravity, or solitude. You have withstood those doubtful temptations, though you avoid
intimacy and even friendship."

"You mistake pity for love..."

"No, but I know you took pity on me. I thank you for it. The hours I have spent in your
company have meant so much to me. I wanted you to know it, that's all." She turned to reclaim
her cloak and leave.

"Wait!" He stepped away from the window, toward her, his face and his single eye
intent. "I have never pitied you." His composure was completely gone, his words uneven,
unwilling. "I was attracted to you the moment you walked across the Pump Room to my mother
and me. With your remarkably kissable lips and your grey velvet eyes--you were just as high as
my heart and uncaring of appearance, position or rank. I love your courage, your compassion,
your shy reserve and your strength. And you were never, ever, to know that..."

Joy was dawning in Carolina's face. "Why not? You would condemn us both--"

"Yes," he ground out. "You shall not bear my burdens." He stalked from the parlour,
shouting in the corridor for a horse, passing down the stairs in dangerous haste.

Carolina abandoned her cloak, bonnet and gloves, and hurried after him, half blinded by
tears. She followed him through the tap room unnoticing, and reached the inn's door to the stable
yard where the rain was falling relentlessly.

She was determined his pride should not keep them apart. Her most unrestrained hopes
had been realized; her sacrifice of reticence and vanity had recognized the reward she
desperately sought.

She paused on the doorstep just in time to see her love slip in the quagmire of mud and
muck created on the cobbles by the cold rain. She saw his desperate out-flung left hand, the fall
with all its awkward ignominy. A man without his disability would not have gone down. Had
there been a usable arm on his right side, he might have balanced. Had the rain not obscured the
vision of his only eye, he might have seen the danger more clearly. But Alexander Quainton did
fall and he measured his length face down in the mud.

There was no laughter, as there might have been had he been the worse for drink. In pity
and concern, the ostlers and the grooms surged to aid the wounded warrior to his feet, to help. He
thrust them away with a ferocious growl, struggling to his knees and then upright. Carolina, who
had advanced into the rain when he fell, remained where she was.

The humour and the armour was stripped from Alexander as the rain made rivulets in
the mud coating his damaged face. He made no jest as the men stood respectfully away; he just
stared at Carolina. Then, brushing past her, he reentered the inn.

The rain trickling down her neck brought her to cognizance moments later, and she too
hurried within. The landlady was there with a rough towel, and offers of hot water. Carolina
could hear the landlord and the bootboy scurrying to aid Alexander. She absently thanked the
woman for her concern, and accepted the towel, blotting the rainwater from her face while she
thought.

After some minutes of serious consideration, she slowly climbed the stairs, the skirt of
her soaked blue merino gown gathered in one slender, white-knuckled hand.

The boot boy was leaving Alexander's chamber as she neared his door, and she slipped
in after the lad's departure. Alexander had stripped off his coat, waistcoat and shirt, and his
eyepatch, and was bent over a steaming bowl of water, washing the mud from his face, hand and
hair. His damaged arm, thin and scarred, hung uselessly by his side.

When he reached blindly for the towel, she placed it in his hand.

He stilled, alerted to her presence. Then he made a pretense of drying his skin, and
straightened, to stare challengingly at her with his single slate blue eye. The other lid was sewn
shut, drawn askew by scars.

"This is the reality. Pity me now," he said, without a trace of the charming humourist,
but with something of a snarl. He did not move to conceal either his damaged face or his pathetic
arm from her.

"Why? Are you not the same as you were half an hour since, when I said I loved you?
Has a fall in the mud changed you? Are your scars worse because I have seen them? Is your
character less than it was an hour ago? Can you never laugh again?
Are you different, sir,
than you were?
"

She faced him no more than a hand's breadth away.

"No." He seemed to force out the word.

"Then I love you still," she said. She traced her finger gently across his sealed eyelid,
and let her hand rest lightly on the healed contusions of his lifeless arm. She stared unflinchingly
in his ruined face.

He groaned, whether from anguish or love she did not know. Then he caught her close
with his left arm, and bent his head to kiss her. His initial gentleness turned to demand, and his
desire fired a response in Carolina that left them both shaking.

He spoke in broken, barely audible voice. "And I love you...have from the moment I saw
you, staring at me with compassion, and a lively curiosity. If you saw nothing to pity in me,
likewise I never saw anything to pity in you. Now you have seen me as I truly am, and I believe
you love me."

She pressed a kiss above his heart and heard his breath catch in his throat.

"Always," she assured him. "Do not doubt it. Ever."

THE END

Lesley-Anne McLeod has loved all things British for longer than she can remember. So
it was natural that when she turned to writing fiction she should write Regency romances, those
uniquely English historical romances in the tradition of Jane Austen.

Lesley-Anne has been writing for twenty-five years and has written five Regency
romances and several Regency short stories. She has published articles on antiques and
collectibles, and has also free-lanced in business writing. Book-selling was her career for nearly
ten years; she owned her own bookstore for three of those enjoyable years. She belongs to the Saskatchewan
Romance Writers and treasures the support and friendship that group offers.

Lesley-Anne is married and has one daughter. She lives on the prairies of Canada which
are distant from Regency England in time and thought, but which retain an echo of Great Britain
in history and tradition.

* * * *

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