Come Near Me (24 page)

So she
simply
told him each day that she was
happy.

And she
was
happy. Really she was. A bit
lonely, perhaps, when she’d never been lonely before, even if she’d
often been alone. Adam might invite her along for a ride once in a
while, when he knew he wouldn’t be too busy, but he didn’t want to
bore her with estate business. He’d told her as much.

This made sense to Sherry, as she was sure she
wouldn’t want to bore him with a recitation of her duties—when she
remembered to perform them. She seriously doubted that he would
want to accompany her as she toured the rooms with the housekeeper,
commenting on how fine everything looked when that conscientious
person looked to her as if it just might be time she mumbled
something flattering about beeswax or some such thing.

Still, for as lovely as the country was, and as
happy as she was, Sherry was beginning to worry that Adam didn’t
see her as his wife. Which was ridiculous, because she was his
wife. They’d said their vows, right here, beside this very stream.
She was his wife, he was her husband.

Except that between being lovers and ignoring each
other—the former being how she saw their marriage, the latter being
how she’d seen her parents’ marriage—she was beginning to believe
there might exist something that was
different
from either
of those unions.

Adam cosseted her, tried to amuse her, gave her
lovely gifts, laughed with her, teased with her.

She did her best to please him, wanted only to
please him.

They never argued, never spoke seriously about
anything at all.

They simply loved each other.

Shouldn’t there be something
deeper
than
pleasure?

Perhaps when they had children of their own...

“Well, hello there, dear lady. Doesn’t this make for
a most delightful, bucolic scene?”

Sherry quickly pulled her feet out of the water and
tucked them beneath her skirts as she turned around to see a man
standing on the bank above her.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Forgive me, did I startle you? I
should have realized you were miles away, made my presence known by
crashing through the trees like a loose bull on the run or some
such thing. Daydreaming, were you?”

Sherry couldn’t find her tongue. It was there,
somewhere, stuck inside her head, but it wouldn’t work, wouldn’t
push out any words. Because the man she was looking at was so
singular, so unique, that she thought she must be dreaming him.

Tall, as tall as Adam, as dark as Adam, he had a
face that could only be called angelic. Eyes as blue as a summer
sky, long, dark lashes, a smile that could melt ice in the dead of
winter. He was dressed in London’s latest fashions, his cravat an
intricate marvel, his superfine coat fitting him like a second
skin. What on earth was such an elegant creature doing tramping the
fields of Daventry Court?

“Ah, a silent beauty,” the man said, smiling so that
the sun seemed suddenly to shine ten times brighter than it had
before. “And rightly so, as you have no idea who I am. I should
rectify that, I suppose.” He bowed, elegantly. The word kept
circling inside Sherry’s head.
Elegant.
He was simply
elegant.

“Yes,” she said at last, feeling suddenly defensive
and, for the first time, very much the marchioness. “Introductions
most definitely would be in order, as you’re standing on Daventry
soil. That said—who are you, sir, and what are you doing here?”

“I am Richard Brimley, my lady, come to rusticate in
the country for a few months,” he intoned, holding out his hand to
her, to help her rise, which was something she most definitely
didn’t want to do. At least not until she could locate her hose and
shoes. “Which is the same as to say I’ve a need to outrun my
tradesmen’s bills until the next quarter, but we won’t pay any
attention to that, shall we? I’ve just rented a most wonderfully
appointed domicile someone with a flair for the ridiculous has
dubbed Frame Cottage. And you’re the marchioness of Daventry, of
course.”

“There’s no of course about it, Mr. Brimley,” Sherry
told him, surreptitiously shoving her balled-up hose into her
pocket and pushing her still-damp feet back into her shoes. She
couldn’t decide if she liked Mr. Brimley or not. He was so smooth,
so very sure of himself, so obviously confident he was making a
first-rate impression on her. The fact that he was doing just that
only upset her more. “How would you know who I am?”

There was his smile again, battering down any
defenses she might have tried to build, taking all of her new,
titled consequence and blowing it off his hand like so much rice
powder, reducing her to what she still felt herself to be—a
slightly simple child. As sophisticated as a dairymaid, for all of
her London Season. “I may be new to the neighborhood, my-lady, but
my locally retained staff has already informed me of the lovely
Lady Daventry. Hair like dark fire, a beauty beyond compare, and a
most honest, straightforward disposition one might even call blunt.
So? Am I wrong?”

“No, Mr. Brimley, you’re not wrong about my
identity, and I thank you for your compliments if they assisted you
in coming to a correct, if only somewhat flattering conclusion,”
Sherry said, still ignoring his outstretched hand as she clambered
to her feet. Had she ever felt as gauche, and yet so possibly
intriguing? Feminine? “I must return to Daventry Court now. Would
you care to escort me?”

“It would be my honor, madam,” he said, bending down
to retrieve her account book and her novel, tucking both under his
arm. “I had dared to hope, but you would have had every right to
order me from the, property, never to return. You are too
gracious.”

“Belatedly gracious, I believe, sir. Please forgive
me for being so impolite, but you did startle me, you know.”

“Yes, and I could have been a highwayman, couldn’t
I? Or a Gypsy king come to steal you away, hold you for
ransom?”

“A Gypsy king, Mr. Brimley?” Sherry said, relaxing
more and more under Richard Brimley’s friendly gaze. “You aspire,
then, to royalty?”

“Of a sort, my lady, of a sort,” he replied, holding
out his arm. This time she took it and, together, they walked out
of the trees and toward the small bridge that crossed the stream a
quarter mile in the distance. She would have told him about the
steppingstones, except she didn’t picture the man as the sort who
would chance muddying his highly polished boots when there was a
less risky way to cross over the water.

“You were in London, Mr. Brimley?” she asked after a
few moments. “I don’t believe I saw you, and I believe I saw most
all of the world there during the Season.” What she didn’t say was
that, among the hundreds of names and faces that had been presented
to her, she was sure she would have remembered Richard Brimley. He
had the face and figure and air of easy confidence that would make
him easily recognized in the midst of a multitude of lesser
mortals.

“A brief visit only, actually, my lady,” he told her
as he helped her over a patch of rough ground. “Only long enough to
renew a few old acquaintances, I fear, but my time was delightfully
spent, I assure you. In fact, I attended your ball the last night
of the Season, not that I’d been invited. But when a friend dared
me to accompany her, I could not decline. Naughty, aren’t I?”

“A friend?” Sherry looked up at him, caught the
devilish glint in his liquid blue eyes. “I shouldn’t ask this
friend’s name, should I?”

“You could ask, my lady, but, as a gentleman, I fear
I would have to decline to answer. We arrived late and withdrew
early, I will say that, and so most unfortunately I was denied the
opportunity to meet my host and hostess. Would your husband have
tossed me out on my ear, do you think?”

“Adam isn’t quite that starchy,” Sherry told him,
remembering how little of their own ball the host and hostess
themselves had attended. “I only hope you enjoyed yourself.”

“Oh, I did, most definitely. I always enjoy myself
in London Society, and feel very much at home; amid kindred spirits
as it were. In other words,” he said, winking at her, “I find
London deliciously naughty.”

“And the countryside, Mr. Brimley,” Sherry asked,
“how do you find it?”

He looked at her for long moments, until she felt a
blush rising in her cheeks. “Delightful, my lady. I find the
countryside absolutely delightful. Tell me, do you play?”

Sherry blinked in confusion, and to rid herself of
the insane idea that she might be in danger of falling under some
fairy spell. What a pity that she had left Chollie’s four-leafed
shamrock in her rooms. She’d never known a man could be so
beautiful. “Do I play? Do you mean cards, Mr. Brimley?”

“No, my lady. Although I do enjoy a good game of
chess, I find cards boring and predictable. What I meant, however,
was do you play—at life? Do you enjoy life? Do you enjoy the simple
pleasures of dancing alone in the middle of a field of wildflowers,
moving to the music inside your head? Do you gaze at the full moon
and wonder what it would be like to take flight, see the other side
of it? Can you stay very still and stare at a deer for hours,
without once wishing to put an arrow through its heart? Do you dare
anything, try anything, just to feel the joy of life it gives you?
Do you
live,
my lady? Do you dream? I think you do. I have a
sense about these things, you understand.”

Sherry removed her hand from his arm, shaken to her
very core. How could he so carelessly guess so much about her? “Do
you sense, Mr. Brimley, that you are entirely too personal with
your questions?”

“A thousand pardons, my lady,” Brimley said, his
handsome face earnest, yet still smiling. “I’ve always been one to
rush my fences, often to my sorrow. But I sensed a kindred spirit
in you, from the moment I first saw you. We are life’s
wonderers.”

“Wonderers? You mean wanderers, don’t you?”

“No, my lady.
Wonderers.”
He took her hand,
laid it on his bent arm once more, patted it companionably, “We
look at the earth, and wonder. We look at people, and we wonder. We
look at beauty, and we wonder. How did the grass get so green? The
sky so blue? Where did all this lovely diversity come from, and
why, how? Are we a part of it, or is it a part of us? And why, oh
why, are most mortals so unimpressed with any of it? Why don’t they
see what we see? Why are they so ungrateful, and so unhappy?”

“Oftentimes,” Sherry said hesitantly, “oftentimes I
imagine they’re just too busy.”

“Oh, yes, too busy. Too busy to look up at the sky.
Too busy gathering and grabbing and lusting for more and more and
more. God wasted all this beauty on mere mortals, that’s what I
think.”

Sherry smiled, believing herself to actually be
having an intellectual discussion. Adam had never discussed
anything with her in this way, spoken of ideas, of notions. “Are
you saying, then, Mr. Brimley, that the Lord should have planned a
shorter week during the Creation? Perhaps stopped after the birds
and the trees, and left Man totally out of the perfection of His
creation? It’s an interesting theory, I suppose.”

“Indeed, it is. Think about it, my lady. The earth
is perfection itself. Without Man there to clutter it up, that is.
What has Man brought to the earth, madam? Wars, pestilence, petty
jealousies, coal fires, insatiable greed, evil in all its forms.
You and I, we see a deer. We watch it, savor its beauty, while
others look at the same deer and see”—he grinned down at
her—”dinner.”

“Man has to eat, Mr. Brimley,” Sherry pointed out
rationally. “And, even if Man didn’t exist, there are other
predators who look at a deer and see their dinner.”

“True enough, I suppose,” he said, sighing. “But
animals don’t kill for sport, do they, once their bellies are
full?”

“No, I suppose they don’t,” Sherry answered as they
paused at the steps leading up to the sprawling gardens. “But do
you really think the world would be perfect if we humans were
erased from it? If we’d never been here in the first place? Who
would appreciate all its beauty, if Man had never been
created?”

“God and his Angels, my dear,” Brimley said, lifting
her hand to his lips, then smiling at her, “Of which, I am assured,
you are most certainly one. A beautiful, unspoiled angel.”

Sherry tilted her head to one side, then smiled.
“You’re funning with me, aren’t you, Mr. Brimley? Just talked round
and round, in a huge circle, in order to compliment me? Surely
there are more direct ways?’

“A circuitous route, my lady, is eminently more
enjoyable for some of us. But have I done it? Have I wormed my way
into your good graces? Intrigued you, made you believe that we all
could spend a most enjoyable summer, laughing, and playing, and
perhaps even thinking deep from time to time? Dare I even hope that
I will be invited inside Daventry Court, to meet your esteemed
husband and his brother, Lord Dagenham? I will perform party tricks
for them as well, should you wish it.”

“You have left me no choice but to invite you
inside, Mr. Brimley,” Sherry responded with her usual honesty.
“Otherwise, how should I ever be able to explain you to my husband?
You are quite singular, you know.”

“One of a kind, my lady,” he agreed with a smile so
boyish and appealing that Sherry giggled. “There will never be
another like me, I assure you.”

“Sherry? Who is that with you?”

She turned at the sound of Geoff’s voice, then
motioned for him to come down the steps, join them. She made the
introductions quickly, and just as quickly Geoff invited Richard
Brimley into the house for a glass of wine and some
conversation.

Sherry smiled as she followed the two men into the
house, knowing Geoff had been at loose ends since returning from
London, and believing that Richard Brimley’s curious and intriguing
presence may just be the perfect solution to her brother-in-law’s
ennui.