Elisabeth Fairchild (8 page)

His hands, for miles so still, now fingered the reins uneasily. “I fear I dwell too much on the past.”

“The war?”

He nodded. His gaze flickered in Felicity’s direction. “Things best forgotten.”

She considered for fleeting moment what it must have been like. His concern for the child touched her. “I appreciate your sensibilities, sir, but surely such events must never be forgotten.”

His brows rose.

She stroked Archer’s mane, the dark hair course and long, and wonderful between her fingers. She wondered what Mr. Shelbourne’s hair felt like. She wondered if she offended him. “I have never been to war, but I find, in my own trivial conflicts, I come to better understand myself and human nature, good and bad.”

He studied her a moment, deep green eyes unreadable --she could not tell if he thought more or less of her for her remark, only that it would seem to have startled him.

“I am not one for chit-chat, Mr. Shelbourne.” She wondered if he expected some kind of apology for her outspokenness. “I find it a waste of breath, thought and energies.”

“Indeed?” His eyes narrowed.

Had she said too much? Spoken too freely? It was what she considered both a strength and a failing, voicing her opinion, especially when it ran contrary to common beliefs or practice. It had earned her something of a reputation. She was in addition to her questionable status with regard to Felicity, and her mother, considered an oddity for her own sake. Eccentric. Had Lady Anne been considered thus?

“Whose eyes you would have me open, Miss Foster?” he asked abruptly. “And to what end?”

She frowned. He raised the one topic she did not care to delve. And yet, she had asked for this. She could not now refuse him.

“The world’s eyes, sir,” she said simply “to who and what I am.”

“And what is that?”

She bit her lower lip. “An unfit topic,” she said elusively.

He glanced beyond her, to Felicity, clinging quietly, listening. The child soaked up everything.

“You set me a difficult task.” He shifted in the saddle, thigh muscles flexing, driving all thought and sense from her for a moment.

“Yes.” She laughed. “Perhaps impossible.”

“Who are you?” he asked.

She lifted her gaze from the strength of his thigh to find him regarding her with intense curiosity, and a gleam of mischief in his eyes.”

“You know me, sir.”

“Not really. I know your name, and that you like Darjeeling tea better than China black, and fells better than dales, but above and beyond that . . .” His eyes scanned the horizon, distance yawning between them, a sudden chill. She had seen that look before in his eyes, at the campfire.

He blinked, shifted his gaze, the look fading. “Do we any of us really know one another?”

“Given time, the truth, and desire,” she said without thinking how the last word might be misinterpreted.

He  smiled, mischief returned, nothing distant in the look he bent on her in saying, “We have the time. I am beset by desire--as to truth--that is up to you and I. I thought we might address what and who you really are. By what deeds you would be known.

Who was she? Simple as that, and yet, not so simple. She thought of Lady Anne, of the influence of two dead women in who she had become.

“What makes a person?” she asked. “There is so much ground to cover.”

“Past, present, and future,” he agreed.

“And more.”

Felicity’s little hands were hot on her back. So much more, she thought.

“Connections,” he added.  “Family and friends.”

Yes, family, she thought, though she could not tell him how. Not yet. She did not know if she could trust him yet, with so much.

“Dreams and desires.” Her voice sounded unintentionally wistful.

He cocked his head, dark green eyes considering her, the corners of his mouth down-turned. “Will you share yours with me, Miss Foster?”

Felicity spared her from answering, by inserting herself into their conversation. “I like waterfalls,” she announced.

He evidenced neither irritation nor impatience, saying in the gentlest of voices. “They make a lovely noise, don’t they? Like the hush of the wind through the trees, or the tide on a sunny day.”

“Is it?” Felicity wondered. “I have never seen the sea.”

“Nor I,” Penny echoed.

“What?” He stared at them, amazed. “Tucked away in the fells all of your life? I must take you both to the seaside some day.”

“May we?” Felicity asked, eyes bright.

Penny laughed. “We must introduce Mr. Shelbourne, first, to the fells.”

“Do his friends mean to come?”

Penny waited his answer.

He shook his head, leaning from the saddle, his knee accidentally bumping hers, as he chucked the child under the chin. “They prefer chasing after fishes and foxes.”

In his mischievous smile, in his easy, affectionate exchanges with the child, Penny found herself liking Alexander Shelbourne more than she ever might have expected. Was this how it had been for Lady Anne and the Earl of Pembroke?

“How did you and Val become friends?” she asked.

His head jerked up with unexpected speed. His smile wavered. “He saved my life,” he said. “I’ll tell you about it some day. And you?”

“And me, what?”

“Fell for him, did you?” He watched her keenly.

How did one respond to such a question?

“Most women do,” he said.

Penny shrugged. “He led me . . .”

His brows rose. The word “astray” seemed to hang waiting between them, and that was not at all the impression she wished to give.

She frowned. “He led me to believe he cared for me. I was naive, trusting. But, that was years ago. I am sure Val has changed as much as I have.”

He nodded. “You’ve had a falling out?”

“We have,” she allowed.

She tried to reconcile what she knew of Val, with the heroism he mentioned so nonchalantly. She must, she thought, let go the past.

“I am glad to hear he was in a way to save your life, just as you were in a way to save mine today.”
Oh, Lady Anne
, she thought. “There is hope for us all if Valentine Wharton is a reformed man.

Chapter Nine

He did not go fell walking the following day. A cloud sat heavily upon the dale, and did not lift. He and Val took Oscar fishing, and as they cast their lines into the rain dotted Eden, he asked Val, “How long ago did you leave the dale?”

“All of six years,” Val said readily enough.

“And is the dale changed?” Oscar wondered.

“Not a bit of it,” Val said. “Other than that we are all a bit older. How went your jaunt, yesterday, Cupid? Was the force in full force?”

“Splendid,” Alexander said. “I chanced upon a familiar face.”

“Did you? Who?”

He had both their attention.

“My Valentine,” he said, picturing her in his mind in the moment he had kissed her, savoring the memory.

“Touch-me-not? Chasing after you, is she?”

Was it jealousy colored Val’s voice as he jerked his line from the water, and cast it impatiently to a new spot?

“She was there with a child,” he said, casting truth at Val, hoping he might catch more of it, if he were patient.

“Child? What child?”

“I cannot claim to be entirely clear on that point. A Foster, in the care of your Miss Foster.”

“Not
my
Miss Foster at all any more, my friend,” Val protested. “
Your
Miss Foster it would seem. As to the child, “ His lips pursed, his voice dripped with even more sarcasm than usual. “A by-blow, most likely. Does he favor Touch-me-not?”

“She is fair, with blue eyes.”

Val shook the fair hair from his own blue eyes. “And how old did she appear to be?”

Alexander shrugged, though he was not at all casual in studying Val’s hands gripping the pole, his knuckles gone white. “Difficult to tell. I do not consider myself a good judge when it comes to children, but she does not look to be more than five, or so.”

Val had any response in mind it was cut short by the salmon that in that instant struck hard the end of his line, but Alexander wondered many times afterward, if it was the bite of the fish, or the news he had just received knocked Valentine Wharton unsteadier in that instant.

Penny saw him in crossing the bridge over the River Eden, he and his friends walking toward her, fishing creels slung across their shoulders, rods piercing the ground hugging clouds. Fine figured young men, all three of them, and yet at sight of them her attention fixed exclusively on Alexander Shelbourne, on the dark gleam of his hair, the strength of shoulder and thigh, the narrowness of waist and hip. She awaited his reaction to sight of her with pent breath.

He was speaking to Oscar Hervey, head bent, shoulders shaken by laughter as Oscar’s hands gestured. Oscar spotted her first, and stopped talking, the dark head rose, the hollows of his cheeks, the depths of his eyes turned first to Oscar, and then, sensing her approach, towards her. And suddenly, she could breathe again, deep, happy breaths, for his first reaction was to smile, a broad, face brightening smile, as if it were the most natural thing in the world--as if he could not have stopped himself from smiling had he tried.

Cupid, her Cupid,  raised his pole in salute, and quickened his pace.

Valentine Wharton did not.

Oscar simply eyed her with keen interest, gaze straying now and again to regard his companions.

“If it isn’t the Misses Foster,” Shelbourne called out jovially.

“Cupid!” Felicity squealed, and slipping Penny’s hold, ran toward him. “We have been to market,” she said.

“Have you?” He knelt to speak to her on her own level. “We have been fishing.”

“Catch anything?” she asked, leaning into his bent knee.

“Look and see.” As Penny came lee with them, his gaze rose to meet hers. Felicity lifted the creel lid with a gasp.

“Trout!” she cried. “And salmon. Three big ones.”

“Luck, Mr. Shelbourne?” Penny asked, self-conscious under the eyes of so many. As glad as she was to see him, she meant to keep the encounter short--safer that way--smarter--and easier on her nerves.

“Indeed,” he agreed, gazing at her over Felicity’s fair head with a twinkle in his eyes meant just for her, that made her wonder if their encounter figured into that luck somehow.

Then Val was upon them, nothing lucky in the chill gaze he fixed on either of them. “So you’ve a child, have you, Penny, since last we met?”

Lady Anne, Lady Anne
, she thought. She must not let him rattle her with his bitter suggestiveness, not with his friends, not with Cupid watching so intently. Not with Felicity staring up at them. “A child in my care, yes, Val. A lot has happened since you went away.”

The man that had once won her with a lad’s wink regarded her as coldly as if they were complete strangers.

“Whose is she?” he asked bluntly.

She could have slapped him. Felicity’s attention was by now firmly fixed on the two of them, her keen little ears taking in every word, her body tense with listening.

“She is mine, now. Aren’t you Felicity, my love?” She took the child’s hand, her gaze meeting briefly that of Mr. Shelbourne as he rose, lacing his creel lid shut.

 “Little pitchers have big ears, Val,” he curtailed Val’s response in asking,  “Can these questions keep? Fish are spoiling.”

Penny was spared further questions, further contact of any kind with Val and his guests, until the evening of Fiona’s fete.

Spring hung in the breeze, despite the chill, a hint of crushed hyacinths and snow drops. The carriages had intruded upon the corner of the garden. Penny and her father, disembarking from her father’s ancient coach, were met by the creaking sway of the apple trees Appleby was famous for.

“What an awful noise,” her father complained, and Penny could not tell if it was the moaning treetops he referred to, or the scrape of fiddles and the keenness of a pipe trailing from the wide doors of the barn.

They paused to peep in the doorway to the vast, stone floored apple storage area. It smelled most pleasantly of the ghost of that ripe fruit, but now, in a flurry of color and movement, it was a Circassian Circle of apple-cheeked young men and women. The younger and more energetic of the guests danced themselves warm, eyes bright, laughter on their lips.

She glanced about, wondering if he would be there. Hoping.

Her father was greeted by nods.

She did not see him. No Cupid. No Val. No Oscar.

Penny drew her cloak closer against the nip of the wind, against the heated looks from the young men. She ignored them, as the young women ignored her, pretending her invisible. It never failed to pain her, and yet she expected no more of them. It did not matter, not in the grand scheme of things. Her mother had let things matter too much. Not she. She modeled herself after Lady Anne. She arranged her features in an expression of sublime indifference.

Her father seemed not to notice. She often wondered if her own face took on such a rigid, impassive expression.

“Will you dance, Penny?” One of the Griffith lads asked, eyes bright with hope, the only man in the room gentlemanly enough to ask, and he five years her junior, filled with the confidence of youth.