Miss Lindel's Love (18 page)

“Get by, sir,” Maris said. “Let me up, you foolish creatures.” She looked past the milling dogs and saw him. Suddenly, she smiled, sharing her amusement at the farce of her position. “I meant to be very dignified, Lord Danesby. As you see, I have failed.”

He reached out both hands over the dogs’ backs, helping her to her feet. For a moment, she stood with her hands clasped in both of his. He searched her face. Barring a muddy smear from an inquisitive nose, she looked just as she had in London. No, not quite. Her gaze met his without a trace of self-consciousness. No shyness made her look away while a blush burned itself out in her cheeks. Nor did her hands quiver in his. His sense of loss, of having just failed to catch a precious stone tossed to him, engulfed him once again. Maris Lindel was no longer in love with him.

She took her hands from his grasp on the pretext of shaking out her twisted skirts. “You look well,” she said. “Have you had a pleasant summer?”

“Very pleasant, Miss Lindel. The racing was excellent.”

“And now you prepare to hunt?”

He looked down at the dogs and laughed. “With this motley crew? I fear not. I don’t actually enjoy hunting anymore, not since I took a bad spill in Quorn country. I wasn’t hurt very badly—barring a broken arm—but I had to shoot my horse. It happened to be one I was especially fond of.”

What in heaven’s name possessed him to go babbling out that morbid story? He had, in spare moments, envisioned their next meeting. Kenton had promised himself that he would be suave, putting her at her ease, and charming her without apparent effort. He wanted, he supposed, to instill in her the same sense of loss he felt, to know what she had refused. Seeing her now, he realized how childish that ambition was. He didn’t want her to suffer even an instant of what he felt now, the knowledge that he’d been an utter fool and showed no signs of improving.

“I can understand how that might put you off hunting,” Maris said. She looked over her shoulder. “Might I trouble you to return your dogs to their pen, my lord? My friend, Miss Pike, is easily alarmed and dogs frighten her. All except Gog and Magog, her father’s pugs.”

“Certainly.” He put two fingers to his lips, whistling sharply. Did a slight gleam of admiration appear in Maris’s eyes? “My kennel man will come collect them.”

Hudnall and Dominic appeared, deep in conversation. Kenton felt a pang of jealousy when Maris seemed to appreciate the sight of Dom’s tall form. He supposed Dom was a rather good-looking chap, if you took away that air he had of not being quite present. He introduced them somewhat ungraciously but neither seemed to notice.

“It’s a delight to meet you at last, Miss Lindel,” Dom said, bowing over her hand.

“There seems to be a young lady in the trees over there, Dom,” Kenton said. “Would you be a good fellow and reassure her that the dogs will soon be kenneled?”

“I’ll even undertake to bring her down from the tree. What is her name?”

“Lucy Pike,” Maris said. “She’s rather nervous of dogs and of Lord ... and of strangers.”

“I’m entirely harmless, I assure you.”

Kenton and Maris watched Dom lope off in the direction of the trees, “Never tell me that Miss Pike is afraid of me?”

“Yes, my lord. You are rather an intimidating person to a young miss fresh from the country.” Her smile was slightly ironical, a new expression which charmed him as much as her wide-eyed simplicity did.

“You were never intimidated by me, Miss Lindel, or indeed by anything.”

“You are wrong, my lord. But you called me Maris once upon a time.” Was she flirting with him? He decided she was but, lowering thought, only as she might have flirted with a fossilized friend of the family.

“A gentleman is allowed to use a lady’s Christian name when proposing to her. He reverts to her surname when he is refused.”

“Then you must certainly continue to call me Miss Lindel.” Without the slightest acknowledgment of his reference to their past, she gave a last shake to her skirts and straightened her bonnet from its drunken pose over her left ear. “There. Now that I am respectable again, shall I tell you why I have called?”

“You’re not respectable just yet.” He reached out to rub away the mud from her cheek only to have her flinch away before he could touch her. For the first time, her eyes shifted away from his gaze.

“Will you come into the house for some tea, Miss Lindel?”

“You are very kind, my lord. I shall wait for my friend, if I may?”

“This house is yours,” he said, reverting to the grand phrase of Spanish hosts. He’d said it before, to other guests, but he’d never meant it quite so earnestly. Whatever she wanted, and he felt sure she wanted something or she never would have come, she could have.

* * * *

“So that’s your Miss Lindel, is it?” Dom said as they waved to the back of the landau taking the young ladies home.

“Yes.”

“How soon do you leave for Bath?”

“Tomorrow. Do you care to accompany me?”

“In the same spirit that Miss Lindel accompanies her elderly friend? To assist you and see you come to no mischief?”

“The mischief’s done,” Kenton said. “If I hadn’t been such a fool in town ...well, it’s all spilt milk now. But I hope to show her a better side of me in Bath than she saw in London. I think she liked my roses at any rate.”

“So she’ll be your betrothed by—what—Tuesday next? Three days for a special license and then ‘ring out wild bells.’“

Kenton sighed deeply. “In a romance, perhaps. But there’s a harder task ahead of me than slaying a dragon or redeeming the Holy Grail. I have to make her fall in love with me again.”

To Maris’s surprise, her mother had not scolded her for approaching his lordship with the problem of what to do with Miss Menthrip. On the contrary, she praised her. “That was very well thought of, Maris. You showed great courage.”

“He’s not an ogre,” she said, finding it odd that she should find it necessary to defend Lord Evanesby to her mother in the same words she had used to Lucy. “I knew he would find it in his heart to be generous.”

“I did not mean that he would be cruel or indifferent to Miss Menthrip’s plight, though I would not have thought to approach him in the matter. If there were a lady at the manor, perhaps I should have done so.”

“Is it only women who care what becomes of those less fortunate? I am certain there are many fine philanthropists who are men.”

Mrs. Lindel merely smiled at her daughter’s heat. “I imagine there are many such, though I have had not heard that his lordship is among their number. Yet you must admit it took some courage on your part to speak to his lordship at all, after your last meeting.”

“Mother,” Maris began, feeling the time was ripe, “what did Uncle Shelley say to him?”

“Uncle Shelley?”

“When he was in London, I know he called upon his lordship.”

“Did he? I’m afraid we never discussed it. My brother assured me that he felt the matter was closed and no good purpose could come of pursuing it further. He thought it very well done of you to refuse his lordship’s kindly meant offer. I agree with him. It would have made you look guilty.”

“How do you know I’m not?”

Mrs. Lindel laughed. “Don’t be so foolish, Maris. Even if I were blind and irretrievably stupid, you’re not the sort of fool who throws her cap over the windmill and counts the world well lost for love. Lord Danesby may be your beau ideal but you are, I hope, a properly raised girl.”

“My... my beau ideal?”

“You have been in love with him, or rather the idea of him, since you were fifteen, have you not? You and Lucy Pike both.”

Maris stared in disbelief at her mother. Was this the sweet, rather vague woman she’d lived with for so long? Mrs. Lindel laughed again, this time at her dumbfounded daughter’s expression. “Don’t tell me you didn’t think I knew? When every scrap of paper in your room had some variation of ‘Lady Danesby’ scrawled over and over upon it? When I found drawings of your supposed monogram on the edge of every picture you sketched? I may not be clever, my dear, but I’m observant.”

Maris chuckled at herself and then laughed with her mother. “Did you ever see the description of our wedding I wrote for the
Gazette?
Twelve white horses drew the carriage, if you please, while no one less exalted than the Archbishop of Canterbury performed the ceremony. I believe the King was in attendance, miraculously restored to full health,”

“Did doves hold up your veil?” Mrs. Lindel inquired. “When I was going to marry the doctor’s son, doves were to hold up the edges of my veil and two marchionesses were to carry my train, I was to be married in Westminster.”

“The doctor’s son? I never heard this tale.”

“It was so long ago. I hardly remember his name now but he was the most beautiful young man, at least to my nine-year-old eyes. I remember he had very straight brows which made him look deliciously stern. I was certain he’d committed some terrible crime. I vowed that when he was arrested, I would pine beneath his prison window, dying in the same hour that they hung him.”

“Before or after you were married in Westminster?” Maris asked wonderingly, fascinated by the light this confession threw on her own imaginings.

“No, that was the version where he was reprieved and his wicked uncle—who had kidnapped the rightful heir and left him to die in a field where he was rescued by Dr. Dowdy—that was his name! Gregory Dowdy.” She smiled distantly, as if looking across the years at the whimsical child she’d been.

“What about the wicked uncle?” Maris demanded.

“Oh, what nonsense I thought of. Naturally, Gregory was no mere doctor’s son. After I saved him from the prison or the terrible fate that awaited him, he’d discover he was the rightful heir to a dukedom and return to me in gratitude. Then we’d have the grand ceremony. I remember, yes, I remember I was determined to have a five-guinea lace veil. To me, the height of opulence.”

Maris came and put her arms about her mother’s waist. “I wish I’d told you sooner.”

“But where would be the relish in that? These dreams wither if they are spoken while we believe them. Every girl finds some unattainable man to adore. It is a safe way to play with those feelings that make up a woman’s life. When we are ready for real love, we remember our play and it adds a gloss to the sometimes dreary round of a marriage.” Once again, she seemed to be looking at things in the past, things Maris could neither share nor see. Yet she could glimpse, dimly, that these matters lay in her future.

“Must it be dreary?”

“What, my dear? No, but it cannot always be like our dreams. Dreams end with ‘and they lived happily ever after.’ The rest of us must go on, learning that love ebbs and waxes but only dies if we neglect to cherish it.”

“Is that...”

“How your father and I were? Of course. We were fortunate in our love, that we found one another. There was never such a splendid man as your father. He was so full of life he could raise other people’s spirits just by walking into a room. I sometimes hear his laughter even now. It didn’t seem possible to me that it could die, even if he did.”

“I know,” Maris said softly, a tear running down her cheek to nestle like a kiss on her lip.

“Yet, how at times I struggled to hold on to my patience. When he would bring the whole field home to dinner with no more notice than your coming with a message fifteen minutes before the rest were to arrive.”

“I remember that,” Maris said. “I’d never heard you swear before.”

“‘Blast’ is hardly a swear word.”

“That’s not what you said. You said ...”

Mrs. Lindel put her fingers over Maris’s mouth. “I said ‘blast.’“

“Yes, Mother,” Maris said dutifully, her eyes alight.

“Your father was not always as tender of my feelings as he might have been, especially at first. He was still such a boy when we married. How my whims infuriated him! I was something of a flirt then, you see.”

“You?”

“Why sound so amazed? I haven’t always been comfortably plump, nor was my hair so gray. I think this year has aged more rather.”

“I can’t see it,” Maris said, giving her mother’s waist another squeeze.

“You’re a good child. You won’t make the mistakes I made. Do you know, at one time, I went running back to my mother, full of crochets and complaints about my brutal husband. My father was sympathetic—I was his darling which may have been half the problem. My mother, however, made no bones about it. If I had made a bad bargain, even after all my former raptures about this paragon, then it was up to me to put it right. So I went home again, only to find your father frantic with worry. I remember how long we talked, hours and hours into the night. Then I discovered you were coming along and there was nothing to do but stay together. In the end, we had more happiness than usually is granted to us poor mortals. I had him for nearly twenty years; more than most.”

Maris knew that in another moment her mother would sniff, brush her hands together and find some task to do. Clinging to her for one sweet instant more, Maris dared to ask a question. “Is that why you look so faraway sometimes? You are thinking of the past?”

Her mother appeared startled. “Do I?”

“Sometimes.”

“I can’t guess what I would be thinking of. Whether Mrs. Cosby reminded the butcher to be more careful with his cutting, most likely.” She seemed to realize that this flippant answer would not satisfy Maris. “Yes, I suppose I may fall into a reverie sometimes and that your father’s time with me may well be the cause if I look sad. However, I hope I am enough of a Christian to believe that everything happens for ...well, if not for the best, at least for a reason. As for my appearing somewhat pensive of late, one can hardly blame me.”

“Because of what happened in London,” Maris said, willing to assume this burden as well.

“London? Heavens, no. The world does not revolve about you, my dearest, not even my world. I have found myself wondering what I shall do once you and Sophie are married and living with your husbands.”

“That day is farther off now than when I left for London,” Maris said dryly.