Simply Perfect (12 page)

“You parted on bad terms?” he asked.

“We parted on the best of terms.” They had stepped onto one of the paved paths through the parterre gardens and slowed their steps by unspoken consent until they stopped walking altogether. “We were betrothed. Oh, unofficially, it is true—he was eighteen and I was seventeen. But we were in love, as perhaps only the very young can be. He was going to come back for me.”

“But he never did.” He looked down at her, trying to see the romantic girl she must have been and imagining by what slow stages she had grown into the severe, disciplined woman she was today—most of the time anyway.

“No,” she said. “He never came. But that is all very ancient history. We were children. And how we can exaggerate or even distort events in memory! He remembers only that we grew up with the closeness of brother and sister, and he is quite right. We were friends and playmates for years before we imagined ourselves in love. Perhaps I have exaggerated those events and emotions in my memory. However it is, I have no reason to avoid him now.”

And yet, he thought, McLeith had ruined her life. She had never married. Though who was he to make that judgment? She had done good things with her life instead. And perhaps a marriage to McLeith would not have turned out half so well for her.

“Have
you
ever been in love, Lord Attingsborough?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Once. A long time ago.”

She looked steadily at him.

“But it did not work out?” she asked. “
She
did not love
you
?”

“I believe she did,” he said. “Indeed, I know she did. But I would not marry her. I had other commitments. Finally she must have understood. She married someone else and now has three children and is—I hope—living happily ever after.”

Beautiful, sweet-natured Barbara. He no longer loved her, though he felt a residual tenderness whenever he set eyes upon her, which was often enough since they moved in much the same circles. And sometimes, even now, he thought he caught a look of wounded puzzlement in her eyes when she looked at him. He had never given her a reason for his apparently cooled ardor. He still did not know if he ought to have. But how could he have explained the advent of Lizzie in his life?

“Other commitments?” Miss Martin asked. “More important than love?”

“
Nothing
is more important than love,” he said. “But there are different kinds and degrees of love, and sometimes there are conflicts and one has to choose the greater love—or the greater obligation. If one is fortunate, they are one and the same.”

“And were they in your case?” she asked, frowning.

“Oh, yes,” he said.

She looked around suddenly at the gardens and the milling guests as if she had forgotten where she was.

“I do beg your pardon,” she said. “I am keeping you from tea. I really am not hungry. I believe I will go to the rose arbor. I have not seen it yet.”

It was his chance for escape. But he found he no longer wished to get away from her.

“I will come with you if I may,” he said.

“But is your place not with Miss Hunt?” she asked him.

“Should it be?” He raised his eyebrows and leaned a little closer to her.

“Are you not to marry her?” she asked.

“Ah,” he said, “news travels on the wind. But we do not need to live in each other's shadow, Miss Martin. That is not the way polite society works.”

She looked across the formal gardens and up to the terrace, where McLeith and Portia Hunt were standing at one of the food tables, plates in hand.

“Polite society is often a mystery to me,” she said. “Why would one choose not to spend as much time as one can with a loved one? But please do not answer.” She looked back into his eyes and held up one hand, palm out. “I do not believe I wish to hear that you gave up on love years ago and are now prepared to marry without it.”

She was startlingly forthright. He ought to have been angry with her. He was amused instead.

“Marriage,” he said, “is another of those obligations of rank. One dreams as a very young man of having both—love and marriage. As one grows older one becomes more practical. It is wise to marry a woman of one's own rank, of one's own world. It makes life so much easier.”

“That,” she said, “is exactly what Charlie did.” She shook her head as if astonished that she had made such an admission aloud. “I am going to the rose arbor. You may come with me if you wish. Or you may rejoin Miss Hunt. You must not feel in any way responsible for keeping me company.”

“No, Miss Martin.” He set his head to one side as he regarded her with eyes squinted against the sun. “I know you are perfectly capable of looking after yourself. But I have not yet seen the rose arbor, and I believe I have more of an appetite for roses than for food.
May
I accompany you?”

Her lips quirked at the corners, and then she smiled outright before turning and walking diagonally across the parterres in the direction of the rose arbor.

That was where they spent the remaining half hour of the garden party, looking at the roses, a bloom at a time, dipping their heads to smell some of them, exchanging greetings with acquaintances—at least,
he
did—and finally sitting on a wroughtiron seat beneath an arch of roses, gazing about at all the beauty and breathing in the fragrant air and listening to the music and speaking very little.

It was possible to sit silently with Miss Martin now that the discomfort he had felt out on the river had disappeared. With almost anyone else he would have felt obliged to keep a conversation going. Even with Miss Hunt. He wondered if it would always be so or if marriage would bring them enough contentment in each other's company that they could be satisfied with a shared silence.

“Silence,” he said at last, “is not the absence of everything, is it? It is something very definite in its own right.”

“If it were
not
a very definite something,” she said, “we would not so assiduously avoid it through much of our lives. We tell ourselves that we are afraid of darkness, of the void, of silence, but it is of ourselves that we are afraid.”

He turned his head to look at her. She was sitting with straight spine, not quite touching the back of the seat, her feet side by side on the ground, her hands resting palm up, one on top of the other, in her lap—a growingly familiar pose. The slightly floppy brim of her hat did not quite hide the rather severe lines of her face in profile.

“That sounds bad,” he said. “Are we such nasty creatures at heart, then?”

“Not at all,” she said. “Quite the contrary, in fact. If we were to see the grandeur of our real selves, I suspect we would also see the necessity of living up to who we really are. And most of us are too lazy for that. Or else we are having too good a time enjoying our less than perfect lives to be bothered.”

She turned her face to his when he did not answer.

“You believe in the essential goodness of human nature, then,” he said. “You are an optimist.”

“Oh, always,” she agreed. “How could life be supported if one were not? There is a great deal to feel gloomy about—enough to fill a lifetime to the brim. But what a waste of a lifetime! There is at least as much to be happy about, and there is so much joy to be experienced in working toward happiness.”

“And so silence and…darkness hold happiness and joy?” he said softly.

“Assuredly,” she said, “provided one really listens to the silence and gazes deeply into the darkness. Everything is there.
Everything
.”

He made a sudden decision. Ever since deciding to call upon her in Bath, and especially since being shown around her school and talking with her on the road to London, he had been meaning to take matters further with her. Now was as good a time as any.

“Miss Martin,” he said, “do you have any plans for tomorrow? In the afternoon?”

Her eyes widened as she continued to look at him.

“I do not know what Susanna has planned,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

“I would like to take you somewhere,” he said.

She looked at him inquiringly.

“I own a house in town,” he said. “It is not my place of residence, though it is on a quiet, respectable street. It is where—”

“Lord Attingsborough,”
she said in a voice that must surely have even the most intrepid of her pupils quaking in her shoes whenever she used it in school, “where
exactly
are you suggesting that you take me?”

Oh, Lord! As if…

“I am not—” he began.

She had inhaled sharply while he spoke the three words, and her bosom had swelled. She looked forbidding to say the least.

“Do I understand, sir,” she said, “that this
house
is where you keep your
mistresses
?”

Plural. Like a harem.

He leaned back in the seat, resisting the sudden urge to bellow with laughter. How could he possibly have been so gauche as to give rise to such a misunderstanding? His choice of words today was proving quite disastrous.

“I must confess,” he said, “that the house was bought for just that purpose, Miss Martin. It was years ago. I was a swaggering young sprout at the time.”

“And
this,
” she said, “is where you wish to take
me
?”

“It is not unoccupied,” he told her. “I want you to meet the person who lives there.”

“Your
mistress
?”

She was the very picture of quivering outrage. And part of him was still amused at the misunderstanding. But really this was no joke.

Ah, this was not funny at all.

“Not my mistress, Miss Martin,” he said softly, his smile fading. “Lizzie is my
daughter
. She is eleven years old. I would like you to meet her. Will you? Please?”

8

Claudia gave herself one more look-over in the pier glass in her
dressing room and drew on her gloves as she turned toward the door. She felt rather self-conscious because Susanna was standing there.

“I am sorry,” she said briskly, not for the first time, “that I will be unable to come visiting with you this afternoon, Susanna.”

“No, you are not.” Her friend was smiling impishly. “You would much rather go driving in the park with Joseph. I would in your place. And today is as sunny and warm as yesterday.”

“It was very kind of him to offer,” Claudia said.

“Kind.”
Susanna tilted her head to one side and regarded her closely. “It is what you said at breakfast, and I objected to it then, as I do now. Why should he
not
take you for a drive? He must be close to you in age and he enjoys your company. He proved that the evening before last when he sat beside you at the concert and took you in for supper before Peter could find you to bring you to our table. And yesterday he walked you home from Mr. Hatchard's and then took you out on the river during the garden party and was sitting in the rose arbor with you when we came looking for you to bring you home. You must not talk of his interest as mere kindness, Claudia. It belittles you.”

“Oh, very well, then,” Claudia said. “I daresay he has conceived a violent passion for me and is about to beg me to become his marchioness. I might end up a duchess yet, Susanna. Now
there
is a thought.”

Susanna laughed.

“I would rather see him marry you than Miss Hunt,” she said. “His engagement has not yet been announced, and there is something about her I do not like though I cannot explain quite what it is. But I hear sounds downstairs. Joseph must have arrived.”

He had indeed. He was standing in the hall when Claudia went down with Susanna, talking with Peter. He smiled up at them in greeting.

He was, of course, looking as handsome as ever and alarmingly virile in a dark green coat with buff pantaloons and white-topped Hessian boots. At least his colors coordinated with hers, Claudia thought wryly. She was wearing the third and last of her new dresses—a sage green walking dress that she had thought very smart when she bought it. And really, what did it matter that she looked far less grand than anyone else she had met socially in the last few days? She did not
want
to look grand, only presentable.

He had brought a curricle instead of a closed carriage, she saw as soon as they stepped outside the door a couple of minutes later, Susanna and Peter coming too to see them on their way. He handed her up to the passenger seat and climbed up to sit beside her before taking the ribbons from his young tiger, who then proceeded to jump up behind them.

Despite herself Claudia felt a rush of exhilaration. Here she was in London, staying at a grand house in Mayfair, and riding in a gentleman's curricle with the gentleman up beside her. Their shoulders were, in fact, all but touching. And she could smell his cologne again. She did not need to remind herself, of course, that this was no mere pleasure trip but that he was, in fact, taking her to meet his daughter—his
illegitimate
daughter, the offspring, no doubt, of one of his mistresses. Lila Walton must have been right on that visit of his to the school. He had a daughter he wished to place there.

And the nature of his interest in her was now quite apparent. So much for romantic daydreams.

She was not really shocked at the revelation he had made yesterday. She was well aware that gentlemen had their mistresses and that sometimes those mistresses, as was nature's way, bore them children. If the mistresses and their children were fortunate, the gentlemen also supported them. The Marquess of Attingsborough must be of that number, she was happy to know. His mistress and daughter were living comfortably in a house he had bought years ago. And if he chose to send the girl to her school, well…She did not doubt he could afford her fees.

Yet despite the existence of a longtime mistress and mother of his child, he was courting Miss Hunt. It was the way of the world, Claudia knew, at least of his world. He needed a wife and legitimate heirs, and a man did not marry his mistress.

She was
very
glad she did not move in his world. She far preferred her own.

She wondered how Miss Hunt would feel about the existence of the woman and child if she knew about them. But then it was altogether possible that she did.

Claudia waved to Susanna and Peter as the curricle rocked into motion, and then folded her hands in her lap as it made its way out of the square. She disdained clinging to the rail beside her. She was no coward, and she was determined to enjoy every moment of the novelty of bowling along through the streets of London in a smart open vehicle, looking down on the world from her high perch.

“You are very quiet today, Miss Martin,” the marquess said after a few minutes had passed. “Have Miss Bains and Miss Wood been interviewed yet?”

“Yes,” she said. “Both of them went this morning. And both were successful—in their own eyes anyway. Flora said that Lady Aidan was extremely kind to her and asked only a few questions before telling her all about Ringwood Manor in Oxfordshire and the people who live there and assuring her that she is bound to be happy there as she will be just like a member of the family. The last governess has recently married—as did the governess before her. Then Flora was taken to meet the children, whom she liked exceedingly well. She will be leaving for her new life tomorrow.”

“And was Lady Hallmere as amiable to Miss Wood?” the marquess asked, turning his head to grin at her—goodness, but he was close.

He was turning the curricle into Hyde Park. Claudia had thought she was lying when she told Susanna that this was to be their destination. Perhaps it would turn out to be only a white lie.

“She asked Edna many questions,” she told him, “both about herself and about the school. Poor Edna! She does not do well when she is being questioned, as you may remember. But Lady Hallmere surprised her by telling her that she remembered hearing about the burglary that killed Edna's parents and made an orphan of her. And although Edna said she was very haughty and intimidating, it was obvious that she admired the woman greatly. And Lord Hallmere was also present and was kind to her. She loved the children when she met them. And so Edna too will be leaving us tomorrow.” She sighed audibly.

“They will be fine,” the marquess assured her, turning his curricle onto an avenue that stretched ahead between rolling green lawns and ancient, shady trees. “You have given them a good home and a sound education, and now you have found them decent employment. It is up to them how they conduct the rest of their lives. I liked them both. They will be fine.”

And he startled her by freeing one of his hands from the ribbons and reaching across to squeeze both her hands in her lap. She did not know whether to jump with alarm or bristle with indignation. She did neither. She carefully remembered the purpose of this drive.

“Is your mis—Is your daughter's mother expecting us?” she asked.

There had been no time yesterday for any real explanations. Even as he had told her that the person he wished her to visit—Lizzie—was his daughter, Susanna and Peter had been stepping into the rose arbor, looking for her.

“Sonia?” he said. “She died just before Christmas last year.”

“Oh,” Claudia said, “I am sorry.”

“Thank you,” he said. “It was a very sad and difficult time.”

And so now he was left with the problem of an illegitimate daughter to provide for. His decision to send her to school, even though she was only eleven years old, was even more understandable. For the rest of her girlhood he would not have to worry about anything more than paying the school fees. And then he would probably find her a husband capable of supporting her for the rest of her life.

What had he said yesterday? She frowned slightly, trying to remember. And then she did.

Nothing
is more important than love.

He had put emphasis on the first word. But she wondered if there had been any real conviction behind those words. Had his own daughter become an encumbrance, a nuisance, to him?

They did not linger in the park. Soon they were back out on the crowded streets of London again, and the sun began to feel uncomfortably hot. But finally they turned into quieter residential streets, clean and respectable though obviously not inhabited by the most fashionable set. They drew to a halt outside one particular house, and the tiger jumped down from behind and held the horses' heads while the marquess descended to the pavement, came around the curricle, and held up a hand to help Claudia alight.

“I hope,” he said as he rapped on the door, “you will like her.”

He sounded almost anxious.

He handed his hat and whip to the elderly and very respectable-looking manservant who answered the door.

“Take Miss Martin's things too, Smart,” he said, “and let Miss Edwards know that I am here. How is Mrs. Smart's rheumatism today?”

“Better, thank you, my lord,” the man said as he waited for Claudia to remove her gloves and bonnet. “But it always is in the dry weather.”

He took their outdoor things away and came back a few minutes later to inform them that Miss Edwards was in the parlor with Miss Pickford. He turned and led the way upstairs.

Miss Edwards turned out to be a small, pretty, petulant-looking young lady, who was obviously too old to be Lizzie. She met them at the parlor door.

“She is not having a very good day today, I am afraid, my lord,” she said, curtsying to the marquess and glancing sidelong at Claudia.

The room behind her was in semidarkness, all the heavy curtains being drawn across the windows. In the hearth a fire burned.

“Is she not?” the marquess said, but it seemed to Claudia that he sounded more impatient than concerned.

“Papa?” a voice said from inside the room. And then more gladly, filled with excitement,
“Papa?”

Miss Edwards stood aside, her hands clasped at her waist.

“Stand and curtsy to the Marquess of Attingsborough, Lizzie,” she said.

But the child was already on her feet, her arms held out toward the door. She was small and thin and pale, with dark hair waving loose down her back to her waist. Her face was alight with joy.

“Yes, I am here,” the marquess said, and strode across the room to fold the child in his arms. She wrapped her own tightly about his neck.

“I
knew
you would come,” she cried. “Miss Edwards said you would not because it is a sunny day and you would have a thousand things more important to do than coming to see me. But she always says that, and you always come when you say you will. Papa, you smell good. You
always
smell good.”

“Especially for you,” he said, untwining her arms from about his neck and kissing both her hands before releasing them. “Miss Edwards, why on earth is there a fire burning?”

“I was afraid that Lizzie would catch a chill after you took her out in the garden last evening, my lord,” she said.

“And why the darkness?” he asked. “Is there not enough darkness in Lizzie's life?”

Even as he spoke he was striding over to the windows and throwing back the curtains to flood the room with light. He opened the windows wide.

“The sun was shining directly in, my lord,” Miss Edwards said. “I wanted to protect the furniture from fading.”

He looked at Claudia as he moved back to his daughter's side and set one arm about her shoulders.

“Lizzie,” he said, “I have brought someone to meet you. She is Miss Martin, a friend of mine. Miss Martin, may I present my daughter, Lizzie Pickford?”

There was something strange about the child's eyes, Claudia had seen as soon as the curtains were drawn back. One was almost closed. The other was more open, though the eyelid fluttered, and the eye wandered beneath the lid.

Lizzie Pickford was
blind
. And if Claudia's guess was correct, she had been blind from birth.

“Lizzie,” Miss Edwards said, “make your curtsy to Miss Martin.”

“Thank you, Miss Edwards,” Lord Attingsborough said. “You may take a break. You will not be needed for the next hour or so.”

“Lizzie Pickford,” Claudia said, walking closer to the child, taking her hot, thin little hand in her own and squeezing it before letting it go, “I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Miss Martin?” the girl said, turning her face to her father.

“I had the pleasure of visiting her last week when I was away from you for a while,” he said, “and then of escorting her to London. She has a school in Bath. Would you like to offer Miss Martin a seat and me too since we are visiting you? My legs are aching from all the standing.”

The girl chuckled, a light, childish sound.

“Oh,
silly
Papa,” she said. “You did not walk here. You rode. In your curricle—there was more than one horse. I heard them. I told Miss Edwards that you had come, but she said she had heard nothing and that I must not get my hopes up and become feverish. You are
not
tired of standing. Or Miss Martin either. But I am pleased you have come, and I hope you will stay forever and ever until bedtime. Miss Martin, will you please sit? Papa, will you? I will sit beside you.”