Simply Perfect (23 page)

She was clinging to one of the ribbons with both hands, and she was dancing about the maypole with vigorous, ungainly steps while Miss Martin moved behind her, her hands on Lizzie's waist. She was laughing too. She was also bonnetless and disheveled and flushed.

Lizzie was shrieking with louder laughter than anyone else.

“How very charming,” Elizabeth said without any apparent irony.

“Is that the
blind
girl I have heard about?” Portia asked of no one in particular. “She is spoiling the dance for the others. And she is making a spectacle of herself, poor girl.”

Lily was simply laughing. She clapped her hands in time to the music.

And then several of the girls noticed the new arrivals and the dance came to an end as they all stopped and stared and then bobbed curtsies.

Lizzie clutched Miss Martin's skirt.

“Maypole dancing in July?” Lily cried. “But why not? What a grand idea.”

“It was Agnes's idea,” Miss Martin explained, “instead of the ball game we were going to play. It was her way of including Lizzie Pickford, who has joined us for the summer holiday.”

Her eyes met Joseph's briefly.

“Lizzie has been able to hold on to the ribbon,” she continued, “and dance in a circle with everyone else without colliding with anyone or getting lost.”

“She ought to be taught the proper steps, then,” Portia said, “so that she may look more graceful.”

“I thought she was doing remarkably well,” Elizabeth said.

“So did I,” Joseph said.

Lizzie cocked her head and her face lit up, and he almost wished that she would cry out his name and reach out her arms to him and put an end to this distasteful charade.

But then she smiled and raised her face to Miss Martin, a look of gleeful mischief there. Miss Martin set an arm about her shoulders.

“Do carry on,” Elizabeth said. “We did not mean to disturb you.”

Some of the younger children, Joseph could see—not the schoolgirls—were tackling Hallmere on the grass and shrieking with delight. Lady Hallmere was egging them on. The dog, tethered to a tree close to the maypole, was sitting and placidly watching, his tail thumping on the grass. The duchess was hurrying toward them from a distant cluster of infants.

“I believe we are all out of breath,” Miss Martin said. “It is time for something less strenuous.”

“Ball?” one of the older girls suggested.

Miss Martin groaned, but the lady Joseph recognized as Miss Thompson, the teacher who had appeared outside the school in Bath, had come up with the duchess.

“I will supervise a game for anyone who wants to play,” she said.

“Horace has a new collar and leash,” Lizzie announced loudly. “I hold on and he takes me about and I don't run into things or fall down.”

“How very clever, dear,” Elizabeth said kindly. “Perhaps you could show us.”

“That child,” Portia said sotto voce to Joseph, “ought to learn to speak when she is spoken to. Blindness is surely no excuse for bad manners.”

“But perhaps childish exuberance is,” he said, watching as Lizzie turned and groped with one hand until Miss Martin untied the dog and set the loop of the leather leash in her hand. It took all his willpower not to rush forward to help.

“I will come walking with you if you wish, Lizzie,” a girl about her own age said, taking her free hand.

Lizzie looked in his general direction.

“Would you like to come too…sir?” she asked.

“Well, really!” Portia exclaimed. “What impudence.”

“I would be delighted,” he said. “Miss…Pickford, is it?”

“Yes.” She laughed with glee.

“And Miss Martin must go too,” Lily suggested.

“The rest of us will remain here and be lazy,” the duchess said. “And then we will go into the house for tea. How delighted I am to see you all.”

The dog moved off at a trot and Lizzie and the other girl shrieked with laughter again as they set off in his wake. But he seemed to understand the charge with which he had been entrusted and slowed to a walk as he made his way toward the driveway and then crossed it, making a wide loop about the large stone fountain that stood before the main doors. He also steered well clear of all the trees, leading them toward the other side of the house.

“I hope, Miss Martin,” Joseph said, clasping his hands at his back, “you are not too attached to that dog. I cannot see Lizzie being willing to part with him at the end of the summer. He is looking remarkably healthy. Has his weight doubled, or is that just my imagination?”

“Your imagination, thank goodness,” she said. “But his ribs are no longer visible, and his coat has acquired a sheen.”

“And Lizzie,” he said. “Can that possibly be her, walking hand in hand with another girl, being drawn along by a dog? And dancing earlier about a maypole?”

“And knitting this morning,” she said, “though I believe she dropped more stitches than she worked.”

“How can I ever thank you?” he asked, looking down at her.

“Or I you?” She smiled back at him. “You have challenged me. Sometimes one becomes blinded by routine—ah, pun unintentional.”

They were making their way, he could see, toward a largish lake. He lengthened his stride, but Miss Martin caught his arm.

“Let us see what happens,” she said. “I think it very unlikely that Horace will march straight into the water, and if he does, Molly certainly will not.”

But the dog stopped well short of the bank, and the girls stopped too. The child called Molly then led Lizzie forward, and they both went down on their knees and touched their hands to the water, Lizzie tentatively at first.

Joseph moved up beside them and squatted down next to his daughter.

“There are some stones along the bank,” he said, picking one up. “If you toss them into the water, the farther out the better, you can hear them plop. Listen!”

And he demonstrated while Molly looked at him with fright and Lizzie turned her head and inhaled in such a way that he knew she was breathing in his familiar scent. But she smiled when she heard the stone plop into the water and reached for his hand.

“Help me to find a stone,” she said.

He squeezed her hand and she squeezed back, but from the mischievous smile on her face he knew she was enjoying the game of secrecy.

For the next few minutes she hurled the stones he helped her find. The other girl overcame her fright and threw some too. They both laughed whenever a stone fell with a particularly loud plop into the lake. But finally Lizzie had had enough.

“Shall we go back to the others, Molly?” she asked. “Perhaps you want to join in the ball game. I don't mind. I'll sit and listen.”

“No, I'll watch it with you,” Molly said. “I can never catch a ball.”

“Miss Martin,” Lizzie said, “will you and P—and this gentleman stay here while we go? I want to show you that we can do it on our own. Do you think we can, sir?”

“I shall be vastly impressed if you can,” he said. “Off you go, then. Miss Martin and I will watch.”

And away they went, the dog in the lead.

“Is she sprouting wings so quickly?” he asked ruefully when they were out of earshot.

“I believe she is,” Miss Martin said. “I hope she does not grow overbold too soon. I do not expect it, though. She knows she needs Molly or Agnes or one of the other girls—and Horace, of course. This summer will be a very good experience for her.”

“Let's sit for a little while, shall we?” he suggested, and they sat side by side on the bank of the lake. She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms about them.

He picked up one more stone and bounced it across the water.

“Oh,” she said, “I used to be able to do that when I was a girl. I still remember the memorable occasion when I made a stone bounce six times. But I had no witness, alas, and no one ever believed me.”

He chuckled. “Your pupils are fortunate indeed to have you for a headmistress,” he said.

“Ah, but you must remember that this is a holiday,” she told him. “I am rather different during term time. I am a stern task-mistress, Lord Attingsborough. I have to be.”

He remembered how all the senior girls had fallen silent as soon as she stepped out onto the pavement just before she left Bath with him.

“Discipline can be achieved without humor or feeling,” he said, “or with both. You achieve it
with
. I am quite sure of that.”

She hugged her knees and did not answer.

“Do you ever wish for a different life?” he asked her.

“I could have had one,” she said. “Just this morning I had a marriage offer.”

McLeith! He had ridden over here this morning to call on her.

“McLeith?” he said. “And
could have
? You said no, then?”

“I did,” she said.

He was damnably glad.

“You cannot forgive him?” he asked.

“Forgiveness is not a straightforward thing,” she said. “Some things can be forgiven but never quite forgotten. I
have
forgiven him, but nothing can ever be the same between us. I can be his friend perhaps, but I can never be more than that. I could never trust that he would not do something similar again.”

“But you do not still love him?” he asked.

“No.”

“Love does not last forever, then?”

“He asked me the same thing this morning,” she said. “No, it does not—not love that has been betrayed. One realizes that one has loved a mirage, someone who never really existed. Not that love dies immediately or soon, even then. But it
does
die and cannot be revived.”

“I never thought I would stop loving Barbara,” he told her. “But I did. I look upon her fondly whenever I see her, but I doubt I could love her again even if we were both free.”

She was looking directly at him, and he turned his head to look back.

“It is a consolation,” she said, “to know that love dies eventually. Not a very strong consolation at first, it is true, but
some
comfort nevertheless.”

“Is it?” he asked softly.

He did not know if she was talking about them. But the air suddenly seemed charged between them.

“No,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “Not at all really. What absurdities we sometimes speak. Future indifference is no consolation for present pain.”

And when he leaned toward her and set his lips to hers, she did not draw away. Her lips trembled against his and then pressed back against them and parted as his tongue pushed between them and into the warm cavity of her mouth.

“Claudia,” he said a few moments later, closing his eyes and touching his forehead to hers.

“No!” she said, withdrawing and getting to her feet. She stood looking out over the lake.

“I am so sorry,” he said. And he was too—sorry for what he had done to her and for the disrespect he had shown Portia, to whom he was betrothed. Sorry for his lack of control.

“I wonder if it is a pattern doomed to repeat itself every eighteen years or so of my life,” she said. “A duke and a duke-in-waiting choosing a bride for her suitability for the position and leaving me behind to grieve.”

Oh, dash it all! He drew a slow breath.

“And
what
have I said?” she asked him. “What have I just admitted? It does not matter, though, does it? You must have guessed. How pathetic I must seem.”

“Good God!” he cried, getting to his feet too and standing a short distance behind her. “Do you think I kissed you because I pity you? I kissed you because I—”

“No!”
She swung around, holding up one hand, palm out. “Don't say it. Please don't say it even if you mean it. Either way, I could not
bear
to hear it spoken aloud.”

“Claudia…” he said softly.

“
Miss Martin
to you, Lord Attingsborough,” she said, lifting her chin and looking very much the schoolmistress again despite her disheveled appearance. “We will forget what happened here and what happened at Vauxhall and at the Kingston ball. We will
forget
.”

“Will we?” he said. “I am so sorry to have upset you like this. It was inexcusable of me.”

“I am not blaming you,” she said. “I am quite old enough to know better. I will never even be able to convince myself that I fell prey to the lures of a practiced rake, though that is what I expected you to be when I first set eyes on you. Instead you are a gentleman whom I like and admire. That has been the whole problem, I suppose. And I am prattling. Let us return or everyone—Miss Hunt in particular—will be wondering what I am up to.”

And yet, he thought as they made their way back to the far lawn, not touching and not talking, they could be no more than a few minutes behind the girls.

Minutes that had done infinite damage to both their lives. No longer could he even pretend that he did not love her. No longer could she pretend that she did not love him.

And no longer would they be able to trust themselves to be alone together.

He felt his loss like a hard fist to the stomach.

16

After their return from Lindsey Hall, Joseph and Portia sat together
in the formal flower garden to the east of the house. He was feeling mortally depressed. For one thing he had spent very little time with Lizzie, and the deception, though it had seemed to amuse her, had been distasteful to him. For another thing, he and Claudia Martin must now stay away from each other. No longer could he enjoy even her friendship.

And for a third thing he had been able to discover no warmth, no compassion, no generosity, no spark of passion, beneath the beautiful, dignified, perfect appearance Portia presented to the world. And he
had
tried.

“I am pleased that you enjoy riding,” he had told her on the way back to Alvesley. “It is one of my favorite activities. It will be something we can do together.”

“Oh,” she had replied, “I will not expect you to be hanging about me all day when we are married, just as I will not be hanging about you. We will both have our duties and our pleasures to keep us busy.”

“And those pleasures cannot be found in each other's company?” he had asked her.

“When necessary,” she had said. “We will entertain a great deal, of course, especially when you become the Duke of Anburey.”

He had persisted. “But
private
pleasures? Walking together, dining together, even just sitting and reading or conversing together? Will there not be time for them too? Will we not
make
time for them?” He had
not
added the idea of making love as another private pleasure in which they might choose to indulge after they married.

“I imagine,” she had said, “that you will be a busy man. I am sure I will be busy with all the duties of being the Marchioness of Attingsborough and later the Duchess of Anburey. I will not expect you to feel obliged to amuse me.”

He had not pursued that line of conversation.

He had tried, now, here in the garden, to get her to relax and enjoy with him the beauty that surrounded them.

“Listen!” he had said just a few minutes ago, holding up one hand. “Have you ever thought about how much we miss in life from being endlessly busy? Listen, Portia.”

There was a stream at the bottom of the flower garden with a rustic wooden bridge crossing it and wooded hills beyond. And, sure enough, the birds in the trees here were as busy with their summer chorus as those in Richmond Park had been. He could also hear the gurgle of the stream. And he could feel the warmth of the summer air. He could smell the flowers and the water.

She had maintained a polite silence for a few moments.

“It is by being busy, though,” she had said then, “that we prove ourselves worthy of our humanity. Idleness is to be avoided, even despised. It reduces us to the level of the bestial world.”

“Like Lizzie Pickford's dog sitting beside the maypole waiting to take her safely wherever she wished to go?” he had asked with a smile.

It had been a mistake to mention that particular animal.

“That child,” she had said, “ought not to have been rewarded for being so forward when she was in company with her betters. Blindness is no excuse. It was very good of you to go walking with her to the lake, and the Duchess of Bewcastle made a point of commending your kindness and good nature, but she must surely have wondered if you had not shown some lack of discrimination.”

“Discrimination?”

“Her own son, the Marquess of Lindsey, was outdoors with her,” she had pointed out to him, “as were the children of the Marquess of Hallmere and the Earl of Rosthorn and Lord Aidan Bedwyn. Perhaps it would have been more appropriate to turn your attention to one of them.”

“None of them asked me to go walking with them,” he had said. “And none of them was blind.”

And none of them was his own child.

“The Duchess of Bewcastle is a very amiable lady,” she had said. “I cannot help wondering, though, if the duke does not regret condescending to marry her. She was once a teacher in a village school. Her father was once a teacher. Her sister teaches at Miss Martin's school in Bath. And now she has all those charity girls staying at Lindsey Hall and speaks of them as if they give her as much pleasure as the children of the duke's own family. They ought not to be there. For their own good they ought not.”

“For their own good?”

“They need to learn their proper station in life,” she had said. “They must learn the distinctions between themselves and their betters. They must learn that they do not belong in places like Lindsey Hall. It is really quite cruel to them to allow them to spend a holiday here.”

“They ought to remain at the school, then,” he had said, “kept busy with mending and darning and fed bread and water?”

“It is not what I mean at all,” she had told him. “You must surely agree with me that those girls ought not even to be at a school with other, paying pupils. Those others are only the daughters of merchants and lawyers and physicians, I daresay, but even so they are middle class, not lower, and there is a definite distinction.”

“You would not want to see your own daughter go there, then?” he had asked.

She had turned her head to look at him and laughed. She had looked genuinely amused.

“Our own daughters,” she had said, “will be educated at home, as I am sure you would expect.”

“By a governess who may have been educated at Miss Martin's school or one like it?”

“Of course,” she had said. “By a servant.”

And so now, a mere few moments later, in another silence, Joseph felt his spirits slide all the way down to the soles of the riding boots he was still wearing. There was no hope, no ray of light, ahead. He ought to have insisted upon a decent period of courtship before committing himself to offering for her. He ought…

But there was no point in such thoughts. The reality was that he was betrothed to Portia Hunt. He was as firmly bound to her as if the nuptials had already been solemnized.

The sound of feminine voices in merry conversation with one another came from the terrace behind them, and soon Lauren and Gwen and Lily and Anne Butler stepped into the garden.

“Ah, your peace is being invaded,” Lauren called when she saw them. “We are going to climb to the top of the hill and admire the view. Have you been up there?”

“We have just been relaxing here,” Joseph said with a smile.

“We are going to sit up there and make
plans,
” Lily said.

“Plans?” Portia asked.

“For a picnic the day before the anniversary celebrations,” Lily explained. “Elizabeth and I have been telling everyone about the delightful scene that met our eyes when we arrived at Lindsey Hall earlier, children everywhere, all enjoying themselves enormously.”

“And it struck my mother-in-law and me,” Lauren said, “that there are lots of children here too and yet all the official celebrations virtually exclude them. And so we decided on the spot to organize a children's picnic for the day before the ball.”

“How delightful,” Portia murmured.

“But now we have to plan it,” Mrs. Butler said. “And because I was once a teacher, I am expected to be an expert.”

“Lauren and Lady Redfield are going to invite all the children from Lindsey Hall too,” Gwen said. “And some of the other children from the neighborhood. There will be an army.”

“Miss Martin's girls too?” Joseph asked. He had been wondering how he could arrange to see Lizzie again.

“But of course not,” Portia said, sounding shocked.

“But of course,” Lily said simultaneously. “They were a delight, were they not, Joseph, all dancing about the maypole? And that little blind girl was quite undaunted by her affliction.”

“Lizzie?”

“Yes, Lizzie Pickford,” she said. “Lauren is going to invite them all.”

“Alvesley may never be the same,” Lauren said with a laugh. “Not to mention us.”

Joseph, smiling back at her, could remember a time when Lauren had been every bit as straitlaced and apparently lacking in humor as Portia. Love and her marriage to Kit had transformed her into the warmhearted woman she was now. Was there a glimmering of hope for him after all? He must persevere with Portia. He must find a way to her heart. He
must
. The alternative was too dreadful to contemplate.

“Do you want to come up with us?” Gwen suggested, looking at Portia.

“The sun is rather too hot,” Portia said. “We will return to the house.”

The ladies proceeded on their way across the bridge and onto the path that would take them up the rather steep slope. Even Gwen was undaunted, despite a rather heavy limp, the permanent aftereffect of a riding accident that had happened during her marriage, before Muir died.

“It is to be hoped,” Portia said as they rose to their feet and he offered her his arm, “that they plan the picnic very carefully indeed, though it is kind of Lady Ravensberg and Lady Redfield to think of it. There is nothing worse than children being allowed to run wild.”

“Nothing worse for the adults in charge of them, perhaps,” he said, chuckling. “Nothing more blissful for the children themselves.”

Would Lizzie come? he wondered.

And would Claudia Martin come?

         

For four days Claudia did not set eyes upon the Marquess of Attingsborough. For herself she was very glad indeed. She must forget him—it was as stark and as simple as that—and the best way to do that was never to set eyes on him again.

But Lizzie grieved.

Oh, outwardly she seemed to be thriving. She was looking less pale and thin than she had. She had friends willing to take her about and read to her. She had music to listen to since some of the girls liked to take a turn at the spinet and several liked to sing. Claudia tried telling her stories from history and then asking her questions later. The not unsurprising discovery was that Lizzie had a sharp memory. She was certainly not uneducable. She dictated two more of her own stories, one to Claudia and one to Eleanor, and never tired of having them read back to her. She liked to knit, though her inability to see a dropped stitch or to pick it up if someone else pointed it out was a problem yet to be solved.

She had the dog as a constant companion and increasingly as a guide. Indeed, she was becoming bolder every day, taking short walks with just the dog while Claudia or Molly or Agnes trailed along behind in case they were needed and sometimes went ahead to lead Horace in the desired direction.

She was even something of a favorite with the duchess and her other guests, who often made a point of speaking with her and sometimes included her in their activities when the other girls were engaged in a game in which she was unable to participate. Lord Aidan Bedwyn took her riding with him one day while his older children rode their own mounts and his young daughter rode with her mother.

But despite it all Lizzie grieved.

Claudia found her one afternoon when the other girls had gone out with Eleanor on a lengthy nature hike, curled up on her bed in her room. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

“Lizzie?” Claudia said, seating herself beside the bed. “Are you sad at being left behind? Shall we do something together?”

“Why does he not come back?” Lizzie wailed. “Is it something I did? Is it because I called him
sir
instead of
Papa
? Is it because I asked him to wait at the lake with you so that I could show him I was able to find my way back to the house with just Horace and Molly?”

Claudia smoothed a hand over Lizzie's hot, untidy hair.

“It is nothing you did,” she said. “Your papa is busy at Alvesley. I know he is missing you as much as you miss him.”

“He is going to send me to your school,” Lizzie said. “I
know
he is. He is going to marry Miss Hunt—he told me so when I was still at home. Is she the lady who said I was a clumsy dancer? Papa is going to send me to school.”

“And you do not want to go?” Claudia asked. “Even though Molly and Agnes and the other girls will be there, and Miss Thompson and I?”

“I want to be home with Papa,” Lizzie told her. “And I want you and Horace to come as you did before, only more often. Every day. And I want Papa to stay the night
every
night. I want…I want to be
home
.”

Claudia continued smoothing a hand over her hair. She said nothing though her heart ached for a child who wanted only what ought to be every child's right. After a few minutes Lizzie was asleep.

But the very next day Claudia was able to seek her out with altogether more cheerful news. She had just heard it herself from Susanna and Anne, who had come over from Alvesley with Lady Ravensberg. And Lizzie, Claudia had decided, would be the first of the girls to hear. She was standing by the fountain with Molly despite the fact that it was a chilly, windy day that threatened rain. They were trailing their hands in the water and sometimes stretching out their arms to feel the spray. They were giggling.