Dark Angel / Lord Carew's Bride (32 page)

“The children will not bother you, provided you tell them quite firmly that you are not to be romped with,” the countess added.

There were four children, the countess’s two and Lady Boyle’s two. They were perfectly normal, well behaved—though exuberant—children. Samantha was fond of them and had no objection to being romped with quite frequently.

“The children never bother me, Jenny,” she assured her cousin. “It is just that I like being alone occasionally. I like walking long distances to take the air and commune with my own thoughts. You will not be offended, will you?”

“No,” Lady Thornhill said. “Oh, no, of course not, Sam. You are our guest here and must do as you please.
It is just that you have changed. You used not to like being alone at all.”

“It is advancing age,” Samantha said, smiling.

“Advancing age!” her cousin said scornfully. “You are four-and-twenty, Sam, and as beautiful as you ever were, and with more admirers than you ever had.”

“I think perhaps,” Lady Boyle said gently, entering the conversation for the first time, “Samantha is missing Lord Francis.”

Samantha hooted inelegantly. “Missing Francis?” she said. “He was here for a week—visiting Gabriel—and left this morning. I always enjoy Francis’s company. He teases me about being on the shelf and I tease him about his dandyish appearance. Lavender silk for dinner last evening, indeed, and in the country! But when I am not in his company, I forget him immediately—and I daresay he forgets me, too.”

“And yet,” the countess said, “he has twice made you a marriage offer, Sam.”

“And it would serve him right if I accepted one of these times,” Samantha said. “He would die of shock, poor man.”

Lady Boyle looked at her in some shock herself and smiled uncertainly at the countess.

“No, if you really do not mind, Jenny, and if you will not be hurt, Rosalie,” Samantha said, “I believe I will walk alone this afternoon. Aunt Aggy is having a rest, and this lovely spring weather calls for something brisker than a stroll to the lake.”

“You could have gone riding about the estate with
Gabriel and Albert,” the countess said. “They would not have minded at all. But here I go, trying to manage your life again. Have a good afternoon, Sam. Come, Rosalie, the children will be climbing the nursery walls in their impatience already.”

And so finally Samantha was alone. And feeling guilty for spurning the company that had been offered her. And feeling relieved to have the rest of the afternoon to herself. She drew on a dark blue spencer over her lighter blue dress, tied the ribbons of her bonnet beneath her chin, and set out for her walk.

It was not that she disliked either Jenny or Rosalie or their children. Quite the contrary. She had lived with Jenny and Jenny’s father, Viscount Nordal, for four years after her parents died when she was fourteen. She and Jenny had made their come-out together. They had loved the same man…. No, that was not to be thought of. Since Jenny’s marriage six years before, Samantha had frequently stayed at Chalcote with her and Gabriel. If they were in town during the Season, she often stayed with them there. Jenny was her dearest friend.

And Rosalie, the wife, also for six years, of Gabriel’s closest friend, Sir Albert Boyle, was impossible to dislike. She was sweet and shy and gentle and did not have a mean bone in her whole body, Samantha would swear.

The trouble was that they were both very contentedly married. They were both absorbed in affection for their husbands and affection for their children and affection for their homes.

Sometimes Samantha wanted to scream.

And Gabriel and Albert quite clearly shared all those affections with their wives.

Samantha had been at Chalcote since just before Christmas. The Boyles had been there for a month. Aunt Agatha—Lady Brill—Samantha’s constant companion, had come with her. Lord Francis Kneller, another of Gabriel’s friends, had been there for a week. Everything was so wonderful, so peaceful, so cheerful, so domesticated. Everyone, it seemed, was in the process of living happily ever after.

Oh, yes. Samantha’s steps quickened. Sometimes she could scream and scream and scream.

And she felt horribly guilty. No one could be kinder to her than Jenny and Gabriel. At least Jenny was her cousin. Gabriel was nothing to her, and yet he treated her with as much courtesy and even affection as if she were his cousin, too. It was horribly ungrateful to want to scream at their domestic bliss. She did not resent their happiness. Indeed, she was very happy for them. Their marriage had had such an inauspicious beginning. And she had felt that it was partly her fault. …

No, it was not that she resented them. It was just that … Well, she did not know just what it was. It was not jealousy or even envy. Darkly handsome as Gabriel was, she had never felt attracted to him herself. And she was not in search of a man of her own. She did not believe in love. Not for herself, anyway. And she had no intention of marrying. She wanted to remain free and independent. She was almost both already—Uncle Gerald had not kept firm reins on her since she reached her
majority. But when she was five-and-twenty, her parents’ small fortune would be hers to manage herself.

She could hardly wait.

Her life was as she wanted it to be. She was not lonely. She had Aunt Aggy all the time, there were always Jenny and Gabriel to be visited, there were numerous other friends. And there was that group of gentlemen whom it pleased Gabriel to call her court. It was flatteringly large, considering her advanced age. She believed it was so large just because all its members knew very well that she intended never to marry. They felt safe flirting with her and sighing over her and sometimes stealing kisses from her, and even occasionally making her marriage offers. Francis had made her two, Sir Robin Talbot one, and Jeremy Nicholson so many that both of them had lost count.

Her life was as she wanted it to be. And yet … She could not even complete the thought. She supposed it was the normal human condition never to be quite happy, quite satisfied. She did not know what it was that was missing from her life, if anything. When she turned five-and-twenty, perhaps everything would be finally perfect. And there was not long to wait.

She did not know where she was walking. Except that it was in the opposite direction from the lake. And again she felt guilty. Jenny’s Michael and Rosalie’s Emily, both five years old, were intelligent and interesting children. Rosalie’s Jane, three years old, was a mischief, and Jenny’s Mary, aged two, was a sweetheart. Rosalie was in a delicate way again and was due to deliver later in the
spring. Perhaps for Jenny’s sake Samantha should have gone with them.

She recognized where she was when she came to the line of trees. She was close to the boundary between Chalcote and Highmoor. They were two unusually large estates adjoining each other. Highmoor belonged to the Marquess of Carew, but Samantha had never met him. He was from home a great deal. He was from home now.

She walked among the trees. There was no real sign of spring yet above her head, though the sky was blue and there was definite warmth in the air. The branches were still bare. But soon now there would be buds, and then young leaves, and then a green canopy. There were snowdrops and primroses growing among the trees, though. And there was the stream, which she knew was the exact boundary line, though she had not walked in this particular place before. She strolled to the edge of it and gazed down into the clear water gurgling over the stones at the bottom of the streambed.

Not far to her left she could see broad stepping-stones that would take one safely across to the other side. After strolling toward them and hesitating for only a moment, she crossed them and smiled to find that Highmoor land looked and felt the same as Chalcote land.

She had no wish to turn back yet. If she returned to the house, Aunt Aggy might be up after her rest and Samantha would be obliged to bear her company. Not that she did not love her aunt dearly, but … well, sometimes she just liked to be alone. Besides, it was far too
lovely an afternoon for part of it to be wasted indoors. The winter had been long enough and cold enough.

Samantha continued on her way through the trees, expecting that soon she would come out into open land again and would be able to see the estate. Perhaps she would be able to glimpse the house, though she did not know if it was close. On such a large estate it might be miles away. Jenny had told her, though, that it was a magnificent house, with features of the old abbey it had once been still visible from the outside.

The trees did not thin out. But the land rose quite steadily and quite steeply. Samantha climbed, pausing a few times to lean one hand against the trunk of a tree. She must be dreadfully out of condition, she thought, panting and feeling the heat of the sun almost as if it were July rather than early March.

But finally she was rewarded for her effort. The land and the forest continued upward—there was even a quite visible path now—but to one side of her the land fell away sharply to open grassland below. And Highmoor Abbey was in the distance, though she had no clear view of it. She moved about a bit, until finally there was almost a clear opening downhill, with only one tree obstructing the view. There was no seeing it quite clearly, it seemed, and the slope looked rather too steep to be scrambled down.

But there was a feeling of magnificence. A feeling of excitement, almost. It looked wilder than Chalcote, more magical.

“Yes, that tree does need to be removed,” a voice said
from quite close by, making Samantha jump with alarm. “I was just noticing the same thing.”

He was leaning against a tree, one booted foot propped back against it. She felt an instant surging of relief. She had expected to see an arrogant and irate Marquess of Carew—not that she had ever seen him before, of course. It would have been unbearably humiliating to have been caught trespassing and gawking at his ancestral home. Even this was bad enough.

Her first impression that he was a gardener was dismissed even before she reacted to his words. He spoke with cultured English accents, even though he was dressed very informally and not at all elegantly in a brown coat that would have made Weston of Old Bond Street shudder for a week without stopping, breeches that looked as if they were worn for comfort rather than good fit, and top boots that had seen not only better days, but better years.

He was a very ordinary looking gentleman, neither tall nor short, neither herculean nor puny, neither handsome nor ugly. His hair—he was not wearing a hat—was a nondescript brown. His eyes looked gray.

A very unthreatening looking gentleman, she was happy to note. He must be the marquess’s steward, or perhaps a minion of the steward.

“I—I do beg your pardon,” she said. “I was, um, I was trespassing.”

“I will not have the constables sent out to arrest you and haul you before the nearest magistrate,” he said. “Not this time, anyway.” His eyes were smiling. They
were very nice eyes, Samantha decided, definitely a distinguishing feature in an otherwise very ordinary face.

“I am staying at Chalcote,” she said, pointing downward through the trees. “With my cousin, the Countess of Thornhill. And her husband, the Earl of Thornhill,” she added unnecessarily.

He continued to smile at her with his eyes and she found herself beginning to relax. “Have you never seen Highmoor Abbey before?” he asked. “It is rather splendid, is it not? If that tree were not there, you would have the best view of it from this vantage point. The tree will be moved.”

“Moved?” She smiled broadly at him. “Plucked out and planted somewhere else, just like a flower?”

“Yes,” he said. “Why kill a tree when it need not die?”

He was serious.

“But it is so huge,” she said, laughing.

He pushed away from the tree trunk against which he had been leaning and came toward her. He walked with a decided limp, Samantha noticed. She also noticed that he held his right arm cradled against his side, his wrist and hand turned in against his hip. He was wearing leather gloves.

“Oh, did you hurt yourself?” she asked.

“No.” He stopped beside her. He was not a great deal taller than she, and she was considered small. “Not recently, anyway.”

She felt herself blushing uncomfortably. How gauche of her. The man was partly crippled and she had asked if he had hurt himself.

“You see?” he said, pointing downward with his good arm. “If the tree is moved, there will be a full frontal view of the abbey from here, perfectly centered between the other trees on the slope. It is all of two miles away, but an artist could not have done better on a canvas, could he? Except to have left that particular tree off the slope. We will be artists and imagine it removed. Soon it will be removed in fact. We can be artists with nature as surely as with watercolors or oils, you see. It is merely a matter of having an eye for the picturesque or the majestic, or merely for what will be visually pleasing.”

“Are you the steward here?” she asked.

“No.” He turned his head to look at her over his outstretched arm before lowering it.

“I did not think you could be a gardener,” she said. “Your accent suggests that you are a gentleman.” She blushed again. “I do beg your pardon. It is none of my business, especially as a trespasser.” But it struck her suddenly that perhaps he was a trespasser, too.

“I am Hartley Wade,” he said, still looking into her face.

“How do you do, Mr. Wade,” she said. She extended her right hand to him rather than curtsying—he did not seem the sort of man to whom one would curtsy. “Samantha Newman.”

“Miss Newman,” he said, “I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”

He shook her hand with his right one. She could feel through his glove that his hand was thin and the fingers stiffly bent. She was afraid to exert any pressure and was
sorry then for the impulsive gesture of offering the handshake.

“I am considered something of a landscape artist,” he said. “I have tramped the estates of many of England’s most prominent landowners, giving them advice on how they can make the most of their parks. Many people believe that having well-kept formal gardens before the house and regularly mown lawns is enough.”