Dark Angel / Lord Carew's Bride (36 page)

T
HE DAYS CRAWLED BY
. His utter solitude was his own fault, of course. If he had only made known his return home, he would have had callers. Thornhill would have been among the first. And he would have called on his neighbors. He would have had invitations to dinner. He would have issued invitations. Oh, yes, it was entirely his own fault that he was so very solitary.

And all because of a little creature so beautiful from the outside of her person right through to her soul that she was as unattainable as a star in a different galaxy. All because he was afraid for her to know who he was, lest he see a change in her, lest he see her humanness. He did not want her to look on him as the immensely wealthy and eligible Marquess of Carew. He wanted her to continue to see him as plain—very plain—Hartley Wade.

Every smile she gave Hartley Wade was a treasure to be stored up for future pleasure, because each smile was guileless and sincere as well as utterly beautiful. Every word she spoke to him had been committed carefully to memory.
It must be the loveliest place on earth. … Perhaps you
should employ me as your assistant…. I could live here happily
for the rest of my life. … Will you come too? … This has been so
pleasant
.

He did not want her to know. He wanted the fantasy to continue—for one more afternoon. And so he imposed seclusion on himself, not leaving his land lest he be seen and word should spread. He walked and rode about the park for almost every daylight hour of the two
interminable days, thinking about her, dreaming about her, calling himself every abusive name he could think of, from idiot on down.

He could not sleep from thinking of her, and when he did sleep he dreamed of her, dreams in which she was always just beyond the reach of his outstretched arms, and always smiling at him and telling him how pleasant this had been.

One evening, after he had dismissed his valet for the night, he stood in front of a pier glass, dressed only in his shirt and pantaloons, and looked at himself—something he rarely did, apart from careless glances.

He smiled ruefully at his image and then looked downward and closed his eyes. How imbecilic he was being. He set his right hand on his left and massaged his palm with his left thumb, pressing hard over stiff tendons, pushing his fingers straight one by one. She must be the most beautiful little creature ever to have lived. How could any man look at her and not want her and love her? She could choose any man she wanted. She could choose the most handsome man in England. She doubtless had a large court of admirers. The reason she was still unwed at the age of four-and-twenty must be that her choices were legion.

And he dared to want her himself?

He opened his eyes and forced himself to look at his image again. He watched his thin, twisted hand being massaged and exercised—but never brought back quite to full use.

And he dared to love her himself?

If she knew who he was, a demon in his brain told him, perhaps she would want him. Or his title. Or his property. Or his wealth.

No woman could ever want
him
. Though Dorothea had loved him, he remembered. Not at first. He had been merely a man who could afford to pay for her favors and set her up with the security of a prolonged relationship. But she had grown to love him. She had told him so and he had believed her. He would always be grateful to her, poor Dorothea. He had been fond of her.

But Dorothea had been rather plump and plain, ten years his senior, an aging courtesan even when he had first gone to her to lose his virginity.

No other woman could ever want him. Certainly not Miss Samantha Newman. The idea was laughable. He laughed softly, his eyes closed again.

But she had enjoyed their two afternoons together. She had enjoyed his company. And there was to be another. She was going to allow him to show her his greatest treasure, his home. And he was going to have the memory of her there, inside Highmoor Abbey, gazing admiringly at all the state rooms. He was sure she would admire them. And all the while, as unobtrusively as he could, he would admire
her
and commit to memory her every look and gesture and word.

Oh, yes, he was going to remain Mr. Hartley Wade for one more afternoon. He prayed for good weather. In the meanwhile, the days seemed endless and dreary, and the only way he could bring himself any peace was to walk to the lake and stand on the bank staring at the place
where the three-arched bridge and the rain house—he smiled at her name for the pavilion—would stand when he had had them constructed later in the year.

But the morning of the appointed day finally came, and then the afternoon. And all his prayers had been answered. Not only was it not raining, but the sun was shining down from a cloudless sky. There was even heat in the air. He gave instructions at the house before he left. Until they saw Miss Newman and drew their own conclusions, his staff would think him mad—first forbidding them to spread word of his return and now forbidding them to use his title for the rest of the day.

He rode down the long, winding driveway toward the gatehouse, from where he would be still out of sight of anyone riding along the road. He tried to persuade himself that he would not be too disappointed if she did not come.

But he knew as soon as he saw her, a scant two minutes after his own arrival, that he would have been very disappointed indeed. Devastated.

She saw him almost immediately and raised a hand in greeting. At the same time, her beautiful face lit up with a happy smile. Yes, happy. She was happy to see him.

She was dressed in a very smart and fashionable riding habit of dark green velvet. She wore an absurd little matching riding hat perched on her blond curls, its paler green feather curling enticingly down over one ear and beneath her chin. His mind searched for a more superlative word than beautiful but could not find one.

“Have you ever known a more glorious spring day?” she called to him gaily when she was within earshot.

“No, never,” he said truthfully, smiling at her.

Never. And there would never be another such.

H
E DID NOT TAKE
her immediately to the house. He took her off the driveway and through old and widely spaced trees.

“It was a tangled, overgrown, ancient forest,” he said, “and quite impenetrable except to wild animals of the smaller variety. I had it cleared out so that it could become a deer park and so that it could be walked and ridden in. Of course”—he laughed—“the marquess then decided that there was to be no hunting on his land. The deer have an idyllic life here.”

“Oh,” she said, “I am so glad. Do you disapprove?” She hoped he did not. She hoped he did not enjoy blood sports. But almost all men did. They saw it as a slur on their manhood to admit otherwise. Her respect for the Marquess of Carew rose.

“No,” he said. “I created the deer park only on the understanding that it be in the nature of a preserve. Look.” He pointed with his whip. There were five of them, lovely and stately and quite unafraid, though they must have seen and heard the horses and humans no more than a hundred feet away.

“How can anyone want to shoot them?” she said, and he smiled at her with his eyes.

He took her all the way around the more open part of
the park, with the abbey always visible. From the front it still looked as if it might be a cathedral. The other three sides were a strange mixture of architectural designs. Successive marquesses had obviously all made their mark on the building. And yet the result was curiously pleasing. Samantha could not think of a house—and she had seen many of England’s most stately—that she admired more.

“Thank you,” Mr. Wade said when she told him so.

“Have you had a hand in its design, then?” she asked him.

He looked at her blankly for a moment before laughing. “No,” he said. “But I shall pass along your compliment to the marquess. I am merely anticipating his response and expressing it to you while you are able to hear it.”

“How absurd you are,” she said.

The park was quite unconventionally designed. There were no formal parterre gardens before the house but only a wide cobbled terrace and several large flowerpots, empty at this time of year. But there were flower beds and rock gardens, some of them already full of green shoots; one of them, in a more sheltered area, was overflowing with blooming crocuses and primroses. But there was nothing symmetrical about their design. Most of them were unexpected, in hollows that were hidden from the eye until one was almost on top of them. All of them took careful advantage of the contours of the land.

“It is strange,” she said. “But I like it. Is it your work?”

“Not so much my
work
, to be fair to the gardeners,” he
said. “But my design. I suppose it is strange. To the human mind, anyway, which demands orderliness and symmetry. Nature makes no such demands. Had you noticed? That tree on the slope where we first met, for example. And sometimes I have to argue a point with nature. But not always. I like to work with nature rather than against it, so that everything in a park looks natural even if it is not so in fact.”

“You must have spent a great deal of time here,” she said. “The marquess must have a deep respect for your work.” Again her respect for the master went up.

“He has no artistic sense himself,” he said, a twinkle in his eye. “But he can recognize it and encourage it in others. I have designed several parks in other parts of England. But this is my favorite.”

“Do you live close to here?” she asked. It seemed a shame for him to have spent so much time and creative energy dreaming up such beauty if he rarely had the chance to see it all.

“Not too far away,” he said. “Shall we take the horses to the stable and go into the abbey?”

“Yes, please,” she said. She hoped the interior would not be disappointing. But she desperately wanted to see it for herself, now that she had been so close. She worried a little about what the servants would think. Would they know who she was? Would they be scandalized to see her alone with their master’s hired landscape gardener? But she was not going to allow servants to spoil her afternoon. The three-day delay had seemed endless.
And she had felt so happy to see him again, waiting for her at the gatehouse. Her friend.

The hall robbed her of breath. It was two stories high and seemingly all carved stone pillars and great Gothic arches. It felt as though one were walking into a cathedral.

“The oldest and most magnificent part of the house,” he said. “Apart from the tiled floor, which my gr—, which my employer’s grandfather had put down, this is the entryway almost exactly as it was until the abbey was confiscated by Henry the Eighth.”

“Oh!” was the most intelligent comment she could think to make.

A footman bowed to her after Mr. Wade had signaled to him, and took her hat and her whip and the outer jacket of her riding habit. He made a very stiff half-bow to Mr. Wade and, without a word, took his hat and whip. Samantha found herself biting her lower lip at the obvious slight. They must see him here as a servant, little better than themselves, though he was very obviously a gentleman. Servants could be far more discourteous than their betters. But Mr. Wade made no comment. Perhaps he had not noticed.

They spent all of an hour walking about the state rooms—the grand ballroom, the drawing room, the dining room, the reception hall, the bedchamber where King Charles the Second himself had once slept. She looked at Rembrandts and Van Dycks and one magnificent seascape by Mr. Reynolds. It was all more glorious than even she could have pictured.

“Imagine living here,” she said to Mr. Wade when they were in the ballroom, stretching her arms wide and twirling twice about. “Imagine all this being your very own.”

“Would you like it?” he asked.

“Perhaps not.” She stopped twirling. “Surroundings are not everything, are they? There are other things more important.” She laughed. “But that will not stop me from
imagining
living here.”

“You should marry the Marquess of Carew,” he said.

“Indeed.” She laughed. “He is a single gentleman, is he not? How old is he? Is he young and handsome? Or is he old and doddering? But no matter. Bring him on and I will set about charming him witless.”

“Would you?” He was smiling at her, his head to one side.

“The Marchioness of Carew,” she said, waving an imaginary fan languidly before her face. “It has a definite ring to it, does it not? I do believe you should bow to me, sir.”

“Do you?” He did not bow.

“I shall have you beheaded for insubordination,” she said, raising her chin and looking along the length of her nose at him. “I shall have my husband, the marquess, order it. The marchioness. Of Highmoor Abbey in Yorkshire, you know.” She waved a hand before his face for him to kiss.

He did not kiss it.

“I told you I am still a child at heart,” she said, reverting to her normal self. “I would not try charming him
even if he were the proverbial tall, dark, and handsome gentleman—like Gabriel. I would not exchange my freedom even for all this.” She waved an arm about the ballroom without looking away from his face.

“Is your freedom so precious to you, then?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Have you wondered why I am unwed at my age? It is because I have decided never to marry.”

“Ah,” he said. There was a smile in his eyes, but very far back. Most people would not have even realized that it was there. “I think you must have been hurt badly.”

She was jolted with surprise. Gentlemen were in the habit of telling her that she was the happiest, sunniest-natured lady of their acquaintance.

“Yes,” she said. “A long time ago. It does not matter any longer.”

“Except,” he said, “that it has blighted your life.”

“It has not,” she said. “Oh, it has not. What a strange thing to say.”

“Forgive me,” he said, smiling more fully. “Come to my office and let me order tea. It is the marquess’s office, of course, but I have appropriated it for my use while I am here and he is not.”

Friends knew each other, she thought. He had seen something that no one else had ever seen. And he had perceived something about her that even she had not perceived—or not admitted, anyway. Had her life been blighted? Had she allowed
him
such power over her?