Dark Angel / Lord Carew's Bride (38 page)

She did not really understand what the attraction of
the friendship was. She did not try to understand it. She was too busy enjoying it.

But it was not to last much longer after all. She was sitting alone at the breakfast table, staring into space. Gabriel and Albert had gone off riding about some business somewhere, and Jenny was in the nursery with Mary, who had fallen out of bed during the night and bumped her head and was still feeling the need of her mother’s soothing words and arms.

Aunt Agatha came into the breakfast room, bringing with her the usual pile of letters from her friends in London. She kissed her niece, exchanged pleasantries with her, took toast and coffee, and settled to reading the latest news and gossip from town after Samantha had assured her that no, of course she did not mind if Aunt Agatha was unsociable for a few minutes.

“Oh, dear,” her aunt said after three of those minutes had passed. “Oh, dear, oh, dear. Poor Sophie.”

“Is Lady Sophia ill?” Samantha inquired politely.

“An oaf of a coachman ran her down when she was crossing the street,” her aunt said, still frowning down at her letter. “He even had the nerve to curse her and to ride off without stopping. She was carried home with a broken leg.”

“How nasty,” Samantha said, concerned. “I do hope she is not in too much discomfort.”

“She is,” Lady Brill said. “But worse than that, she is languishing for lack of company, poor Sophie. You know how visiting and exchanging news is the breath of life to her, Samantha, dear.”

“Yes.” Samantha could not quite suppress a smile. Being confined to her own home with a broken leg must be fairly killing her aunt’s closest friend.

But the smile was wiped away almost immediately. “I must go to her,” Lady Brill said decisively. “Poor, dear Sophie. And almost no one in town yet to pay her calls. The least I can do, dearest—the very least—is go to sit with her in her hour of need.”

Selfishly, the implications for Samantha herself were instantly apparent to her. But so were her obligations.

“When shall we leave?” she asked.

“Oh.” Lady Brill looked at her and her frown became worried. “I will be dragging you away from dear Jennifer and Lord Thornhill weeks earlier than we expected. But you cannot stay here, can you, dear? There will be no one with whom to travel back to town next month for the Season. You certainly could not travel alone. Will you mind very, very much? Poor Sophie, you know.”

Samantha leaned across the table to set a hand over her aunt’s. She minded very much indeed, but for a reason that was quite foolish from any rational consideration. “Of course I will not mind,” she said. “I think it very sweet of you to want to return to keep Lady Sophia company. And why should I mind being in town, even if the Season has not yet begun? There is always something to do there. Besides, I need a whole new wardrobe of clothes. I have simply nothing to wear that everyone has not already seen.”

“That is very sweet of you, dear,” Lady Brill said, looking relieved. “Very sweet indeed. And perhaps this will
be the year when you will find the gentleman of your dreams. He will come along, mark my words, even though you keep insisting that you are not even in search of him. I have never heard such nonsense in my life.”

Samantha smiled. “When do you want to leave?” she asked.
Please not today. Oh, please, not today
.

“Tomorrow morning?” her aunt asked apologetically. “As early as possible. Will that be too much of a rush for you, dear?”

The door opened at that moment and Lady Thornhill came in. She assured them that Mary, who was not normally a clinging infant, had thoroughly enjoyed her moment of tragedy but could no longer resist the urge to play with Emily and Jane. Michael had gone with the men.

“Oh,” she said, looking genuinely dismayed when Lady Brill had given her news and told of their plans, “are we to lose you both so soon, then? I had counted on at least another two or three weeks.”

And yet, Samantha thought as she made her way upstairs soon after to give her maid instructions to begin packing for the next day’s journey, Jenny must feel some relief, too, to know that soon she was to have Gabriel and her children to herself again. Albert and Rosalie were to leave within the week.

In six years, Samantha had not envied her cousin’s married state. She had only pitied her, even though she had always been well aware that Jenny’s marriage had quickly developed from its disastrous beginning into a
very deep love match. Today for the first time she felt—oh, not envy. No. Nor loneliness. Only—she could not put a word to what she felt.

But she did feel sorrow to know that this afternoon’s meeting with Mr. Wade was to be the last. It was very unlikely that she would ever see him again, even though it seemed that he had been to Highmoor several times. It would be just too unrealistic to expect that any future visit of his there would coincide with one of her own to Chalcote. And extremely unlikely that she would encounter him anywhere else.

This afternoon would be their final meeting, then. And she would not even be able to suggest that they correspond, despite the fact that they were friends. They were, after all, a single gentleman and a single lady, who had no ties of blood. They could not correspond. Some things were just too improper to be seriously considered.

She left early for her meeting with him. Yet she hurried toward her destination as if she were late. She hurried with eager footsteps and a heavy heart. She did not want the friendship to end. And she resented the fact that it must end just because social convention frowned heavily on any relationship between a man and a woman that did not lead them in due course to the altar.

It was very foolish.

She had no wish whatsoever to go to the altar with Mr. Wade.

But she had every wish in the world to have him as a friend.

She briefly wondered why.

She was very early at the meeting place. At least half an hour early, she estimated, though she had no watch with her. She was going to have a long wait. She did not want to wait. This afternoon was too precious. Their last together.

But as she approached the temple at the top of the hill, he stood up from the stone bench inside it and waited for her to come up to him. He was as unfashionable and as shabby as ever. He was smiling.

His smile warmed her more than the sun.

“You see?” she called gaily. “I have come all this distance and am hardly out of breath.”

“My heartiest congratulations,” he said.

S
HE WAS ALL IN PINK, EXCEPT FOR HER STRAW BONNET, and as pretty as the proverbial picture. She was flushed and bright-eyed, and it was pleasant for a moment to imagine that she was a woman hurrying to meet her lover—him.

Pleasant and absurd.

“Since you are not at all breathless,” he said, “you will, of course, not need to rest here for a while. We will march onward to the rapids, shall we?”

“Ah,” she said, laughing. “How ungentlemanly you are. You have called my bluff.” She went past him and collapsed with exaggerated exhaustion onto the bench. “You are early.”

“And so are you,” he said. “Weather like this is not to be wasted, is it?” He sat down beside her, careful to leave a few inches of space between them.

“How long are you planning to be here at Highmoor?” she asked him. “Long? Or will you be leaving soon?”

She was beginning to feel the impropriety, he guessed. Perhaps she was finding it increasingly difficult to give reasonable excuses to her relatives for so many afternoon absences. She was hoping that he would leave
soon so that she would not have to tell him their meetings must end. He felt infinitely sad.

“I will probably be staying for a while,” he said. “But—”

“I am leaving tomorrow,” she said hurriedly and breathlessly. Her face was turned toward the sky, but her eyes were tightly closed. “I have to return to London with my aunt. Her friend has been housebound by an accident; Aunt Aggy wants to be with her. We will be leaving early in the morning.”

He felt panic coil inside him. “The Season will be beginning soon enough,” he said. “I daresay you will be happy to be back in town.”

She had opened her eyes and was looking down the hill and across the fields and meadows below.

“Yes,” she said. “I have many friends there, and more will be arriving every week. And there is always something to do in town. Sir Albert and Lady Boyle will be leaving Chalcote within the week. Jenny and Gabriel will enjoy having their home to themselves again, though they would be far too polite to admit as much even to each other, I would think. Yes, it will be good to be back. I am looking forward to it.”

He was memorizing her profile—long-lashed blue eyes, straight little nose, sweetly curving lips, soft skin with a becoming blush of color on her cheeks, shining blond curls beneath the brim of her bonnet, the very feminine though not voluptuous curve of her bosom.

He wondered if he was being hopelessly fanciful, hopelessly romantic, to believe that he would always remember her, always love her.

She turned her head and smiled at him, and it pleased him to imagine that there was a certain bleakness in her eyes. “And you will be able to work without interruption when I am gone,” she said.

“Yes.” He dared not think of how he was going to feel after she had gone.

“You really are no gentleman.” Her smile deepened. “You are supposed to assure me that I have been no bother at all and that you will miss me when I am gone.”

“You have been no bother at all,” he said. “I will miss you when you are gone.”

“And I will miss you,” she said. If there had been any wistfulness in her expression, it vanished instantly. “I have never met a landscape gardener before. I did not realize there were such people. I thought one merely sallied outdoors with a spade and a trowel and some flower seeds and set about creating one’s garden.”

He laughed.

“I thought follies grew up out of the soil—quite accidentally in the most picturesque places,” she said. “And in my naiveté, I thought that all lakes and waterfalls and views were created by nature. I did not know there were men who liked to follow in God’s footsteps, correcting his mistakes.”

He laughed again. “Is that what I am doing?” he asked her. “It sounds rather dangerous for my chances in the hereafter, does it not? Do you think God will be offended?”

She chuckled with him but failed to take her turn in the conversation. They were left, when the laughter
ended, looking at each other, a mere few inches apart. For the first time there was an awkwardness between them, a need to fill the silence.

She filled it first. “Where are the rapids?” she asked.

He scrambled to his feet. “A good march away,” he said. “I hope your shoes are comfortable.” As well as dainty. She had abandoned her half boots today. Her unshod foot, he thought, would fit on the palm of his hand.

“If I get blisters,” she said, “I will have a few days of carriage travel in which to nurse them. What a horrid thought. I hate lengthy carriage journeys. One feels at the end of them that every bone in one’s body has been jostled into a different position. One is reluctant to peep into a looking glass for fear that one will be unrecognizable.” She laughed gaily.

They laughed a great deal during the rest of the afternoon and talked mostly nonsense. They were comfortable and happy together. Oh, yes, and vastly uncomfortable, too, somewhere beneath the surface of their gaiety. It was always very difficult to live through the last event of a good interlude, he thought. One could not enjoy it. One was too aware of the need to enjoy it to the full because there would be no more.

The afternoon was an agony to him.

He could remember sitting at Dorothea’s bedside when she was nearing the end—it had come unbelievably quickly. She had been conscious and able to listen and even to talk a little. It had been so hard to talk to her. There had always been the awareness—
these might be the very last words I will ever speak to her
. And she had been good
to him. He had wanted to say something memorable—not that she would have long in which to remember.

She was the one who had said it—and he had remembered ever since.
I am so very fortunate
, she had whispered to him over and over again during what had turned out to be their last hour together. He thought she had meant that she was fortunate to die while she was still his mistress, before he tired of her. He had been humbled by her devotion. And so he had told her the big lie, and had never been sorry.
I love you, my sweet
, he had whispered back.

Partings were such wrenchingly dreadful things. He knew by her manner that Samantha did not look forward to this one, but for her, of course, it was a mere friendship that was ending. She would feel sorrow rather than agony. And so he had the extra burden during the afternoon of hiding his own excruciating pain. For three days he had counted the hours. Now he was counting minutes, not knowing exactly how many he had left.

She loved the rapids, with their bare, jutting rocks and the canopy of trees overhead and the sense—created by the sound of rushing water—of utter seclusion. The laughter and the bantering stopped for several minutes while she wandered slowly up and down the rocky bank and he gazed at her.

“Not a huge waterfall,” she said to him at last. “It would be too much, too overpowering. It is wildness that is called for here rather than grandeur. But a series of smaller falls, yes. It would be an improvement—if this
can be improved upon. Oh, it is lovely, Mr. Wade. How I envy the Marquess of Carew his home.”

That had been his thought exactly—a series of falls rather than one great one. Something to stand beside and stroll beside. Something to catch the light and shade at different angles.

“I am sorry,” she said, looking at him with contrite eyes. “You are the landscaper. I was merely to approve or disapprove your ideas. Now tell me that you planned a huge waterfall and I shall squirm with embarrassment.”

“Your mind must be attuned to mine,” he said. “You suggested exactly what I had planned.”