Indiscreet (7 page)

They had turned onto the driveway on their way back to the
stables and the house. Probably there would be a few others up by now and ready for breakfast. Clarissa had planned an excursion for the afternoon to Pinewood Castle five miles distant, weather permitting. Clearly weather was going to permit. He was going to be expected to escort Ellen Hudson. Probably something would have been arranged for this morning also to somehow throw them together.

He drew his horse to a halt suddenly. “You two ride on,” he said, making his tone deliberately light. “I would hate to be a distraction to the two of you when you are so deep in mourning.”

They both looked at him and at each other in some surprise and the teasing light died from their eyes. One thing they had learned over the years of their friendship was sensitivity to one another's moods. They might not realize immediately that one of the others was not sharing the mood of the group, but as soon as they did, they were immediately sympathetic.

“And you need to be alone,” Nat said. “Fair enough, Rex.”

“We will see you back at the house,” Eden said.

Not a word about believing he was going to ride back to find Catherine Winters. Not a suggestion of a teasing gleam in their eyes. He could not quite understand why he could not himself see the fun of the situation. After all, he had been rejected before. They all had. And they had all usually been able to laugh at their own expense as well as at one another. None of them was infallibly irresistible to the fair sex, after all.

He wheeled his horse without a word and made his way back down the drive. He might have pretended to have an errand in the village, but it was rather early for that. Besides, they would
have known that he lied. He turned away from the village when he reached the bottom of the drive and rode back along the lane they had ridden just a few minutes before. He did not hurry. He hoped that enough time had elapsed that she would be gone without a trace. Not that there were many byways along which she might have been lost to sight. And he knew that her dog would have slowed her down since she did not keep him on a leash and he liked to wander and explore as they walked.

He hoped that he would not be able to catch up to her. Even so, he was disappointed when it seemed that she had indeed disappeared from sight. After riding for a few minutes, he could see no sign of her and yet he could see for some distance ahead. He soon realized where she must have gone, though. One of the side gates into the park suddenly came into view. It was closed, but then, she would have shut it after her to keep the deer inside. He tried the gate. It opened easily. It was obviously in frequent use. He maneuvered his horse around it and went inside.

There were ancient trees along this border of the park. It had been a favorite childhood playground. Even the smell of it was familiar and the shade and the silence. He dismounted and led his horse by the reins. Perhaps she had not come this way after all. But even if she had not, he would continue on his way and return home by this route. He had always liked trees. For some reason they could always be relied upon to bring a sense of peace.

And then he heard the snapping of twigs and the little brown-and-white terrier came loping along and set its front paws up against his legs. It wagged its tail. He must have made a friend, the viscount thought wryly. It did not even bark.

“Get down, sir,” he instructed the dog. “I do not appreciate having paw marks either on my boots or on my pantaloons.”

The dog licked at his hand. He had noticed before that the terrier would never win any prizes for obedience. She had clearly spoiled it.

“Toby, where are you?” he heard her call. “Toby?”

And then, while he was in the process of taking two paws in his hands and setting them on the ground, she came into sight. She stopped and looked at him, and he looked back. This had been foolishness, he thought. Why had he done it? She was a virtuous woman and he wanted nothing to do with virtuous women. Not in a one-on-one situation, anyway.

And what had happened to yesterday afternoon's resolve?

She looked beyond him, as if expecting to see Nat and Eden, and then back. She said nothing.

“I, after all, am on my brother's land,” he said. “What is your excuse?”

Her chin came up. “Mr. Adams has opened the park to the people from the village,” she said. “But I am on my way back to the gate. It is time we went home.”

“Walk back through the trees,” he said. “You can get from here all the way to the postern door and avoid the public path and the village. It is a much more pleasant route. I will show you the way.”

“I know it, thank you,” she said.

He should let it go at that. Walking back through the trees with her, leading his horse and waiting for her dog to explore
every tree, would take at least half an hour. Quite alone with her among the trees. Claude would have his head.

He smiled at her. “Then let me accompany you?” he asked. “You are quite safe with me. I do not indulge in seductions this early in the morning.”

She blushed and he held her eyes with his, still smiling, pulling gently on that invisible thread between them.

“I can hardly forbid you,” she said, “when I am the trespasser and you are the guest.”

But she had not said any more about going back through the gate onto the road, he noticed.

They walked side by side, not touching. Yet he felt quite breathlessly aware of her.

“The primroses are all in bloom,” he said. “The daffodils will be out soon. Is spring your favorite time of the year, as it is mine?”

“Yes,” she said. “New birth. New hope. The promise of summertime ahead. Yes, it is my favorite time of year, even though my garden is not as full of color as it will be later.”

New hope. He wondered what her hopes were, what her dreams were. Did she have any of either? Or did she live such a placid and contented existence that she needed nothing else?

“New hope,” he said. “What do you hope for? Anything in particular?”

She was gazing ahead, he saw when he glanced down at her. Her eyes looked luminous and he knew the answer to one of his silent questions. There was wistfulness in her gaze, longing.

“Contentment,” she said. “Peace.”

“And do you have neither that you must hope for them?” he asked.

“I have both.” She glanced quickly up at him. “I want to keep them. They are fragile, you know. As fragile as happily-ever-afters. They are no absolute state that one attains and then keeps forever and ever. I wish they were.”

He had disturbed her peace. There was no accusation in her voice, but he knew it was so. And happily-ever-afters? Had she discovered with the death of a husband that there was no such thing? As he had discovered it with the fickleness of a betrothed?

“And you?” She looked up at him more steadily. “What are your hopes?”

He shrugged. What did he hope for? What did he dream of? Nothing? It was a disturbing thought but perhaps a true one. Only when one hoped for nothing and dreamed of nothing could one keep control of one's own life. Dreams usually involved other people and other people could never be depended upon not to let one down, not to hurt one.

“I do not dabble in dreams,” he said. “I live and enjoy each day as it comes. In dreaming of the future one is wasting the present.”

“A common belief.” She smiled. “But one impossible to live up to, I believe. I think we all dream. How else can life be made bearable at times?”

“Has life sometimes been unbearable to you, then?” he asked. He wondered if her life really was contented. She had been living here for five years. She had been widowed for at least that long. How old was she? In her mid-twenties at a guess. From the age
of twenty or so, then, she had lived alone. Was it really possible that she was contented with such an existence? Of course, it was possible that her marriage had been insupportable to her and the freedom of widowhood seemed a paradise in contrast.

“Life is unbearable to all of us at times,” she said. “No one is fortunate enough to escape all of life's darkness, I believe.”

They had reached the river, which flowed through the wood and on out of the park to skirt behind the village. It gurgled downhill at this particular point, over stones and under an arched stone bridge with balustrades either side that they had used to balance on as children, arms outstretched.

“If ever you want peace,” he said, coming to a stop in the middle of the bridge and resting his arms along the top of the wall, “this is the place. There is nothing as soothing as the sight and sound of flowing water, especially when the light falling on it is filtered through the branches of trees.” He let his horse wander to the other side to graze on the grass of the bank.

She stopped beside him and looked down into the water. Her dog ran on ahead.

“I have spent many idle minutes standing just here,” she said. Perhaps she did not realize that the tone of wistfulness in her voice said more than her actual words expressed. It told him that she agreed with him and that there had been many occasions when she had needed to seek out peace.

He looked down at her, slim and dark and beautiful beside him. Her fingertips, in kid gloves, were resting on the edge of the balustrade. If only his calculations at the start had been correct, he thought, he would have known her quite intimately by now.
He would know what that slender, shapely body felt like beneath his hands and against his own body. He would know how soft and warm and welcoming she was in her depths. He would know if she loved with cool competence or with hot passion. He would know if the first could be converted to the second.

He would wager that it could.

He wondered if once or twice would have satisfied him. Would he be hot for her still, as he was now? Or would he—as he usually was with women—be satisfied once he had known all there was to know? Would he have lost interest and not even have pursued her this morning for this unwise walk through the woods with her?

He could not know. He probably would never know.

He did not realize that he had been standing staring silently down at her until she looked up at him, awareness in her face and in her eyes.

He reached for something to say to her but could think of nothing. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but closed it again and looked back into the water. He wondered afterward why he did not merely straighten up and suggest that they continue on their way. He wondered why she did not think of the same way of defusing the tension of the moment.

But neither of them thought of it.

He leaned sideways and down, turning his head and finding
her mouth with his own. He parted his lips in order to taste her. Her lips trembled quite noticeably before returning the pressure of his. He did not touch her anywhere else. Neither of them turned.

The kiss did not last long, but far longer than it ought to have lasted. He looked back into the water. She presumably did the same thing. He was shaken. He did not know quite where this was headed and he liked to be in control of his affairs. She had refused to be his mistress. And he had been given the firm impression that she had meant it. Kisses for the sake of kisses were pointless especially when they set one on fire. But there was nowhere else for them to lead. He certainly was not interested in any permanent sort of relationship.

“For the sake of my self-esteem,” he said, “you must admit that it was not because you did not want to, was it?”

There was a lengthy silence. He did not think she was going to answer. Perhaps she had not understood his question. But she did answer eventually. “No, it was not because of that,” she said.

It would have been easier if she had not admitted it. Damnation! What did she want out of life? Only contentment and peace? Not pleasure? Though there was another possibility, of course.

“I suppose,” he said, his voice harsher than he had intended it to be, “you want marriage again.”

“No,” she said quickly. “No, never that. Not again. Why would any woman willingly make herself the property of a man and suffer all the humiliation of submerging her character and her very identity in his? No, I am not trying to tease you into making me an honorable offer, my lord. Or any other type of offer either.
I meant my refusal the other evening, and if you believe me to be a tease and take that kiss as evidence, then I apologize. It was not meant to tease. It was not meant to happen at all. I am going home now. Alone, please. I will not get lost, I assure you. Toby!” she yelled.

She hurried across the bridge and onward as soon as her terrier made its appearance from among the trees to pant eagerly at her. He did not try to accompany her. He stayed where he was, his elbows on the balustrade, staring down into the water.

He might have stood there for a long time if the crackling of undergrowth had not brought his head up again. He thought she was returning for something. But it was merely one of Claude's gardeners or gamekeepers, who looked at him a little curiously, pulled on his forelock, and continued on his way.

It was a good thing, Lord Rawleigh thought, that the man had not happened by a few minutes sooner.

T
HE
villagers of Bodley-on-the-Water were finding that their lives had brightened considerably. The weather had been unseasonably sunny and warm for a long stretch of days so that the trees were noticeably green and the early-spring flowers were all in bloom with the promise of more to come as green shoots appeared in the gardens even of those not reputed to be blessed with green thumbs. A few fluffy white lambs were frisking on spindly legs in a few fields alongside their shaggier and yellower mothers.

And of course Mr. and Mrs. Adams were back home with their houseguests, and one or more of them appeared in the village or at least passed through it almost every day. A few of the villagers were even blessed with invitations to the house. The rector and his wife were invited several times of course. They
were both of the gentry class—Mrs. Lovering was second cousin to a baron. Mrs. Winters was invited once. Miss Downes was invited to tea with the ladies one afternoon at the request of Lady Baird, who remembered her from a long time ago. Unfortunately, Mrs. Downes was too frail to leave her home in order to accompany her daughter. But Miss Downes had reported that Lady Baird was to call one afternoon.

There was to be a dinner and ball at the house one evening. Everyone from miles around with any claim to gentility would be invited to that one, of course. There was to be a proper orchestra instead of just the pianoforte that was played at the occasional village assembly in an upper room at the inn. The greenhouses behind Bodley House were to be ransacked for floral arrangements for the dining room and ballroom.

None of the plans were a secret just as none of the daily activities of the family and guests were. The servants at Bodley were not unusually loose-tongued, but most of them were local people with families either in the village or on the farms about it. And one of the footmen and a few of the gardeners frequented the tavern during their free hours. Mrs. Croft, the housekeeper, was a friend of Mrs. Lovering. News concerning people in whom everyone had an insatiable interest could not be kept entirely under wraps. And nothing was secret, of course.

Unfortunately, the line between news and gossip has ever been a fine one.

Bert Weller, into his fourth mug of ale at the tavern one evening, reported seeing Mrs. Winters walking her dog among the trees inside the walls of Bodley very early that morning. There
was nothing so strange about that. Mrs. Winters was ever an early riser. She was often out at the first cockcrow. And she frequently walked in the park, as many of them did. Mr. Adams had informed them they might, though they were not sure that Mrs. Adams approved of their taking such liberties.

The only strange thing—and perhaps it was not strange at all, Bert conceded—was that Viscount Rawleigh had been in the woods too, not very far away, standing on the old bridge, staring down into the water while his horse grazed nearby. Indeed, it had looked for all the world as if Mrs. Winters was coming from the direction of the bridge.

Perhaps they had met and exchanged morning greetings, someone suggested.

Perhaps they had met and exchanged
more
than morning greetings, Percy Lambton suggested, with a leer and a glance all about him for approval.

But he met none. It was one thing to comment on hard fact and even to speculate a little. It was quite another to instigate malicious rumor. His lordship was their Mr. Adams's brother—his
twin
brother—and Mrs. Winters was a respectable citizen of their own village, even if no one knew where she came from or what her life had been like before she came to live at Bodley-on-the-Water.

Perhaps they had met by accident and walked together. They would have been presented to each other at the house when Mrs. Winters was invited there, after all.

They would make rather a handsome couple, someone observed.

Ah, but he was a
viscount,
others remembered. There was too large a social gap even though she was almost without doubt a lady.

“Or a former lady's maid who has learned to ape her betters,” Percy Lambton suggested.

The conversation drifted to other matters as Mrs. Hardwick refilled mugs.

But somehow word spread. And it aroused interest in its hearers, though very little malice. It aroused enough interest that they watched with more than usual attention for any sign of an attachment between so great a personage as Viscount Rawleigh and their own Mrs. Winters. There were three incidents before the night of the dinner and ball. Three very minor incidents, it was true, but then, to people who lived in such isolation from centers of activity and gossip, even small incidents could assume a significance beyond the facts.

•   •   •

EVERYONE
from Bodley House attended church on Sunday morning. Catherine watched in some amusement from her pew as Mrs. Adams, at her regal best, led the procession down the aisle to the padded pew at the front, where she always sat, though not all of them could fit on that favored seat, of course. Most of them had to sit on bare polished wood behind her.

The Reverend and Mrs. Lovering had been invited to the house to dinner again last evening. She, Catherine, had not. It had been a significant omission, considering the fact that Mrs. Adams was one lady short in her guests. Clearly she was
punishing Catherine for having had the temerity to be in the music room alone with Viscount Rawleigh. Not that it had been particularly improper, but Mrs. Adams wanted him to have eyes only for her sister for the coming weeks. Any other single women between the ages of eighteen and forty must be seen as a threat.

Juliana sidled into the pew beside Catherine, as she sometimes did, and smiled up at her in conspiratorial fashion. Mrs. Adams did not appear to miss her. She probably assumed that her daughter was with one of the guests. Catherine winked back.

She had had an invitation to the dinner and ball to be held next Friday, but that was hardly surprising either. It was not easy in the country to assemble enough guests to enable one to call a gathering a ball. Every last body was important to the success of the occasion.

She was not sorry to be in Mrs. Adams's bad books. She had been quite happy during the past three days not to set eyes on Viscount Rawleigh. She stole a look at him now seated on the padded pew beside Miss Hudson and two places from his brother. Goodness, but they looked alike. It seemed amazing that such handsome dark looks could be duplicated.

That kiss! It had been a mere meeting of lips. Nothing else. There had been no more to it than that. But it had left her seared, devastated. It had haunted her for three days and woven itself into all her dreams at night.

It was not so much the fact that he had stolen it as the fact that he had not. She had known it was coming. She would have had to be an imbecile not to know. The air had been charged there on the bridge. She could have broken the tension. She could have
said something. She could have moved. She could have continued with her walk. She had done nothing.

It was he who had kissed her. It was he who had moved his mouth to hers—and his lips had been parted. Her own role had been quite passive, though she feared that once his mouth was on hers, she had pushed her lips back against his. She had tried to persuade herself that he was entirely to blame, that it really had been a stolen kiss—after he had assured her that he did not seduce women early in the morning.

But it had not been a stolen kiss. It had been something shared. She was at least equally responsible for it. She had not avoided it because—well, because she had wanted it. She had been curious. Oh, no, that was nonsense. She had been hungry. Simply that.

But how could she cling now to the righteous indignation with which she had greeted his visit to her cottage and his conversation in the music room? She was a hypocrite. But she wanted nothing more to do with him. She had thought herself past all possibility of such foolishness.

Oh, the eternal attraction of the rake, she thought with an inward sigh, looking down determinedly at her prayer book and bending an ear to the whispered confidences of Juliana. She had ridden up with her uncle Rex yesterday and he had
galloped
his horse when she had begged him to and then her mama had scolded him and told him she had been ready to have the vapors and Papa had laughed and told her that Uncle Rex had been the best horseman in the British cavalry and then Mr. Gascoigne . . .

But then the service began and Juliana had to be shushed—with a smile and a wink.

It had been Catherine's intention to slip out of church just as soon as the service was at an end. She had no wish to come face-to-face with any of the party from Bodley House. But in the event it did not happen that way. Juliana had another story that she was burning to tell. She gave an excited account of the afternoon she had spent at Pinewood Castle, where Lord Pelham had taken her up onto the battlements and she had been frightened and Uncle Rex had taken her down to the dungeon and she had been frightened, though it was not really a dungeon because there was a barred gateway onto the river and Uncle Rex had said that only romantics believed it was a dungeon. In reality it had probably been a storehouse for supplies delivered by water.

By the time the story came to an end everyone was outside and everyone had had a good look at her in passing, since Juliana was seated and prattling beside her. So much for disappearing without being seen, she thought wryly.

Juliana darted out ahead of her and even then Catherine hoped to be able to slip away unnoticed. But it seemed that the whole congregation was gathered on the church path or on the grass at the edges of the churchyard. And the Reverend Lovering, stationed at the top of the steps, kept her hand in his after shaking it and commended her on the arrangements of crocuses and primroses she had set at the altar.

“We must be thankful for the blessing of flowers, even the least splendid blooms of the early spring, with which to adorn our humble church for the eyes of our illustrious guests,” he said. “I take it as a decided mark of respect for the cloth, Mrs. Winters, being too humble to believe that there is anything personal in the
matter, that all Mr. Adams's guests, including Viscount Rawleigh, have seen fit to worship with us this morning.”

“Yes, indeed,” Catherine murmured.

But then Lady Baird came to greet her, bringing her husband and Mrs. Lipton with her. And somehow Lord Rawleigh was there too, bowing slightly to her and fixing his eyes on her. She feared—she very much feared—that she was blushing. She tried desperately not to think about their last meeting.

That kiss!

She talked brightly to Lady Baird, Sir Clayton, and Mrs. Lipton. And took her leave of them as soon as she politely could.

“Mrs. Winters,” a haughty and rather bored voice said as she turned away, “I shall escort you home, ma'am, if I may.”

Almost the full length of the village street. There was the bridge and then Mrs. Downes's house, then the rectory and the church, and then the whole village before the thatched cottage at the opposite end. And the whole village and half the countryside and all the family and guests from Bodley House were still assembled in the churchyard and on the path.

It was nothing very remarkable, of course. They were going to be in full sight of everyone for every step of the way. She had been escorted home from church before now. If almost any other man had suggested the same thing, she would not have felt the dreadful embarrassment and self-consciousness she felt now. But the one thing she could not do was to follow instinct and assure him that there was no need. That would invite comment.

“Thank you,” she said, walking down the path and out onto the street ahead of him. She willed him at least not to offer his
arm. He did not. Why on earth was he doing this? Could he not realize that she wanted nothing further to do with him? But why would he realize any such thing? She had permitted him to kiss her during their last encounter. She felt dreadfully mortified, and she felt that every eye of every member of this morning's congregation must be on their backs and that everyone must know that they had met alone in the woods three mornings ago and that he had kissed her.

Pray God, she thought for surely the hundredth time, that Bert Weller had not seen Lord Rawleigh in the woods after he had seen her that morning.

“Mrs. Winters,” Lord Rawleigh said now. “I seem to have done you a disservice.”

Only one? To which one was he referring, pray?

“You were not at dinner last evening,” he said, “or at the informal dance in the drawing room afterward, though Clarissa clearly found the uneven numbers provoking. My guess is that you have fallen from grace and that it is my fault. The music room incident, you know.”

“Nothing happened,” she said, “except that I played Mozart rather badly and that you told me you wondered.”

“And you administered a magnificent set-down,” he said, “to which I was given no time to retaliate. Clarissa was, of course, annoyed to find us together. You are altogether too beautiful for her peace of mind, ma'am.”