Dark Angel / Lord Carew's Bride (33 page)

“And it is not?” she asked.

“Not always. Not often.” His eyes were smiling again. “Formal gardens are not always even particularly attractive, especially if the land before the house is unusually flat and there is no possibility of terracing. One would have to be suspended in the sky—in a balloon, perhaps—and looking downward to appreciate the full effect. And usually there is a great deal more to parks than just the house and the mile or so of land directly in front of it. Parks can be extremely pleasant places in which to walk and relax and feast the senses if one exercises just a little care and planning in organizing them.”

“Oh,” she said, smiling. “And is that what you are doing here? Has the Marquess of Carew employed you to tramp about his park and give him advice?”

“He is about to have one of his trees repositioned at the very least,” he said.

“Will he mind?” she asked.

“When someone asks for advice,” he said, “he had better be prepared to hear some. A number of things have already been done here to make the most of nature, and to add to it and change it just a little for more pleasing
effects. This is not my first visit, you see. But it is always possible to imagine new improvements. As with that tree. I cannot understand how it has escaped my notice before now. Once it is gone, a stone grotto can be erected here so that the marquess and his guests can sit here and enjoy the prospect at their leisure.”

“Yes.” She looked about her. “It would be the perfect spot, would it not? It would be wonderfully peaceful. If I lived here, I believe I would spend a great deal of time sitting in such a grotto, thinking and dreaming.”

“Two very underrated activities,” he said. “I am glad you appreciate them, Miss Newman. Or one might be tempted to sit, perhaps, with a special companion, one with whom one can talk or be silent with equal comfort.”

She looked at him with sudden understanding. Yes, that was what it was. That was it. That was what was missing. She had felt it and wondered about it and puzzled over it. And here was the answer, so simple that she had not even considered it before. She had no special companion. No one with whom she could be silent in comfort. Even with her dearest relatives, Aunt Aggy and Jenny, she always felt the necessity to converse.

“Yes,” she said, a curious ache in her throat. “That would be pleasant. Very pleasant.”

“Are you in a hurry to return to Chalcote?” he asked. “Or is there anyone who will be anxious over your absence? A chaperone, perhaps?”

“I have outgrown the need for chaperones, Mr. Wade,” she said. “I am four-and-twenty years old.”

“You do not look it,” he said, smiling. “Would you like to stroll up over the hill, then, and see some of the improvements that have already been made and hear some of my ideas for new ones?”

It was very improper. She was a lady very much alone in a wooded area of the countryside with a strange gentleman, albeit a very ordinary and rather shabby gentleman. She should have turned very firmly in the direction of home. But there was nothing at all threatening about him. He was pleasant. And he had aroused a curiosity in her to see how nature could be manipulated, but not harmed or destroyed, for the pleasure of humans.

“I should like that,” she said, looking up the slope.

“I have always thought the marquess was fortunate,” he said, “having the hill on his land, while the Earl of Thornhill was left with the flat land. Hills have so many possibilities. Do you need assistance?”

“No.” She laughed. “I am just ashamed of my breathlessness. The winter has been endless, and I have been far too long without strenuous exercise.”

“We are almost at the top,” he said. His limp was quite a bad one, she noticed, but he appeared far more fit than she. “There is a folly there, in a very obvious place. I normally like to be more subtle, but the marquess has assured me that any guests he brings this way are always thankful for the chance to sit and rest there.”

Samantha was thankful for it, too. They sat side by side on the stone seat inside the mock temple, looking down over the tops of the trees to the fields and meadows below. The house could be seen over to one side, but
it was not as splendid a view as would be that from the top of the slope where she had stood earlier. He pointed out to her places where trees had been removed and replanted in previous years. He indicated two paths down the steeper part of the slope, each leading to a folly that had been carefully placed for the view it afforded. He explained that there was a lake just out of sight that he was particularly working on this year.

“The secret is,” he said, “to leave an area looking as if all its beauty and effects are attributable to nature. The lake must look like an area of wild beauty by the time I have finished with it. In reality I will have made several changes. I will take you down there afterward and show you if you wish.”

But he made no immediate move to do so. They were sheltered from the slight breeze where they sat, and the sun shone directly on them. It felt almost warm. There were birds singing in the trees, almost invisible except when one rose into the air for some reason before settling back again. And there were all the fresh smells of spring.

They sat in silence for many minutes, though Samantha was largely unaware of the fact. There was no awkwardness, no feeling that the conversation must be picked up again. There was too much of nature to enjoy for it to be missed in conversation.

She sighed at last. “This has been wonderful,” she said. “Wonderfully relaxing. I could have gone to the lake at Chalcote with my cousin and Lady Boyle, one of her
other guests, and their children. At the risk of offending them, I preferred to be alone.”

“And I ruined that attempt,” he said.

“No.” She turned her head to smile at him. “Being with you has been as good as being alone, Mr. Wade.” And then she laughed, only partly embarrassed. “Oh, dear, I did not mean that the way it sounded. I mean I have enjoyed your company and been comfortable with you. Thank you for opening my eyes to what I had not even thought about before.”

“It is too late to go down to the lake now,” he said. “It must be past teatime, and you will be missed. Perhaps some other time?”

“I would love to,” she said. “But you are working. I would not want to waste your time.”

“Artists,” he said, “and writers and musicians are often accused of being idle when they are staring into space. Often they are hardest at work at such times. I have been sitting here beside you, Miss Newman, having ideas for my—employer’s park. I would not have sat here, perhaps, if I had not been with you, and would not therefore have had the ideas. Will you come again? Tomorrow, perhaps? Here, at the same time we met today?”

“Yes,” she said, coming to a sudden decision. She could not recall an afternoon she had enjoyed more since coming to Chalcote almost three months before. The thought made her feel disloyal to Jenny and Gabriel, who had been so kind to her. “Yes, I will.”

“Come,” he said, getting to his feet. “I shall escort you
as far as the stream.” His eyes smiled at her in that attractive way he had—almost the only thing about him that was actually physically attractive, she thought. “I must see you safely off Carew’s property.”

She was afraid that all the walking would be hard on his infirmity, but she did not like to mention it again. He limped beside her all the way back down the hill to the stream. They talked the whole while, though she would not have been able to say afterward exactly what they talked about.

“Do be careful,” he said as she made her way back across the stones to the other side of the stream, trying not to hold her skirts too high. “Toppling into the water at this time of year might be just too exhilarating an exercise.”

She stopped at the other side to smile at him and raise a hand in farewell. One of his arms was behind his back. The other was crooked against his hip. It was his right hand. She wondered if by some miracle he was naturally left-handed.

“Thank you,” she said, “for a pleasant afternoon.”

“I shall look forward to seeing you again tomorrow, Miss Newman,” he said. “Weather permitting.”

She was through the trees in no time at all and on her way back across the meadow toward the lawns of Chalcote park. It must indeed be past teatime, she thought. If Jenny and Rosalie were back from the lake, they would wonder what on earth had happened to her.

Would she tell them? That she had walked and sat with a total stranger for well over an hour? That she had
made an assignation to meet him again tomorrow? She did not believe she would. It would sound bad in the telling, yet there had been nothing bad about it at all. Quite the contrary. There could not be a more ordinary, pleasant gentleman in existence, or one with whom she could feel so very comfortable. Neither was there a gentleman with whom she had had an encounter less romantic. There had been no physical awareness at all.

If she told, Aunt Aggy would have ideas about coming along with her tomorrow as a chaperone. And then there would be the necessity for conversation among the three of them. It would not be a pleasant afternoon at all.

No, she would not tell. She was four-and-twenty years old. Quite old enough to do some things alone. Quite old enough to have some life of her own.

She would not tell. But she knew she would be looking forward to tomorrow afternoon with pleasure.

H
ARTLEY WADE, MARQUESS OF CAREW, WATCHED her go. He stood where he was, on his side of the stream, long after she had gone.

She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. By far the most beautiful. She was small and shapely and dainty and graceful. Her hair was honey-blond and worn in short curls. Her bonnet had not hidden its glory. Her eyes were the bluest blue, her lashes long and darker than her hair. Her face was lovely and smiling and animated and intelligent.

He smiled ruefully to himself. For all his seven-and-twenty years, he was reacting like a schoolboy to a rare glimpse of someone from the female world. He was in a fair way to being in love with her.

He turned about to make his way back up the hill through the trees. With the side of his right hand he rubbed at his upper thigh. He was going to suffer tonight from all the walking. Though perhaps not too much. He had not walked a great deal during the past few months, but he had ruthlessly exercised. He smiled anew at the remembered expression on Jackson’s face when he had first walked into the famous pugilist’s boxing saloon in London three years ago. When he had
limped
in, rather.
Jackson was proud of him now and eager to show him off to some of his other patrons. But the marquess had only ever been there in private and had only ever worked with the master himself. He was no sideshow for a fair.

He arrived at the point close to the top of the hill where he had first seen her—Miss Samantha Newman. Yes, the tree definitely had to go. The view would be quite magnificent.

It had not struck him immediately that she had not realized who he was. Perhaps neither Thornhill nor his lady had described him to her. They were decent people. Perhaps they had not begun any description they might have given of him with the most obvious feature. Perhaps she did not know that the Marquess of Carew was a cripple. That was the label by which he was known, he was well aware, even if it was not strictly true. Had she heard that label, she would surely have realized who he was.

He had given her his name with some reluctance. But even that had meant nothing to her.
How do you do, Mr. Wade
, she had said politely. He had watched for the change in her manner, but it had not come.

The temptation had been overwhelming—the temptation not to enlighten her. And, of course, if she had been given no description of him and if his name meant nothing to her without his title, there was no reason why she should guess his identity—even though he had been roaming his own land. He was dressed for comfort in almost the oldest clothes he possessed. His valet had warned him just that morning that if his lordship
insisted on wearing these boots one more time after today, he would send a public notice to all the newspapers that he was not responsible for his master’s appearance.

But they were such comfortable boots, and such threats were not by any means new. Hargreaves had been with him, and threatening him, for eleven years.

The marquess continued on his way to the top of the hill and sat on the stone seat he had occupied with Miss Newman earlier. She had conversed with ease and had listened with what had seemed genuine interest. She had sat beside him for what must have been all of fifteen minutes in silence, a silence of remarkable comfort. She had not felt the necessity to speak to hold the silence at bay, nor had she felt the necessity of prompting him into speech.

She had said—what had been her exact words? He thought carefully.
I have enjoyed your company and been comfortable with you
. Her voice had held the ring of truth. Other women had uttered the first part of what she had said. None had ever said the rest. And none had ever spoken with sincerity.

He kept himself from company a great deal these days, though he was no hermit. He avoided female company whenever he could. It had become too demeaning, too hurtful, to see the instant spark of interest and acquisitiveness in female eyes as soon as he was identified and to be fawned over for the rest of that particular social event. His title was an impressive one, he supposed—he was the eighth marquess of his line. And, of course,
there was this property in Yorkshire, and the one, almost equally large and prosperous, in Berkshire. He had more wealth than he would ever know what to do with.

He could have lived with the fawning, perhaps. Many gentlemen of his class had to. It was the way of the world. But there was also the disdain he sometimes surprised in female eyes at his unprepossessing appearance. And sometimes it was worse than disdain. Sometimes it was distaste or even disgust at his grotesque limp and his twisted hand. He rarely appeared outside his home now without a glove on at least his right hand.

Lord Byron’s limp, of course, had only succeeded in making him more attractive to the ladies. But then the Marquess of Carew did not have either Lord Byron’s beauty or his charisma.