Lessons In Loving (20 page)

‘So where did I go wrong?' He wound his own wide smile up a notch.

‘Very well. Ten out of ten,' she said. ‘Perhaps I'm rather jaded. I must have lived in the city for too long.'

‘Really? And I thought you played sweet-natured country lass rather well. Definitely ten out of ten.'

‘Yes. They always told me I was a born actor,' she said. That was a flagrant fib. She'd been told far too many times, ever since her debut as Cinderella's Ugly Sister Number Two in a school play at age seven, that she had zero acting talent.

‘Aren't I lucky!' He smiled. His toothy grin almost split his face. ‘I just enjoyed a conversation with a famous actress. Tell me, Miss Courtney, are you in town to do a play? Hamlet? Julius Caesar, perhaps?'

‘My lips are sealed,' she said, deciding to join in the fun. ‘You'll have to speak to my director.'

‘I have a better idea,' he said. ‘Afternoon tea this afternoon. Not at the Great Eastern.'

‘Very well,' she said. ‘Tea at not the Great Eastern.'

After tea in the surprisingly civilised managers' dining hall at Northern Consolidated's resplendent offices, Darcy took Kate home in his smart gig. When he pulled up outside her cottage and she stepped down from her seat, he smiled at her.

‘Busy next Saturday?' asked the man Kate had privately labelled Mr Darcy.

‘Well, no. But—' She stepped back from the gig, clutching her shopping.

‘Very well, milady. I shall call for you at six. A rather splendid Saturday night dinner at the company's management dining hall. They do a not bad a la carte menu.' Before Kate had time to refuse, he powered away with a wave and a grin.

In the quiet of her cottage, Kate found herself drifting back into a forbidden territory—Tom land. Tom and Laetitia would be married now. Bending to the task of making lots of children. Keeping Kenilworth Station in the family had been Tom's primary goal in life ever since his blue-blooded mother had grilled him on the absolute necessity of maintaining the Fortescue family's noble bloodlines.

Kate still missed Tom. Missed his smile, the warmth of his muscled body moving close to hers as they packed away the lesson for the day, the chance brush of his hand as they cleared the dinner dishes. Lately, she'd resigned herself to the impossibility of forgetting him, of erasing him from her life like a teacher wipes a blackboard. Tom Fortescue was a germ who'd infected her very soul. Like someone who has contracted tuberculosis, she might never purge him from her soul.

After the Saturday night dinner with Mr Darcy, she let him hold her hand as they walked to his gig in the dark. But no goodnight kiss. As he went to take her in his arms, she smiled and ducked away.

‘I'm not ready yet,' she said as he helped her down from her seat.

‘When will you be ready, Kate?' he whispered.

‘I'll advise you,' she said. ‘It might be some time.'

Back in her cottage, she sat in the warm dark and dreamed of Tom.

***

‘The company's annual ball is on in a couple of weeks,' Mr Darcy told Kate over the following Saturday night's dinner. ‘And you're invited. Lucky girl!'

‘Indeed? And to whom do I owe my heartfelt gratitude for that signal honour?'

‘What I meant was, will you be my partner?'

‘Very well. On the understanding there are no strings attached.'

‘Strings? What do you mean?'

‘Nothing, Darcy. Nothing.' She paused, trying not to laugh as he feigned boyish innocence. ‘But I'll confess to something. A deep, worsening pain.' She put a hand under her breast. ‘Here, in my heart.' As his look turned to horror, she laughed.

‘What's a girl to wear?'

‘Oh, that. The administration people have ordered a bunch of costumes. From a Perth fancy dress store. This year's ball is called Return to Regency. So all the costumes are to be Regency. A few days before the ball, everyone, men included, goes down to the storeroom and chooses their clothes. Last year we all wore harlequin outfits. Hysterical! Next year it might be medieval.'

‘Very well, sir. Katherine Tudor accepts your kind invitation. And she can't wait to dress up as a queen. Or worse.'

***

From the moment Kate set foot in the Granite Ridge Community Hall two Saturday nights later, her mind slid into déjà vu. Granite Ridge had become another version of Croydon Creek's Pioneers' Ball, from the strings of coloured lights draped over the building, to the clusters of tables seating the wildly overdressed guests. At least the dancing was less challenging. There were no complicated gyrations like the one where she'd sprained her ankle during the tortuous tango. And to Darcy's credit, he tried hard to help her enjoy their turns on the dance floor.

Too soon, the moment would come for the band to play Auld Lang Syne. The men would rise and, more or less gallantly, escort their partners out into the warmth of the desert night. Very likely, Mr Darcy would want his first kiss. Since that first awkward meeting outside the grocer's shop, he'd been decent, understanding. But he'd been more than somewhat obvious about his intentions. In a town where men outnumbered women about ten to one, every Granite Ridge man without a regular lady friend was on the hunt for one.

Kate would refuse him, of course. And thereby earn a reputation as a cold, selfish fish. She'd find herself cut out of Granite Ridge society—an inconvenience she would face with appropriate stoicism. She'd come to like Mr Darcy. But her heart hadn't. As always, in her solitary evenings she found herself dreaming of Tom. And always at the wrong moments. The recent ball had been too much of a walk down memory lane.

‘Kate.' As they sat in Mr Darcy's gig outside the Community Hall, she braced herself. A few minutes before, the last of the couples had shuffled outside and driven away.

‘Yes, Darcy.'

‘Is tonight the—night?'

‘You know the answer.'

‘But I thought you seemed to enjoy the ball. The dancing.'

‘Indeed I did. Thank you for your kind invitation. I felt rather like Cinderella.'

‘But—'

‘Darcy. Forgive me, but you're beginning to sound tiresome. Perhaps you want me to pay the rent outstanding for all the dinners you've taken me to.'

‘You know that's not so, Kate.' Darcy's voice cracked a little. ‘But a man has feelings. Especially when he's close to a beauty like you. A dozen men tonight told me you looked beautiful. Most admitted to being jealous.'

‘Take me home please, Darcy.' He flicked the reins, drove her to her cottage, pulled up.

‘Goodnight, Kate.' He stared at the stars as she gathered her things.

‘Goodnight, Darcy.' She kept her voice light. ‘And thank you most sincerely for a delightful evening.'

‘What if this were our last night out, Kate?'

‘I'd be sorry to hear that.'

‘A man has, well, needs. I like you, Kate. Emily Coleman told me you were a lovely person. She didn't know the half of it. Since we've spent time together, I've come to …'

He couldn't be on the point of telling her he loved her. They'd enjoyed a few dinners together, a few jokes over afternoon tea. Nothing more.

His voice dried up. The silence lengthened. Kate slid a look towards the man who sat beside her, hands on the reins, staring up into the star-studded sky. A minute dragged by. Then another. Without warning, he lifted the reins, ready to flick them.

Kate understood. She slid from her seat and stood beside the gig.

‘Goodnight, Darcy. You're a lovely man. I've enjoyed our times together. And I know you'll find someone.'

As he drove away she walked to her door. Why had she rewarded a handsome, decent man—a man any girl could fall for—with total coldness? She'd answered that question many times. There was only one man in the world she could ever love. And he'd long ago become a glass of water thrown into a fast-flowing stream. Still, she was glad she'd stood up to the subtle pressure applied so long and so hard by Darcy. Vida Goldstein would be proud of her. She was a woman with her own needs, her own values—not a man's plaything. Tomorrow morning she'd head off to school and lose herself in her teaching.

CHAPTER 16

Laetitia found Tom sitting on a bench in the conservatory, where she'd left him while she talked with her father after his crucial meeting with Tom.

‘Thank you for waiting, my darling,' she oozed. ‘Father thinks you're the most wonderful man in the world.' She paused to beam a dazzling smile at him. ‘And he wanted me to tell you so.' Then she bent and gave him a kiss full on the lips. A moist, inviting kiss.

‘Thank you,' he said, instantly cautious. Laetitia's always-changing moods had long been difficult for him to understand. ‘And you? What do you think?'

‘Father's always right.' She stood in front of him, hands on hips, grinning. Then she wiggled those hips. ‘So if he says you're wonderful—'

‘I wonder if you really mean it?' After his roller-coaster ride of the last few days and nights, Tom had learned to distrust anything Laetitia said. She fluttered her long golden lashes at him. His stupid heart thudded at the sight.

‘I'd love to prove it to you, darling.' She wiggled her hips again.

‘How?'

‘There are lots of ways. Lots.'

‘Mmm. Did he talk about your coming to Kenilworth?'

Now it was time for Laetitia to descend into guarded cautiousness.

‘Well—yes.'

‘And?' Tom remembered Laetitia's horror the last time he'd dared to raise the subject. He watched her face twitch into a mask of conflict. But she said nothing.

‘Are you coming to Kenilworth or aren't you?' He watched as she struggled to shape an answer that would please him without committing her to what she likely saw as a fate worse than death.

‘I'd like to come.'

‘Excellent!'

‘On a sort of trial run.'

‘Trial run?'

‘Perhaps rather like having a holiday there. With Mother and Father. To see how much I like it. To discover whether I can buy my essentials there.'

‘Indeed? That sounds extremely sensible.' Tom breathed easier. ‘When do we leave?'

‘Let's get it over with. As quickly as may be.'

***

A week after he'd sent a letter to his manager, Tom stepped down from the train at Armidale station, together with Laetitia and her parents. No longer needed while her employer was on holiday, Prudence had been given a ticket to sail to Melbourne to visit her sister, with firm instructions to be back in time for the family's previously booked departure for Southampton.

Ah Foo silently loaded their baggage into the landau and headed for Kenilworth. They arrived on an unseasonably hot afternoon.

‘Sorry about the flies, folks,' Tom's foreman Mick said as he opened the landau door outside the Big House. ‘A day like today, they're out and about a bit.'

‘If they don't buzz off, I very likely will,' Laetitia growled. She waved her hand across her face again. ‘Nobody told me these cursed flies would crawl all over me the second I arrived.'

‘Best we head for the house,' Tom said. ‘Mick, could you kindly take the luggage?'

An hour and a bath later, Laetitia swanned onto the verandah of the Big House dressed in a flowing gown of pink silk, and sat beside her resigned parents. Tom sat ready with a bottle of French champagne. He popped the cork and filled their flutes.

‘Here's to our future, my darling Laetitia,' he said. ‘May it be darned happy.'

‘Mmm.' She drank without raising her glass to his. ‘And what's the next torture you have in store for me? Now that I've survived my first day?'

A few days later, after several nights of healing sleeps for Laetitia, whose chambers were in a wing assigned to the Barrington-Smythes, Tom risked taking her to Croydon Creek to meet Rob and Sally Carter. They would have a vested interest in meeting the future wife of their boss. Already word had found its way to them, courtesy of Fred, a neighbour who'd dropped by to collect the mail.

‘She's a real English beauty, I'll say that for her,' Fred told the locals. ‘But she's gonna take a while to get used to us. One good thing, though. She's pretty handy with swearwords.'

‘So she's picked up the local language pretty quick, then?' Rob said. ‘We should read that as a definite step in the right direction.'

Tom had arranged with Rob for his new family to meet Rob and Sally for lunch. They gathered at the Croydon Valley Inn, the village's only white-tablecloth eating place. As Tom introduced them, Laetitia planted a kiss on Rob's cheek, then hugged Sally.

‘And what do you think of Croydon Creek, Laetitia?' Rob ventured as they sat. ‘Perhaps your first impressions?'

‘I love it. Can't wait to visit the shops.' Tom noticed that she didn't spot Rob's and Sally's raised eyebrows.

‘And the future? How does that look to you?' Rob had never been afraid to cut to the chase.

‘Oh, wonderful.' She looked up at the silent Tom, then looped her arms round his neck and slid a slow, soft kiss across his face. As Tom struggled to hide his surprise, the elder Barrington-Smythes bent their necks in the other direction, scanning the sky for a non-existent bird flying past. Tom and Laetitia hadn't so much as kissed in days. She always told him she was too tired. Tom recalled her too-mushy affection during the Blackheath weekend with Prudence and Kate.

Why was she intimately close against him in company, then cold as a dead fish when they were alone? He recalled his time in the park near Melton Lodge when he'd watched Mr and Mrs Swan chase away the interloper visiting them on the pond.

‘A wedding soon? And a family a little later?' Rob asked as he waved a message to the barman to bring some beers, fast. Tom reminded himself to reprimand Rob about his country-boy crassness during a future appropriate moment.