A Night Like This (14 page)

Surprised and perhaps a little bit alarmed, because she
shouldn’t
know him so wel. It was not her place, and such a connection could lead only to heartbreak.

She knew that, and so should he.

“Were they estranged?” she asked, still curious about Lord Chatteris. She had only met the earl once, and briefly at that, but it seemed they had something in common.

Lord Winstead shook his head. “No. I rather think the elder Lord Chatteris simply had nothing to say.”

“To his own son?”

He shrugged. “It is not so uncommon, realy. Half of my schoolmates probably couldn’t have told you the color of their parents’ eyes.”

“Blue,” Anne whispered, suddenly overcome by a huge, churning wave of homesickness. “And green.” And her sisters’ eyes were also blue and green, but she

“Blue,” Anne whispered, suddenly overcome by a huge, churning wave of homesickness. “And green.” And her sisters’ eyes were also blue and green, but she regained her composure before she blurted that out, too.

He tilted his head toward her, but he did not ask her any questions, for which she was desperately grateful. Instead he said, “My father had eyes exactly like mine.”

“And your mother?” Anne had met his mother, but she had had no cause to take note of her eyes. And she did want to keep the conversation centered on him.

Everything was easier that way.

Not to mention that it was a topic in which she seemed to have great interest.

“My mother’s eyes are also blue,” he said, “but a darker shade. Not as dark as yours—” He turned his head, looking at her quite intently. “But I have to say, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen eyes quite like yours. They almost look violet.” His head tilted the tiniest bit to the side. “But they don’t. They’re still blue.” Anne smiled and looked away. She’d always been proud of her eyes. It was the one vanity she still alowed herself. “From far away they look brown,” she said.

“All the more reason to cherish the time one spends in close proximity,” he murmured.

Her breath caught and she stole a glance at him, but he was no longer looking at her. Instead he was motioning ahead with his free arm, saying, “Can you see the lake? Just through those trees.”

Anne craned her neck just enough to catch a silvery glint peeking between the tree trunks.

“In the winter you can see it quite wel, but once the leaves come out, it’s obscured.”

“It’s beautiful,” Anne said sincerely. Even now, unable to see most of the water, it was idylic. “Does it get warm enough to swim in?”

“Not on purpose, but every member of my family has managed to be submerged at one point or another.” Anne felt a laugh tickle her lips. “Oh, dear.”

“Some of us more than once,” Lord Winstead said sheepishly.

She looked over at him, and he looked so adorably boyish that she quite simply lost her breath. What would her life have been if she had met him instead of George Chervil when she was sixteen? Or if not him (since she could never have married an earl, even as Annelise Shawcross), then someone just like him. Someone named Daniel Smythe, or Daniel Smith. But he would have been Daniel.
Her
Daniel.

He would have been heir to a baronetcy, or heir to nothing at al, just a common country squire with a snug and comfortable home, ten acres of land, and a pack of lazy hounds.

And she would have loved it. Every last mundane moment.

Had she realy once craved excitement? At sixteen she’d thought she wanted to come to London and go to the theater, and the opera, and every party for which she was issued an invitation. A dashing young matron—that’s what she had told Charlotte she wanted to be.

But that had been the foly of youth. Surely, even if she had married a man who would whisk her off to the capital and immerse her in the glittering life of the ton

. . . Surely she would have tired of it all and wanted to return to Northumberland, where the clocks seemed to tick more slowly, and the air turned gray with fog instead of soot.

All the things she had learned, she had learned too late.

“Shal we go fishing this week?” he asked as they came to the shore of the lake.

“Oh, I should love that above all things.” The words rushed from her lips in a happy flurry. “We’ll have to bring the girls, of course.”

“Of course,” he murmured, the perfect gentleman.

For some time they stood in silence. Anne could have remained there all day, staring out at the still, smooth water. Every now and then a fish would pop to the surface and break through, sending tiny ripples out like rings on a bul’s-eye.

“If I were a boy,” Daniel said, as transfixed by the water as she, “I would have to throw a rock. I would have to.”
Daniel
. When had she started to think of him as such?

“If I were a girl,” she said, “I would have to take off my shoes and stockings.”

He nodded, and then with a funny half smile, he admitted, “I would have probably pushed you in.” She kept her eyes on the water. “Oh, I would have taken you with me.”

He chuckled, and then fell back into silence, happy just to watch the water, and the fish, and bits of dandelion fluff that stuck to the surface near the shore.

“This has been a perfect day,” Anne said quietly.

“Almost,” Daniel whispered, and then she was in his arms again. He kissed her, but it was different this time. Less urgent. Less fiery. The touch of their lips was achingly soft, and maybe it didn’t make her feel crazed, like she wanted to press herself against him and take him within her. Maybe instead he made her feel weightless, as if she could take his hand and float away, just so long as he never stopped kissing her. Her entire body tingled, and she stood on her tiptoes, almost waiting for the moment she left the ground.

And then he broke the kiss, puling back just far enough to rest his forehead against hers. “There,” he said, cradling her face in his hands. “Now it’s a perfect day.”
Chapter Twelve

A
lmost precisely one day later, Daniel was sitting in Whipple Hil’s wood-paneled library, wondering how it had come to pass that
this
day was so utterly less perfect than the one before.

After he had kissed Miss Wynter down by the lake, they had hiked back up to the clearing where poor Lord Finstead had been courting his beautiful but dim-witted princess, arriving only moments before Harriet, Elizabeth, and Frances did, accompanied by two footmen with picnic hampers. After a hearty meal, they had read from
The Strange, Sad Tragedy of Lord Finstead
for several more hours, until Daniel had begged for mercy, claiming that his sides hurt from so much laughter.

Even Harriet, who kept trying to remind them that her masterwork was not a comedy, took no offense.

Even Harriet, who kept trying to remind them that her masterwork was not a comedy, took no offense.

Back to the house they’d gone, only to discover that Daniel’s mother and sister had arrived. And while everyone was greeting everyone else as if they had not seen each other just two days earlier, Miss Wynter slipped away and retired to her room.

He had not seen her since.

Not at supper, which she’d been required to take in the nursery with Elizabeth and Frances, and not at breakfast, which . . . Wel, he didn’t know why she hadn’t come down to breakfast. All he knew was that it was well past noon and he was still uncomfortably full from having lingered at the table for two hours, hoping for a glimpse of her.

He’d been on his second complete breakfast by the time Sarah had seen fit to inform him that Lady Pleinsworth had given Miss Wynter much of the day off. It was a bonus, apparently, for all the extra work she had been performing. First the musicale, and now her double duty as governess and nanny. Miss Wynter had mentioned that she wanted to go to the vilage, Sarah had told him, and with the sun once again peeking through the clouds, it seemed an ideal day for her outing.

And so Daniel had set out to do all those things the lord of a manor was supposed to do when he wasn’t wildly infatuated with the governess. He met with the butler. He looked over the account books from the last three years, belatedly remembering that he did not particularly like adding sums, and he’d never been good at it, anyway.

There ought to have been a thousand things to do, and he was sure there were, but every time he sat down to complete a task, his mind wandered to
her
. Her smile. Her mouth when it was laughing, her eyes when they were sad.

Anne
.

He liked her name. It suited her, simple and direct. Loyal to the bone. Those who did not know her well might think that her beauty required something more dramatic—perhaps Esmerelda, or Melissande.

But
he
knew her. He did not know her past, and he did not know her secrets, but he knew
her
. And she was an Anne through and through.

An Anne who was currently someplace he was not.

Good heavens, this was ridiculous. He was a grown man, and here he was moping about his (albeit large) house, all because he missed the company of the governess. He could not sit still, he could not even seem to sit straight. He even had to change chairs in the south salon because he was facing a mirror, and when he spied his reflection, he looked so hangdog and pathetic he could not tolerate it.

Finaly he went off to find someone who might be up for a game of cards. Honoria liked to play; Sarah, too. And if misery did not love company, at least it could be distracted by it. But when he arrived in the blue drawing room, all of his female relations (even the children), were huddled around a table, deep in discussions about Honoria’s upcoming wedding.

Daniel began his very quiet retreat to the door.

“Oh, Daniel,” his mother exclaimed, catching him before he could make his escape, “do come join us. We’re trying to decide if Honoria should be married in lavender-blue or blue-lavender.”

He opened his mouth to ask the difference, then decided against it. “Blue-lavender,” he said firmly, not having a clue as to what he was talking about.

“Do you think so?” his mother responded, frowning. “I realy think lavender-blue would be better.” The obvious question would have been why she’d asked his opinion in the first place, but once again, he decided that the wise man did not make such queries.

Instead he gave the ladies a polite bow and informed them that he was going to go off and catalogue the recent additions to the library.

“The library?” Honoria asked. “Realy?”

“I like to read,” he said.

“So do I, but what has that to do with cataloguing?”

He leaned down and murmured in her ear, “Is this where I am supposed to say aloud that I am trying to escape a gaggle of women?” She smiled, waited until he straightened, and replied, “I believe this is where you say that it has been far too long since you have read a book in English.”

“Indeed.” And off he went.

But after five minutes in the library, he could not bear it any longer. He was not a man who liked to mope, and so finaly, after he realized that he had been resting his forehead on the table for at least a minute, he sat up, considered all the reasons why he might need to head down to the vilage (this took about half a second), and decided to head on out.

He was the Earl of Winstead. This was his home, and he’d been gone for three years. He had a moral duty to visit the vilage. These were his people.

He reminded himself never to utter those words aloud, lest Honoria and Sarah expire from laughter, and he donned his coat and walked out to the stables. The weather was not quite so fine as the day before, with more clouds above than sky. Daniel did not think it would rain, at least not in the immediate future, so he had his curricle readied for the two-mile journey. A coach was far too ostentatious for a trip to the vilage, and there seemed no reason not to drive himself. Besides, he rather liked the touch of the wind on his face.

And he’d missed driving his curricle. It was a fast little carriage, not as dashing as a phaeton, but also not as unstable. And he’d had it for only two months when he’d been forced to leave the country. Needless to say, smart little curricles had not been thick on the ground for exiled young Englishmen on the run.

When he reached the vilage, he handed off his reins to a boy at the posting inn and set off to make his cals. He would need to visit every establishment, lest someone feel slighted, so he started at the bottom of the high street at the chandler and worked his way up. News of his appearance in town spread quickly, and by the time Daniel entered Percy’s Fine Hats and Bonnets (only his third call of the day), Mr. and Mrs. Percy were waiting at the front of their store with identicaly wide smiles on their faces.

“My lord,” Mrs. Percy said, dropping into as deep a curtsy as her largish frame would alow. “May I be one of the first to welcome you home? We are both so honored to see you again.”

She cleared her throat, and her husband said, “Indeed.”

Daniel gave both of them a gracious nod, surreptitiously glancing about the establishment for other customers. Or rather, one other customer. Specificaly. “Thank you, Mrs. Percy, Mr. Percy,” he said. “I am delighted to be home.”

Mrs. Percy nodded enthusiasticaly. “We never believed any of the things they said about you. Not a thing.” Which led Daniel to wonder what sorts of things had been said. As far as he knew, every tale that had been spread about him had been true. He
had
dueled with Hugh Prentice, and he had shot him in the leg. As for his fleeing the country, Daniel didn’t know what sort of embelishment that story might have acquired; he rather thought that Lord Ramsgate’s ranting vows of revenge would have been titilating enough.

But if Daniel hadn’t wanted to debate the merits of blue-lavender and lavender-blue with his mother, he
definitely
did not wish to discuss himself with Mrs. Percy.

The Sad, Strange Tale of Lord Winstead. That’s what it would be.

So he simply said, “Thank you,” and moved quickly to a display of hats, hoping that his interest in their merchandise might overshadow Mrs. Percy’s interest in his life.

Which it did. She immediately launched into a list of the qualities of their most recent top hat design, which, she assured him, could be made to fit his head precisely.