Follow the Heart (17 page)

Once again, Kate’s attention wandered. Every so often, she thought she heard footsteps on the path behind them, and in turning to look at Lord Thynne, she would glance over her shoulder to see if Andrew had decided to follow them after all. But if he had, he stayed out of sight.

By the time they reached the orangery at the back of the house, Kate knew more about Greymere’s improvements than she wanted to—more than Lord Thynne had shared with Sir Anthony at dinner last night. The heat and steam of the greenhouse seemed to collect on Kate’s cool skin.

“Thank you for walking with me, Miss Dearing.” Lord Thynne made a slight bow. “I hope . . . I hope the weather stays pleasant so you can show me more of the gardens.”

Kate wasn’t certain if the stinging in her cheeks was due to the heat in the room or the heat of her self-consciousness. Why would a viscount want to spend time with someone like her? Lord Thynne was meant for Edith Buchanan. And Kate had already learned enough of her cousin’s temperament to know she didn’t want to cross the black-haired beauty.

“I hope the weather stays nice as well, my lord. However, if you truly want to see the gardens, you should ask Miss Buchanan to show them to you. After all, this is her home. She must know them much better than I do.” She pressed the backs of her hands, still cool from outside, to her hot cheeks.

An inscrutable expression entered Lord Thynne’s pale eyes, but he quickly masked it with a tight smile. “I do not believe Miss Buchanan is much of a walker. So you may be my only hope, if I am to see the grounds, Miss Dearing.”

She didn’t want to cross Edith . . . but she would not turn Lord Thynne away in case he did not want Edith. “In good weather, I walk every morning after breakfast, and you are welcome to join me whenever you wish.”

The lines around his eyes deepened along with his smile. “I shall hold you to that, Miss Dearing.” He inclined his head and left the orangery.

Kate stood for a moment among the palms and citrus trees. Could her task be accomplished so easily? Her stepmother had insisted that the removal to England was God’s will and that if they all prayed hard enough and often enough, God would quickly bring about the solution to their dilemma. Could Lord Thynne be the answer to her stepmother’s prayers?

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

N
ora straightened the stack of books one more time. Then she moved them off the main table onto the window seat. She moved them back to the table. Took the Daniel Boone book off the top of the stack and slid it into the middle so it might be seen but would not be too obvious.

The ticking of the clock competed with her pounding heart for volume.

A moment after the first chime sounded to mark eleven o’clock, the door opened. Nora folded her hands at her waist, prepared to congratulate Florie on her punctuality.

Instead, Christopher Dearing came through the door. “I hope I am not late.” He looked around the room. “Ah, I see Cousin Florie isn’t here yet.”

Nora swallowed hard, wishing she did not have such a reaction every time she saw him. But ever since dancing with him last week, she had been unable to get him out of her mind—or to stop her heart from racing whenever she caught a glimpse of him. Or thought she might catch a glimpse of him.

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Dearing. I am certain—”

“Sorry. So sorry!” Florie dashed into the room, skirts flying.

Nora fixed her pupil with a stern expression. “You know tardiness will never be acceptable once you are at school.”

“I know. You tell me every day.” Florie grinned and took a seat at the table.

Christopher crossed his arms. “Cousin Florie, I must say, I am disappointed.”

The young woman’s face fell, eyes wide. “Why? What have I done?”

“I thought you were a caring, considerate person.”

“I am. I promise, I am.” Florie looked as if she might burst into tears at her cousin’s disapprobation. Nora was torn between wanting to find out what Christopher meant and defending her charge. After all, she was a young woman, not a child to be berated so—though her position as youngest in the family, as well as being her father’s special pet after her mother’s death, meant Miss Florence acted younger than she was, holding on to the vestiges of the role as the baby of the family longer than she should have.

Christopher shook his head, then braced his hands on the edge of the table opposite Florie and leaned toward her. “If you want to prove to me that you are the young woman I thought you were, you need to be not just on time but early to your lessons every day. By giving Miss Woodriff that courtesy—by showing her you respect her time and the effort she has put into preparing your lessons—you will prove to me that you are the kind, thoughtful person I hope you to be.”

Nora’s heart pounded in a paroxysm of palpitations she thought would make her faint. She grabbed the back of the nearest chair and took several deep breaths. Not since she’d left her position at Mrs. Timperleigh’s school had anyone afforded her the honor of such respect for her position. And she hadn’t realized just how much she missed it.

Unshed tears sparkled in Florie’s blue eyes when she looked at Nora. “I am so sorry, Miss Woodriff. I meant no disrespect. I promise I will be on time every day.”

“Early,” Christopher prompted, straightening.

“Yes. Early.” Florie nodded as if making a solemn oath.

Christopher’s gaze lingered on his cousin a moment longer before he turned and smiled at Nora again. She squeezed the chair back’s rung until the carved wood bit into her skin. “Now, Miss Woodriff, how would you like me to begin?”

“We . . . we have an atlas there”—she pointed to the large book on a stand—“which has maps of America. Perhaps you would like to start with geography?”

Christopher picked up the stack of books Nora had left on the table and moved them to a shelf, then brought the large atlas over and spread it open on the table, pulling a chair over to sit beside Florie. He carefully turned the pages until he came to a map of the eastern portion of America.

“Cousin Florie, pay very close attention, because I am about to show you the most important city in the United States of America. Are you ready?” His brown eyes sparkled, but his facial expression was serious.

“I’m ready. But I think I already know what it is.”

Nora had taught Florie all about Washington, DC, the capital city of the United States.

“Good.” He pointed to something on the map. “This is Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Not only is it the most beautiful city in America, it’s also the most important because it’s where I am from.” He grinned. “Did you know that it was the first capital of the United States?”

Nora hid her smile, took one of the books from the pile, and sat on the window seat, pretending to read but hanging on every word Christopher Dearing said about his homeland. The longer he talked about it, the more she wanted to see it.

“How would someone get from Philadelphia to . . . where is it your brother has his shop, Miss Woodriff?” Florie’s question pulled Nora back to the table.

“Sacramento, California.”

“Your brother has a shop there?” Christopher looked up from the pages showing the entire continent of North America. “When I heard he was in California, I assumed he’d gone as a gold seeker.”

“That was why he went, originally. But when he arrived in New York and discovered how many others had gone with the same plan, he decided he would make more money by opening a mercantile to sell supplies and dry goods to the prospectors. It seems to have been a good plan. He has done well for himself.” So well, in fact, she was certain she would never see him again, as his letters were full of his love for his new home.

Christopher propped his chin on his palm. “It seems a long time, but mark my words—in another twenty or so years, there will be trains that can take someone from Philadelphia to California in a matter of days, rather than months.”

“Twenty years a lifetime from now.” Florie’s voice contained a petulant whine.

Pulling his gaze away from Nora, Christopher squeezed his cousin’s shoulder. “I know. But it’s a big country.”

“Show me how he would have gotten to California from New York.” Florie leaned over the atlas again.

Nora and Florie had traced the route in pencil as Jack’s letters arrived during his journey, but Florie had gone over it so many times since then, running her finger across the pages, the markings had been rubbed away.

Christopher looked at Nora again. “Do you know what route he took?”

As if she could forget. Worrying about him as the weeks passed between each correspondence had etched the names of the places he’d been indelibly in her mind.

She started naming cities and watched in fascination as Christopher’s long, elegant fingers traced the route. With a delicious shudder at the memory of those hands, those strong arms, holding her as they’d danced, Nora swayed, catching the edge of the table before she lost her balance and embarrassed herself by swooning.

She tried to tell herself her extreme reaction to a man she barely knew was because she had never spent so much time in the company of a young, handsome man in her life. But even if that were the case, she still wanted to stop, to cease reacting to him. Because she knew, before long, he would move on to someone else, someone more befitting his social standing, his situation in life. And when he did, Nora would be left disappointed.

At least she would have the memory of him to keep her company during her long future as a spinster schoolteacher.

Five young women and six young men. Kate would never be able to keep all the names straight. She perched on the edge of the settee and allowed the newcomers to speak around and over her but did nothing more than observe and try to remember if the blonde in the garish orange-and-blue plaid gown was the knight’s daughter or the earl’s granddaughter. And while none of the women outranked Edith—the eldest daughter of a baronet—all were younger, prettier, and wealthier than Kate. And they all knew how to flirt.

The young men Sir Anthony invited ranged from sons of wealthy landholders—though not Mr. Brockmorrell of the unwelcome proposal to Edith—to the second son of a marquess, who just happened to have a sickly older brother.

And Edith Buchanan was the sun around which all the men orbited, the other women merely moons reflecting Edith’s glow.

If they were sun and moons, what did that make Kate? The dark expanse of empty space between the heavenly bodies.

Smiling at her own fancifulness, she accidentally caught the eye of one of the young men. He inclined his head, then rose and came over to sit in the armchair beside the sofa. “Miss Dearing, I feel I hardly had a chance to greet you, as we all arrived in such a gaggle. May I introduce myself again? I am Oliver Carmichael.” His brown hair curled over his ears and about his collar—but the rest of his hair wasn’t curly.

Kate could imagine the man’s valet pinning Mr. Carmichael’s hair in curl papers every night before bed. She almost laughed. “It is very nice to make your acquaintance, Mr. Carmichael. And from where in England do you come?”

“I have the very great privilege of being a neighbor of the Buchanans. Not a near neighbor, but at Chawley Abbey, about five miles away. Perhaps you have heard of it?” He appeared assured of her assent.

“No, I am sorry to say I have not.” Though not so very sorry, given the amusing way his expression fell.
No. I mustn’t be Kate. I need to be Katharine.
“Is it really an abbey?”

Pride swelled his chest. “A former one. It has been in my family since Henry VIII awarded it to the first Oliver Carmichael, who served as a gentleman in the king’s privy chamber.”

If Kate remembered correctly, the current Oliver Carmichael was an Honorable Mister, indicating he was the son of an aristocrat, and his family must be one of prestige in the neighborhood. “My, but that is impressive, Mr. Carmichael. Do tell me about it.”

As she knew would be the case, that was all the invitation Carmichael needed to launch into a description of just how favored his great-great-great-something grandfather was by the Tudor king whom Kate knew only as a man who divorced or killed all of his wives save the sixth one, who escaped with her life only because Henry VIII died before he could have her arrested and tried for something trivial. Oh, and the one who died from childbirth complications. At least, that’s the way Mother had told the story so many years ago.

It had been one of Kate’s favorite stories, one she asked for almost every night when Mother came in to kiss her good night.

Since most of the stories her mother told her at bedtime were meant to be instructive—encouraging Kate to be kind, loving, humble, and generous—Kate had always been curious why her mother had first told her the story of the Tudor king and his wives. Years after her mother’s death, when Kate had been able to read the history of Henry VIII for herself, she thought she finally understood the lesson her mother wanted her to learn from the tragedy—to be cautious and wise and not let a man’s flattering tongue lead her down a path of destruction.

Kate blanched. If that was truly the lesson her mother wanted her to learn, then her mother had been a hypocrite, telling Kate not to be guided by her heart but by reason alone. After all, Mother had married for love, against her family’s wishes. And Kate knew her mother had loved Father dearly until the day she died. So why would she repeatedly tell her daughter a story that taught that following her heart could be dangerous and have a tragic end?