The Indian Maiden (3 page)

TWO

The sounds of
the horse’s hooves were muffled by the needle-covered floor of the narrow path, and the evergreens crowded so close to the trail that it was obvious that only repeated shearings kept them from jealously closing up entirely around this hole within their heart. They’d been cropped only recently, or so Faith thought, for their cool spicy scent was a sharp contrast to the warm floral aroma of the day she’d left outside their perimeters. Here it was dim, for the evergreens touched tendrils high above their heads where the shears had not yet chastened them, and here it was also cool and quiet and more peaceful than any place she’d yet visited since she’d set foot in England, fully three weeks past.

Although she was not alone now, as indeed, it seemed she’d not been let alone unless she was asleep or in her bath since she’d arrived here, the gentleman she shared the horse with did not, at least, seek to entertain her or quiz her endlessly about her home, as so many of the people she’d met so far had done. In fact, even now, after passing the last week with them at this house party, she found it difficult to separate most of them from the mass of them in her mind, she’d been so overwhelmed by their attentions. There was Lady Mary, her hostess, of course, and her family, and some few others who were different enough to be remarked upon in any crowd, like the earl and the Washburn twins, but in all they were still a jumble of voices and faces to her, all alike in that they all appeared to be equally astonished by the one salient fact of her being an American.

It couldn’t just be because she was an alien, or even because her country had lately been at war with theirs. After all, they seemed to take French people as a matter of
course, they spoke of Russian princesses as though they were not half out of the common, many of them had servants of several European nationalities, and they mentioned Austrian and German cousins without a blink. But from the moment they heard her speak, or heard of her home country, they were wide-eyed and curious to the point of being ill-mannered. Even more galling, they didn’t seem to think that she’d notice, or know enough to mind if she did notice their rudeness. Perhaps they expected her to wear feathers or carry a spear or eat her mutton raw, but it seemed they watched her every move and were vastly pleased and entertained by every difference they did discover in her.

That was why she’d finally broken and told them such a tale back on the lawn. And that was why she’d been so angry at the fellow she rode with now, for she’d just been getting into her stride, and was wondering how far she could go with the tale she’d been spinning, when he rode in and ended it all. She hadn’t minded the interruption at first, for in truth, he’d been a thrilling apparition, cutting into their lethargy like lightning enlivening a breathless day. But not only had he ended it, but then he’d clearly let them know they’d been being hoaxed as well. And she’d been just about ready to tell them about the dangerous wild opposum hunts.

Now she remained silent, for she hadn’t the measure of this man who companioned her at all. Though he was so astonishingly good looking that she scarcely dared to meet his eye, he spoke to her as naturally as she wished everyone else would do. Yet he’d responded to the greatest set-down she’d ever given a fellow as though he considered it vastly entertaining. Ordinarily, she would have begged pardon for her rudeness to him immediately, she’d never gone so far in incivility and knew there was no excuse for it. But since she suddenly realized that, clearly, she didn’t understand any of these people any better than they did herself, she kept to a troubled silence.

“Well,” the gentleman behind her now said casually, as though they’d just left off speaking rather than having ridden along mutely for several minutes, “since you’re not searching for a husband, I infer that this visit to Marchbanks is in the nature of a vacation. Not,” he added lightly, “that I think for one moment it’s my business to know what any of your aims are. I assure you I don’t mean to interrogate you. But you’re obviously unused to our enchanting English customs. If your stay is only to be a matter of weeks, a summer idyll, as it were, then I won’t bother to point out certain
...
pitfalls, in our society to you. For then it would scarcely matter, would it? You’d be off on a ship in a month and devil take the lot of us and what we think of you, or, more to the point, what we might do to you for inadvertently tripping over some of our hallowed institutions. It’s only because I thought you might stub your toe painfully that I interfered today.

“But that’s over now, and if you’re just passing through, why bother to tease you with lessons in surviving in the
ton
?
...
I’ll swear this is the coolest spot in the entire park, and unless someone’s of a mind to submerge themselves in the lake up to their necks, they’d do far better just remaining here until evening, don’t you think?” he asked brightly.

“I hope to be gone by autumn,” she said very softly, after a thoughtful pause, “but my grandfather, you see, has other plans.”

“Ah,” Lord Deal commented, finding it interesting to try to read his companion’s thoughts by watching the nape of her neck. It was a very lovely nape, to be sure, long and unblemished and shadowed now and again by stray wisps of honey hair that the wind sometimes caused to drift across it. It was a nape that he discovered himself very tempted to kiss in fact, not only because he wondered at whether that creamy skin would be as cool and fragrant as he imagined, but because then she would undoubtedly turn around and he would either be given a more classic embrace, or a deserved swift slap. But either way, he’d be able to see her face and her eyes, which he’d been enchanted to discover were gray as the first haze of dawn. Still, he could at least see her point.

Sitting quite properly side-saddle, if she gazed straight ahead of her instead of looking off to the front of the horse as she was doing, she’d seem aloof and unfriendly if she didn’t incline her head that further fraction necessary to read his expression. Yet if she turned to him, since they were of necessity sharing the somewhat confined space of a horse’s back, they would be, essentially, nose to nose. A delightful circumstance for him, but unless she were known to be very short-sighted, a very compromising position for her. He sighed.

“I don’t mean to be cryptic,” she said at once, misinterpreting the reason for the sound she’d heard. “It’s only that Grandfather sent me here for exactly the reasons you’d suppose. He’s the one looking for a husband,” she said crossly, “for me. And as I love him, the least I can do for him is to visit here as he wishes me to do, for a while at least. I’ve been here almost a month. But I want to go home,” she whispered very softly, and as she spoke it, he could swear he read that barely suppressed longing and loneliness for home in the dejected droop of her neck as well as he’d ever read it in anyone’s face.

“You’re quite sure then that you don’t care to shop around and pick up a nice inexpensive English husband?
”
he asked pleasantly.

“Oh no,” she replied at once, shaking her head in the negative so many times that several slips of hair slid loose to tempt him unmercifully.

“Is it anything we’ve said?” he asked in hurt tones, and then was about to explain his jest as he would to most young women, since they usually took him quite literally, when she pleased him enormously by saying at once, “I’ve nothing against the English, believe me.
I
just don’t care to marry as yet. Not anyone, of any nationality. But knowing that you’ve been sent specifically for that purpose and having your hosts know it as well, makes it all that much more uncomfortable. I don’t want Grandfather to think I haven’t tried, and I don’t want to actually deceive him. He knows how I feel, you see, but he’s so sure I’ll meet my match here
...
How long, do you think, would a person be expected to have to stay on before they gave up on such a search?” she asked.

“That depends,” he said thoughtfully, “entirely on how old Grandfather is.”

She chuckled. He was just as unexpected a person as his entrance had hinted at. He was very pleasant, one of the nicest gentlemen she’d met since she’d come here. So she turned her head and grinned at him. It was difficult talking with someone you couldn’t see, but, on the whole, she discovered as she quickly turned back to stare down the long, dark arched tunnel of evergreens again, it was more comfortable than keeping your gaze averted as he studied your profile, and far easier than looking directly into those kind and amused light eyes.

“I’ll probably leave for home,” she said, “in the autumn. I thought I’d wait until Will gets himself a wife, for I doubt Grandfather would expect me to stay on here alone. Will’s looking for an English lady to call his own. He’s originally from London, you see, and came to America when he was very young. We arrived here together because he’s worked with Grandfather forever and now he’s made his fortune, he’s come back here to settle down, and Grandfather asked him to look after me. ... Do you know that I’ve told you more about us in a few moments than I’ve ever told half the people who pepper me with questions?” she said wonderingly.

“It’s because I promised you something in return, don’t forget,” he explained. “And I’m sure you didn’t forget, you’re a canny Yankee trader. Now then, since you’re going to stay for an indefinite time, I think you might well have use for that advice. Don’t tease them, Miss Hamilton,” he said seriously, “they’ll believe anything you choose to tell them so it would be too easy for a bright young woman like yourself to mislead them. It’s no sport casting for fish in a barrel. But it’s not your sportsmanship I worry about, it’s the fact that they have great power, and can make you very wretched indeed if they’ve a mind to, and if they’re given the opportunity as well.”

“What?” she said in amazement. “Are you funning me now in revenge for my earlier stories? What can they possibly do to me, my lord? Are you going to treat me to tales of chains and dungeons in return for my stories about snakes?”

When she was done laughing, he went on to say, very clearly, very seriously, “They can give you a name, Miss Hamilton, which is far heavier to bear than chains, and they can tell tales about you which hurt more and are more poisonous than those snakes you invented. They can create you a dungeon out of the thin air by ostracizing you, and taunting you, and excluding you from society.”

“But I have friends whom I trust to remain my friends,” she said, sitting up straighter. “And I’ve told you that I don’t care about your society. So I don’t believe I need any more advice. But thank you,” she added, inclining her head as would a queen to acknowledge some courtier’s small favor, an effect somewhat ruined by the fact that it could only be seen from the back by the one it was meant to dismiss. To show that she wasn’t concerned enough to even be angry, she changed the subject lightly by asking, “And by the way, how did you know I was bamming them?”

“I’ve been to your country,” he answered quietly, turning the horse sharply where the trail suddenly divided.

“Oh really?” she asked with lively interest. “When?”

“The first time? Four years ago,” he said.

“But
...”
She paused. “As a soldier?” she gasped.

“Oh no,” he said calmly, “I’ve never bought colors.”

“Then,” she said breathlessly, this time swinging her head around so swiftly, she felt a twinge, “as a
spy
?”

“No, Miss Hamilton,” he answered with a trace of anger, “as a patriot.”

They rode on in absolute silence for a few moments more, Faith now wondering why she’d been foolish enough to be shocked simply because a man had been true to his own country, and Lord Deal wondering why a girl whose grandfather had sent her to get an English husband would be angry at a gentleman for being English.

“Good heavens,” she said at last, abandoning her bout with semantics and nationalism in an effort to normalize relations, “I’d no idea the lake was so far.”

“It isn’t,” he replied, “we’ve only been going round and round the bridal path. See?”

And now, looking past his pointed finger, she could see that the evergreens were beginning to slope lower and grow farther apart until they gave way at their end to a wide and grassy meadow. Beyond that, she could make out the group of ladies and gentlemen they’d so recently left, looking as though they’d been raised up by some giant hand and deposited gently in this new locale, for they were ranged around on their cushions and rugs again, only this time on the banks of a disappointingly bland, obviously artificial, and perfectly round ornamental pond. “And,” he bent his head to whisper to her as they rode into the clearing and he noted the back of her neck growing pink, “here’s another unsolicited lesson in British social niceties. Don’t bother to be vexed with me for the sake of appearances. They none of them will ask where we’ve been. It’s not only because, my dear Miss Hamilton, they believe you to be entirely moral. Neither is it so much that they trust me to be highly honorable, as it is that they know me to be highly eligible. And I am, I assure you. For you see,” he breathed, his whisper tickling her ear as he brought his lips nearer the nearer they came to her smiling hostess,
“I
just happen to be looking for
a
fiancée
. Because as it turns out, I
did
lose one.”

Faith was lifted down from the saddle immediately by the earl. Before she could get her balance back and take an unwavering step on firm ground, Lord Deal had made his abjectest apologies to the group, cited several pressing matters, and with a show of reluctance so outsized it bordered on mockery, he saluted them and was off again and gone back through the evergreen passage he’d so lately left.

“The fellow,” the earl drawled, “certainly knows how to make his entrances and exits. But how was the performance itself?” he asked Faith as they strolled back to where her patchwork cushion had been placed upon the grass. “Did he entertain you? He took such a time delivering you to us, we’d begun to wonder whether we’d have to send either a search party or a vicar after the two of you.”

Though the words caused Faith to feel guilt for no reason at all, Lord Deal had said that no one would mind their absence, and then too, the earl’s voice held no more than its usual boredom, despite his words. So she only laughed and said dismissively, “You’d have done better to send a gardener with pruning shears. I’d no idea that you English kept timber on your land as impenetrable as our deepest forests.”

“Oh?” he said with a little interest lightening his gray eyes, “like the ones with all those dreadful creatures lying in wait within them? Why don’t you tell us some more about them? Lord knows we could do with some enthralling conversation. The company’s gone into a decline since you’ve left. As you can see,” he whispered as he gave her one long white hand in assistance so that she could gracefully settle down to her lawn seating again, “they’re all positively wilting, and it isn’t just the weather that’s breeding ennui. We could use a little enlivenment from our intrepid young American visitor.”