Page 44 of The Captive
His requests, rather. Christian stepped down from Chessie’s back and leaned on the stone wall surrounding the family plot.
“I told you to leave this to the gardeners, my lady.”
“Good morning, Your Grace.” The countess—Gillian—sat on her heels and drew the back of her hand across her cheek, leaving a smudge of dirt. “I don’t recall you forbidding me to tend these plots, though you asked me not to bring Lucy here.”
Christian sensed about thirteen separate rebukes in those two sentences. For failing to greet her properly, for using the imperative, for accusing her of ignoring his wishes, for not bringing Lucy to her mother’s grave, for not visiting that grave himself, and little Evan’s grave, and on and on.
She made her words count, did Lady Greendale. He resigned himself to summary court martial, tied up Chessie’s reins, and sent him off toward the stable.
And again, the sight of the horse trotting away tickled some vague recollection in the back of Christian’s mind, the very elusiveness of the memory adding to his bad mood.
“Won’t the lads worry about you? Fear you’ve come to harm?” her ladyship asked.
“Not unless I can tie up my reins as I tumble into a ditch.”
He scrambled over the wall. A year ago, he would have vaulted it cleanly, but he didn’t trust himself to pull that off, and got up a little resentment of the countess as a result.
“What exactly are you doing?” He dropped to the blanket she’d spread under her knees. “I employ an army of gardeners, and they’re well paid to keep the entire estate in good trim.”
“I’m transplanting violets and lily of the valley. Here, make yourself useful.”
She passed him a clump of earth with some violets sticking out of one end, slender white roots dangling from the other. He stared at those roots, so pale and vulnerable and yet necessary to the plant for life and stability.
“I have a general notion which end goes down and which goes up, but what had you in mind for these, Countess?”
She spared him a glance, and she might have been smiling—not at him, of course, for he was out of her favor over something.
Kissing her last night?
Not kissing her last night?
“Put them in there,” she said, pointing with a hand trowel. “Along Evan’s grave.”
“Aren’t we supposed to greet the dead, say prayers as we work? Maybe sing a hymn or two?” He scratched at the dirt with some implement she passed him. The tool was like a metal claw and bit into the soft soil easily, though he hadn’t the knack of using it with his right hand.
He switched it to his left. The two fingernails Girard’s fellows had appropriated had almost grown back to a normal length, the wound to the smallest finger was nearly healed, and by virtue of riding, he’d developed some grip strength as well.
“You are disrespectful of the dead,” she said, hacking at her patch of ground with the trowel.
“You are disrespectful of me, regularly. Of all in your path. God above, those smell good.” He took her gloved hand in his and brought some lily of the valley to his nose. “Why did you choose these?”
“They manage well in partial shade, and you have them in abundance along your walks. Give those back.”
She’d dropped her hand, leaving him sniffing the little white flowers, their dirt trailing over his riding breeches. He passed them to her at nose height.
“Stop teasing.” She took the flowers and smacked his hand. “If you must tarry here, at least plant something over your son’s grave.”
He’d spent half the evening at his son’s grave, telling the boy all about his sister, about Cousin Gilly, and Chessie. Happy things, mostly, so the sorrow could wash through him all the more cleanly.
And yet, on this pretty morning, the countess’s tone was sharp, too sharp.
“What’s amiss, my dear?” He patted his violets into the ground as she did violence to the earth with her trowel. “Tell me, hmm?”
Maybe she’d felt coerced into staying here at Severn, and needed to dress him down for that cozy scene by the hearth last night. To think she had regrets over it made him sad, for if she had regrets, he’d have to muster some too.
He truly didn’t want to distress her.
He put his gloved hand over hers. “Countess, desist. You are vexed, and I would not have it so.”
