Page 56 of Miss Determined
“I will manage.” She offered him a bright, false smile. “You must be off, of course. At least you have fine weather for the journey. I’ll see about having Roland saddled.”
She strode down the steps and around the corner of the innyard, divided skirt swishing briskly.
“Not the farewell you’d anticipated?” Sycamore asked, taking Trevor by the arm and half hauling him down the steps.
Trevor shook free, resisting the mighty temptation to send Sycamore sprawling on his backside. “I’ll ride with John Coachman on the bench,” he said as a groom ran up Jacques’s stirrups and let the girth out two holes before tying the reins to the back of the coach. “You may enjoy your own company inside, or bide here for all I care.”
“Miss DeWitt is angry to see you go,” Sycamore said. “I know the look. She can’t argue with a death in the family, but the lady had plans for you this morning that did not include a public fare-thee-well.”
“Her plans for me and mine for her involve the rest of our lives. Stop dawdling, Dorning.Le temps passeand all that.”
“You only speak French when you’re upset.”
“Va au diable.” Trevor scaled the coach and took the place beside the coachman, who nodded a greeting, his hands full of reins. Sycamore climbed into the coach, and the moment arrived for Trevor to take his leave of Crosspatch Corners.
Amaryllis stood at the corner of the innyard, tall, composed, bareheaded. As the coach rocked forward, Trevor swept off his hat and waved, then blew her a kiss in parting while half of the village looked on.
She barely nodded, and Trevor came to the very puzzling conclusion that Sycamore was right: Amaryllis wasn’t merely annoyed at this sudden change of plans, she was angry, possibly even furious.
And that made no sense at all, given what Trevor knew of her general good sense, compassion, and—most especially—her stated regard for him.
The coach clattered away from the green, and Crosspatch Corners was lost to Trevor’s view.
ChapterThirteen
The damage done by a lie was rarely limited to the falsehood itself.
Everybody, from Mama, to Grandmama, to Vicar, to the fancy deportment instructors at Lissa’s finishing school had agreed on that. The greater harm was to one’s reputation when the lie was revealed. A fib told to spare a neighbor’s feelings or flatter a friend was tolerable in moderation, but nobody respected self-serving dishonesty.
Nobody trusted a liar. Except, apparently, for Amaryllis DeWitt, if the liar was a fashionable bachelor.
Lissa patted Roland soundly on the neck, dismounted, and handed the reins to the Twidboro groom. “He was a perfect gentleman, and I gave him every opportunity for bad manners.”
“Roland needed to get away from the Hall for a bit,” the groom replied, loosening the girth and running up the stirrups. “See the sights, learn a few lessons that the home pastures can’t teach. The lad has a sense of himself now. You can see it in the eye. Mr. Dorning did right by him.”
Mr. Dorning had not done right by Lissa, and yet, he also hadn’t acted like a man caught in a betrayal. She knewthatlook only too well. She pondered the conundrum of Trevor’s behavior at the Arms as she made her way up to the Hall.
“Lissa!” Caroline was sitting on the side porch with a book in her lap, and for once, the child was smiling. “Has Roland graduated from finishing school?”
“Something like that. What are you reading?”
Caroline held up a tome bound in morocco leather. “Wordsworth. Mr. Dorning recommended it at supper last night. Did you know Mr. Wordsworth went to Paris to support the anti-royalists when he was a youth? Mr. Dorning told me that.”
“The poet is hardly doddering now, and he seems to have settled his spirits.” Or the unmitigated savagery of the Revolution had dissuaded him from radical tendencies.
“Mr. Wordsworth settled his spirits by communing with nature,” Caroline said, her smile taking on a smug quality. “Mr. Dorning said the contemplatives have always sought the wisdom and solitude of nature. Are there female contemplatives, Lissa?”
Mr. Dorning… Mr. Dorning… Diana was similarly afflicted with a need to quote Trevor, while mention of him left Mama looking thoughtful and Grandmama smiling.
Lissa took the place beside her sister on the sun-warmed bench. “If we haven’t any lady contemplatives, you can be the first. You certainly love to wander the out of doors. Your bluebells will soon be blooming.”
“I might miss them, if Mama lets me go to London.”
Why had Trevor inquired about Lissa’s London plans? Had that been for form’s sake? Had he realized his dishonesty had been revealed?
Grandmama emerged from the house, a paisley shawl about her shoulders. “Greetings, children. I do believe spring has finally arrived. Amaryllis, how fare our mares?”
“Phillip gave an all’s well report.”
