Page 13 of Lady Mary's May Day Mischief
“Sweet girl, do not tell me you still do not dance.”
“No, I do not.”
He tipped up her chin, his fingertips gentle on her skin, his gaze compassionate. “You coward.”
She pressed her lips together. “My last dance was with you.”
“In London.” He captured a wild tendril of her hair and slid his fingers along the long curl. Then he pushed it behind her ear. “I remember.”
She nearly wept with joy at his recollection.
He was the one who’d been with her when she’d fallen in the woods. They were playing hide and go seek and she’d tripped over a fallen log. An old rotten limb had pierced her thigh. And it was he who had pulled it out, then carried her more than two miles to home where her mother laid her on the settee, cleaned the gash and bound her up. For a week, she’d struggled with a fever and infection. The surgeon thought they might have to amputate. Or worse, that she’d develop gangrene and die. Each day, Blake had come to call. Each day, he brought something she loved. An acorn. A chess set. Him. Always him.
“We’ll all see to this new patient,” he said. “Then you and I will have hours together, recalling who we were when we were young.Iwill sing.Youwill play the piano. Andtogether, we will dance.”
He sat back, his arm securely around her shoulders. Oh, he was well pleased with himself.
And she?
Oh, my. She was exhilarated. A nervous ninny hammer. A gay girl as she could not recall she’d ever truly been. Because…oh, dare she think it, lest she blurt it out? She put two fingers to her lips to seal in the truth.
Yes, for the first time in two years, she felt the affection she’d missed, the endearments she’d forgotten, the sweetness of one who regarded her with total acceptance.
* * *
He never thought he’d find Birdie like this. Of a sudden. In a coaching accident, no less. In need of help to set her to rights. But when she was jostled in an accident and in vast need of his comfort, his life became more difficult.
She had been on his mind since he’d returned to England. Hell, he’d thought of her constantly all the years he’d been away. More since his two older brothers died and he thought of home. Especially since he’d seen her in London in ‘fourteen. Then he had enjoyed himself with her, played piano duets and given in to the temptation of decades and kissed her. Numerous times. A meeting of lips and tongues and an ardor borne of years together and years apart.
For weeks after his return to Paris, he’d pondered how he could propose to her. His future was as uncertain then as it was now, despite his inheritance of the estate. To be the Baron Lawton-Bridges was no small responsibility. To be Captain Lord Bridges at the same time complicated the running of the estate and raised questions of his future in the Corps. But he’d had a peace to claim, and then when Bony returned to Paris from Elba, he’d had battles to fight, a war to win all over again. Whatever raptures he had found with Mary in those days at home, he had quickly abandoned. Not just because wanting a wife was so impractical given his job, but because he’d learned something worse: He could not trust her. That shocked him and sobered him. And he threw himself into the challenges of defeating Bonaparte with more vigor than ever. The memory of her white moon glow hair, the pale pink of her lips and the peal of her laughter diminished because he killed it. She was no longer the sweet sylph who could lure him to sleep.
As a boy he’d never called his regard for her love. Or infatuation. He’d known her as the scamp who lived across the river. The one he fished with. Explored the forests with. Rode with. Learned how to hunt with…or dance with…until she fell and nearly died. After that, he learned how to walk more slowly with her. A minor concession to the knowledge that she lived, whole, save for a limp that never marred her petite and fragile beauty or her jolly ways. If he persisted to cajole her to carry on, to learn how to walk again, if she called him a pest, it was a small price to rid her of self pity. To know she walked the earth, even without him beside her, as the girl who brought a smile to his lips and to his soul, gave him abundant reasons to fight and prevail.
But no, he had not loved her. He could not. Not as other men proclaimed they loved their intendeds or their wives. He had been graced or damned with a different social life from many of his colleagues. Most were not of the upper one hundred; most Royal Engineers came from lesser strata. Sons of merchants or bankers, clergy or military went to school at Woolwich. To be admitted, they had to have shown some skills in mathematics or geometry and some knowledge of chemistry, geology or botany. And they had to have passed an examination to verify their abilities. As the third son of a baron, whose title and lands dated from William the Conqueror, Blake had never entertained remaining on the land of his father. He’d always known he was more than ‘The Spare’. He was ‘The Irrelevant’. To make a living, he must move on and outward. Moreover, he’d never considered himself a match for the only daughter of an earl, albeit the one who was his dearest friend.
He did not permit himself to love her. Before that day two years ago in London when he’d kissed her and caressed her and yearned to make her his wife, he had not allowed himself even to pine for her. To do so would have brought him heartache. And as a military man, he could not afford disabilities of any kind. His work, which he loved, was his life. His work, which absorbed him and fulfilled him, consumed his every waking moment. He could not make mistakes. A miscalculation in the length of road to be traveled, the depth of a river to be crossed or the height of a castle wall to be scaled or exploded could not only cost days and weeks or months of missed opportunities to engage the enemy. It could mean wagon trains of dynamite were inadequate to the job. Miners could dig to the wrong depth. Sappers could sit by the side of muddy roads instead of digging the tunnels beneath Spanish and French fortifications that would blow a hole in their works and let the victorious British through. Worse, men could starve because he failed to clear a supply train efficiently. Men could lie wounded because he failed to repair a bridge to let in the medical team. Men could die because he had misread the topography of the battlefield and the enemy had gained the high ground, the advantage…and he had failed his duty.
But with the end of conflict, he faced a different set of circumstances, familial as well as personal. He had come home because his work in France was done. The war was over, the peace treaty signed and Bonaparte safely tucked in the south Atlantic. It meant his own future as a Royal Engineer would devolve to other duties, other tasks. Instead of blowing bridges up, he would construct them to last a thousand years. Instead of drawing landscapes to inform Wellington of battlefield topography, he might survey land here or across the seas. Yes, change might mean he’d be ordered to other countries. He had an appointment next week with his commander to discuss his future assignments. But he also had to impress upon that man the importance and urgency of his other newer responsibility as heir to his father. He had responsibilities there. Not simply to the house or the land. But more importantly to his father’s tenants. Just as he had regarded Wellington’s soldiers as his responsibility to provide for, so too did he regard his father’s people as his own to raise up to the prosperity they deserved.
He had not predicted he would see Mary at all, let alone so soon. Not as the result of an accident. Not in the road. In need of assistance. He had not hoped to visit with her or put his arms around her or comfort her. He’d wished to avoid any intimacy because he had no rights to begin any relationship with her when he had no clear vision of his future to offer her. Plus that other matter still rankled. She was assertive, that he’d always known. Her friends relied on her to help them. That too he understood because she thought in creative ways. But one time, she’d gone too far and a friend of his had suffered for it. Only the war and his need to devote his full attention to his job had taken his mind from his despair over her actions.
But he was to be three days in her company—and heaven help him, he did not wish to change what stretched before him. Despite his uncertainty about his future and about her nature, he would not, could not push her away. He curled her closer, his one arm around her shoulders and his other hand holding hers. Whatever question he could ask about his tomorrows, the contentment that fell over him was a peace he’d searched for as he sought sleep on countless battlefields and never found without her lovely face before him.
So it was with that he asked himself if now he might forget that niggling question of her character. Could he not allow himself to proclaim he loved her?
Had he not for all his life?
Chapter 4
Charlton’s carriage pulled into the circular drive of Courtland Hall just behind another. Mary recognized the gold trim of their two friends’ ebony traveling coach.
Ivy and Grace Livingston were twins, the only daughters of the Earl of Seaford. They, along with Esme, Fifi and Mary and one other young lady Willa Sheffield, had formed a cadre of good fellowship at Miss Shipley’s School. A few other girls, like Millicent and Sandrine, had joined them for a year or two, as they came or went from school to their debuts. But the six had been the core. For seven years, they’d studied dance and piano, French and household management, along with the proprieties that the headmistress declared would make them spouses worthy of the best gentlemen in the land. Yet, considering the wars had taken many eligible young men away to the Navy and the Army, none of the six was yet married. Ranging in ages from twenty-three to twenty-five, the friends—except now Esme—approached that most prickly of conditions, spinsterhood.
The one woman who stood at the door ready to receive them all with her parents was younger than the rest—and soon would no longer be part of their cohort. Esme had golden-brown hair, coffee brown eyes and a laugh hearty as red wine. She’d always tagged along with the other five. Aspired to be included in all they did. And constantly tried to do the right thing by them all, be fair-minded in card games, sharing her skills in tapestry, but who constantly pushed herself forward, blatantly so. Despite her rabid need to be first in French, her preening with new fashions—and her attempt to charm every girl’s brother who came to the school to visit, Esme was included in the girls’ festivities, but welcomed to them only because she was generous with her knowledge, her advice and her empathy. Her passion to be first and foremost at every subject, every art with every person, teacher or parent or brother, had created disharmony. Now that she was first among them in the most coveted of any young woman’s aspirations—to marry and do it well, Mary hoped that Esme’s pride of place would engender some humility in her soul.
Indeed Esme greeted them at her front door with a most wholesome smile and kind words. Her parents—Lord Courtland and his wife—were gracious, hailing each of the new arrivals with a warm-heartedness that spoke of true joy at seeing them all. But it was the sight of Fifi tightly bound in the strong arms of Lord Charlton who commanded everyone’s attentions.
Mary explained what had happened to their public conveyance and how the two men had rescued them. Then it was Lord Courtland, who evidently had met Lord Charlton before, who introduced him to his wife and his daughter Esme.
