Page 22 of Lady Mary's May Day Mischief
He hurried away. Had she missed Winston’s interest in Ivy? She felt her face flush. She had lost her touch at this match-making thing. Even fake match-making.
“What’s wrong?” Blake asked her. “You look like you ate a mouse.”
“I think I made a mistake.” Then she glanced at Fifi and Charlton who scowled at each other. Not with them, clearly.But I’ve been wrong about Winston.
“Wrong about Winston?” Blake followed her line of vision. “I don’t understand.”
“I’ve made a mistake. My apologies.” She smiled up at him. “So you have business with Lord Northington?”
“We do. I’ve had correspondence with my estate manager at Lawton Abbey and we have a problem, Winston and I, to repair the footpath along the river and shore up the banks.”
“At its northern bend?” She remembered the sharp curve in the river and how it could overflow its banks, flooding the farmland on either side.
“Yes. It’s in need of repair, has been for years, I understand. I know how to do it, do it quickly and for a fair cost. But of course, I need Northington to recommend it to his father. We need Brentford’s approval because it’s no use to repair Wintston’s and my section if the Duke won’t.”
She pictured the way the river could run its banks so quickly that those who lived in cottages nearby could see their homes, their possessions, their loved ones and crops washed away in the deluge. “My father appealed to his for many years to let him build a dam.”
“Did he? A dam! I had no idea.”
“A good one too. But the duke would refuse.”
“Why?” Blake shook his head. “Better to repair it than to watch crop land go to ruin or see people die.”
“Papa always said the duke hated the cost of repairs.”
“Silly thinking.”
“I hope you can persuade Northington.” She recalled the many times her father complained of the duke’s short-sightedness. An aspect of it skirted the edges of her memory.
“What is it?” Blake considered with a sweep of his luminous eyes that swelled inside her like a tide of yearning.
“I’m trying to remember something about my father’s correspondence with the duke, but…it eludes me.”
“Tell you what we’ll do to elicit those memories?” He wiggled his brows in enticement.
“What?”
“You and I will play a duet.”
“Ho, oh, no!” she said as he grabbed her hand.
“We will!” He tugged her forward.
“We haven’t played together in years!” She tagged behind him as he wove them through the guests. “We’ll horrify them!”
He stood before the huge yellow and green pianoforte and put his hands on her shoulders. “Would you rather I take you to the card room and demand you play a round ofvingt-et-un?”
“God, no! I’d lose my corset!”
He grinned. “Right. Sit.”
She shook her head.
He pointed to the bench. “I’ve dreamed of this. For years and years. You were my treble. I your base. Now we’ll do a simple number. Five-fingered exercise.”
She recalled sitting beside him in radiant sunlight in his parlor or hers as dust motes danced around them like tiny gilded fairies. “Can we manage to remember it?”
“You don’t forget something like that. I didn’t. It got me through the nights when all I heard were the cries of men in pain and the howl of wolves.”
