Freyja had found refuge in the morning room. She was writing a letter to her solicitor while Morgan, beside her at the table, wrote to Judith.
'This waiting around for something to happen is very strange, is it not?' Morgan said abruptly after a while. 'I expected fireworks as soon as we arrived at Penhallow. I expected excitement and danger and flashing swords and smoking pistols for the first day or two and then the satisfaction of victory.'
'Are you disappointed?' Freyja smiled at her.
'Disappointed? No.' Morgan frowned. 'But a little uneasy, I must confess. The marchioness really does hate Joshua, does she not? And all of us too even though she persists in informing us how delighted she is to have us all here. Why does she hate him so much that she is prepared to put his life in danger?'
'She blames him for her son's death,' Freyja said. 'She thought him guilty in the sordid business over the governess, and then when her son went to confront him, he died. In a sense, perhaps, one can hardly blame her for wondering if the accident really was an accident.'
'I suppose,' Morgan said, 'it was the son who seduced the governess.'
'Yes,' Freyja said.
'I do not believe I would have liked him,' Morgan said. 'Indeed, I am quite certain I would have detested him quite as much as I do his mother. How horrid of him to have allowed Joshua to shoulder the blame-and to find a home for that poor lady. But what worries me, Freyja, is that witness. How provoking that he is not at home and so cannot be confronted. Alone he is surely no threat at all, but what if he can persuade several other men to corroborate his story? Does Joshua understand the danger he is in? Is he doing anything about it?'
'He is indeed,' a voice said from the doorway, and they both turned to see Joshua himself standing there. He was still dressed for riding. His face was ruddy from the outdoors, his eyes dancing with laughter.
He liked living on the edge of danger, Freyja thought.
Independent of thought, her body was instantly aware of him, of his virile grace and beauty. She had wanted yesterday to happen so that she would have happy memories to cling to. She had been a fool. How would she live without that? How would she live without him?
'What, then?' Morgan asked.
'Why spoil the fun by telling?' he said, laughing as he came into the room. 'Garnett is still from home, but I have hopes that he will return in time for the ball. Indeed, I am depending upon his having heard of it and upon his having a proper sense of drama. I have sent him an invitation.'
'I know,' Morgan said. 'I wrote it. But why?'
But he would only laugh again. 'Let me say only,' he said, 'that if Garnett comes, the ball will be an occasion after the Bedwyns' own heart.'
Morgan's eyes shone. 'Oh, you do have something planned,' she said. 'Well done.'
He reached out a hand and squeezed her shoulder while turning his attention to Freyja.
'I am going down to the river walk with Prue,' he said. 'Will you come, Freyja?'
'I have to finish this letter to Judith,' Morgan said when Freyja looked at her, 'and then I must write to Aunt Rochester. I have not done so in ages, but she is to sponsor my come-out in the spring, perish the thought.'
Freyja changed into a wool dress and a warm pelisse. She even, after looking out the window to note that the weather had not changed, drew on a bonnet that would cover her ears. Prue too was dressed warmly, in sunshine yellow from head to toe. She was beaming and clearly excited at the prospect of an outing with Josh and Freyja.
They scrambled down over the sloping lawn to the valley without using the more gradual slope of the winding driveway past the dower house. Prue was laughing aloud as she hurtled down the last few feet into Joshua's waiting arms. Freyja glared at him when he would have offered similar assistance to her, and he grinned and turned away.
They walked along the private path that ran beside the river to the beach. They did not go all the way to the beach, though. They stopped frequently to peer into the water, watching the slow currents eddying past stones and small sandbars, seeing the occasional tadpole dart by. Joshua picked up a stone and hurled it in a high arc to hit the opposite bank, some distance away, and Prue laughed and clapped her hands with delight. Freyja, not to be outdone, picked up a flat stone and threw it in such a way that it skimmed the surface of the water, bouncing four times before it sank out of sight. Prue jumped up and down in her excitement.
'I want to do that,' she said, and Freyja spent the next ten minutes or so showing her how to select a suitable pebble and how to throw it sideways with just the right flick of the wrist. Prue never did get it right, but she derived a great deal of merriment from trying and collapsed down onto a large rock with uncontrollable mirth when Joshua could not do it either.
Freyja, with a sharp, narrow-eyed look at his abjectly meek face, was convinced that he could make his stones bounce ten times if he so chose.
She could not understand the almost painful love she felt for Prue. She was usually embarrassed by what she had always thought of as handicaps. If she had known about Prue in advance, she would have been horrified and would have shied away from her. Even so, she had kept her wary distance for a few days, content to let Eve and Joshua and Chastity converse with the girl.
But there was no guile in her and no stupidity or dullness or negativity. She was a sunny-natured child who simply did not possess whatever it was in most of the rest of mortality that enabled them to move away from the innocent exuberance and loving trust of childhood to a darker place they labeled maturity. Although Prue's sometimes ungainly movements and round, childish face were an outward sign that she was not as other young women were, she nevertheless was a rather pretty young lady.
She was the same age as Morgan.
Joshua looked down at her with a smile of warm affection until she had stopped rocking with laughter.
'Do you like going to the village, Prue?' he asked.
