did.” He looked down at her, trying to see the romantic girl she must have been and imagining by what slow stages she had grown into the severe, disciplined woman she was today—most of the time anyway. “No,” she said. “He never came. But that is all very ancient history. We were children. And how we can exaggerate or even distort events in memory! He remembers only that we grew up with the closeness of brother and sister, and he is quite right. We were friends and playmates for years before we imagined ourselves in love. Perhaps I have exaggerated those events and emotions in my memory. However it is, I have no reason to avoid him now.” And yet, he thought, McLeith had ruined her life. She had never married. Though who was he to make that judgment? She had done good things with her life instead. And perhaps a marriage to McLeith would not have turned out half so well for her. “Have you ever been in love, Lord Attingsborough?” she asked. “Yes,” he said. “Once. A long time ago.” She looked steadily at him. “But it did not work out?” she asked. “She did not love you?” “I believe she did,” he said. “Indeed, I know she did. But I would not marry her. I had other commitments. Finally she must have understood. She married someone else and now has three children and is—I hope—living happily ever after.” Beautiful, sweet-natured Barbara. He no longer loved her, though he felt a residual tenderness whenever he set eyes upon her, which was often enough since they moved in much the same circles. And sometimes, even now, he thought he caught a look of wounded puzzlement in her eyes when she looked at him. He had never given her a reason for his apparently cooled ardor. He still did not know if he ought to have. But how could he have explained the advent of Lizzie in his life? “Other commitments?” Miss Martin asked. “More important than love?” “Nothing is more important than love,” he said. “But there are different kinds and degrees of love, and sometimes there are conflicts and one has to choose the greater love—or the greater obligation. If one is fortunate, they are one and the same.” “And were they in your case?” she asked, frowning. “Oh, yes,” he said. She looked around suddenly at the gardens and the milling guests as if she had forgotten where she was. “I do beg your pardon,” she said. “I am keeping you from tea. I really am not hungry. I believe I will go to the rose arbor. I have not seen it yet.” It was his chance for escape. But he found he no longer wished to get away from her. “I will come with you if I may,” he said. “But is your place not with Miss Hunt?” she asked him. “Should it be?” He raised his eyebrows and leaned a little closer to her. “Are you not to marry her?” she asked. “Ah,” he said, “news travels on the wind. But we do not need to live in each other’s shadow, Miss Martin. That is not the way polite society works.” She looked across the formal gardens and up to the terrace, where McLeith and Portia Hunt were standing at one of the food tables, plates in hand. “Polite society is often a mystery to me,” she said. “Why would one choose not to spend as much time as one can with a loved one? But please do not answer.” She looked back into his eyes and held up one hand, palm out. “I do not believe I wish to hear that you gave up on love years ago and are now prepared to marry without it.” She was startlingly forthright. He ought to have been angry with her. He was amused instead. “Marriage,” he said, “is another of those obligations of rank. One dreams as a very young man of having both—love and marriage. As one grows older one becomes more practical. It is wise to marry a woman of one’s own rank, of one’s own world. It makes life so much easier.” “That,” she said, “is exactly what Charlie did.” She shook her head as if astonished that she had made such an admission aloud. “I am going to the rose arbor. You may come with me if you wish. Or you may rejoin Miss Hunt. You must not feel in any way responsible for keeping me company.” “No, Miss Martin.” He set his head to one side as he regarded her with eyes squinted against the sun. “I know you are perfectly capable of looking after yourself. But I have not yet seen the rose arbor, and I believe I have more of an appetite for roses than for food. May I accompany you?” Her lips quirked at the corners, and then she smiled outright before turning and walking diagonally across the parterres in the direction of the rose arbor. That was where they spent the remaining half hour of the garden party, looking at the roses, a bloom at a time, dipping their heads to smell some of them, exchanging greetings with acquaintances—at least, he did—and finally sitting on a wroughtiron seat beneath an arch of roses, gazing about at all the beauty and breathing in the fragrant air and listening to the music and speaking very little. It was possible to sit silently with Miss Martin now that the discomfort he had felt out on the river had disappeared. With almost anyone else he would have felt obliged to keep a conversation going. Even with Miss Hunt. He wondered if it would always be so or if marriage would bring them enough contentment in each other’s company that they could be satisfied with a shared silence. “Silence,” he said at last, “is not the absence of everything, is it? It is something very definite in its own right.” “If it were not a very definite something,” she said, “we would not so assiduously avoid it through much of our lives. We tell ourselves that we are afraid of darkness, of the void, of silence, but it is of ourselves that we are afraid.” He turned his head to look at her. She was sitting with straight spine, not quite touching the back of the seat, her feet side by side on the ground, her hands resting palm up, one on top of the other, in her lap—a growingly familiar pose. The slightly floppy brim of her hat did not quite hide the rather severe lines of her face in profile. “That sounds bad,” he said. “Are we such nasty creatures at heart, then?” “Not at all,” she said. “Quite the contrary, in fact. If we were to see the grandeur of our real selves, I suspect we would also see the necessity of living up to who we really are. And most of us are too lazy for that. Or else we are having too good a time enjoying our less than perfect lives to be bothered.” She turned her face to his when he did not answer. “You believe in the essential goodness of human nature, then,” he said. “You are an optimist.” “Oh, always,” she agreed. “How could life be supported if one were not? There is a great deal to feel gloomy about— enough to fill a lifetime to the brim. But what a waste of a lifetime! There is at least as much to be happy about, and there is so much joy to be experienced in working toward happiness.” “And so silence and…darkness hold happiness and joy?” he said softly. “Assuredly,” she said, “provided one really listens to the silence and gazes deeply into the darkness. Everything is there. Everything.” He made a sudden decision. Ever since deciding to call upon her in Bath, and especially since being shown around her school and talking with her on the road to London, he had been meaning to take matters further with her. Now was as good a time as any. “Miss Martin,” he said, “do you have any plans for tomorrow? In the afternoon?” Her eyes widened as she continued to look at him. “I do not know what Susanna has planned,” she said. “Why do you ask?” “I would like to take you somewhere,” he said. She looked at him inquiringly. “I own a house in town,” he said. “It is not my place of residence, though it is on a quiet, respectable street. It is where—” “Lord Attingsborough,” she said in a voice that must surely have even the most intrepid of her pupils quaking in her shoes whenever she used it in school, “where exactly are you suggesting that you take me?” Oh, Lord! As if… “I am not—” he began. She had inhaled sharply while he spoke the three words, and her bosom had swelled. She looked forbidding to say the least. “Do I understand, sir,” she said, “that this house is where you keep your mistresses?” Plural. Like a harem. He leaned back in the seat, resisting the sudden urge to bellow with laughter. How could he possibly have been so gauche as to give rise to such a misunderstanding? His choice of words today was proving quite disastrous. “I must confess,” he said, “that the house was bought for just that purpose, Miss Martin. It was years ago. I was a swaggering young sprout at the time.” “And this,” she said, “is where you wish to take me?” “It is not unoccupied,” he told her. “I want you to meet the person who lives there.” “Your mistress?” She was the very picture of quivering outrage. And part of him was still amused at the misunderstanding. But really this was no joke. Ah, this was not funny at all. “Not my mistress, Miss Martin,” he said softly, his smile fading. “Lizzie is my daughter. She is eleven years old. I would like you to meet her. Will you? Please?”
8
Claudia gave herself one more look-over in the pier glass in her dressing room and drew on her gloves as she turned toward the door. She felt rather self-conscious because Susanna was standing there. “I am sorry,” she said briskly, not for the first time, “that I will be unable to come visiting with you this afternoon, Susanna.” “No, you are not.” Her friend was smiling impishly. “You would much rather go driving in the park with Joseph. I would in your place. And today is as sunny and warm as yesterday.” “It was very kind of him to offer,” Claudia said. “Kind.” Susanna tilted her head to one side and regarded her closely. “It is what you said at breakfast, and I objected to it then, as I do now. Why should he not take you for a drive? He must be close to you in age and he enjoys your company. He proved that the evening before last when he sat beside you at the concert and took you in for supper before Peter could find you to bring you to our table. And yesterday he walked you home from Mr. Hatchard’s and then took you out on the river during the garden party and was sitting in the rose arbor with you when we came looking for you to bring you home. You must not talk of his interest as mere kindness, Claudia. It belittles you.” “Oh, very well, then,” Claudia said. “I daresay he has conceived a violent passion for me and is about to beg me to become his marchioness. I might end up a duchess yet, Susanna. Now there is a thought.” Susanna laughed. “I would rather see him marry you than Miss Hunt,” she said. “His engagement has not yet been announced, and there is something about her I do not like though I cannot explain quite what it is. But I hear sounds downstairs. Joseph must have arrived.” He had indeed. He was standing in the hall when Claudia went down with Susanna, talking with Peter. He sm iled up at them in greeting. He was, of course, looking as handsome as ever and alarmingly virile in a dark green coat with buff pantaloons and white- topped Hessian boots. At least his colors coordinated with hers, Claudia thought wryly. She was wearing the third and last of her new dresses—a sage green walking dress that she had thought very smart when she bought it. And
