explanation for the fact that the basket had not been as heavy as Stephen had expected it would be. Golding shook it out and would have spread it on the grass himself, but Miss Haytor hurried to help him, grasping two corners while he held the others. Together they set it down flat, without a wrinkle.
'It is too early for tea,' Golding said. 'Shall we go for a walk?'
'But someone may make off with the basket and the blanket while we are gone, Mr. Golding,' Miss Haytor pointed out.
'Quite right,' he said, frowning. 'We will not be able to walk far. We will have to keep them in our sight.'
'I am quite content to sit here,' Cassandra said, 'and bask in the sunshine and breathe in the fresh air and drink in the sight of so much green countryside. Why do you not walk with Mr. Golding, Alice, and Lord Merton and I will stay here.'
Miss Haytor looked suspiciously at Stephen. He smiled his best smile at her.
'I will protect Lady Paget from harm, ma'am,' he said. 'The public setting of the park and the other people strolling here will be effective chaperones for both you and her.'
She was still not quite convinced, he could see. But her desire to walk – /alone/ – with Golding was being weighed against caution.
'Allie,' Cassandra said, 'if we have driven all this way merely to stroll together in a tight circle about the picnic basket, we might as well have stayed at home and eaten in the back garden beneath Mary's clothesline.'
Miss Haytor was convinced. She went down the slope with Golding and then took his offered arm as they turned in the direction of the distant ponds.
'I believe,' Cassandra said, seating herself on the blanket and removing first her gloves and then her bonnet and setting them down beside her,
'I have been incredibly selfish.'
'In sending them off walking while we remain here?' he asked.
'In keeping Alice with me all these years,' she said. 'She started to look for other employment when I accepted Nigel's marriage offer. She even went to one interview and was impressed with both the children and their parents. But I begged her to come with me into the country, at least for a year. I had never lived in the country and was somewhat apprehensive. She came because I was so insistent, and then she stayed, year after year. I thought only of /my/ needs and told her more times than I can count that I did not know how I would live without her.'
'It is basic human need to be needed,' he said. 'She very obviously loves you. I daresay she was quite content to stay with you.'
She turned her face toward him. She was sitting with her knees bent, her arms clasped around them.
'You are too kind, Stephen,' she said. 'She might have met someone to marry years ago, though. She might have been happy.'
'And she might not,' he said. 'Not many governesses are in a position to meet prospective husbands, are they? And her new employers might not have needed her for anything more than imparting a certain body of knowledge to their children. The children might have resented her. She might have been dismissed soon after acquiring the position. Her next one might have been worse. /Anything/ might have happened, in other words.'
She was laughing, her face still turned toward him.
'You are quite right,' she said. 'Perhaps after all I have been saving her for this happy reunion with the love of her life. I think Mr.
Golding may well /be/ that. Today is not for gloom and guilt, is it?
Today is for a picnic. I have always associated that word with pure enjoyment. But there were never any picnics during my marriage. It is strange, that. I did not even realize it until today. I came here to enjoy myself, Stephen.'
He sat with one knee raised, the sole of his Hessian boot flat on the blanket, one arm draped over his knee, the other slightly behind him, bracing his weight. They were sitting in the dappled shade offered by the spreading branches of one of the oaks. His hat was on the blanket beside him.
He watched, fascinated, as she lifted her arms, drew the pins from her hair, and shook it free over her shoulders and along her back. She set the pins down on the brim of her bonnet and drew the fingers of both hands through her hair to release any tangles.
'If you have a brush in your reticule,' he said, 'I will do that for you.'
'Will you?' She looked back at him. 'But I removed the pins so that I can lie back on the blanket and look at the sky. Perhaps you will brush it later, before I put it back up.'
The strange thing was that she was not flirting with him. Neither was she using her siren's voice or eyes. Yet he felt the tension between them like a palpable thing – and doubted she did. She was as he had never seen her before, relaxed and smiling and without artifice.
He was dazzled.
She was far more attractive to him than when she was trying to attract.
She stretched out on the blanket, adjusting her clothes to make sure her dress decently covered her ankles. And she laced her hands behind her head and gazed upward. She sighed with obvious contentment.
'If only we could keep our connection with the earth,' she said, 'all would be well with our lives. Do you think?'
'Sometimes,' he said, 'we become so intoxicated by the strange notion that we are lords of all we survey that we forget we are creatures of the earth.'
'Just like butterflies,' she said, 'and robins and kittens.'
'And lions and ravens,' he said.
'Why is the sky blue?' she asked.
'I have no idea.' He grinned down at her, and her eyes turned toward him. 'But I am very glad it is. If the sun merely beamed down its light from a black sky, the world would be a gloomier place.'
'Just like before a thunderstorm,' she said.
'Worse.'
'Or like nighttime with a brighter moon. Come down here and look,' she said.
He deliberately misunderstood her. He lowered his head over hers and slowly searched her face, his eyes coming to rest finally on her green eyes. They were smiling.
'Very nice indeed,' he said. He meant it too.
'Likewise.' Her eyes were roaming over his face as well. 'Stephen, you are going to have wrinkles at the outer corners of your eyes when you are older, and they are going to make you impossibly attractive.'
'When the time comes,' he said, 'I'll remember that you warned me.'
'Will you?' She lifted her hands and set two fingertips lightly over the spots where the wrinkles would be. 'Will you remember me?'
'Oh, always,' he said.
'And I will remember you,' she said. 'I will remember that once in my life I met a man who is perfect in every way.'
'I am not perfect,' he said.
'Allow me to dream,' she said. 'To me you are perfect. /Today/ you are perfect. I will not know you long enough or intimately enough to learn of your weaknesses and vices, which are doubtless legion. In memory you will always be my perfect angel. Perhaps I will have a medallion made and wear it about my neck.'
She smiled.
He did not.
'We will not know each other for long?' he asked her.
She shook her head.
'No, of course not,' she said. 'But that does not matter, Stephen. There is today, and today is all that matters.'
'Yes,' he said.
As far as he knew, there were no people walking in sight of them. If there were, they must already be