Elisabeth Fairchild (18 page)

She opened her eyes at once at the creak of the wooden bench, her hand moving at once to refasten errant hooks. He watched with some amusement as her fingers strove to clasp them without success, the hooks being very tiny ones.

“A perfect day, is it not?” he asked.

“A lovely day,” she agreed, still fussing, the hooks uncooperative.

He pretended not to notice.

He drank in a deep, contented breath, surreptitiously eyeing her throat, the slender grace of her wrists. “Just like when I was a lad.”

“When you first learned of the palace in the lake?” she asked.

“Yes. A rather remarkable trip.”

“In what way remarkable?”

“My father had shown little interest in me until that time.” He leaned back, lounging comfortably, deeply interested in the way the sun touched her hair, striking light in the darkness.

Does she look more like her father or her mother?
He took a deep breath, savoring the fresh breeze, the faint hint of almond soap, remembering.

“A magical summer. It lives perfect and golden in my memory. Like the sunset last night.”

She surprised him in saying, “And now you would give a wonderful golden summer to Felicity.”

He nodded.

Her hooks proved problematic. Her hands fascinated him, the shell pink tips of her fingers. He rather enjoyed watching her struggle, and yet he asked, “Might I be of assistance?”

Her eyes went very wide. “That would not be . . .”

“Appropriate?” he teased. “Doubtless not. Ought not to have unfastened them to begin with.”

She blinked at him with an expression of such consternation he must laugh and say, “Leave them be, Miss Deering. This is not a day for high-necked black dresses that stifle one unnecessarily. I would not have you fainting again. There are none here who matter who will care that your hooks are undone.”
None save me
.

She looked toward the shore, hands stilling.

He turned to see what drew her eye.

Waiting for them at the dock, stood a man he knew at once to be Cupid, and a woman, skirt kicking in the breeze, her hand raised to hold fast a straw hat, to shield the eyes of a swaddled babe in her arms.

His heart lurched.

“Penny!” Felicity cried out in delight.

From his lips came soft echo to his daughter’s cry.

“Penny!”

A
s their boat returned to the pier, Elaine found the golden moment on the lake turned to brass.

“Penny!” Felicity cried, leaping from the boat.

Lord Wharton’s relaxed pose underwent drastic transformation, his body tensed in every muscle, like arrow in drawn bow, his body shouting what his mouth could not.
Penny!

The Shelbournes were on the way to Shrewsbury, a visit to Penny’s aunt, who must see the new baby. They had told Val’s mother they might chance upon him in Bala, promised to bring him news--grave news if the look in the tall, dark-haired gentleman’s eyes gave clue--Cupid--this was certainly Cupid--but Lord Wharton did not see the gravity in the gentleman’s eyes, his gaze fixed exclusively on the woman, the woman in turn focused exclusively on Felicity, who ran from the boat into her arms with a cry of such gladness it warmed the heart.

“My dear,” she said. “How you have grown! Grown beautiful.”

Such tenderness in her eyes, in her voice. Lord Wharton straightened in hearing it. He seemed to go all hard as he stepped from the boat, his chin, the posture of his back and shoulders, the manner in which he thrust out his hand to the gentleman, saying, “Cupid. Last man on earth I expected to see here.”

“Val.” The young man would not let go his hand. “Val, I’ve news.”

At last Penny Shelbourne looked at him, over the top of Felicity’s head. In her eyes a great sadness brimmed. “Val,” she said.

Elaine stepped from the boat, footing swaying, rocking, as uncertain as the quaver in Penny Shelbourne’s voice.

“What is it?” Valentine demanded. “What is amiss?”

Solid ground. Elaine’s feet found solid ground at last, and still she felt the sway of the boat in her limbs, the lift of the deck beneath her feet. An illusion. An unsettling illusion.

“Your father, Val . . .” His friend let the words hang unfinished.

Val froze. She had never seen him stand so still. His jaw seemed set in stone.

The young woman’s pained look increased. She shot a look at her husband, the look of a woman at a loss seeking support where she knew herself most likely to find it. Then she looked again at Val, and there was love in her eyes, and sympathy, “His heart, Val,” she said.

It was hard to gage how the truth hit him. He made no movement. Indeed, his face remained stonelike--emotionless. Then, without word, or gesture, or glance again at his visitors, he strode away from the circle of eyes that watched too keenly his reaction to this dreadful revelation.

Penny made a move, as if to go after him, but her husband, quite sensibly, caught hold of her hand, and drew her to him, Felicity as well, and said, quietly, “He needs to be alone, my loves.”

Both heads nodded. Penny shifted the babe in her arns, wiped a tear from her eye, for the first time glanced blankly at Elaine. Then gathering Felicity closer, she turned into her husband’s shoulder to let the tears flow, murmuring indistinctly, “Poor Val.”

“We dealt him a bad blow,” he agreed.

Felicity, who watched the whole with great uncertainty, chin tipped high, her hand creeping into Elaine’s, asked in a whisper, “What has happened?”

Elaine knelt to look her in the eyes, to brace her shoulders, to murmur gently, “Your father’s father, my dear. His heart has stopped.”

“Dead?” she asked with a child’s bluntness, her gaze rising to meet Penny’s, to gain confirmation. “He is dead?”

“Yes,” Penny said quietly.

“And father? Has he gone to cry where I cannot see?” She asked it of Penny, as though she would know the answer better than anyone.

“I should think perhaps he has.” So serious her expression, so sad her eyes, she bent to look upon the sleeping baby.

Elaine felt his gaze, the one they called Cupid, measuring her, measuring the child’s reaction.

“Introduce me, my dear.” He touched Felicity’s shoulder, a loving, fatherly gesture, his fingers smoothing back wind tousled hair.

A distraction, the suggestion. A wise move.

“Is this the new governess we have heard so much about?”

Heard? What have they heard?

Felicity made shaky introductions, her efforts interrupted by Mrs. Olive, who came red-eyed to meet them from the inn, tears springing fresh when she heard that the master had gone for a walk, and that none knew when he might return.

Felicity flung herself at Penny Shelbourne’s skirts weeping then, and the woman guided her away, that the child might feel some sense of privacy, Cupid lifting the sleeping baby from her arms.

“Isn’t it a pity about the poor man’s father?” Mrs. Olive whispered to Elaine as they stood waiting at a discreet distance, part of this, and yet, for the moment, unnecessary. “More’s the pity they never really had a meeting of the minds about poor Felicity. Mild-mannered and sweet-tempered as he was, my lord’s father was undeniably stiff-necked. He considered it quite inappropriate to keep the child housed at the Manor. Convinced his son to send her away to boarding school, he did. Never acknowledged her connection to him when they were in the house together. I know for a fact she goes unmentioned in the will.”

Elaine frowned, touched by this added layer to poor Felicity’s plight. “How unfortunate.”

“Yes, doubly so when I know my lord asked his father again, right before we left if he might not bring the child home with him on his return.”

“And what did his father say?”

“Not while he was still lord and master of the manor. And Valentine snapped back at him that the day would soon come when that would no longer be reason to stop him.”

“Oh dear!”

“Aye, regretting such words today, I’m thinking.”

Elaine blinked back sudden tears. The last words she had said to her own father, regrettable, unforgivable--words she had wished time and again left unsaid.

“The baby is wet,” Shelbourne murmured to his wife.

“I shall just go and change him.” She reached for him at once. “Do you mean to chase after Val?”

“Yes. Ought to see how he bears up.”

“My dear Felicity.” Elaine knelt to offer the child fresh handkerchief. “Come, come, my dear. It is quite all right to cry when one has good reason. Now blow your nose.”

“Let me take the wee one,” Mrs. Olive insisted. “I have yet to see the lad in his entirety, you know.”

“And a marvel of perfection he is,” Penny boasted with a new mother’s pride as she carefully handed over her precious charge. “You must come and ogle his exquisitely formed fingers and toes, Felicity. They bring back such pleasant memories of when you were given into my care.” She put her arms around the girl’s shoulders. “Perhaps you will tell me about school?”

Felicity enthusiastically agreed, ready to be led away.

As easily, as swiftly as that, their shared past made Elaine quite suddenly an outsider, unneeded, invisible, left standing by the lake.

Used to being relegated to the background in Lord Palmer’s household, Elaine found herself awkward placed in that position by strangers from Lord Wharton’s past, by the death of a man she would never have the privilege of meeting. She had grown used to being noticed, indeed, needed and appreciated.

Her discomfort was, she decided, after a few moments of unexpectedly biting melancholy, a selfish waste of time. It was not often she was given opportunity alone with her thoughts--and in such a perfect place for thinking. On this day, of all days, she must cherish the opportunity for quiet contemplation. She chose a path that led her in a direction the others had not taken.

The lake spoke to her as she walked, soothing, peaceful, whispering of life, not death. It seemed logical to assume that the trip to Wales must be cut short, that Valentine Wharton would wish to return to Cumbria to assist in the settling of his father’s estate. This might be her last opportunity to treasure the lake.

The town of Bala was quiet under the afternoon sun, the stillness gently broken by the sound of singing, a choir practicing beneath the high steeple of Bala’s ivy-draped church. Peace and a feeling of well-being might be found in those voices, a sense echoed by the call of birds that flit above her head as she passed. A wagtail flashed yellow and black, flight wavering, then a magpie, starkly black and white, in a swift flutter of wings that ended in a long glide to a tree where a jay gave a hoarse call. A woodpecker rattled and tapped.

Parallel to the lake she went, the soft sounds of the lake against the shore as comforting as bird call. To the northernmost end of town she strolled, thinking of her father--of the day he had died--a day without birdsong--without the sunlit comfort of a lake. It had rained that day--the day truth unfolded and her future was made clear to her.

Her feet led her to Tomen Bala, a grass covered mound as tall as a three story house, the path very steep, difficult to climb without tripping over one’s skirt, and yet she managed, in need of exertion, something to ease a heart’s aching.

Tomen Bala, she had been told by the innkeeper, was either a beacon hill, or perhaps the grave mound of an ancient, beloved king. Death--there is no getting away from it.

Breathing hard by the time she reached the top of the mound, she looked out across the lake and thought of the palace buried beneath the waters. A romantic notion, like the future she had once taken for granted. Like a fairy tale.

The view from the top of the mound, almost twice as wide as it was tall, was spectacular. Below spread the lake, sparkling in sunlight, the water rippled--scales from a dragon’s back-- surrounded by three cloud-kissing mountains: Arennig Fawr, Aran Benllyn, and Aran Fawddwy, lilting names on the tongue, a mad scramble of consonants on the page. The undulating mirror image of rock and heather, shrubbery and sky against the lake formed an oddly exhilarating optical illusion. She tried to puzzle out where their boat had drifted that afternoon, and recaptured some of the peace they had found in the view, in the caress of the breeze on her cheek, in the whisper of the lake, in the heat of the sun on her shoulders.

“This is not a day for high-necked black dresses.” She could hear Valentine Wharton’s voice as clearly in her mind as if he stood beside her. She could see the blue of the lake reflected in the blue of his eyes as he watched her hands. She undid the hooks at her throat and breathed deep.

There was welcome shade beneath the one tree that grew atop Tomen Bala, a good-sized alder, its bark scored with the names and initials of those who wished to mark their climb, or link their name with anothers.

Would I link my name with that of a heartbroken man? Am I in love? Foolishly, hopelessly in love?
Love brought Lord Wharton here with his daughter, a memory of the love of the father before him who had brought his own wild child into the rugged hills of Wales, a place of beauty, a place of reflection, and at its heart the peaceful blue of the lake.

Elaine sat in the grass and considered her feelings for Valentine Wharton, and for his motherless daughter. The shadow of the mountains claimed the spot where she sat, chilling her. She drew her black cape closer about her shoulders, and tied her bonnet more securely under her chin, and rehooked the high neck of her dress.

The sky went a deeper azure. The sun slid lower casting the hillsides in a haze of gold and lengthening shadows, and still she sat, motionless, thinking: of their knees beneath cover of his coat, of the grip of his arms when he had carried her to her bedroom at Caxton, of the caress of his voice in the darkness, lakeside telling her tales of a doomed kingdom and the harpist who loved a king who did not recognize her wisdom. She had to admit herself a woman smitten, a woman troubled by pangs of jealousy that Lord Wharton was a man clearly in love, not with her, but with the woman who had come such a long way out of her way to tell him of his father’s demise, his best friend’s wife--Penny Shelbourne.