Simply Love (12 page)

But how could she ever wish to change anything from her past, even the ugliest thing of all? Without it there would not be David.

“Miss Jewell,” Mr. Butler said softly at last, “it has just occurred to me that we must have been out here for a long time. Perhaps the dancing is over and the neighbors gone home. Country people do not usually keep late hours. I hope I have not compromised you in any way.”

“Of course you have not.” But she sat up, checked her hair, and got to her feet while he got to his. “Nobody even noticed us leave, and no one will notice our return. And even if anyone does, it does not matter, does it? We are merely two friends out taking the air together.”

“Friends.” He looked at her and smiled as she shook out her shawl and draped it about her shoulders. “I am glad we are. I wondered after the last time we walked together.”

They were standing very close to each other, she realized. She felt an almost overwhelming urge to reach out her hand and touch his cheek again. But he was making no move to touch her in any way. She wondered if he wished to—and if she really wished to touch him.

She did not touch him. And she was glad he did not touch her. For if she did, or if he did, it would surely be more than just a simple touch this time. She would not be able to bear being kissed by him. She wanted it and cringed from it.

And the idea that she might cringe gave her pause. Cringe because of his appearance? Or because the last man to touch her had been…?

She turned away.

“I'll race you to the bottom,” she said, and took off running and slipping and sliding and shrieking and laughing—and hurting her feet—until she arrived at the bottom of the hill all in one piece a few moments after him.

He was grinning his lopsided grin as she fell into step beside him, breathless and still laughing.

The dancing was just ending as they entered the drawing room through the French windows. There was a bustle of activity as all the outside guests found one another and their belongings and took their leave of the duke and duchess and the houseguests and one another.

It was an opportune time for their return, Anne thought. No one would have even noticed that she and Mr. Butler were gone.

“I must go too, Miss Jewell,” Mr. Butler said, making her a half-bow. “You still wish to join me on Sunday morning?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I shall look forward to it.”

She watched him as he took his leave of the duchess and realized that right now at this moment she felt buoyantly happy.

Like her son, she thought, she needed male companionship as well as female. It had been so lacking in her life. She would miss him when…But no, she would not think of that.

Today was Thursday. There were three days to go to Sunday—she actually counted them off on her fingers.

In three more days she would see him again.

“To a service that will be all in Welsh so that she will not
understand a single word?” Morgan, Lady Rosthorn, said, staring at Joshua. Then her face lit up with mischief and delight. “How very promising, to be sure.”

“Promising?” Lord Aidan said, his brows coming together in a frown. “A church service? I will go to my grave, Morgan, without a glimmering of an understanding of the female mind.”

“He has invited her to go to
church
with him?” Lord Alleyne rolled his eyes. “A bold and risqué move indeed. I did not know Syd had it in him to be such a devil of a fellow.”

“Perhaps,” Lord Rannulf said, grinning, “they need a chaperone. Any offers? Josh, you are the one who claims a relationship with the lady.”

“But I am also the one who has been entrusted with the task of taking her son to church with everyone else,” the marquess said. “I cannot be in two places at the same time, Ralf.”

Judith clucked her tongue.

“Putting them together at dinner on Thursday evening certainly was an inspired move, Christine,” she said. “It worked just as we thought it might.”

“Though Free almost ruined all by talking Syd's ear off,” Lord Rannulf said. “I almost gave myself the migraines with all the nodding and winking I did in her direction.”

“Oh, nonsense, Ralf, you did no such thing!” Freyja retorted. “Of course I talked to him. One cannot be
too
obvious about these things. If Syd had suspected even for a single moment that we were busy matchmaking for him, he would have run a hundred miles without stopping, and who could blame him?”

“Not me, Free,” Lord Alleyne assured her.

“And I believe Miss Jewell would run
two
hundred, Freyja,” the duchess said. “Indeed, she would be spending this whole month hiding in a dark corner if we gave her half a chance, would she not? Did you notice how she slipped away from the breakfast table a few minutes ago instead of lingering like the rest of us? I like her exceedingly well. And I do agree that she and Mr. Butler might well suit if they are just given a fair chance to become acquainted.”

“
Fair
being the operative word, Christine,” Lord Aidan said. “Why it should be thought that merely because Sydnam and Miss Jewell are both lonely souls they must therefore belong together escapes my understanding.”

“Perhaps because you do not possess a romantic bone in your body, Aidan,” Lord Rannulf said with a chuckle.

“But do you not agree, Aidan,” Rachel, Lady Alleyne, asked him, “that they ought to be given a chance to see if they belong together? And it was they who made the first move, after all, by walking on the beach together and then planning another walk the next day. And it was you, Rannulf, who pointed out to us on Thursday evening that they had been outside together for an hour and a half. Though, of course, we had
all
noticed.”

“All of which would seem to prove,” Lord Aidan said, “that they are quite capable of conducting their own grand romance if they so choose. Just as Eve and I did.”

“But with a little help from Wulfric, you must confess, Aidan,” his wife added.

“Wulfric as matchmaker,” Gervase said. “Good Lord! The mind boggles.”

His grace did not seem amused at having his name dragged into such a conversation. He raised one eloquent eyebrow as he set down his coffee cup.

“It would seem to me,” he said, “that my steward and one of my guests ought to be allowed to walk out on a warm summer evening and attend church in company with each other—even a
Welsh
church—without arousing such fevered speculation in the bosoms of my family that my very digestion has been threatened. Christine, has word been sent to the nursery that the children are to be brought down in ten minutes' time?”

“It has indeed, Wulfric,” she said, smiling warmly at him along the length of the breakfast table. Her eyes twinkled. “And those children are to include David Jewell so that his mama and Mr. Butler may walk to and from the Welsh chapel
alone
together.”

His grace touched the handle of his quizzing glass, but his fingers did not quite curl about it. Indeed, an observant spectator might even have sworn that his lips twitched as he gazed back at his wife.

Precisely fifteen minutes later the last of the cavalcade of carriages moved away from the front doors of Glandwr, taking the Bedwyn family and all their children and guests—including David Jewell—to the morning service at the English church in the village.

Anne Jewell watched them leave from the window of her bedchamber, happy in the belief that her absence had gone quite unnoticed by everyone except Joshua and David.

                  

Sydnam stood at the window of the sitting room in his cottage, watching the driveway. A number of carriages had passed down some time earlier—the service at the church was an hour earlier than the one at the Welsh chapel—but he had not seen Miss Jewell in any of them. She must intend to keep her appointment with him, then. For some reason he had half expected her to send an excuse—perhaps because he had looked forward to this so much.

It had looked earlier on as if it were going to rain, and the sky was still cloudy. But he thought the fine weather would hold after all.

He was tired. He was accustomed to the old nightmares, but they were never easy to bear, and pulling himself out of them after he had awoken was always akin to a nightmare in itself. The servants, including his valet, knew not to disturb him on such nights even if they heard him cry out or scream, as he sometimes did. In latter years he had been very thankful to be away from his family, whose concern and insistence upon bearing him company on such occasions was not so easily deterred. During the day after one of his nightmares he was always tired and listless, and usually depressed too. But the old, familiar enemy did not have quite the power it used to have. He had pulled himself determinedly free of it this morning.

He just wished last night had not been one of the nights. He wanted to be fully alert this morning. It might be the last opportunity he would have to be alone with her.

He wondered if she realized how close he had come to kissing her up on the hill a few nights ago. It was a night he would long remember. Her beauty and his attraction to her had proved almost irresistible. Thank heaven he
had
resisted.

They were not a couple who could fall into any easy flirtation or romance.

When he saw her coming down the driveway, tall and graceful and lovely in a cream-colored muslin dress with a straw bonnet tied with brown ribbons, he felt his spirits rise after all. It was such a rare thing to have female companionship, and he genuinely enjoyed hers. He donned his hat, let himself out of the cottage, and went to meet her beyond the cottage gate.

“I hope,” he said, looking up at the sky after greeting her, “we are not going to be rained upon. But the clouds do not look as threatening as they did earlier.”

She looked up too.

“I did not even bring an umbrella,” she said. “I am determined to be optimistic even if I ruin a bonnet in the process.”

And indeed she looked happy, as if she really were glad she had agreed to accompany him to the chapel. How foolish they had been to miss longer than a week of an acquaintance that seemed to give them both pleasure. He had thought of her a great deal during that week, he realized—and she was to be here for only a month in total.

Now that he was outdoors he felt less tired.

“The others all drove to church,” he said. “I saw the carriages pass. What excuse did you give for not going with them?”

“None,” she said. “I spoke privately with Joshua to ask if David could go to church with him. I told him why I would not be going myself, but I daresay he will not tell the others. Why would anyone else be interested to know where I am anyway?”

Ralf had brought her into the conversation while a few of them had been out riding last week—and had asked Sydnam's opinion of her looks in such a contrived, offhand manner that it could only have been deliberate. Then the other night Sydnam had caught Alleyne's eye as he stepped back into the drawing room with her, and there had been amused speculation there. And then he had intercepted Morgan's glance, and she had smiled fondly at him. The Bedwyns might be very much more interested than Miss Jewell realized—but he would not alarm her by saying so. Bedwyns be damned—the women he chose to be friendly with were none of their business.

“The duchess has arranged for us all to go for a drive this afternoon,” she said. “I must not be too late back.”

“And I am planning to go over to TÅ· Gwyn later on if it does not rain,” he told her.

“Tea what?” she asked.

“TÅ· Gwyn,” he repeated. “Two Welsh words meaning
white house,
though in fact it is not white at all, but a sizable gray stone manor set in its own park. I believe the old house was indeed white, but it was pulled down and rebuilt a century or more ago. It belongs to the Duke of Bewcastle at present, but I have hopes of purchasing it from him and making it my own.”

He had finally broached the subject with Bewcastle two days ago. The duke had not said yes. Neither had he said no. He had merely stared at Sydnam, his silver eyes slightly narrowed, his fingers seeking out the handle of his quizzing glass.

“Doubtless,” he had said at last, “you have marshaled all sorts of irrefutable reasons why I should comply with this request, Sydnam. I will hear them all before I leave Glandwr, but not today. Today the duchess awaits my presence in the drawing room for tea.”

That had been that. But he had not said no.

“You spoke of it,” Miss Jewell said, “when we went walking in the valley, though you did not name it.
TÅ·
Gwyn.
I like the name both in its Welsh form and in translation. It sounds cheerful.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “you would like to go over there with me one day before you leave here?”

As soon as the words were out, he regretted them. Tŷ Gwyn, he hoped, was going to be his future home. It was where he would belong, where he would set down roots, where he would be as happy as it was possible to be for the rest of his life. He was not sure it was at all wise to take Miss Jewell there, to have memories of her there—though
why
not he did not know.

But the words were out.

“I would like to show it to you,” he said. “I always make sure that the park is kept tidy and that the house is kept clean, though it is almost a year since the last tenants left.”

“Then I would like to go,” she said. “Thank you. I shall look forward to it.”

They did not speak much after that, but after stepping through the park gates and turning left along the narrow road with its hedgerows on either side and over the stone bridge that spanned the valley, they were soon in the village. It was small and picturesque, its gray stone houses, some thatched, some roofed with gray slate, set back a little way from the road at various angles, a green privet hedge all about the perimeter of each garden, flower beds and grass in front, long lines of vegetables growing at the back. The church was tall with a narrow spire, the chapel more squat and solid-looking a short distance farther along the road.

He did not always attend the chapel. Although he was taking Welsh lessons from Tudor Rhys, the minister, and could both understand and speak a few sentences and read a great deal more, he was quickly lost when people around him started to speak at normal conversational speed, and the lengthy sermons went right over his head. But he did come sometimes. He loved the sound of the language and the fervor of the minister and congregation. It was the music that drew him most, though.

He no longer felt self-conscious with the villagers, who had grown accustomed to his appearance long ago. But he felt self-conscious this morning as he arrived at the chapel with Miss Jewell and was aware of the hush that fell over the congregation and then the renewed whisperings and head noddings. And one glance at her told him that she was feeling equally embarrassed.

But it was a morning service that he knew he would long remember. Perhaps he always would, in fact. Though the villagers and country people were accustomed to him, most of them nevertheless kept their distance from him, perhaps more out of respect than revulsion. He always had the pew to himself—except today.

Today he had a beautiful woman seated beside him for all of an hour and a half and it was just as well no one could read his thoughts. During the long sermon he entertained all sorts of fantasies about her relationship to him.

Most of all, though, he would remember the way she blushed and smiled when Tudor Rhys suddenly switched to English in order to introduce her to his congregation and welcome her. And the way she stood enthralled during every hymn while a hundred or more Welsh men and women around them opened their throats and sang praises in perfect, unrehearsed harmony.