She understood these things but seemed powerless to do anything to correct them. It did not help that she had not ridden for almost three years—her soggy ride from the Serpentine to Bertie’s town home did not count.
The Bedwyns and their spouses seemed charmed nevertheless. They called greetings and encouragement and advice to her and laughed when she laughed. They rode out of the stable yard with her in a body that for a few moments gave her the illusion of safety.
And then they abandoned her.
One group of them bore Miss Hutchinson off in their midst, though the Marchioness of Rochester had commended her to the duke’s keeping. Another group of them bore off Melanie and Bertie, Audrey and Sir Lewis, and Justin.
The only person left for Christine to ride with was the Duke of Bewcastle. And the reverse was true too, of course.
She felt more than ever self-conscious in his company. She still could not believe that she had poured out the true story of her marriage and Oscar’s death to him. She had never told any of those things even to Eleanor, the sister to whom she was closest. She had felt strangely comforted afterward even though he had offered no words of consolation. This morning, though, she felt simply embarrassed—and a little chilled. He had offered no words of comfort.
Of course
he had not. He was probably disgusted, even though he had thanked her for telling him. He had kept his distance from her all last evening, and this morning he had not uttered one word to her at breakfast.
“If we are to keep up with the others and reach Alvesley before dark,” he told her now, “you had better coax that horse to a walk instead of a dance, Mrs. Derrick.”
Now that her mount had been abandoned by the group, it was doing just that—dancing in place.
Christine laughed, though she felt somewhat chagrined too.
“We need to become acquainted,” she said. “Give me a moment.”
“Trixie,” he said, “meet Mrs. Derrick. Mrs. Derrick, meet Trixie.”
“I am delighted to know that I inspire you to such flights of wit,” she said. She tightened her grip on the right rein and Trixie obediently danced about in a complete circle.
“Relax,” the duke instructed her. “Relax your body—she can feel your tension and it makes her nervous. And relax your hands. She is a follower rather than a leader. She will follow Noble if you leave her to her own devices.”
It sounded so simple—
relax
. Yet when she tried it, it worked and Trixie plodded obediently after the magnificent black stallion on which the duke was mounted.
“Now I must only hope,” she said, “that no hedge looms suddenly before us. I suppose Noble would go soaring over it, and since Trixie is a follower, she would soar after him. I fear I might be left behind on the ground on the other side.”
“I promise,” he said, “to come back for you.”
She laughed, and he looked across at her with his steady, inscrutable eyes.
“Tell me about Alvesley Park and the people there,” she said. That, she had learned, was their destination. “It is the Earl of Redfield’s home?”
“It is,” he said.
She thought that was all he was going to say and was determined that she would not bother herself with making labored conversation as they rode. If he was content with silence, then so was she.
But he proceeded to tell her about the earl’s three sons, the eldest of whom had died some years ago, while the youngest was the steward at his Welsh estate. He had been terribly maimed in the Peninsular Wars and was apparently determined to prove that he was not useless. Kit Butler, Viscount Ravensberg, the middle son, was now the Earl of Redfield’s heir and lived at Alvesley with his wife and children.
“Have your two families always been close?” Christine asked.
“Most of the time,” he said. “Redfield’s sons and my brothers and Freyja were always playmates—Morgan too when she was old enough.”
“But not you?”
“For a while.” He shrugged. “I outgrew them all.”
The words were coldly, disdainfully spoken. Had he never known human joy, this man, even as a child? How could she ever imagine that she might be in love with him? How could she have confided in him yesterday? And
quarreled
with him? She had almost forgotten the quarrel. He had not been cold then. Ah, how provokingly complex he was.
“You said
most
of the time,” she said. “Have there been some disagreements, then?”
And then he told her an extraordinary tale about his plan and the Earl of Redfield’s to arrange a marriage between Lady Freyja and the eldest of the earl’s sons, a plan that had proceeded smoothly until Kit returned from the wars one summer and he and Lady Freyja fell in love. She had renounced him and announced her betrothal to his brother anyway, and Kit had returned to the Peninsula, but only after engaging in a vicious bout of fisticuffs with Lord Rannulf on the lawn outside Lindsey Hall one night. And then three years later, after the eldest brother had died, the duke and the earl had tried to arrange a match between Lady Freyja and Kit, assuming it would be to the liking of both. But when Kit returned home that summer, presumably for the betrothal celebrations, he had brought the present Lady Ravensberg with him as his betrothed.
“Oh,” Christine said. “And was Lady Freyja very upset?”
“Angry,” he said. “If she was upset, she was not admitting it. But none of us, if the truth were told, were pleased with Kit—and we let both him and his lady know it in our own peculiar way. The hard feelings have passed by now, though. Freyja even made her peace with Lady Ravensberg after she met Joshua.”
It was a complicated tale and not at all the sort of story he would have told her last year, Christine realized, remembering how he had spoken of his properties and his family without any unnecessary details and no emotion at all. He was, she realized, trying to open up to her as she had to him yesterday. He was trying to establish some sort of relationship with her. He was, in a sense, wooing her.
He talked almost all the way to Alvesley with very little prompting on her part. He even told her things she had not asked about. He told her a little about the courtships of all his siblings and about the dreadful summer months of 1815, when they had believed Lord Alleyne to be dead, killed at the Battle of Waterloo, where he had gone to deliver a letter to the Duke of Wellington from the British ambassador, to whose embassy he had been attached at the time.
“And then,” he said, bringing the story to its end, “when we all drove back to Lindsey Hall from the church after Morgan’s wedding, there he was, standing on the terrace waiting for us.”
Christine felt as if she had a lump in her throat.
“It must have been an amazingly wonderful moment,” she said.
“Yes,” he said curtly. “He had fallen from his horse after being shot in the leg at Waterloo, and had banged his head so hard it is amazing he survived at all. He lost his memory for a few months. It was Rachel who found him and nursed him back to health.”
She gazed at him as Trixie plodded docilely after his horse. And she realized something about him that she was not at all sure she wanted to know. Despite the curtness of his tone and the usual severity of his expression, he was reliving something that had been deeply emotional to him.
And then . . . there he was, standing on the terrace waiting for us.
Did he realize how he had betrayed himself with just those bare words?
She blinked her eyes furiously and turned her head to face front. How would she explain tears to him if he saw them?
They reached Alvesley, another grand mansion, soon after that, and the duke helped her dismount, turned over the horses to a groom’s care, and escorted her after the others into the house. It was a great relief not to be alone with him any longer. He was beginning to disturb some of her firmly held preconceptions and she really did not want that to happen. She wanted her safe life back. More than that, she wanted it back without regrets, without any doubts that it was what she chose with both her head and her heart.
For someone who had been very reluctant to mingle with members of the
ton
at Schofield Park last year and even more reluctant to mingle with society in London after Audrey’s wedding earlier this spring, Christine thought ruefully over the next hour, she had really allowed her control over her world to slip alarmingly. First all the Bedwyns, and now this.
After being presented to the Earl and Countess of Redfield and Viscount and Viscountess Ravensberg—whom she looked at with some interest after the story about them she had just heard—she then had to be introduced to all their houseguests and there was not a person among them without a title—the Earl and Countess of Kilbourne, the Duke and Duchess of Portfrey, Lady Muir, the Earl and Countess of Sutton, the Marquess of Attingsborough, and Viscount Whitleaf, all of them relatives of Viscountess Ravensberg.
It was really quite overwhelming. But fortunately there were so many in the visiting party and so many voices attempting to talk at once that Christine was able to find a window seat in the drawing room that made her relatively inconspicuous, and set about recapturing her long-held ambition to be an amused spectator of humanity rather than a participant in its follies.
The Duke of Bewcastle sat in a group with the Earl of Redfield, the Duke of Portfrey, and Bertie, and was soon deep in conversation with them. It was strange how he looked the most aristocratic of anyone present—and also the most handsome. Which was a silly thought, really, when she had already admitted that Lord Alleyne was the best-looking of the Bedwyn brothers and when Viscount Whitleaf was a remarkably good-looking young man with devastatingly attractive violet eyes—whose effect he was now demonstrating on Amy Hutchinson. And the Marquess of Attingsborough, tall, dark, handsome, and charming, was enough to make any warm-blooded female trip all over her feet and her tongue. Not to mention the Earl of Kilbourne and Viscount Ravensberg . . .
“Wool-gathering, Chrissie?” Justin asked, coming to perch beside her. “I am sorry I had to abandon you to your fate with Bewcastle on our way here. I seemed to have no choice. I’ll try to do better on the way back.”
She smiled at him. He had promised her last evening that he would stay by her side whenever he could and protect her from what he was sure were the unwelcome attentions of the duke. She had not contradicted him. Neither had she agreed with him.
She had slept with his quizzing glass beside her pillow—the duke’s, that was—so that she would not forget to return it to him this morning. She could feel it now, rather heavy inside the pocket of her carriage dress.
“I did not mind,” she said. “I learned all sorts of interesting things about his family. They really are pleasant people, are they not, Justin?”
“Pleasant?”
He chuckled. “If you like your people arrogant and overbearing, Chrissie, yes, I suppose they are. And if you like them going off on their own now and then to laugh at us all. I
heard
them yesterday after that walk—they were all in a room together. They did not like your behavior, you may be sure. But don’t worry about that.” He patted her hand. “
I
like it, even though I did not witness the roll down the hill. And I like
you
. I am going to come to Schofield for the summer, as soon as the Season is over. We will spend some time together, you and I. We will go for long walks and drives, and we will laugh at the fashionable world.”
Why, she wondered, had she not been able to fall in love with someone safe like Justin nine and a half years ago—or one year ago? She did not believe he had ever been in love with her either, despite what Hermione had said a few nights ago and even though he had offered her marriage, but even so . . .
“Mrs. Derrick.”
Christine looked up, startled, to find herself being regarded by Lady Sutton, a young lady who gave the impression that she thought herself of enormous consequence. “Was it not you who caused such a stir by falling into the Serpentine a few weeks ago?”
“Oh, dear.” Christine felt herself blushing as everyone in the room turned to look at her, though just a moment before there had been several group conversations in progress. “I am afraid I do have that dubious distinction.”
The Marquess of Hallmere chuckled. “She stooped to pick up a glove a certain, ah,
lady
had dropped in the water,” he said, “and fell headlong in. Lord Powell fished her out, but it was Bewcastle who played knight errant and wrapped his coat about her and took her home on his horse.”
“The story was all about London within hours, as you may imagine,” Lady Rosthorn added, suddenly looking quite as haughty as her eldest brother. “Everyone enjoyed a hearty laugh and was charmed with a lady who had put her own safety at peril in such a cause.”
“We were greatly disappointed,” Lady Hallmere added, also looking decidedly formidable, “as were many other people, that Mrs. Derrick disappeared from town so soon after. She would have been much in demand at various entertainments. But we were fortunate enough to meet her here as one of Wulfric’s houseguests.”
“And yesterday,” Lord Alleyne said with a flashing of his handsome smile, “we all had the privilege of witnessing Mrs. Derrick’s unconventional and exuberant approach to life when she rolled down the hill from the wilderness walk to delight our children, who then all had to copy her, of course.”
“As did Free,” Lord Rannulf added.
“Dear me,” Lord Sutton murmured.
“The children all adore her,” Lady Aidan added. “They positively mobbed her in the nursery before breakfast this morning.”
“I can well imagine,” the very lovely Viscountess Ravensberg said with a warm smile for Christine. “Children always choose the right people to love. Have you had much to do with children, Mrs. Derrick? Do you have any of your own?”
What they had all just been doing, Christine realized as she stumbled through an answer, was
defending
her against the undoubted spite of the Countess of Sutton. The Duke of Bewcastle had not said a word, but he had directed one of his frosty stares at the countess and raised his quizzing glass—one of the remaining seven—to his eye.