Viviana turned and drifted back toward the tidy kitchen. “Do what, Lucy?” But she was afraid she knew what Lucy was asking.
“You know,” she answered. “To just up and leave London like that. To marry someone else. It’s not my place to say, miss, but it don’t seem right, somehow.”
“Right for whom, Lucy?” asked Viviana quietly. “For my child? Would it have been better for her to be born a bastard?”
“I’m not saying that.” Lucy drew out a chair at the table for Viviana, then picked up the earthenware pitcher of cider again. “But perhaps…perhaps you didn’t give Mr. Hewitt a chance.”
“I gave him a chance,” said Viviana, dropping her gaze. “He did not wish to marry. Not to me. I was not surprised, of course. So I kept my pride—and I kept my troubles to myself.”
Lucy sat down abruptly. “Lord Gawd, miss!” she whispered. “You didn’t tell him?”
Viviana stared into her cider and shook her head.
Lucy’s opinion was plain in her tone. “You ought to have done, miss,” she warned. “Really, you still ought. It don’t seem wise to keep such a thing from a man.”
Viviana’s head jerked up. “Tell him now?” she echoed incredulously.
“Dio mio,
Lucy! What good would that do my daughter? She is the only person who matters now. Her father made his choice.”
“Well, it’s not my place say,” Lucy repeated. “But I was the one, miss, left to explain your haring off like that to Mr. Hewitt. You weren’t there. You didn’t see him.”
“My leaving spoiled his fun,
si?”
Lucy looked at her chidingly. “Oh, miss, it weren’t like that,” she said. “Devastated, he was—and not quite right since, if you ask me.”
“Oh, Lucy!” she said. “You are having romantic imaginings.”
Lucy frowned. “Well, I do live here, miss, not a mile from Arlington’s back gates,” she said. “Pr’haps I don’t see the family regular, but I know a thing or two about what goes on up there. And he’s not happy. Any fool with eyes can see that.”
Viviana almost wished Lucy spoke the truth. How pathetic that was!
“Well,” said Lucy after a moment had passed, “do as you think best, miss. I believe you’re wrong, but you can depend on me to keep my mouth shut. And your husband’s dead now, so I reckon that part’s laid to rest.”
Lightly, Viviana touched Lucy’s arm. “Lucy, I did not lie to Gianpiero, if that is what you think,” she said. “He wished desperately to marry me. I—I told him I carried a child.”
Lucy’s eyes widened. “And he married you anyway, miss?” she answered. “Many a man would not have been so kind.”
Viviana’s mouth twisted. “It was not a kindness,” she said.
“What, then?” Lucy looked at her blankly.
Viviana hesitated. “It was a matter of possession,” she finally said. “Gianpiero wished to make certain I did not slip from beneath his thumb and vanish again. Not unless he wished it.”
“And so you struck a bargain, miss? Is that it?”
“A devil’s bargain,” Viviana whispered. “My body for his name.”
Lucy’s expression soured. “It is often the way of men, isn’t it, miss?”
“It is the way of most men, I sometimes think.”
Lucy lifted one shoulder. “Well, my Joe’s been a good man to me,” she said. “I guess that Gianpiero must have wanted you something frightful.”
Frightful.
Yes, that was one word for it. “He said that he did,” Viviana whispered. “And he married me, Lucy, with his eyes open, knowing that I did not love him. But I was a good wife. I did not wish him dead. I swear, I did not.”
Lucy leaned forward, and patted her hand where it lay upon the table. “Well, just put it from your mind, miss,” she said soothingly. “It’s water under the bridge now.”
At Viviana’s quizzical look, Lucy smiled. “It means that what’s done is done, and no point mourning over it,” she clarified, pushing away the mug. “Now, I suppose I’d best hasten up to the Arms and get little Teddy. Will you come along with me, miss? I know it’s just a tavern, but it’s a respectable enough place.”
Viviana smiled, and pushed her chair back. “I should be pleased, Lucy, to go. Very pleased indeed.”
The feeble afternoon sun had finally emerged by the time Lord Wynwood and his sister departed their great-aunt’s house. They left Lady Charlotte in good spirits, intent upon paying an afternoon call to the vicar, which was yet another duty Quin had neglected.
Suddenly, he decided to neglect it just a little longer. Squinting his eyes against the low sun, Quin helped Alice up the steps into his carriage. “You go on without me, Allie,” he said when she had settled in. “I cannot bear another call today.”
Alice frowned down on him. “We shan’t be over half an hour,” she said. “Really, Quin! What has got into you? And how will you get home?”
“I shall walk,” he answered. “The fresh air will do me good.”
He did not wait to hear his sister’s further protests and set off in the direction of the footpath, a shortcut through the woods. He had no taste for the endless round of social calls which life in the country now required of him. Instead, he found himself surprisingly eager to return to Arlington. He wished to summon Herndon to his office so that they could discuss the planned repairs to Chandler’s granary.
After his day spent touring tenant farms, Quin realized it was also time to review Herndon’s list of projects, to see what other urgent needs had been left hanging. And in doing all of this, Quin had begun to feel the faintest stirring of usefulness. That feeling had been bolstered by Herndon, who had seemed grateful, and eager to begin the work. They had parted quite amicably. And yet, Quin had been avoiding his estate manager ever since.
Quin looked up to see that the rolling grounds of the gatehouse had given way to the dense patch of forest which encircled Arlington Park. Within, it was darker, and a little colder, too. Quin realized he had not fastened his greatcoat, and did so at once. He thought again of Herndon, and wondered what, if anything, he ought to say to the man. There was something which had been weighing on his mind.
That same evening he had given Herndon his list, Quin had escaped the house after dinner in a strange state of mind. Still disconcerted by his little contretemps with Viviana at the cottage, Quin had decided to walk alone in the Tudor garden. At least, he had believed himself alone—until he had seen Herndon with Alice.
Quin still could not quite put his finger on what it was that had so disturbed him. Perhaps it was the way they had walked, like the very dearest of friends, their heads so close together they almost touched. Or perhaps it was his sister’s light, lilting laugh; the one he had not heard since well before her marriage. But most likely, it had been the expression of unadulterated joy which he had caught on Herndon’s face.
Quin had always thought of his estate manager as being stern, almost emotionless. He certainly had not looked emotionless with Alice. And Quin had felt—well, not anger. He had not even felt that Herndon was being presumptuous. He had felt…
envy.
Yes, that was it. Envy that someone—two people, actually—whom he admired so thoroughly could find such joy in one another’s company.
Quin wondered if he would ever know that kind of joy. Oh, he had known pleasure and comfort aplenty—perhaps too much of the former. He had had the good life handed to him on a crystal platter, and fed to him with a silver spoon. He knew it, and was not ungrateful. But where joy should have been there seemed only a restive emptiness.
Of course he had once loved Viviana—or thought he had—and he had experienced a great many emotions in her company. A rushing, crashing riptide of emotions. Angst. Pleasure. Jealousy. Desire. But joy? No, that he could not recall.
Yes, he envied Alice and Herndon. He wished them both very happy, though he deeply doubted they would find happiness together. His mother would put a stop to that. And he could not manage Allie’s problems for her. He could barely manage his own.
Just then, something hard struck the top of his beaver hat, bounced off, and landed on the path. Quin stopped and picked it up. A conker—round, brown, and perfect. And enormous. For a moment, he studied it, boyhood bloodlust surging in his heart. He weighed the nut in his hand. Yes, a sixer, for sure. He would not even need to wheedle Mrs. Prater into baking this one. It could probably take out a pane of glass at a hundred paces. Feeling silly, and strangely sentimental, Quin slipped his prize into his pocket.
But no sooner had he set off again than another struck him, a little harder this time. And this time he did not miss the spate of soft giggles which followed. He turned all the way around on the footpath, the hems of his greatcoat swirling out around his boots. Nothing. And then he looked up, as he should have done at the outset.
From amongst the bare branches, a soft, perfect oval of a face looked back at him.
Viviana.
But not Viviana, either.
“I saw you,” said the child in the tree.
Quin picked up the horse chestnut. “I noticed,” he said, tossing it up at her.
She tried to catch it and failed miserably. “No, I meant I saw you at the amphitheater,” she said, scrabbling down one branch as if to better study him. “Nadia was flirting with you. I think she wanted you to kiss her.”
Ah, the fetching little acrobat! He had quite forgotten. But he had not forgotten the child. “You’d best come down, Cerelia,” he ordered. “You are up too high—unless you have become an acrobat since last we met.”
“I can climb,” she said disdainfully. Then, clever as an organ-grinder’s monkey, the girl swung down another branch, her petticoats flouncing about her dainty boots as she did so.
Quin tried to scowl at her. “The truly professional tree climbers don’t go it alone, you know,” he remarked after a few moments had passed. “Who would send for help if you fell?”
The girl was halfway down. Her heavy, bronze-colored hair was sliding from its braid on one side, and he could see that she’d rent a seam under the arm of her coat. “I shan’t fall,” she said in her faintly accented English. “I never do. Besides, I’m not alone.”
“Oh?” he asked. “Who is with you?”
She clutched tight to a branch and grinned down at him over her shoulder.
“You
are,
signore,”
she said.
Quin could not help but grin back at her. “Ah, but I am a most unreliable sort of chap,” he answered. “Never around when I’m needed. Ask anyone who knows me.”
The girl kept winding her way down, carefully placing her hands and feet. Somehow, he knew better than to offer his help. “Actually, I came with my friends,” she said, as she caught the last branch. “Lottie and Christopher. Do you know them?”
Her feet touched the ground, light as a thistle blossom. Quin swept off his hat, for it somehow seemed the right thing to do. “I do indeed,” he said. “But I certainly don’t see them here, and I am fairly sure I would recognize them. I am their uncle, you see.”
Her face brightened a little at that. “Are you?” she asked, looking up at him. “Your name is Lord Wynwood, is it not? Do you know the little brook just at the bottom of this hill?”
“Yes, yes, and—er, yes. I do know the little brook.”
She gestured toward the coombe below. “Well, they went down there to look for salamanders.”
Quin crooked one brow. “Isn’t it a little cold for that?”
Looking mildly embarrassed, she shrugged. “I don’t know what it is, this salamander,” she confessed, as a cascade of bronze hair slithered over her shoulder.
Quin searched his mind. He had briefly studied Italian, back when he had harbored the foolish notion of rushing off to the Continent and dragging Viviana back to England. “A salamander is a creature,” he said. “And rather like
un…un alamaro.”
“A frog?” she said sharply.
He shook his head. “No, not a frog,” he responded, trying to dredge up the right word. “I meant to say
una lucertola.
I think.”
The girl was trying not to laugh. “A lizard, do you mean?”
He gave up, and nodded. “Yes, like a lizard.”
Her face broke into a smile that was like a ray of sunshine. “You are very kind to try to speak Italian to me.”
“Grazie,”
he said. “I fear I do not know any Venetian. It is much the same, is it not?”
She laughed. “Somewhat, yes,” she said. “But at home, Mamma and I speak Italian or English.”
Lord, she was going to be a beauty, he thought. Her face looked so much like her mother’s it was breathtaking. A pity her father was dead. In a few years, it was going to require six or seven resolute parents to keep the young men at bay. At that thought, something swift and protective surged through him. Followed by a sense of grave unease.
Quin remembered himself as a young man, recalled with horror the lascivious thoughts and wicked imaginings which had utterly possessed his mind. God preserve her from that! But she was not his responsibility, was she?
Well, no. But she was a child. A child who was standing in the freezing cold in the middle of his wood. There was a certain moral obligation in that, wasn’t there? He looked up through the bare, clattering branches, and saw something—snow, or perhaps just ash—come swirling down.
“You had best go fetch the others, Cerelia,” he said. “We shall walk you home first, then I will take Chris and Lottie back to Arlington Park.”
The girl stuck out her lip. “I wanted to climb another tree.”
“This isn’t negotiable,” he said firmly. “I think we might be in for a little snow.”
The child’s face lit up.
“Snow—?”
Just then, a crashing arose in the tangle of rhododendron which meandered up from the stream’s edge. The two wanderers burst from the greenery. “Uncle Quin! Uncle Quin!” Lottie rushed up the hill to greet him. “Have you come to find us? We are not lost, you know.”
“Are you not?” Quin caught her around the waist, lifted her off her feet, and spun her round on the footpath. “Perhaps I am lost, Lottie. Perhaps you have found me. Did you ever think of that?”
“Oh, poo!” said Lottie. “Mamma says you are a vagabond. They are never lost.”
She was laughing when he set her back down on her feet again, and she clung to him dizzily, her arms wrapped round his neck. It was then that he noticed the expression on Cerelia’s face. She looked…not envious, but almost painfully alone. She literally stood apart from them, on the opposite side of the footpath, which might as well have been a gaping chasm.