Belle of the ball (14 page)

"Let's see, what shall I tell you? My first real sight of Canada—I do not count the eastern area as Canada, not my Canada, anyway—was Montreal Harbor, and a dirtier, more disease-ridden place you have never seen! Our vessel was quarantined for a week, and all I could do was gaze at the shore and wish I could leave that rocking, boring jail of the ship. When I finally did, I made my way immediately out of the town and into the wilderness. I was so young—only nineteen. It called to me, Arabella, like the Siren songs the sailors used to hear, and I responded by falling deeply in love."

They walked and talked for an hour, and then finally sat on a log near the other end of the pond from Captain James, who they could still see casting his line. They gazed out across the calm pond; the sky, a brilliant blue, almost sapphire, with tiny clouds puffing across it like sails on a lake, was reflected like a mirror, and a swallow swooped low and shot straight up into the azure heights. Arabella was content for the first time in a long time and yet she did not understand why. Her problems were still what they were. The moment Lord Pelimore was back in town her mother would be plaguing her again, though she had seemed mysteriously distracted lately. And this interlude with Marcus was just that, a pause before the final, serious push to attach Baron Pelimore began.

"Tell me more, Marcus. Tell me more." She laid her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes.

Marcus almost couldn't breathe and his heart beat a rapid tattoo, though he concealed this from Arabella. He talked on as she laid her head on his shoulder. He could smell her lilac woman scent—her soft blond hair was tickling his nose, and he wanted to kiss her. The desire was so suffocating that he could not take in a breath without shuddering, and he did not want to alarm her with his need.

Was it truly pure physical need that he felt, as he had been telling himself? Or was there something more between them? He would never forget her eyes as she begged for forgiveness in the inn on the way to Richmond. In that moment, he felt like he could see through her clear down to her heart, and could see the goodness that dwelt within her, the tender side of a fiery and feisty woman. He felt a sudden urge to take her in his arms, kiss her, and ask her to marry him, and the thought shook him to the core. It was the first time the thought of marriage had ever occurred to him spontaneously like that. He did not intend to marry, ever, and was heading back to Canada as soon as this sad business with his uncle was over. There was no room in his life for a permanent woman.

Of course, there had been Moira, but she had fit into the rugged frontier life he lived. When he had asked her to marry him—circumstances had dictated that proposal, not his own wishes—he was all of twenty-one and she was twenty-seven. They had planned to marry and set on some land down near Lake Erie, land she owned from her father's involvement on the British side of the American Revolutionary war. When she died, he had returned to the nomadic life of the army, and then the war had broken out. Since then he had decided that marriage was too much of a burden when a man liked his life adventurous.

And a woman like Arabella, pampered and used to all of the best in life, would never fit in among his friends. Look at her now, he thought, gazing fondly down at her. Dressed for a day in the country, she still wore gloves, a walking dress of some pretty shiny material, a Spencer, and a ridiculous, tiny hat perched on her blond ringlets, which, as always, were perfectly coiled.

Moira had been a rugged Scotswoman. She was beautiful in her way, but her hair was simply pulled back on her neck, her dress was of sprigged cotton, handmade and well-worn, and her perfume was rainwater. And she was not afraid of hard labor, having worked her father's farm her whole life. She knew how to muck out stables, make candles, boil maple sap for sugar, collect wild rice in the native way, chop wood—and still, as much as she fit into the land he loved, he would not have asked her to marry him, but they found out she was with child, his child. He turned away from the dark memory of the months leading up to her death. Even with all her hardiness she had died before childbirth from some mysterious illness connected with the pregnancy.

No. No man had a right to expect any woman to live like that, and he could not give up his dream of going back to Canada. The sweet flower he held in his arms was a cultivated plant; she would wilt and die in the wilderness.

She opened her eyes and turned her face up to him. "You have stopped talking. Why?"

For an answer, against all his common sense, against all of his sensible resolutions, he covered her lips with his own and felt her immediate surrender to his kiss. Fire and ice raced up and down his spine, and he felt the swift pulse of desire, followed by the throb of arousal. He plundered her mouth for a moment longer, then put her away from him, angry at himself for letting his passions overpower his reason. He felt a sureness within him that she was absolutely innocent of experience. She may have kissed before, but not in this way, not with the wanton disregard of propriety that he had led her to with his own lust.

Her eyes were dazed and shadowed with desire, the green deepened to an olive of incredible hue. Her lips were moist still, and he licked his own lips and took in a deep shuddering breath. What he would give to have her, just once, to love her as a woman should be loved!

But no one knew it would never be, better than himself. He could not— must not—forget her destiny, a rich man's treasure.

"Marcus?" Her voice was sweet and thick, as though she held a mouthful of Devonshire cream and honey. She moved closer to him on the log and threaded her arms under his, around his waist.

He pushed her away, gently, though it was the last thing he wanted to do. "I always seem to be apologizing to you for my behavior," he said, ruefully. "It is getting annoying."

She sat straight, pulling away from him, and the haze disappeared from her eyes. "Then don't do it," she said, tartly, and lifted her chin, shaking back her mussed curls. She took a deep breath and swallowed. "Tell me of George and Mary Two Feathers, instead."

After a silent moment, they returned to the safety of neutral subjects.

"You seem so very fond of Mary," Arabella said, after he described her, her fawn dark eyes and glossy black hair, and how she called him "Pere Marc."

"She is about the age my—" He stopped and looked away, struggling with his emotion, then continued. "She is so very easy to be fond of. She is bright and engaging and smart as a whip. She dances at the lodge meetings in an outfit her mother made her, all buckskin and feathers and little bells obtained by trading with the English; I have been privileged to be named her second father. It is an honor." He stared straight ahead of him and spoke woodenly

Arabella could feel some curious hurt within him. "Do you ever want children?"

She saw him flinch as if she had slapped him, and an idea stole into her brain. But how to ask? "Did you . . . did you have a child once?" she said, as gently as she could.

"Almost," he said, brokenly.

"Moira?"

"Yes."

There was silence but for the trill of a lark. A light breeze had sprung up and it rustled through the brush that crowded the pond edge and created dancing ripples on the surface.

"I am so, so sorry, Marcus," Arabella said, gently, and laid her hand over his. "You must have loved her very much. And to lose not only her, but the life she carried—" Inevitable pain streaked through her, but she abandoned it as an unworthy emotion. He had loved and lost, and she regarded him with a kind of awe she reserved for deep suffering.

"I ... I suppose I did," he said. He covered his eyes with his hands for a moment, then took a deep breath and shook his head, smiling. "Moira was truly wonderful. Brave, resourceful, tough. Those don't sound like womanly traits, but I admired her for them, more than I can say."

Arabella thought how her mother would criticize to hear a woman spoken of in such terms. In her mind men wanted women to be fragile, frail, a delicate ivy needing the strong oak of the male to cling to, so she could wind herself around him and live off his strength. But in her own experience she had seen that the men she had most admired, and that included her cousin True's husband, Lord Drake, appreciated strong women, women who were themselves. Was there something in that then? Did she not have to pretend to be something she was not for her whole life?

But no, she was going to marry Lord Pelimore, and she had seen how he criticized the girls who seemed too independent. He derisively called them "boys," and said they would never marry, for no man would want them. She would be doomed, then, to play the clinging vine her whole life, or live in disharmony with her husband.

She turned her thoughts away from London. "Would you like to have more children?" It was out before she could bite it back, and so she watched Marcus curiously, wondering what his answer would be.

He frowned and laced his fingers together. They both watched his long, strong fingers create a pattern as he threaded them through each other. "The idea has its charm. When I see Mary and George, I think I would. But—" He shook his head. "I think that part of my life, that possibility in my life, is over. I belong in Canada, and the moment my inheritance is out of the way, I will return."

Disappointed, Arabella said, "It is only a couple of hundred pounds. Can they not send it to you?"

Unaccountably, he looked uncomfortable and stood. He took her hand and pulled her to her feet. "There are . . . details to be worked out, paperwork to be signed."

"Ah." That was men for you; they went all mysterious whenever financial matters came under discussion. And of course she, a mere woman, could never understand.

They walked, but some of the comfort between them had disappeared. He held her hand, though, and they walked back through the woods to their picnic area, which had been tidied by the servants—the groom, two drivers, and a maidservant—who now sat a ways off having their own lunch.

Arabella and Marcus were just sitting back down on the blanket when Harris and Eveleen came out of the far copse. Eveleen had a grin on her face, and when she got nearer, Arabella could see twigs and leaves clinging to her hair and dress.

Harris collapsed on another blanket, yawned, and said, "I am sleepy. Going to take a nap, children." He closed his eyes and drifted to sleep rapidly.

Eveleen sat down beside her friend and took a bottle of lemonade out of the basket that anchored one corner. "I am so thirsty," she said. She took a long drink and corked the bottle again, sighing with satisfaction. "What have you two been up to?" she asked, brightly, looking from Arabella to Marcus.

Assailed by suspicions of what her friend had been doing, flustered and confused that she would even think such a thing, Arabella was unable to answer. Marcus jumped in and retailed parts of their conversation, leaving out the kiss.

"How well behaved you two are."

She seemed her usual bright self, but Arabella detected a hint of dissatisfaction, or edginess in her friend, she couldn't decide exactly what it was. It irritated her, this distance between them, this secrecy on Eveleen's part.

Nettled, she replied, "Better well behaved than misbehaved."

"Better misbehaved than bored!" Eveleen's smile had turned sour, and her voice had a bite of tartness to it.

"Better bored than with child," Arabella blurted pointedly, glaring, and then was immediately sorry. Especially when Eveleen's eyes drifted shut and she fainted.

Eleven

There was shocked silence for one moment, and then Marcus flung himself into action, kneeling beside Eveleen on the soft blanket and checking her head to make sure she did not bump it.

"Here, you," he called to Eveleen's maid, a tiny girl named Molly. He beckoned to her. "Smelling salts I Bring smelling salts."

Molly dithered and fluttered, but in the end it turned out that she did not carry that necessity. Miss O'Clannahan never having had an ill moment in her life before this one. Arabella's Annie was not with her, or she would have been so equipped. One of the manservants brought a bottle of water and a cloth, and Marcus hastily poured some of the chilled liquid over it and held the damp cloth to Eveleen's pale brow.

Arabella was shocked to the core and near tears that her nastiness should have had such an outcome. What had she been thinking? How could she be so bitter, so spiteful? And even now it was Marcus, virtually a stranger to them, who was holding her limp friend, and tenderly administering to her. Finally finding the use of her limbs, Arabella knelt beside them and took one of Eveleen's hands. *'Eve, Eve?" she said gently. "Awaken, my dear."

Glancing at her with a question in his tormented eyes, Marcus said, "Is there something here that I donot know about? You do not need to tell me what it is, if it is a secret."

Arabella gazed at him blankly for a moment, and then remembered her mean-spirited remark and what it might seem to imply, and further, what that implication would mean to Marcus. Shame engulfed her. What had overtaken her? She had reacted to Eveleen's tweaking her on her innocence with such a monstrous barb! Monumental bad judgement, and this was the result Calmly, she looked Marcus in the eye and said, "No, there is nothing there, believe me. It was merest chance that what I said—horrible, mean, and impolite as it was—should have this outcome."

At least so she believed. Or was there something there? Arabella shook her head as Marcus, satisfied with her answer, had gone back to his nursing. Watching him, she wondered if he had performed this service for his beloved Moira before her demise. A streak of jealousy chased by remorse coursed through her. He was unlike anyone she had ever met, she thought as she watched Eveleen's eyes flutter open. He was unlike anyone she was ever likely to meet again. He was everything that a man should be, and more.

"What. . . what is wrong?" Eveleen sat up, then held one delicate, freckled hand to her head. Her maid dithered around in the background, offering up prayers for her mistress's recovery.