Carola Dunn (6 page)

 “Only partly. Well, perhaps mostly! But if Ben does the little, necessary, everyday things for her, then she will be able to use what energy she has for pleasant things, like strolling in the garden. I doubt she will wish to go to the Pembroke Arms for a glass of cider!”

 “I doubt it,” he agreed, laughing. “Dash it, a drop of rain just hit my nose. Time we were going home. We’ll take a short cut across the park, and you shall have your gallop.”

 She mounted Dapple with the aid of the block, steadied by his hand. While their hands touched, glove to glove, the hammering of her heart threatened to stifle her. Could she be ill? She did not dare consult him as to the meaning of her symptoms, not when he so studiously avoided her eyes.

 “Hippocrates is ready for a run,” he said in a constricted voice as they started off.

 Exclaiming over his horse’s odd name, Cecily regained her composure.

 “Hippocrates was a famous Greek physician,” he explained, “and it just happens hippo is the Greek for horse.”

 “What about the hippopotamus?”

 “River horse. You have seen pictures? When Hippocrates guzzles his oats too eagerly, I tell him that is what he will end up like.”

 At first their way led along a ride through a fir plantation. By the time they emerged from the trees onto an open track leading uphill across the park, the heavens had opened in good earnest. Within moments, Cecily’s adorable little hat dissolved about her ears and her hair started to lose its pins.

 She must look the veriest hoyden, but she did not care. She would cringe to have Lord Avon see her thus, but Iain—Dr Iain—Dr Macfarlane, she
must
think of him thus—would not curl his lip at her dishevelled appearance.

 A trickle ran down inside the neck of her habit and she shivered. “Shall we race?”

 “No. You are on unfamiliar ground and an unfamiliar mount. I will not leave you behind.”

 “Ha! As if your hippo could beat Dapple! Come on!”

 Hooves pounding, they sped neck and neck up the hill and over the crest. The mansion spread before them. Cecily hoped anyone looking out of a window would be unable to recognize her through curtains of rain, but she could not bring herself to really mind if they did.

 She exchanged a laughing glance with Iain, still matching her pace for pace whether by chance or design. He signalled to her to take the right branch at a fork in the track.

 “To the stables!”

 Cecily nodded. She was in no fit state to go in through the front door.

 They rode through a stone arch into the deserted stable yard. Cecily walked Dapple over to a mounting block. Iain dismounted and hurried to give her a hand.

 As she started to slide down, her soaked skirts tangled around her legs. She lost her balance. In spite of his steadying hand she would have fallen, but he caught her in his arms.

 For an immeasurable aeon he held her, while their eyes spoke to each other of dreams and wishes, of passion and tenderness.

 Boot-nails sounded on the cobbles. “Coming, m’lady!”

 Instantly Iain released Cecily. Scooping up the train of her habit, she fled.

 At the archway she paused to glance back. Through the pelting raindrops, with smarting eyes, she saw Iain staring after her. His face was a mask of yearning and despair.

Chapter 6

 Cecily sat by the fire in her chamber, her chilled hands wrapped around a hot cup of tea. She was scarcely aware of her abigail moving about, tut-tutting over her sodden habit and ruined hat. Through the rising steam from the tea, in the flickering flames she saw Iain’s face.

 All the tea in China could not wash away the lump in her throat.

 Her parents would never let her wed a physician, despite his connection to the Duchess of Pembroke and Viscountess Sutton, even if she were not as good as promised to Lord Avon. She could not claim they had not consulted her wishes. Had she expressed the least distaste for the marquis they would have politely declined the invitation to spend Christmas at Felversham.

 She did not dislike the marquis, but she had never bargained for falling headlong in love with his cousin!

 “Cecy, my love!” Lady Flint bustled into the room. “What is this I hear of your taking a wetting? I was sure you must have returned before the downpour. Wherever have you been?”

 “Felversham is very large, Mama. I rode further than I intended. The mare the Duke bought for my use is a darling.”

 “So very kind of Pembroke! Well, child, Lord Avon is come back from the hunt and enquiring after you, but you must be sure your hair is quite dry before you come down. It will not do to be falling ill at such a time.”

 “No, Mama.”

 After a flash of hope, Cecily decided regretfully that illness was no solution. It would postpone Lord Avon’s proposal, but not prevent it.

 He was as committed as she was, or more. A gentleman’s honour simply did not allow him to fail to come up to scratch—in the vulgar phrase Mama deplored—after such indications as he had given. Even if she succeeded in giving him a disgust of her, he was honour-bound to request her hand.

 What if she simply refused his offer?

 She would without a second thought if she saw the slightest chance of being permitted to wed Iain. Failing that, to reject Lord Avon would open both of them to the utmost opprobium. As a gentleman he could not expose her as a jilt. People would assume he had dishonourably failed to propose—and wonder what she had done to cause such a dereliction of duty in one whose honour was hitherto unsmirched.

 So many people would be hurt. Cecily herself would have earned her disgrace, but Lord Avon had done nothing to deserve to be made the target of a thousand spiteful tongues. Nor did the Duchess deserve to see her son condemned. Cecily’s own Mama would be cast into the depths of despair, dear, kind Mama who wanted only what was best for her daughter.

 And what was best included a titled, wealthy husband.

 “Cecy, you are woolgathering, I declare. Have you heard a word I have said?”

 “I must be sure to dry my hair?” Cecily hazarded.

 “Yes, but since then! Well, no matter, it was nothing of importance and I am sure a girl in your happy position is entitled to a little daydreaming! You had best wear the burgundy red merino when you come down. It is warm as well as elegant.”

 “Yes, Mama.”

 Cecily’s thoughts twisted and turned and found no way out, and Iain’s expression had made plain his absence of hope. On top of all other obstacles, he must fear being regarded as a fortune-hunter. Their love was doomed.

 All that remained was to make sure no one guessed, to conceal their pain and carry on with dignity as if the world had not been rocked to its foundations.

* * * *

 In a spirit of gallant self-sacrifice, Cecily went downstairs as soon as her maid declared her hair dry. Lord Avon invited her to go with him to inspect his ancestors in the portrait gallery.

 Afraid he meant to propose, she panicked for a moment. Her discovery of her love for Iain was too new to bear such a strain with equanimity. Time—even just a few days—must surely enable her to bear it with decent composure.

 Perhaps Elspeth saw her dismay in her face, if not the reason for it, for she said brightly, “It is an age since I admired the first duke. Such a handsome, well-set-up fellow, Cecily, even in the extraordinary clothes Tudor nobles wore. May I go with you, cousin?”

 Lord Avon made no demur. Together they went up to the long gallery, where the tall windows along one side admitted enough of the grey, wintery light to view the paintings on the opposite wall.

 Elspeth’s irreverent comments on the portraits made Cecily laugh in spite of her broken heart. They moved from the ruffs and pointed beards of the Elizabethans, past the long, curling Jacobean wigs and the last century’s powdered hair (“So aging!” said Elspeth).

 Coming unexpectedly face to face with Iain, Cecily gasped.

 “Not a bad likeness, is it?” Lord Avon drawled, and she realized he too was in the picture. “At least you can recognize us. Stubbs generally did a better job of horses than of people, which was all Iain and I were concerned about at the time. Those were our first hunters.”

 “And this was mine,” said Elspeth, moving on to the next canvas. “Dear old Pegasus. Stubbs was dead by then, much to my fury. What a figure I had in those days,” she sighed.

 “And still do, coz. There is a place in this life for the matronly.”

 “Wretch! But there, Cecily, you need not fear putting on a pound or two.”

 Lord Avon gave her a repressive frown, to which she responded with an irrepressible smile. Cecily felt ready to sink beneath the weight of expectations, but at least she had not given herself and Iain away with her unguarded reaction to his portrait.

 She did not see him again until just before dinner, and there were enough other people about to make it unnecessary for them to speak to each other. Seated between Lord Avon and one of his uncles, she was at the opposite end of the table and on the same side as Iain, so she could not even see him. Out of sight, out of mind, she told herself sternly.

 It did not work. She was constantly conscious of his unseen presence, breathing the same air, eating the same dishes from the same gold-rimmed porcelain, hearing the same buzz of polite conversation. Did he try to distinguish her voice with the same involuntary eagerness as she listened for his?

 Or had she imagined he cared as much as she did?

 That horrid possibility struck her as she left the dining room with the other ladies. She almost looked back, but stopped herself just in time. And reminded herself that if he did not love her after all, then at least only she would be hurt.

 One thing she was certain of: she could not sit through a game of chess with him this evening with any degree of calm. The prospect of a game with the Duke without Iain’s support was almost equally dismaying. Nor would she be able to keep her mind on cards, or find the right notes if she had to sing or play.

 She might retire early with a claim of suffering the ill effects of her wetting, but what if Mama asked Iain to treat her?

 The gentlemen came in while Cecily was still dithering. A brief glimpse of Iain’s face before he turned away to speak to his sister was enough to reassure her of his love—and his despair.

 As Lord Avon approached her, one of his brothers-in-law caught up with him and challenged him to a game of billiards.

 “I want my revenge for last night’s débâcle,” he said.

 “Later, old fellow. Lady Cecily, are you going to give my father a chance for revenge at chess, or will you give us some music?”

 The words popped out of Cecily’s mouth: “I should like to learn to play billiards, sir, if you would be so kind as to teach me?”

 His well-concealed but perceptible boredom turned to startlement. Billiards was even more of a male province than chess! What would Mama think of her boldness?

 But Lord Avon assented with a smile of indulgent amusement. “Intent on setting us all by the ears?” he murmured sardonically.

 “No!”

 “Ah, just tired of being angelic all the time? Mama tells me you played the angel to the Diver boy again this morning.”

 “He is a nice boy, and I am sure he will make your mother an unexceptionable page.”

 “No doubt. Garwich,” he said to his brother-in-law, “do join us in the billiard room, and be a good fellow, see if you can prevail upon Sophia to come too. She used to play before she metamorphosed from a schoolroom miss into a proper young lady.”

 Cecily managed to quite enjoy the evening, though unceasing heartsickness lurked behind every smile, every cry of triumph at a good shot and groan of disgust at a bad one. She could not but notice that though Lord Avon stood close behind her, his arms around her, his hands on hers as he helped her line up the cue, her senses stirred not at all.

 The least touch, a mere look from Iain was enough to set her all a-flutter.

 She did not see him again until the next morning when the whole company drove down to the village church for the Christmas morning service. The church was crammed with the nobility, villagers and farm people. Somehow Iain and the Suttons ended up in the pew just behind Cecily and her parents. Throughout the service, she was acutely conscious of his gaze on the back of her neck, to the point where she lost her place in carols she had known by heart since childhood.

 At the end, when she followed her parents out of the pew, she and Iain reached the aisle at the same moment. In the crowd, perforce he offered her his arm. The unnatural silence between them quivered with tension as they made their slow way from the church.

 If only it were Iain who would escort her down the aisle from the altar a few short weeks hence!

 Lord Avon awaited them by the church door. “Ah, you’ve extricated her in one piece, coz! A devilish crush. Come, I’ll drive you both home in my curricle, you won’t be any worse squashed.”

 To protest would have looked churlish on Cecily’s part. She looked at Iain at last, watched him lose the battle with temptation. Intimately squeezed between two gentlemen, in love with one, bound to wed the other, she had to call upon every iota of self-discipline and self-respect to preserve a calm, ladylike demeanour.

 Having survived that agony, she thought as she went up to take off her pelisse and bonnet, she need no longer seek to avoid Iain. Surely it would not be wrong to take a forlorn pleasure his company—in company, of course—until a formal betrothal forced her to give all her loyalty to Lord Avon.

 Perhaps Iain came to the same conclusion. At least, he had no chance to stay aloof, for he was in his element when the children joined the company for Christmas fun. His nieces and nephews and young cousins adored him no less than the village children.

 Since even the urbane Lord Avon took part in the games of speculation, charades, lotto, jack-straws, and snap-dragon, Cecily had no qualms about enjoying herself. On Christmas Day, Mama could not frown upon a bit of a romp.

 The day ended all too soon. In the days that followed, soberer pastimes returned. Cecily continued to play billiards with Lord Avon occasionally, but she also played chess with the Duke with Iain’s assistance, and sometimes with Iain alone. She asked after his patients, too, and they talked about life in Bath, in London, and at her country home. The weather turning crisp and fine, on hunt days he walked with her and Elspeth in the shrubbery, though they did not ride together again.