Diamonds and Dreams (13 page)

Addison stared at his brew. “What about
sugar?”

Saber stalked back to the tea cart,
retrieving the sugar bowl. Frowning, he handed it to Addison.

“Two sugars, please,” Addison
instructed.

Saber realized he didn’t have a spoon. Too
irritated to care, he simply turned the sugar bowl over, dumping
sugar into Addison’s tea. “That was about two spoonfuls, don’t you
agree, Goldie?”

“Looked more like two cups to me,” she
replied. “Saber, you want me to help you?”

David shook his head. “How very kind of you
to offer, Goldie, but Saber is the official tea-pourer here at
Leighwood, and I’m sure he wouldn’t like anyone taking over his
duty.”

“Oh,” Goldie said. “But Saber, you really
should be more careful, y’know. You aren’t a good tea-pourer.”

“Well, carry me out and bury me decently!”
Saber quipped angrily.

“I’ll have milk with mine, Saber,” Winston
informed him. “But just a tad, mind you,” he added when Saber
brought the small pitcher of milk.

Brow raised, Saber poured one, very tiny
drop of milk into Winston’s tea.

“Well, a bit more than that,” Winston
said.

“And I take sugar
and
milk with
mine,” Kenneth said.

“Same for me,” David agreed.

Saber’s fingers whitened around the pitcher.
“Perhaps I could
drink
the tea for the four of you as well?
Heaven forbid that you should strain your throats while
swallowing.”

“I think we can manage the swallowing, but
you failed to bring us napkins,” Addison answered, laughing. “I
cannot drink my tea without a napkin.”

“Oh, really?” Saber had to tamp down his
rising temper. “Then I fear you won’t be drinking your tea,
Addison, because I’m not going to—”

“You know, the
French
don’t drink as
much tea as the English,” Winston informed Goldie. “Isn’t that
right, Saber?”

Saber threw Winston a terrible look and
fetched the napkins. He laid them over his lower arm, bowing as
each man took one. “Just leave them on your laps,” he instructed
them. “If I should see a drop of tea on any of your mouths, you may
be sure I’ll rush to pat it off for you.”

Goldie saw Saber’s irritation. “If it’ll
make you feel any better, Saber, I’ll drink mine just like it is.
Y’all are makin’ too much of a fancy fuss over tea drinkin’ anyway.
Y’got that big ole silver service sittin’ on the rollin’ table over
there, cloth napkins, and cups so fragile they’ll break in your
mouth if you set your lips on ’em too hard. Great day Miss Agnes,
you pay so much attention to
that
stuff, it’s a wonder you
even enjoy the tea when you get around to drinkin’ it.”

Saber glanced at the tea service and the
gleaming tea table upon which it sat. He looked at the fine linen
napkins and studied the delicate china cups and saucers. He’d never
given a second thought to the elegance of teatime. But now that he
dwelled on it, it
was
rather ostentatious.

Goldie took a sip of her tea, grimacing.
“This stuff tastes like dirt!”

Saber couldn’t suppress a grin. “And when
was the last time you feasted upon dirt?”

“Well, never. But I’m sure it tastes like
this tea.”

Addison took a sip of his also. “Mine tastes
like
sweet
dirt. It would seem that Big doesn’t know how to
prepare tea properly.”

“Ah, Big,” Kenneth said. “He was truly
an...
ill-box
today, wasn’t he?”

Winston looked at Goldie. “But he cares for
you
very much.”

“Only breathing comes before his duty to
defend you,” Saber added, stabbing his fingers through his
hair.

She smiled. “He and I have been together for
about four years. I was fourteen when I met him. I saw him with
some big men, and they were makin’ fun of him. They were callin’
him a midget, and Big hates that word. He prefers to think of
himself as a small piece of humanity in a very large world. Anyway,
I wasn’t all that much taller than he was, so when I saw those men
ridiculin’ him, I figured it was my obligation to step in and help
him cuss ’em out. Big didn’t really have anywhere to go after that,
and since I liked him right off, I invited him to come along with
me and Uncle Asa. Uncle Asa didn’t like it much, but when Big
started helpin’ out with the chores and stuff, he quit gripin’
about it.”

“And you care for him, too, don’t you,
Goldie?” David asked.

She nodded. “Big...well, he’s the best
friend a person could have.”

Saber felt a rush of envy over Goldie’s love
for Big. He didn’t take the time to understand why he felt the way
he did. He only knew Goldie’s affection was something he wouldn’t
mind having in the least.

“Big’s an ill-box sometimes, but there’s
nothin’ in the world he wouldn’t do for someone who really needed
him,” Goldie explained. “You just gotta look under that grouchy
outer part of him and find the softy. Uncle Asa—He—I think he’s
like that too. Hard on the outside, but tender underneath. Lots of
people are like that, don’t you think?”

Addison gave Saber a meaningful look. “Yes.
I know someone who’s exactly like that.”

“Then there’s some who are mean through and
through,” Goldie continued, twirling a curl around her finger. “Ole
Raleigh Purvis down in Pee Dee, Georgia, is one of ’em. Raleigh
used to pull the wings off butterflies, then watch ’em crawl away.
It was the saddest thing I ever saw. Those poor butterflies,
they—”

When she broke off, Saber saw a suspicious
glitter in her eyes.
She cries for butterflies.
For some
reason he couldn’t fathom, he was touched by her tears.

“Ole Raleigh was punished though,” Goldie
went on. “He got a horse mad at him. The horse threw him, then
reared over and over again, poundin’ down all over Raleigh. Raleigh
lost both his arms.”

“Poetic justice,” Saber said, noticing how
quickly her tears disappeared.

“Yeah, well, anyway,” Goldie said, “Raleigh
wanted to die after he lost his arms. I know he had it bad, but
y’know, I think dyin’s easy. I’ve never been dead, but it doesn’t
seem like there’s much to it. All you have to do is lie in your
grave. It’s livin’ that’s so damn hard sometimes. Some days come
and it takes every bit of patience and courage you’ve got to make
it to nighttime. Big and I talk about that sometimes. Y’all ever
feel like that?”

She drew her legs up, rested her chin on her
knees, and waited for someone to answer her. But the five men only
stared at her. She wondered why and decided to stare back.

She saw something similar to admiration in
the gazes of Winston, Kenneth, and David, and couldn’t understand
what they were so impressed about. Addison’s eyes were smiling with
what looked to be expectation, and hope, and even excitement. She
couldn’t understand what he was thinking either.

And Saber... Goldie leaned her head to her
shoulder, studying him. He had a faraway look in his seaweed gaze.
A bit of sadness. There was a hint of longing in it too, as if he
were dwelling on something he used to have, missed, but could never
have again.

* * *

Saber watched Goldie skip along the garden
path. Her hair, bouncing and shimmering upon her slight shoulders,
looked like a soft cloud filled with gold dust. The sight reminded
him of the gold brush. If he was going to get it for her, he had to
do it soon. Though she was unaware that he and the boys had planned
to stay at Leighwood for only a fortnight,
he
knew there was
only a week left to that time.

He’d be revealing his identity to her then.
He wondered what she would do when she learned he was the Duke of
Ravenhurst. She was so capricious with her emotions and thoughts,
it was hard to know what her reaction would be.

“Why do you pick dandelions when there are
so many
beautiful
flowers to choose from?” he asked as she
added several more to the tremendous yellow mass she already
held.

She stopped and looked down at the brilliant
flowers. “But dandelions are beautiful, Saber. And you can weave
’em into crowns, too.”

Who would want a crown of weeds?
he
wondered. Taking her elbow, he led her to a group of shade trees.
There, he helped her onto a tall wrought-iron bench, smiling when
he saw the foot of space between her feet and the ground.

“Good spot, Saber,” she said. “Real
umbrageous
. “

He glanced up at the tall trees and
nodded.

Goldie frowned. “Did you understand what I
said?”

“What?” He looked down at the astonishment
in her eyes.
Umbrageous
was her new word for the day, he
realized suddenly, and she hadn’t believed he’d know what it meant.
“I—I’m fairly sure it means ‘shady.’ Of course I could be
wrong.”

“You’re not,” she whispered. “It
does
mean shady.”

He clasped his hands behind his back. “Then
this is indeed an umbrageous spot.” He watched her swing her legs.
She looked like a little girl, sitting there with her flowers in
her lap. “I thought dandelions were weeds.”

“Shows how much
you
know,” she
replied sassily.

His brow rose. He didn’t think there was
much to know about dandelions. But the secretive tinkle in her
voice and the knowing gleam in her eyes made him wonder if there
was a veritable wealth of valuable information within those bright
yellow clusters she caressed so tenderly.

He sat beside her, watching as she lifted
the flowers to her nose. He knew they were not sweetly perfumed,
but the light in her golden eyes told him she was enjoying their
fragrance. She was so simple, this little miss called Goldie. A
whole garden of breathtaking blossoms grew nearby, just waiting for
someone to come and sample their heady scents, touch their
velvet-soft petals. And Goldie had her dandelions. He smiled again
when he saw she had pollen on her nose.

The sight of the yellow powder took him back
some twenty-five years. He remembered gathering pollen in a small
cup. He’d mixed water with it, trying to make yellow paint. He
hadn’t thought of that pollen paint in years, and tried to dismiss
the memory now, too. What good did it do him to recollect times
that had ended all too soon and would never come back again?

“Goldie, you have pollen on your nose.”

She wrinkled up her nose, looking down at
it. Crosseyed, she saw two noses and two blotches of pollen. Her
hands occupied with the flowers, she turned her head to the side,
trying to wipe the pollen off on her shoulder. But she couldn’t get
her nose down quite low enough. “Can you get it off for me?”

“I rather like it there. It goes nicely with
your yellow hair.”

“Nicely with my yellow hair,” she repeated
slowly. A thrill spun through her at the compliment. “Oh, that
sounds so purty. I’ll leave it on then.”

Saber chuckled. “I was jesting, Goldie. I’ll
remove it straightaway.” He raised his hand toward her face.

She drew away. “Y’mean it
doesn’t
look good with my hair?”

“What?”

“The pollen.”

“Yes...yes, it matches your hair, but would
you wear it simply because it does?”

“Yes.”

“Why? It’s pollen. “

“So? You said it looked good with my
hair.”

Saber sat back and crossed his arms. “I
know, but people don’t wear pollen.”

“They can if they want to. I want to. It’s
not hurtin’ anyone, is it?”

“It’ll make you sneeze,” he warned.

“I like to sneeze. Sometimes I sniff pepper
just so I can sneeze. Y’know that little nose tickle that comes
right before a sneeze? You feel it startin’. It builds and gets
stronger, and you tingle all over waitin’ for it to peak. When it
comes it feels so-o-o good.”

Saber thought of something else that was
just like that. Something that started with a tickle, built, became
stronger, and felt like heaven when it finally reached the
crescendo. Funny. He’d never compared lovemaking to sneezing, but
there were a lot of similarities. He felt mirth rising.

When Saber burst out laughing, Goldie
frowned. “Well, if it looks that ridiculous, I’ll get it off.” She
leaned toward him and wiped the pollen off on his chest, leaving a
bright yellow smudge on his snowy-white shirt. She caught his scent
of sandalwood again and lingered near him for as long as she
dared.

When he felt her nose wiggling and inching
along his chest, Saber laughed harder. He couldn’t remember the
last time he’d felt such profound amusement.

Reluctantly, Goldie sat back in her place on
the bench. “Great day Miss Agnes, Saber, you sure are silly today.
What’s gotten into you?”

He started to tell her
she’d
gotten
into him, but no sooner had the thought entered his mind than he
realized the significance of it. His laughter ceased. His smile
faded.

God, was he becoming well and truly attached
to her? He couldn’t let it happen. What good would come of a deeper
relationship between them? He’d be leaving for London in a week,
and she’d go back to Hallensham. They’d never see each other
again.

He felt a sudden touch of sadness and
couldn’t understand why. After all, he’d only known her for five
days. Certainly not enough time to develop any sort of feelings for
her.

Certainly not, and he had no use for
feelings anyway. No use, and that was the end of it. “Have you no
duke lesson for me today?” he snapped.

His abrupt irritation wounded her. She tried
to think of what she’d done to deserve it. She couldn’t remember
what it was, but knew it was something. It always was. “I’m sorry,”
she whispered.

He realized he’d come close to shouting at
her. The hurt in her eyes stole his voice away. It was a moment
before he found it. “Goldie—”

“Oh, I know why you’re mad!” She reached
out, brushing the pollen off his shirt. “It’s all off now. Are you
still mad at me?”