Laura Kinsale (46 page)

Zenia gave her a laughing hug, just because she was such a silly-looking bundle in her mounds of petticoats and pantaloons and little cape. Mrs. Lamb undertook the task of carrying her as they followed a crossing boy to negotiate the road and then entered the park gates.

Under a perfect blue sky, the long white facade of houses that lined the park’s perimeter seemed to glow. Their spired domes were tinted a soft verdigris and tamed into the same perfect regularity of the houses themselves, face upon face all the same, stretching away along the boundary. Inside the iron fence, ladies strolled in cloaks as bright as Zenia’s dress, scarlets and purples and golds, holding the arms of dark-coated gentlemen.

Elizabeth gazed silently at the packs of children running under the leafless trees, tossing crumbs to the ducks or drinking steaming chocolate from one of the refreshment tents. “I shall buy us a pie,” Zenia announced.

“I’m sure she would like it, ma’am,” Mrs. Lamb said amiably. “Though she ate all her porridge not an hour ago.”

When Zenia returned, the nurse was sitting on a bench, watching Elizabeth and another small boy gaze at one another, both of them standing still and expressionless, not two feet apart. Just as Zenia reached them, a school of shrieking children ran past, sending both of the toddlers tumbling in heaps upon the grass. The little boy started to cry, but Elizabeth sat up laughing. She began to run in a bobbing circle, her arms out straight for balance, as the other children danced about her.

Zenia watched. Then she sat down next to Mrs. Lamb and shared out the pie, eating her own portion with relish.

Elizabeth fell down again, and by the time she stood up, the older children had passed on, yelling and shoving at one another. She stood looking after them. After a few tentative steps in that direction, she lost her nerve and looked back doubtfully toward Zenia and Mrs. Lamb.

Her face lit suddenly. “Gah-on!” she cried, and began to run back on an angle that would take her right past the bench.

Zenia turned. Lord Winter was bending down, the long skirts of his dark blue greatcoat sweeping the ground; Elizabeth raced into her father’s arms as fast as her hobbling legs would carry her. He lifted her up high in the air.

An army officer stood a few yards beyond him, gorgeous in plume and gold braid, but to Zenia there was no outfit more superb than Lord Winter’s dark simplicity; no one handsomer or taller or with such a smile. Such a smile; it was still lingering when he settled Elizabeth against his shoulder and looked toward Zenia.

She felt her lips curl shyly. Mrs. Lamb put on a look of utterly blank innocence. He was paler than he had been, but he appeared fit. Looking at him now, Zenia could hardly recall the gaunt, suffering face of his illness—he had life in his smile and in his body; he moved with the same easy dominance, swinging Elizabeth down and sitting on his heels before Zenia.

“Hullo,” he said softly, glancing at her and then back at Elizabeth.

“How are you?” she asked.

“Perfectly well.” He took Elizabeth onto his knee, putting his head down to hers. “But I’ll thank you not to give me any spots again, beloved.”

Elizabeth crowed happily. “Gah-on!” she said, looking at him so closely that they touched noses.

“She seems stout,” he said.

“Oh, yes. She came through it splendidly.”

There was an awkward moment, in which the sound of children shouting and a distant band from somewhere in the park did not give Zenia any ideas for further conversation; at least none that she felt comfortable introducing in public. He seemed to find a duck waddling quickly after a fleeing child to be quite fascinating.

He stood up, letting Elizabeth slide off his knee. For a moment of panic, she thought he was going to take his leave.

“Perhaps you—” He cleared his throat. “I am a member of the Zoological Society. Would you like to walk in the gardens?”

Zenia lifted her face. Before she could answer, he added quickly, “The menagerie is open to members today. I thought Beth might like to see the animals.”

She smiled. “That would be pleasant.”

He took off his hat, reaching down and lifting Beth, perching her on his shoulders.

Zenia pursed her lips, frowning. “I don’t think you should go without your hat in this cold.”

He held it out to Mrs. Lamb to carry, batting Elizabeth’s skirts away from his face as he cast an amused half-glance toward Zenia. “But please may I stay out another half-hour, Mama?”

She returned an arch look. “Someone must look after foolish children and madmen.”

He smiled at her, clapped Elizabeth’s hands over his ears, and walked ahead down the broad path.

Mrs. Lamb and Zenia made diligent small talk about the park and the weather as they strolled under the bare trees toward the Zoological Gardens. Arden felt happily at ease, listening silently, feeling Beth’s warm weight on his shoulders.

He had reached a decision in the long, quiet days of his recovery. She had been badgered by lawyers; coldly informed of her best interests and Beth’s; Arden had made love to her as if she were his by right—she was, but there were forms and conventions; there was a correct and proper way to go about these things, and he had grievously neglected it.

A lady, his book of
Polite Usage and Diction
informed him, had a right to be courted.

Without precisely planning it with Mrs. Lamb, the most flagrant of allies, he had resolved on this meeting in the park. The weather had done him a great favor, and Mrs. Lamb had done the rest—he had been walking here every day for the past three, in hopes they would come out, but it being Sunday gave him the excuse of the zoo, which would take hours to tour, if he had anything to do with it.

“Let me take her down to feed the ducks, sir,” Mrs. Lamb said, as they passed out of the Inner Circle, where a scent of recently turned soil permeated the winter tranquility of the beds. Without subtlety, she added, “You need not hurry. We will meet you the other side of the water.”

Arden traded his hat for Beth, who toddled off willingly after a mallard that knew just how to stay a tantalizing few feet in front of her. Arden did not give himself time to grow ill at ease: he knew that the more time he allowed to pass the more difficult it would be to make his tongue form words; he would begin to hear how silly they would sound; how likely she would think him an ass—
God and St. George!
he thought sardonically, and plunged into his prepared speech.

“Miss Bruce,” he said, dashing a look at her profile. “I would like to call you Miss Bruce, because I would like to begin again. At the beginning. I should like to—” He felt the foolishness of it begin to creep in, undermining his confidence. “You will think it ridiculous, perhaps. But if we could start as if we had just met—I have thought that the trouble between us might be a result of the unusual circumstance; the rather strange manner in which we— became entangled in this situation. That is—you do not know me in this setting, and I do not know you. And I hope—I should very much like—should be honored, that is to say—to make your acquaintance, Miss Bruce.”

There, he thought. And it sounded just as absurd as he had feared. And she was not looking at him, or answering. And he stood holding his hat, frowning down at the brim, until he remembered the next part. He reached under his cloak and drew the white rosebud from his waistcoat.

“Because you are as rare as a rose in winter,” he said—shameless plagiarism from his book of diction, “I thought of you when I picked this.”

Of course he had not precisely picked the thing; he had obtained it on the advice of A Lady of Quality, the one who had written the book—and gone to the devil of a lot of trouble and expense to find the only florist in the city who did not laugh at the idea of a true white rose in this season—a small detail which apparently carried no weight with Ladies of Quality.

She accepted it, looking down at the flower. Arden could not see her expression.

He waited.

His breath frosted around him. He stared at a distant black dog that wove its way along the iron fence at the park edge.

“There are several petals damaged,” he remarked, because the silence had become such an abhorrent vacuum.

She began to giggle. To his vast humiliation she began to laugh.

He stood rigidly before her, while passersby turned at the sound—he saw them grinning—it must be obvious she was laughing at him, at what he had done and said, for she was holding the rose where everyone could see it.

He felt as hot and ill as he had two weeks ago; flushed with stiff misery, his jaw set hard. He would rather have been facing a battery of Ibrahim Pasha’s heavy guns than stand there, but he could not think what else to do.

“Oh!” she said, lifting her face. “Oh, did you truly think of me?”

He realized slowly that her cheeks were pink with cold and pleasure, her eyes wide with a wonder as new and innocent as Beth’s. She was still giggling, a strange hiccupping mirth from deep in her throat that he suddenly recognized was halfway to tears.

“Certainly I thought of you,” he said gravely. “And if you are going to laugh at my rose, Miss Bruce, I shall take it back.”

The rose vanished under her cloak and muff. “You may not have it, my lord.”

It was hardly repartee of any great wit. He had not ever felt a particular need to banter with his lovers, nor to pursue any woman through flirtation. He had generally found that by looking at a desirable female in a certain way, he got his point across, and then they either sought him out or they did not. But they had been experienced women, always; they had not come for pretty badinage. Though he did not himself have any idea of it, Lord Winter, in his detached reserve, his satanic looks and intriguing travels, his well-known ruthlessness in ending any affair at his own convenience, had rather a reputation for being dangerous—even with the ladies who were considered dangerous themselves.

He felt, at the moment, more like a maladroit gawk. Women as objects of appetite were well within the range of his expertise; if she had been the usual amorous widow he would have simply let her talk as he walked her to his rooms or hers. But as much as he wanted to take her directly to bed and hold her and thrust himself inside her and use her until neither of them could move, Zenia was distinct and different; her rebuff could wound him; her disdain would exile him—he felt like a vagabond standing outside a lamp-lit room, liable at any moment to be invited in or driven away.

“May I offer you my arm?” he asked, on the advice of A Lady of Quality. As she accepted his escort, she said nothing. And the longer that she said nothing, the more he felt himself on the verge of blurting something rash or stupid.

“Do you like flowers?” he asked—uninspired but safe.
 

“Oh, yes,” she said, smiling at him.
 

“What are your favorite kinds?”

“I think—” She bent her head so far down that he could not see her face under the bonnet. “White roses,” she murmured.

Nearly, very nearly, he said in an ironical tone,
How gratifying!
But he stopped himself in time. “Then I’m glad I finally managed to locate one. It was no easy task, you may believe me.”

She slanted a look up at him, a faint surprise. “Wherever did you find it growing at this time of year?”

“Ah,” he said. “Ah.”

She was still looking at him in inquiry after that splendid answer.

“I ordered it from a florist,” he said, driven rapidly onto the rocks. “But if I had picked it, it would certainly have reminded me of you.”

Still she looked up slantwise at him, her lips pursed gently. He could not tell if she was offended or amused.

“I bought a book,” he said in desperation. “There is a recommendation for each month, you see—January is a white rose.”

She turned her face away, looking straight ahead as they walked. “I think,” she said slowly, “that you are right, my lord. Perhaps we should become acquainted. Perhaps I do not know you at all.”

“Then allow me to advise you at once that I’m a saphead,” he said jovially. “Supposing you have not divined it already.”

She lifted her chin. “If you please, sir—I shall draw my own conclusions.”

He bowed. “A lady’s perogative.”