Once Upon A Dream (9 page)

"It was a gift," Wulfric said. "And I neither regret giving it nor blame you, Eleanor. Sometimes our dreams lead us in the wrong direction and it would be
foolish to continue pursuing them out of sheer stubbornness or the fear of disappointing others. There are other dreams waiting to be dreamed—the
right dreams, the ones that will lead to contentment."

She turned her head to look at him in some surprise. She had never heard him talk thus before.

He met her gaze. "I am a happy man, Eleanor," he said. "I want your happiness too, not your fear of disappointing me. You surely cannot doubt that your
mother and sisters too want nothing but your happiness."

She drew a slow breath. "I have a potential buyer," she said. "If I sell, I will repay your
loan,
Wulfric, though I will not insult you by
offering any interest on it."

"And what will you do then?" he asked. "Will the new owner wish to keep you on staff as a teacher?"

She had been keeping her mind away from that question. She was not sure of the answer. She was not even sure she would be able to recapture the pleasure
she had felt as a simple teacher at the school.

"I do not know," she said.

"Your mother and Christine would be ecstatic to have you live here," he said. "It would please me too."

"Thank you," she said. "Wulfric, I am so
sorry
. I feel so…defeated."

"Only you can wrestle with that demon," he said. They had been making their way back gradually to where everyone else was thronged. "Christine is wrestling
with a couple of her own. She was neatly maneuvered into inviting Lady Connaught and her daughter here, but she swears she would have resisted to the death
had she not believed Staunton was courting the daughter. Is it as clear to your eye as it is to Christine's and mine that he is trying desperately not to
do so but is perhaps too much the gentleman to be firm with them? The mother is appalling, is she not? One can only hope that the man the daughter
eventually marries will be capable of tearing his wife—and himself—from her pernicious influence. However, while they are at my home they must
be treated as welcome and valued guests. Will the wilderness walk be too much for them, do you think?"

Was
it as clear to her eye? Perhaps her eye had been clouded by her anxiety for the future of the Earl of Staunton's children. Oh, and by her own inappropriate
feelings for him. One might as well be honest at least within the confines of one's own mind.
Was
he trying to avoid Miss Everly?

"Not if you escort them there," she said. "They will see it as an acknowledgement of their superiority over all your other guests."

"Quite so," he agreed, and a few minutes later he was leading them away, one lady on each arm, and Eleanor was moving off in some confusion when she
realized she had been left alone with the Earl of Staunton, slightly removed from everyone else.

"Miss Thompson," he said, stopping her. And oh, she knew as she looked back at him that she was doing exactly what Wulfric had just suggested she do. She
was dreaming another dream. Very foolishly. Very unwisely. Unfortunately, however, dreams seemed to be beyond the control of the rational mind.

Soon she was strolling away from the crowd yet again, toward the lake this time and on the arm of the Earl of Staunton.

"My children have taken a liking to you," he said as he turned their steps in the direction of the lake. "I hope they have not been making a nuisance of
themselves." And he fervently hoped Georgette had not told her, as she had Lady Connaught and Miss Everly, that she was to be their new mama, that it was
only a matter of time before he got around to asking her.

"I have been touched," she said. "Although I love young children, I have never considered myself good with them as my sisters are."

"But I daresay," he said, "they have never been as good with older children as you are."

"You are kind," she said. "Your son is enjoying himself, is he not? Has he never had children younger than himself with whom to play?"

"All his cousins and all the children of our closest neighbors are older," he said. "Young Tommy was a godsend. He and a few other infants see Robert as an
older, bolder boy who will condescend to play with them. And I believe he is seeing himself through their eyes."

"Yesterday," she said, "when several of us climbed the tower folly on the wilderness walk, he took my hand to help me up the winding stairs and then
pointed out for my edification all the landmarks we could see from the top."

He wondered why she had never married. Had it been from choice? From lack of opportunity? From an unwillingness to marry just anyone in order not to end up
a spinster? Had she held out for love or some other ideal that had never happened for her?

"I am sorry," he said, "for that encounter with Lady Connaught last week. She treated you as an inferior who might be of service to her. I am glad you put
her in her place. "

"Did I?" She turned her head to look at him but did not speak. They were crossing the driveway before the large circular flower bed and stopped to look up
at the fountain. Lord Aidan Bedwyn had explained to him how it worked so that it could shoot water so high. It was a quite ingenious mechanism.

"I have almost made up my mind," he said, "not to send Georgette away to school. Not yet, anyway, and never just because it would be more convenient to me
to have her out of the way. I shall ponder the matter carefully over the next year or two, and I shall consult her wishes. She has had a governess since
she was six, though I fear she outstripped her teacher in academic knowledge some time ago and was never much influenced by her in other ways. Fortunately,
the lady resigned in London a month or so ago in order to marry a barrister. I will seek another governess, one who can teach both children and somehow
serve all their educational needs. It will not be easy to find such a paragon."

"I may be able to help you," she said. "My school always takes in a certain number of charity girls. Part of my responsibility at the end of their
schooling is to find them suitable employment. I never turn them out into the world until I am satisfied that they will be happily settled. There is one
girl I have been unable to place yet. She is too intelligent and too…oh, talented and full of energy to fit any of the offers that have been made. I
have even thought of keeping her on at the school as an assistant instructor until there is an opening for a regular teacher, but…well, I may not be
able to do that after all." She did not explain.

"Thank you," he said. "If she comes recommended by you, then I am satisfied.
She
may not be satisfied, of course, if and when she meets
Georgette."

She smiled and changed the subject. "I am always disappointed," she said, "if I come here to find that the waterfall has been turned off, as it is in the
winter. It seems to characterize Lindsey Hall. It has grandeur but brightness and fluidity too. Alleyne Bedwyn once told me that when he was suffering from
memory loss after receiving a head wound at Waterloo it was the fountain that kept flashing into his mind when all else was blank."

They gazed at the water together and listened to the rushing, soothing sound of it.

"Are you happy?" he found himself asking her and then could have bitten out his tongue. Where had that question come from?

She did not answer for a while and he wondered if she would. He was on the verge of apologizing for the question.

"I have everything I could possibly want," she said. "I have employment that I have enjoyed. It has brought me a sense of worth and has brought me into
company with adults and young girls whom I esteem and even love. I have a family I love dearly."

She had not quite answered his question, he thought. Or perhaps she had. Perhaps being independent, doing what she loved and what was important to her had
brought her happiness.

"And you?" she asked him. "Are you happy? But you spoke somewhat on the subject when we dined together."

"I had a happy marriage, which was all too brief," he said. "Now I have my home, my friends, and my children. I am well blessed. And at last I am open to
future happiness. I have concluded that it is not disloyal to the dead to live on."

She turned her head to look almost fiercely at him. "Oh," she said, "you are so very right."

Their eyes met and locked. And there was a pause in the conversation, charged with something unidentifiable while a flush rose to her cheeks. And he asked
the unpardonable question.

"Why have you never married?" he asked her.

They were strolling beside the lake, the wilderness walk above them, trees just ahead of them to offer seclusion from company and shade from the sun. Off
to one side, beyond the end of the walk, was a round stone building that looked like a dovecote.

She smiled faintly and lowered her eyes. "Perhaps," she said, "because I was too much of a romantic. I was betrothed once upon a long time ago to a cavalry
officer. I was head over heels in love with him. No one had ever loved as we loved. Had I been a poet, I would doubtless have filled volumes with flowery
verse pulsing with emotion. Though I must not make light of what was very real. He was killed in Spain at the Battle of Talavera, and I really did not
expect to live on myself. Or want to. If I could have died of grief, I would gladly have done so—not out of any poetic ideal of sentimental grief but
because it was really too painful to be borne. Alas, I could not die. But I would not love again. How could I? The only love of my life was gone forever.
Grieving, remaining true to his memory, became a habit with me, a habit I have always thought to be a virtue until recently. But my devotion has not made
any difference to him, has it? He has been dead all this time."

They had stopped walking, as though by mutual consent. They were among the trees, though in a grassy clearing. The water here was dark green as it
reflected the leaves on the trees. One tree was bent toward the water, a stout branch reaching out over it, and it struck Michael that it would be a daring
boy's dream as a diving platform. And a girl's too, he added mentally, thinking of Georgette. An invisible bird was trilling from somewhere among the
trees. A distant swell of cheering from the direction of the cricket pitch only accentuated the peace that surrounded them.

"How lovely it is just here," she said. "It is very peaceful, is it not?"

"There is something about water and trees," he said, "that is soothing to the soul."

She turned her head to smile at him and he smiled back—before lowering his head to hers and kissing her. It seemed the most natural thing in the
world, a gesture of shared pleasure in the moment and of affection too. When he moved his head back she was still half smiling, and her eyes gazed back
into his without wavering. He touched the fingers of one hand to her cheek and moved them down to trace the line of her jaw to her chin.

"I am sorry," he said.

"Please do not be," she told him, her voice a mere whisper of sound.

And he gathered her into his arms and did what he had been dreaming of doing ever since that evening at the inn more than a week ago. He kissed her
properly, as a man kisses a woman to whom he is sexually attracted. He parted his lips over hers while her own lips relaxed and her arms came about him,
and he teased her lips until they parted and then stroked his tongue into her mouth, exploring its warm, moist depths. She suckled his tongue gently while
his temperature rose and he moved his hands down the inward curve of her spine over the flaring of her hips to her bottom. She had a woman's figure rather
than a girl's. He hardened into arousal and held her to him, not trying to disguise the fact. She made a sound deep in her throat and pressed closer. Heat
flared between them.

He wondered just how secluded this place was. And he wondered if she was a virgin. And he remembered that at least three people were on the wilderness walk
not far away and that his children and a host of other people were no great distance from where they were standing and embracing.

She smelled of something subtly and fragrantly feminine.

She was the one to break the embrace, though not hurriedly. She set her hands on his shoulders and moved slightly away from him.

"It is not at all the thing, is it?" she said, smiling apologetically. "I have just admitted to feeling regret over the lost years and to a certain
loneliness. But I do not want to give you the wrong idea."

He did not ask what that wrong idea was. He regretted the end of the embrace, but at the same time he was relieved by it. He had just extricated himself
from one entanglement. He did not want to land himself in another before he had had time to consider. He had known her for only a week, and during most of
that time he had avoided her or she had avoided him. He was not sure which.

"We are in a beautiful place on a warm summer's day," he said, offering his arm and strolling onward with her, "and we are a man and a woman. I think we
can be forgiven for a little harmless dalliance. Would you not agree?"

He wished he had chosen a different word.
Dalliance
sounded trivial, a little sordid.

"I would," she said. 

 "It is strange, is it not," he said, "how one arrives at adulthood believing that one's childhood and youth have been a journey leading to a fixed
destination and a settled and lasting happiness. Happily-ever-after. It is only as one grows older that one realizes that nothing is static, that nothing
is assured. All of us suffer the troubles of life sooner or later, no matter how carefully we have planned our lives."

"Ah, but life is not all troubles," she said. "There are delights too, pinnacle moments of extreme joy and longer spells of contentment. Perhaps we need
both extremes so that we do not remain the shallow beings most of us are when we first grow up but develop depth of character and empathy with others.
Perhaps we would not recognize or appreciate happiness if we did not also know unhappiness."