Chapter Four

S unday morning dawned cool and cloudy, and Arabella feared they were in for another rainy day. But while the family attended religious services, the sun peeped out from behind the clouds. By afternoon, most of the cloud cover was gone, leaving behind a sunny June day.

Finally, a break from the overcast skies! This was the kind of weather Arabella had hoped to see during her visit. She stood in the breakfast room, gazing out the window at the formal gardens in front of the house. The brightly colored flowers finally showed to advantage.

“Caro,” she said, “I believe I will go for a walk on the grounds. Will you come with me?” Such a fine day should not be spent indoors.

Caroline covered a yawn with one hand, then shook her head. “I am afraid I already need a nap.” She flicked her eyes towards her brother, currently hidden behind the day-old newspaper he was reading. “George?”

“Hmm?” He peered over the top of the newspaper. “Did you need me for something?”

“Arabella spoke of taking a walk while the sun’s still out. Why don’t you join her? I am sure you rarely get proper exercise in town. It would do you good to explore the grounds.”

George grinned. “I think Belle is quite capable of taking a walk on the grounds without an attendant. Newton Park is perfectly safe! But if you wish me to accompany her, I will.” He hesitated for a moment and looked towards Arabella. “That is, if Miss Canning does not object?”

“Of course, you are welcome to join me.” She did not understand why he looked so uncertain about it. True, she generally preferred to walk with no other company than her own thoughts, but she rarely had a chance to speak to George now that he lived in London. She was willing to sacrifice the pleasure of a solitary walk for the sake of his company, given how rarely she experienced the latter. “Just let me grab my things.”

Though Midsummer was only a week and a half away, Arabella did not trust the weather. She donned a spencer as well as her hat, in case there was a breeze. For once, though, the day felt as temperate as it looked. Yesterday’s rain left the ground as soggy as a marsh, but as compensation, the rain also left behind a fresh, clean sent.

She need not have worried about her solitude being disturbed, because George was uncharacteristically quiet today. He idly kicked the gravel ahead of him as he walked, and swung at flowers with his walking stick, beheading some perfectly innocent lupines. In another man, she might have interpreted this as a sign of irritation or uneasiness, but George had always liked to be in motion.

They took the longest graveled walk around the park. This one led to a ha-ha, beyond which lay a pasture full of hungry dairy cows. They paused to watch the grazing cattle. At least, Arabella watched the cattle. George occupied himself by tossing bits of gravel over the sunken fence.

“Did Caro tell you about this ridiculous plan my Uncle William hatched?”

She nearly jumped at the unexpected interruption to the silence. “No.” The word fell into the quiet landscape like a stone tossed into a well. “Which uncle is Uncle William?” As she recalled, the Kirkland family had a superfluity of uncles, and she had no idea which one he meant. “Is he the one who lives in Preston?”

“Yes. Or rather, he used to live there. He lives in Bath now. Says the waters do him good.” George smiled wryly. “And maybe they do, for all I know. Problem is, his summer house in Lancashire—Dogwood Cottage—is empty now. And he thinks it ought to be inhabited.”

“Ah. He is looking for tenants?” She spoke doubtfully, she could not imagine why the emptiness of someone else’s cottage was so important that George would interrupt the comfortable silence of their walk to tell her about it.

George snorted. “That would be the reasonable thing to do, wouldn’t it? Ninety-nine landowners out of a hundred would either lease the place or sell it outright if they did not intend to use it themselves. But no. Uncle William likes to think more creatively. He wants to give it to one of his nephews so it stays in the family.”

“How generous!” she said politely. Then it occurred to her that there might be a personal application to this seemingly random observation. She turned away from the pasture and tried to read George’s expression. But he was a closed book to her. “Do you mean to say that he is giving it to you?” That would certainly be a great change for George after his years in London.

He shrugged and looked away from her. “Not exactly. Maybe. It depends.”

She waited for him to elaborate, but he merely continued to swing his walking stick back and forth, though there were no flowers at hand for him to behead. “On what does it depend?” she asked at last. It was none of her business, but he’d piqued her curiosity.

George sighed. “His plan is very silly, in my opinion,” he said apologetically. “But he means to give to whichever one of his nephews is first to marry. We are all bachelors, you see... and... I suppose he wants the cottage to go to a family rather than to a single man.” He looked down at the toes of his boots. To her amazement, his ears had turned red.

“Goodness, that is unusual.” She frowned as she searched his face, trying to find the source of his discomfort. Finally, it dawned on her. “I see. You are engaged to marry someone now, are you?”

She wouldn’t have predicted that George would feel bashful about announcing such good news, but maybe the engagement was very recent. Or perhaps there was something objectionable about his chosen bride. Surely, he would not propose to someone simply in order to obtain the cottage, would he? He had too much good sense for that!

His blushed deepened. “No, I am not betrothed to anyone. Not yet.” He lifted his head to stare into the pasture, though she doubted he actually saw the placid Jersey cattle. “But I was thinking...” His voice trailed off, and he looked askance at her. “I was wondering... if you would be so gracious as to help me?”

“Help you do what?” Her frown deepened. If he wanted help proposing to the object of his affection, wouldn’t his brother-in-law have better advice? Or his father? It made no sense for him to ask Arabella’s advice. She had certainly never proposed to anyone! Nor did she have any positive proposal experiences to share.

The only proposal Arabella had ever received came from the drunken son of a neighboring squire. He cornered her in the hallway during a country ball and inarticulately declared his love for her. He’d vomited at her feet immediately after she rejected him, making the occasion even more memorable than it would otherwise have been, but she could hardly recommend that course of action to her friend.

George turned to face her fully, giving her an extremely shaky smile. “The fact of the matter is, I’m hoping you can help me gain the inheritance.” He squared his shoulders and lifted his chin, as if he expected opposition. “I mean, by marrying me.”

Arabella’s eyes widened, and she sucked in her breath. But she could say nothing. All her life, she had struggled to find the right words in unexpected social situations. When other people talked about a surprise having rendered them “speechless,” they seemed to mean only that it took them a moment to find their words. But Arabella had found that in pivotal conversations she was sometimes left speechless, producing only at best a monosyllabic answer.

This was such a moment. The urgency with which George swished his walking stick back and forth hinted at his anxiety. His warm brown eyes remained locked with hers, and she could not look away. But she also could not, for the life of her, find any words with which to answer him. If her mind were a library full of reference books, every book she opened contained only blank pages, with nothing to help her respond.

“Perhaps I should clarify,” George said hesitantly, “that I do not mean that we would really be married in any but a legal sense. I am not asking you to keep house with me, at least not for any length of time. I have no intention of permanently altering your life! I wouldn’t ask that of you!”

Arabella’s jaw dropped. She closed it with a snap, and furrowed her brow as she tried to make sense of his words. How could marrying someone not alter her life? “I’m afraid... I don’t... understand.” The words came out broken and halting, but at least they came to her lips. She still weltered in a sea of confusion, but she was no longer struck dumb.

“Let me explain.” George stopped swishing his cane back and forth, resting some of his weight on it instead. “All I’m asking you to do is go through the marriage ceremony with me, then allow me to present you to Uncle William as my wife. That should be enough to do the trick.” He smiled hopefully.

“I don’t understand!” Arabella repeated the words more forcefully this time. She thought she was starting to understand, but if so, she didn’t like what she was hearing. “If I went through the marriage ceremony with you, we would be really and truly married, whether we kept house together or not! There would be no way to back out of it afterward.”

At least, not so far as she knew. Perhaps saying the marriages vows without intention of keeping them was grounds for annulment—but even if that were true, such legal recourse would be an expensive, uncertain prospect. Even for the very wealthy, divorce and remarriage was only permitted in cases of infidelity.

“But we would not behave as husband and wife to each other,” George explained. “At most, we would act the role for only a short time. After Uncle William made the property over to me, you could go back and live with your parents just as you did before, with no harm done. Or, if you preferred, I could give you an allowance, and you could take up residence on your own. So you see,” George concluded, “I am not really asking much. Just a couple of weeks of your time, and—”

“ Not asking much ? You are asking for my whole life!” Arabella did not yell, a proper lady never raises her voice. But she hissed the words with such intensity that George took a nervous step backwards.

Most unfortunately, that step backwards sent him tumbling over the edge of the ha-ha. Arabella lunged to grab his hand, but she didn’t move quickly enough. Fortunately, he struck his head against the earth on the opposite side of the ditch rather than against the stone wall. Unfortunately, the ditch was full of mud. All the cows in the pasture lifted their heads and stared at him with concern.

George gingerly hauled himself to his feet, looked down at his muddied clothing, and sighed. “I don’t suppose you could give me a hand?”

He had dropped his walking stick and lost his hat. He wore his hair cropped too short for it be terribly mussed, but he looked considerably worse for the wear. In Arabella’s opinion, he deserved it. Nevertheless, she knelt on the wet grass and reached a hand down to help George scramble up over the wall and back onto the garden path.

“Thanks.” Once he regained his feet, he put his battered hat back on his head and wiped ineffectually at his clothing. It took him only a moment to give up and accept that it would take a thorough scrubbing to remove the coating of mud.

By this time, Arabella’s temper had cooled. “Are you quite all right?”

“Only my pride is hurt.” He looked up from his muddied topcoat and caught her gaze. “I am very sorry. I did not mean to upset you so. But Belle, why on earth did you get so angry?”

All her anger bubbled back up to the surface. “I would rather you not call me ‘Belle,’” she snapped. “Because if you can make a proposal like that to me, you are not the friend I thought you were.”

His jaw dropped open, but at least this time he didn’t stumble over anything. Instead, he merely rubbed his forehead, thereby smearing dirt across it. “Perhaps my fall addled my brain. Can you explain yourself?”

Arabella wasn’t sure that she could explain. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt such wounded fury. Words did not seem adequate for the emotions shaking her body. She did not know whether to growl, to scream, or to cry. She closed her eyes and shook her head. Then she counted to ten backwards, as her governess had long ago taught her to do when she was overset. It helped a little.

“Maybe it would be best if we simply pretended this conversation never happened,” she said at last. “I will forgive you, and you can find someone else to whom you may propose. And”—she pulled the words out grudgingly, feeling she owed it to him—“we will still be friends. But I don’t want to hear any more about this ridiculous plan. Let us walk about to the house and speak no more of this. Can we agree on that?”

George lifted his hat and scratched his head. “But Belle—Miss Canning, I mean—I really do want to understand. I did not mean to offend you. I thought...” He grimaced. “Maybe I didn’t really think it through. But I wish you would explain yourself more fully.”

Arabella rubbed her hands along her skirt, wishing that she too had a cane to swish, a bracelet to fiddle with, or a quizzing glass to raise. She needed something with which to occupy her hands.

“I will see if I can put my thoughts in order as we walk back to the house.” She pulled her mouth into a wistful smile. “I cannot promise to be any clearer. I have never been good at explaining myself, you know.” Sometimes her strongest sentiments were the most difficult to articulate.

“As you like.” George offered her his arm, and she accepted, though it would likely mean getting mud on her spencer.

For several minutes they walked in silence. This time, the blooming flowers were safe from carnage, as George had ceased swinging his walking stick. The nervous energy he’d displayed before his proposal was gone, replaced by a look of quiet dejection. Maybe Arabella wasn’t the only one who had been hurt by their conversation.

When they reached a covered bench, she paused. She really had much rather never speak of the subject again. But if she had to explain herself, she would prefer to do it here, away from other ears.

“I would like to catch my breath. And then I will try to elucidate the matter.” If she could. She had her doubts.