Chapter Twenty-Two

M rs. Treloar was indisposed that evening, so only Hetty, Nat, and Caroline took dinner in the dining room. Aunt Agnes had decided to go to bed early, and Trefusis didn’t deign to show his face in the house that evening. Consequently, dinner was a much jollier affair than it could have been. Nat found Hetty was, somewhat unfortunately, on fine form, possibly due to the absence of Trefusis.

“I so enjoyed the ball,” she chattered between mouthfuls. “Did you see how many young men asked me to dance? I’m so glad you came here, Caroline, because if you hadn’t, we might not have been invited to Carlyon. And Mrs. Beauchamp is such a charming hostess. She said it was quite all right to call her Ysella, as in truth, she’s not many years older than I am. She’s so pretty. And did she tell you she’s increasing? She said she already has a little girl and is hoping for a boy this time. Though if I was ever to become a mother, it would be girls I’d want. All girls. So much more fun as they can wear pretty dresses, like me.”

“Good heavens, Hetty,” Nat finally managed to put in. “Do you never shut up? Not even to take a breath?”

Hetty pulled a face. “Well, better than never saying a word, like you. Incidentally, I didn’t see you dance with anyone at all at the ball.” Her brow furrowed. “In fact, I hardly saw you at all. Where did you get to? Surely you danced with some body? There were lots of eligible young ladies present.” She batted her long eyelashes in what had to be an attempt to look modest. A failure on that. “Though I was told by several gentlemen that none were as pretty as me. However, I’m sure one of them would suit you perfectly.”

Caroline’s cheeks flushed with color as she regarded her plate.

Luckily for her, Hetty was too taken up with herself to notice.

“Stop right there.” Nat cut his sister off as she opened her mouth again, his aim being to draw her attention away from Caroline. “It’s bad enough with Mother trying to pair me off with some simpering girl without you trying it as well.” Not that he didn’t suspect there was something behind what his mother had said to him. Never a good thing to trust a word that came out of that woman’s mouth.

Hetty’s eyes lit up. “Mama is trying to marry you off? How delightful. That will mean I shall gain a sister.” She glanced at Caroline. “I know I have you, now, but if Nat marries, it will most likely be to someone nearer to me in age, which would be tremendous fun.” She looked back at Nat. “I think that’s a splendid idea. I agree with Mama. Now you’re home, you should marry as soon as possible.”

Nat sighed. “I have no intention of marrying just to give you a girl nearer your age as a sister-in-law. What a thought—two empty-headed chits in one house. That would be torture.”

Hetty giggled. “For you, maybe, but not for me.” Then she seemed to notice the insult. “And I’m not empty headed. You ask Caroline. She knows how diligent I can be at my piano practice and French conversation.”

Nat glanced at Caroline, who seemed now to be having trouble keeping a straight face. Was she laughing at him or Hetty? “Perhaps Caroline might like to tell us her views on marriage?” He’d only said it to distract Hetty, but now the words were out, he wanted to know, although why, he wasn’t quite sure.

Caroline laid her knife and fork down on her plate. “My own parents were very happily married for thirty years, until my father… died.” She paused and he saw her swallow down whatever discomfort this admission had brought to her. “So, I am an advocate of marriage as a partnership of like-minded people. But not just for the sake of being married.”

“I shall marry for love,” Hetty declared, taking a sip of wine.

“An admirable sentiment,” Caroline said, “but not always a wise one. Love does not last forever, Hetty, but friendship does. My parents were the best of friends, although they also loved one another. Not, my mother once admitted to me, with the flush of ardor they felt on first meeting, but with a deep and lasting affection.” Her brow furrowed as no doubt she thought of her parents.

“I do not think our parents were the best of friends, nor that they nurtured any sense of affection for one another,” Hetty said, her eyes sliding sideways to look at her brother. “I remember them fighting. In fact, that is all I remember of Papa.”

Nat considered his words with care. “They were not well matched in temperament, I’ll give you that. But neither were Uncle Robert and Aunt Lowenna. Although Uncle Robert’s marriage was arranged by grandfather, and our father chose to marry Mother, so he must have loved her once. I trust that if you do marry for love, Hetty, it will be to someone I, as your brother, will approve of.”

Hetty giggled. “I only get to meet the suitable young men of the district, and them not very often, so it would be very hard for me to meet someone unsuitable, unless, of course, you mean that I might fall in love with Dickon or the gardener’s boy.”

Poor Dickon, who was standing by the sideboard to serve the food, blushed a hot scarlet at this reference. Hetty was a shameless brat. Nat frowned hard at her.

She sighed, ignoring his expression. “Oh, how I would love to have had my coming out in London. To go to London balls and soirées and Vauxhall Gardens. Then I might have met someone deliciously unsuitable and vexed you properly. That must be magical.”

Nat allowed himself a reluctant smile. “You are very unlikely to have that opportunity, I’m afraid, and I fear you wouldn’t like it near so much as you think. London is full of false friends and spite, as well as the dangers of fortune hunters and cads, who you would undoubtedly be taken in by, being such an empty-headed chit. You are best off here, choosing a suitable husband from amongst the eligible sons of our neighbors.”

Hetty gave a derisive snort, but just then, the dessert was brought in, which distracted her. Ice cream had always been Nat’s favorite as a boy, and Mrs. Teague must have made it specially, using the ice stored in the underground icehouse in the gardens. As Nat ate, he made a mental note to go down to the kitchens in the morning to thank Mrs. Teague personally.

He took another look at Caroline, delicately spooning up the ice cream in sharp contrast to the almost greedy way Hetty was eating it. Her soft brown eyes looked troubled. What was it about her? She seemed almost to be holding her breath as though expecting something dreadful to happen; to be waiting for the strike of doom. Outwardly, her demeanor was all friendly kindness, but he had a distinct sense that she was holding something important back from him.

It being not long after midsummer, after the dessert was finished, it was still light outside in the gardens. As they rose from the table to retire to the drawing room, Nat caught Caroline’s arm to detain her. “It’s such a lovely evening, would you care to take a stroll in the gardens?”

Hetty’s brows rose almost into her hairline. He didn’t need to guess what she was thinking.

With a pretty smile, Caroline consented, and, leaving Hetty to go upstairs and sit with her grandfather, at Nat’s suggestion, they walked out into the walled garden at the side of the house.

Here, paths wound between luscious flowerbeds replete with brightly colored flowers Nat had never known the names of. Climbing roses covered the walls, and trees and bushes grew in profusion. This was the garden his grandmother had designed, and where he’d played as a small boy with Jacka, whose father had been the head gardener. Although despite his father’s horticultural employ, Jacka had been no wiser about the names of the plants than Nat.

Caroline had tucked her hand into the crook of his offered arm, and now she strolled by his side in the warm twilight, the mingled scent of the many flowers pervading the air.

“So,” she said, smiling up at him, “it seems your mother intends you to marry.”

He nodded, still unsure if that was truly what his mother wanted; half convinced that something else had lurked behind her words. “A rather foolish idea. I pointed out to her that no girl would want to see this face every day, or words to that effect.”

“If you find a girl who loves you, she will not hesitate.”

He laughed. “In order to love me, she will have to get past her first sight of my face, and I fear no girl, not even one with the capacity to eventually come to love me, could do that. Save if she were blind.”

“Beauty is only skin deep.”

He shook his head. “Whoever said that knows nothing of wooing. For physical beauty is the first thing that attracts people to each other. Only then do they discover if the beauty of the body is matched by the beauty of the soul. And by then it’s often too late. Whereas for me, my lack of beauty is something all too evident. I am unlikely to find a bride who can overlook my all-too-obvious faults in search of a beauteous soul.”

“Then all girls are fools.”

Nat stiffened. Did she class herself in this statement or mean something else by it? He wanted to ask her, but diffidence kept him silent. And besides which, if all girls were judged by Hetty, then they were definitely fools.

They walked on a bit further until they came to a particularly fragrant rose bush where Caroline halted. “I know this one. Common Provence. We had these roses in the gardens at Cadley Grange, my old home.” She bent to inhale the intense scent. “The smell reminds me of my mother. She always had vases of them about the house all summer long.”

Nat’s heart did a skip of shock. That her mother should have chosen this particular rose above all others as her favorite was too much of a coincidence. He bent to smell them as well, their fragrance sending images flashing through his head that he wasn’t sure he wanted to see. Despite playing in here as a child, he’d never taken a lot of notice of what grew here, except for these roses. It had been more fun to race around the paths with Jacka and the dogs, but every so often, when this bush was in bloom, he’d stopped to drink in their evocative scent.

And remember.

On an impulse, he reached out and plucked one of the best flowers from the bush. With careful fingers he pinched out the few thorns, and held the stem out to Caroline. “Might I put this in your hair?”

Her eyes met his, suddenly serious. “You may.”

How long it was since he’d touched a woman’s hair. In Spain, of course, he’d had a few dalliances with young women who’d been little more than camp followers. After Julia, that was, but they’d been unsatisfactory, and he’d come away from those liaisons discontented and unfulfilled. He’d had to acknowledge that none of them had been what he was searching for, and give up on them. And of course, since his face… well, that had made any further amors of any sort out of the question.

He settled the rose just above her left ear in her soft brown curls, so silken under his touch. The urge to run his fingers through her hair and luxuriate in the sensation was strong.

She smiled up at him. “Thank you… Nat.” She had an uncommonly deep voice for a woman, with a hint of huskiness in it that was most attractive. Odd that he’d not noticed this before. And that he’d also not noticed how clear her skin was, nor the generous curve of her lips…

He stepped back, flustered. He was reacting like a green boy would to the first woman he ever encountered. Not like a man who’d already been married and widowed, and… No, he wouldn’t think of that.

“It’s odd how certain things remind us of home, isn’t it?” he said, the words tumbling out in far too much of a hurry. “When I was in northern Spain, I had occasion to see the ocean and a long sandy beach. It reminded me so much of Morgelyn Beach I was nearly overcome. Silly, but true, and yet now I’m here, it doesn’t feel any more like home than Spain did.”

Caroline touched her fingers to the rose in her hair as if to make sure it was secure. “I understand, I think. Cadley, my parents’ house, will forever be my home, but were I to return to it now, and find others living there, it would no longer give me the same feeling I used to have. The safety it imbued in my soul would be gone.” She began walking again and he kept pace with her. After a bit, she turned to look up at him. “Tell me, Nat, do you feel safe here?”

What an odd question. But now she’d asked it, he felt obliged to consider his answer. “I’m not sure. I hadn’t thought about it before, but there is, perhaps, a feeling of insecurity here that I hadn’t noticed at first. A sense of waiting for something to happen. Something bad.” There, he’d said it. Would she agree with him?

Caroline bit her lip. Was there something else she wanted to ask him? He waited.

She gave herself a shake. “I’m sure it’s probably just that both you and I are unused to being here, even though this is your childhood home. You must be glad to be back within the bosom of your family, with your mother and sister.”

Now it was his turn to hesitate, wondering if he should reveal more to her. She had such an air of quiet reassurance about her, as though he could tell her anything he fancied. Why not? “She’s not really my mother, you know.”

Her eyes widened. “Hetty didn’t say. And you refer to her always as your mother. I had no idea.”

“Hetty doesn’t know. Almost no one does.”

He could see she was twirling all sorts of theories in her head so he’d better come clean and tell the truth. “My father was married before. My mother’s name was Margaret. I remember very little of her, as I was barely three years old when she died. Soon after her death, my father married Ruth, who’d been my grandfather’s housekeeper, and instructed me to call her mother. I think perhaps they hoped I’d never remember and grow up thinking she was indeed who they said she was. But I have fought to keep my memories, fragmented as they are.” He paused, and she gazed up into his eyes, lips slightly parted, as though hanging on his words. It was a long time since a woman had looked at him like that.

He hurried on, again pushing aside that urge to take her in his arms and kiss her. “And by some strange coincidence it is the scent of this very rose…” He indicated the flower in her hair. “That brings back images of my mother the most strongly. Like your mother, she liked to bring flowers into the house, and my clearest memory is of her holding a bowl of roses with the scent all around her like a mist of fragrance. She’s standing at the foot of the stairs, and like you, there’s a rose in her hair. Sunshine is pouring in through the windows, and I am happy.”

Her eyes filled with sympathy. “I had no idea. So, you and Hetty are only half-brother and -sister.” Her eyes narrowed. “And that makes all the difference, I fear.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. I shouldn’t have said that.” She glanced back at the house. “I think I need to go inside and make sure Yves has gone to bed. He’s inclined to misbehave for Bridget, whom he doesn’t like.”

And she turned on her heel and strode away, head up, determined, a woman on a mission. Nat watched her go, confused. That she’d meant something by that last remark he was certain. And whatever it was, he felt sure he needed to know it.