Page 34

M rs. Perry was certainly a Merry Widow.

Sir Frederick found her witty asides quite entertaining, and she was easy on the eye, her golden curls artfully arranged to catch the candlelight.

Of course, she was flirting quite outrageously, each laugh carefully calibrated, each gesture precisely designed to draw attention to her best features.

He must be careful lest he find himself in too deep.

He could see she wasn’t above resorting to underhand techniques to get what she wanted—her eyes darted too often to his signet ring, her questions about his estate too pointed to be casual interest.

And another husband was definitely on her agenda. The way she’d positioned herself just so beside him, allowing her silk skirts to brush his leg, left no doubt about that.

In his peripheral vision he saw Miss Fairchild take the stairs, her midnight blue gown making her seem to float in the shadowy stairwell.

He’d enjoyed trailing about the castle on their treasure hunt, watching her mind work as she decoded each clue.

He’d enjoyed their kiss even more—the softness of her lips, the way she’d melted against him before propriety reasserted itself.

But she’d made it clear that while she’d enjoyed it, she regretted it.

As if succumbing to pleasure undermined her integrity, as if joy itself were somehow suspect.

Well, of course, Sir Frederick didn’t want to be saddled with a Puritan killjoy for life; one who went into a decline through guilt every time she experienced pleasure.

If she had thrown her heart at Thomas Blackheath whom she revered as the epitome of all that was noble, then she had a most skewed view of nobility.

The memory of Blackheath’s perpetually furrowed brow and endless lectures on duty made Frederick’s teeth clench even now.

Blackheath had been a gloomy curmudgeon who had followed orders, even if they ran counter to common sense. He saw duty in black and white, with no room for the hundred shades of gray that made up real life. The man had no capacity for joy.

And if Miss Fairchild aspired to finding a husband in his mold, then both Sir Frederick and she were wasting their time with each other.

No more kisses or wondering if things might go anywhere, he told himself, as he flicked another glance at her leaning over the railings.

Even as he pretended greater amusement in Mrs. Perry’s latest witticism than was warranted, he couldn’t help noticing how the candlelight caught the elegant line of Miss Fairchild’s throat.

If she looked alone and in need of company, Sir Frederick was not the man to engage her in conversation—which he greatly enjoyed, he had to admit.

Their discussions ranged far beyond the usual ballroom fare of weather and who was dancing with whom.

But she was not interested in finding a husband and she was not interested in him. She’d made that abundantly clear.

And he didn’t want a Puritan for a wife, as he’d reminded himself just now. Though the way her eyes had sparkled during their treasure hunt had been anything but puritanical…

No. If she’d made clear that she thought him caddish, then let her think it. The pain in his leg was reminder enough of what duty had cost him; he needn’t seek out more suffering in the form of a wife who would forever judge him wanting.

If she couldn’t see past his exterior, then she clearly didn’t have the depths he’d once thought. She was as shallow and one-dimensional as Thomas Blackheath had ever been. Though the memory of her collapsed on stage during charades, showing such raw emotion, suggested otherwise…

After another minute or so laughing at one of Mrs. Perry’s on dits—something cutting about Lady Townsend’s ostrich feathers—he glanced again at the upper floor to find it empty—like his heart.

Or rather, emptied of the expectation that had built up there.

What had he hoped for? To see her still there, lock eyes with her, and then go up and speak to her?

To explain about Waterloo, about Blackheath, about all the things she didn’t understand?

Suddenly, he felt very weary. Utterly, immensely weary, and he knew it was unfair to Mrs. Perry when he offered his excuses so abruptly, telling her that exhaustion had suddenly overcome him.

The bereft look on her face made him feel guilty, but suddenly there was no enjoyment in being amidst the lively company. He just wanted his bed.

*

But sleep didn’t come easily.

And when the same, familiar, nagging pain in his leg woke him in the early hours of the morning, he knew it would be less tiresome to take himself off to the library than to spend hours tossing and turning in a fruitless attempt to achieve the respite of oblivion.

Shrugging on his banyan and slipping his feet into his slippers, he picked up his candlestick and followed several twisting corridors and flights of winding stairs to the most astonishing collection of books accumulated by generations of Lady Pendleton’s family.

He would enjoy scouring the shelves and find himself something unusual and learned.

Or maybe he’d reread Pride and Prejudice , he thought with a smile. That would be something he’d enjoy conversing with Miss Fairchild about, he thought, pushing open the heavy studded door.

“Miss Fairchild!”

She turned, a look of surprise upon her face.

He noticed she was still in her evening gown so clearly she’d not yet gone to bed.

She was at the far end of the wall of books, where the romance novels were, and for one wild moment he wondered if she’d come to seek out some of the more illicit titles he’d identified—for she’d not know them otherwise, he realized.

But she hurried towards him, her expression one of concern, a letter in one hand and a novel by Mrs. Radcliffe in the other.

“Lady Pendleton is wrong, Sir Frederick,” she said. “Either she’s in ignorance or she’s withholding the truth, but her ancestor, Lady Pernilla, was not having a dalliance with a stable boy.”

“Indeed.” He wasn’t quite sure how to respond. He certainly didn’t want to convey his true thoughts, which were to question why it should matter to her or anyone else; because he thought it was quite delightful that Miss Fairchild should care and that she should come to him.

Not that she’d actually come to him since he’d just stepped into the room.

“Let me draw you up a chair beside this one, and you can tell me all about it,” he invited, making sure the chair was as close as it could get.

She didn’t seem to notice. “You see, Sir Frederick, I realized that the letter that I had assumed Caroline had received from Mr. Greene was written, in fact, a hundred years earlier.” She withdrew a thick piece of paper from her lap and waved it in front of his face.

“It’s been very well preserved, but I should have taken note before I was so quick to run to you with tales about her so-called scandalous behavior. She must hate me now!”

“Caroline is quick to forgive. You only need to explain it to her,” Sir Frederick said, smiling.

He liked the proximity. Miss Fairchild was delightfully earnest. He wasn’t used to that in a woman.

His flirtatious banter with Mrs. Perry this evening had been wearyingly familiar.

The same old playbook. Both of them knew the code and played by the rules.

Once Miss Fairchild had left, he had little choice but to succumb when Mrs. Perry had fluttered her eyelashes above her fan. And then there’d been the small talk, laden with innuendo.

What he had made sure of this evening, though, was that she could be under no illusion he was open to more than a dalliance. She’d have left her slippers in the passage outside her door if he’d given her the smallest bit of encouragement.

With Miss Fairchild playing so much on his thoughts, he was not about to do that.

And now here was Miss Fairchild, who had appeared, as if on cue, like an answer to his dreams.

“Indeed, I shall,” Miss Fairchild was saying.

“I shall show her the letter. In fact, all of them. Oh, Sir Frederick, it’s quite tragic.

There’s a treasure trove here. The young people obviously used an old brick in the wall that could move as their letter box.

I don’t know why they are all there, but I suspect it was safer not to keep them in their respective bedchambers, don’t you think?

Because of the family’s opposition,” she clarified.

Sir Frederick nodded as he took the letters she handed him.

“Fascinating, don’t you think?” she asked again.

“Fascinating,” he agreed. But she was the one he found fascinating. When she was animated, her cheeks became flushed and her eyes sparkled. In the warm glow of the room, he thought he’d never seen any woman more beautiful.

He tried to equate her with the Puritan he’d taken such pains to persuade himself out of admiring earlier.

“Just read the words young William writes to her. It quite makes my heart break.”

Sir Frederick nodded. Then he frowned. “I’m curious as to why you should be so affected, though, Miss Fairchild, when you are the first to decry sentimental bunkum.”

Her rosebud lips parted and for a moment, he thought she would respond with indignation.

Then she said thoughtfully, “I decry sentimentality for its own sake. And when it’s used to manipulate people into thinking something is heartfelt and touching when it isn’t.

Like in a badly written book. Do you not think that the feelings of the heart should be pure and noble, Sir Frederick? ”

It was clear she wasn’t filtering her words; she was far too excited by these love letters. Sir Frederick enjoyed listening to her and watching the emotions flit across her features.

“Have you received love letters like these?” he asked and then wished he hadn’t, for the question seemed to shock her and immediately she was self-conscious once more.