An Unacceptable Offer Page 12

  And it was to his daughters that his thoughts turned most during those five days, with an impatient eagerness to be gone. He was to set out a day before the others so that he would be able to welcome them properly to his home. On horseback he hoped to make the journey in one day. In that case he would have a two-day advantage over his guests.

  “There will be a very good view of the Hall over to your right in just a minute,” Sedgeworth said. He was bending from his horse’s back in order to look into his sister’s carriage, where the ladies rode. “It is built on a rise of land, a quite inspired choice of location, as you will see.”

  “Are we really almost there?” Honor asked. “I am frightfully relieved, as I do not mind saying. Not that this is not a very well-sprung carriage, Joy, but after two days on our delightful English roads, even good springs fail to disguise the bumps.”

  “Having to spend a night at an inn does not help matters either, does it?” Lady Dart said agreeably. “I always believe that inns must purchase their furniture from special manufacturers. Especially the mattresses. There must be competition to see who can produce the lumpiest.”

  “The gentlemen have all the good fortune,” Honor said. “They have been able to ride all the way.”

  Jane did not participate in the conversation. She was watching the window on the right side of the coach, waiting for her first glimpse of Templeton Hall. She tried not to show her eagerness, but she could feel her heart thumping and her breath quickening.

  And there it was. She sat forward and stared, oblivious now of the impression she might be making on an onlooker. It was still a few miles distant but clearly visible on a rise of land above fields and woods. It was a strange mixture of architectural styles, Joseph had told her. The original manor had been built in Elizabethan times, but almost every viscount since had added something. From this distance, however, it looked massive and imposing.

  The carriage rolled down a dip in the road and the house was lost to view behind the roadside hedge. Soon now, Joseph said, they would turn into the elm-lined driveway that stretched for well over a mile before reaching the house. She would see him again soon. It was three whole days since she had set eyes on him. Would he be outside to greet them?

  Jane sat back in her seat suddenly, casting a conscious glance at her two chattering companions. She had realized the turn her thoughts had taken and was horrified at herself. She must not allow such thoughts. She had freely betrothed herself to Joseph, and she looked forward to a good marriage with him. She must forget this childish infatuation for their host. She must guard against seeing him as anything else but her host and her fiancé’s friend for the next two weeks.

  She closed her eyes briefly when the carriage turned into the shady tree-lined driveway that would lead eventually to the house. This might have been hers. She might have been coming home now with her husband. No. No! She resolutely opened her eyes and gazed at the passing trees. She breathed in the scent of green vegetation.

  He was outside. The main doors, leading out onto a cobbled terrace, were open wide. Two footmen were visible inside, but their master was standing at the foot of the steps, his hands clasped behind him, a smile on his face. He must somehow have seen their approach. Jane’s stomach turned over.

  Sedgeworth helped his sister from the carriage and turned back to take Honor’s hand. Somehow it was Fairfax who helped Jane to the ground. He was smiling, looking far happier and more relaxed than she had seen him look in London.

  “I am so pleased to see you safely arrived,” he said, his eyes smiling warmly into Jane’s though he spoke generally to the whole group of travelers.

  He turned away almost immediately to take Lady Dart’s arm and lead her into the house. The others followed, Lord Dart turning to see that his children were being taken care of. They had been traveling in a separate carriage with their governess.

  In the high tiled hallway beyond the great doors Fairfax presented his housekeeper, Mrs. Pringle, and his butler to his guests and had the ladies shown to their rooms so that they might freshen up before gathering in the drawing room for tea.

  “Will you mind very much if my daughters come for tea too?” Fairfax asked before they left. “They are very eager to meet my guests. Of course, at the moment they have all the excitement of greeting three other children.”

  “Oh, I would just love to meet the little dears,” Honor cried.

  “I will not mind at all,” Lady Dart said placidly. “Wallace and I are used to children around us. But our own must not be allowed down. They are always impossibly quarrelsome and irritable after traveling.”

  Jane said nothing.

  The children were brought into the room by their nurse when they were all about to start their tea. They had evidently been dressed up for the occasion. Both were wearing frilled white dresses and spotless shoes. The elder girl had dark shining ringlets. She was not a pretty child, Jane decided, though she had strong features that suggested she would be handsome as she grew older. She was very much like her father. The younger child was just as much her mother’s image. Her head was haloed by short, soft blond curls. She had a very pretty face with large hazel eyes.

  “Ah,” Fairfax said. “We have been waiting for you, poppets. Come and make your curtsies to our guests.” He crossed the room to take a hand of each. The nurse quietly left the room.

  Jane watched them, a strange leaden feeling in her stomach. Here was his past. These were the two children he had had with Susan. How could any other woman ever expect to have a part in his life? These two children must ever remind him of the great love he had lost. She was suddenly glad again that she had not agreed to become the second Lady Fairfax. She could not have borne to be so irrevocably in second place.

  Fairfax brought his children to her and Sedgeworth last. “Now, here is someone who is not a stranger to you,” he said. “Who is this, Claire?”

  The younger child stared at Sedgeworth, smiled broadly, stuck a thumb into her mouth, and turned to hide her face against her father’s leg. “Uncle Joe,” she said through the double obstruction, and giggled.

  “Are you going to sit on my knee today?” Sedgeworth asked. “Amy will, will you not, Amy?”

  The older child walked closer and climbed gravely onto his knee.

  “No,” Claire said, wrapping her arms around Fairfax’s leg.

  He rested his hand gently on her soft curls. “This lady is going to marry Uncle Joe soon,” he said. “Are you going to say good day to Miss Matthews, poppet?” Claire peeped out from the safety of his leg and smiled around her thumb at Jane. Jane did not gush and coo at the child as the other two ladies had done. She kept her expression grave and quite slowly and deliberately winked at the child. Claire continued to smile.

  “If I am Uncle Joe and Miss Matthews is to be my wife,” Sedgeworth said, “she had better be Aunt Jane. Do you think I have made a good choice, Amy, love?”

  Dark blue eyes regarded her seriously. Jane looked back as gravely. “Yes,” the child said.

  “And if you do not have the courage to sit on my knee, Claire,” Sedgeworth said, “will you sit with Aunt Jane?”

  The child continued to smile and cling to her father for a few seconds longer and then she let go and walked up to Jane’s chair. She held her arms above her head. “Up,” she said.

  Jane leaned forward and lifted the tiny child onto her lap. She was really just a baby, she thought. She smelled of soap and powder. She sat looking up at Jane for a while, and her thumb crept back into her mouth. She seemed to be reassured by what she saw. She wriggled herself into a more comfortable position and laid her head against Jane.

  Jane’s arm went around the child and she looked up to surprise a strange expression on Fairfax’s face. He smiled and turned abruptly away to ask Lady Dart if she cared to pour the tea.

  Chapter 10

  FAIRFAX slowed his horse to a walk when he reached the long lake that stretched in a wide crescent a mile to the east of his house. Why d
id water always look so much more beautiful in the early morning and early evening than at any other time? There was a glassy calm about it, its pale blue reflecting also the pink flush of dawn.

  He was always an early riser in the country, especially in summer. It seemed to him that one who slept well past dawn missed the loveliest part of the day. This morning, though, he had been up even earlier than usual. Darkness had barely lifted when his restlessness drove him from bed and out to the stables for an early ride. He had ridden hard for a few miles and was now on his way home. However, it was still very early. There was little danger that he would be neglecting any of his guests if he lingered awhile longer. Most of them would probably not stir for another few hours.

  Fairfax slid from his horse’s back and tethered it loosely to the low branch of a tree. He wandered to the bank of the lake and looked out across it. It was quite erroneous to believe that nature was ever silent. Birds were singing far more loudly than they would later in the day. There was the faint stirring of the trees behind him. And even the water was making an almost imperceptible rushing sound, calm as it was. He breathed deeply of the cool air.

  It felt strange to have houseguests again. Susan had frequently invited friends and relatives. Since her death—indeed, since the start of her final pregnancy—there had been no one except his mother for one month, and Sedgeworth. He thought he would rather enjoy entertaining. The Darts were easy to please. Their children seemed good-natured, if a little boisterous. Certainly his girls were excited by the presence of three playmates staying at the house. The only children they saw with any regularity were the Beasleys, children of the vicar, and the youngest of those was eight.

  Then, of course, there was Sedge. Somehow he did not think of his friend as a guest. He was more like a brother. Fairfax was glad that they had not drifted apart during his marriage. Although they had not seen each other during those years, they had written regularly. And there were the two ladies. He believed he might find Miss Jamieson’s presence amusing if he could just guard against giving the impression that he was her suitor. She had kept them all laughing with her chatter at dinner the evening before, and she had single-handedly organized a game of charades during the evening, though most of them had felt tired from the journey.

  And then there was Miss Matthews. Jane. He almost hated to admit that he liked having her as his guest. When he had risen the day before to see that the sun shone, he had felt immediately glad that she would see Templeton Hall at its best. That his guests would see it at its best, he had corrected himself. He had seen the carriage approach along the main road before it turned into the driveway. And he had waited outside for it, as excited as any boy in anticipation of his first sight of her. Of all of them. He did not know quite how it had happened that he was the one to help her from the carriage when Sedgeworth was standing at the foot of the steps.

  Claire had liked her. She was a shy child, willing to look at other people and smile at them, even talk to them sometimes. But she liked to cling for safety to him or to her nurse. She had gone to Jane Matthews with very little hesitation and had settled comfortably against her. She had been sleeping before they finished tea. He did not care to explore the feelings he had had the few times he had ventured to look at the two of them. Jane had held her comfortingly but without any affectation. She had contributed as much as anyone else to the general conversation.

  Indeed she had not acted toward the children with any of the demonstrative affection of the other ladies. She had treated them as if they were quite normal people. One time when he had looked at her she was gently easing Claire’s thumb from her mouth. And then she laid her hand briefly and gently against the child’s cheek. She had not known that she was observed.

  Fairfax bent to pick up a stone. He hurled it as far as he could out into the water. He picked up another, flatter stone and moved it around carefully in his hand before flicking it so that it bounced three times across the lake before disappearing from sight.

  He did not wish to put into words in his mind the discovery he had made the day before. There was no point in doing so. He had had his chance to woo her. He had not handled it well. He was beginning to understand why she had refused him. He really had made his offer as if she as a person did not matter. He had given her reasons which were all selfish ones. She could make his own life and his children’s lives more comfortable, he had said. It was no wonder she had felt like a commodity. He was appalled now by his own arrogance and by his overconfidence. It had not occurred to him that she might refuse. Of course, in his own defense perhaps he could say that he had not known at the time what he now knew about his feelings for her.

  Well, he concluded, bending in search of another flat stone, it was too late to know now. She was betrothed to his best friend, and they were clearly well-matched. He must use this two-week period to adjust his mind to thinking of her as a friend. At least he would not lose her entirely when she married. He would see her as often as he saw Sedge, and he would hear about her from Sedge’s letters. She would have an interesting life, more interesting than life with him would have been. He was glad for her. She would want children, though. He was sure she would want children. He was not so sure about Sedge.

  But that was their concern, not his, he thought, with a sigh as he turned toward the building a little farther along the bank. It was a marble folly in the shape of a Greek temple. A rather grand structure, he had always thought, to be a boathouse and a bathing hut. He had always loved it, though. His grandfather had certainly had an eye for a perfect setting when he had had it built. He made his way toward it. He should check to see if the boats were in good repair. The girls would surely be pestering him soon to take them out, and his guests too would probably enjoy rowing on the lake.

  Jane too was up early. She had asked to have a window left open the night before and had pulled back the curtains in her room after extinguishing the candles. Her room faced east. Dawn brought with it a pink glow into her room, followed by the orange rays of the rising sun. And thousands of birds housed in the woods at the bottom of the lawn that sloped away to the east must all have been singing as loudly as their beaks would stretch.

  It was impossible to sleep longer, Jane decided at last, throwing back the covers from her bed and reaching for a wrap as the crisp morning air touched her bare arms. She crossed to the window and looked out. It was a beautiful day, and that was surely a lake of some sort beyond the trees. She had meant to ask Lord Fairfax the day before. She very badly wanted to go outside and walk around, perhaps even go down through the trees to discover what really was beyond them. But it was very early. There was probably no one about yet. Perhaps even the servants were not up. It was not seemly perhaps for a guest to wander house and grounds so early on the morning after her arrival.

  Jane washed and dressed slowly and brushed her hair. But the lure of the outdoors was too strong. She decided to go quietly downstairs. If there was no one about and the door was still locked and barred, then she would creep into the library—she knew where it was—and choose a book to bring back upstairs until a more respectable hour. However, luck was with her. The front doors were standing wide open, and a maid was on her knees outside singing as she scrubbed the marble steps.

  “Good morning, mum,” she said, scrambling to her feet and bobbing a curtsy when Jane appeared in the doorway.

  “Good morning,” Jane said. “Please do not let me disturb you. ls it not a lovely day?” She breathed deeply of the fresh air.

  “Yes, mum,” the girl said. “It’s going to be a scorcher.”

  “What is beyond the trees?” Jane asked, pointing to the east. “Is it a lake?”

  “Yes, mum,” the maid said. “A big one. There’s a path through the trees.”

  “Thank you,” Jane said. “I think I shall take a walk that way.”

  “Will you be having your breakfast first, mum?” the girl asked, looking as if she was about to get to her feet again. “Will I be going to Mrs. Prin
gle to tell her?”

  “I shall eat later,” Jane said with a smile. “Please carry on. I shall step down carefully this side so that I do not spoil what you have already cleaned.”

  The maid was singing again before she was quite out of earshot. Jane hoped Lord Fairfax would not mind her exploring on her own. She supposed it was an ungodly hour to be up. But she was always an early riser at home. Most of the year she slept with a window open and curtains pulled back. And how could one sleep when all the creatures of nature were very much awake and letting every sleepyhead know the fact? She loved the early morning. She could feel the dew seeping into her shoes now as she walked across the east lawn. She was glad it was a lake she had seen. There was nothing more calming to the spirit than an expanse of water.

  It was far larger than she had expected. It was wide at the point where she emerged from the trees. And it stretched to either side, becoming narrower in the distance. There was a tree-covered island away off to the left. It was all very beautiful, as water always was early in the day. She would sit on the bank very quietly and let her mind soak up the beauty and peace of it all.

  It could all have been hers. Part of her own home. Strange thought! She still found it difficult to believe either that Fairfax had made her an offer or that she had had the courage to refuse. She sighed. She must not dwell on the loss. Life was turning out much better for her than she deserved. Soon she would be seeing other countries or at least other parts of this country. There would be other places as beautiful as this on which to feast her eyes and her spirit. And Joseph really was a dear person. She had laughed at him the evening before. He had been on Honor’s team for charades and had entered wholeheartedly into the game. Between them, he and Honor had made sure that their opponents had no chance of winning. And Jane had been one of their opponents. Honor had linked her arm through his after the game was over and giggled up at him.