An Unacceptable Offer Page 16

  “But history has been made there, Jane,” her cousin insisted. “Do you not believe that Bonaparte will be remembered as one of the greats of history?”

  “Surely history can find worthier men to remember,” Jane said.

  “I do not believe Bonaparte is as bad as many people say,” Honor said. “If other nations had not sneered so much because he has no royal blood, perhaps he would not have had to prove his worth by conquests. Is he so much worse than some of the other rulers of Europe?”

  She caught Sedgeworth’s amused eye at that moment and blushed hotly. “At least that is what Lord Henley told me in London,” she said. “And he ought to know. I don’t know, of course. I am a mere female. I am content to leave the thinking to the men of this world.” She frowned crossly at Sedgeworth, who had mouthed the final words with her.

  “I am merely thankful that the job has been done and we are at peace again,” Fairfax said. “Though I grieve for the many good men who must have been lost to both nations.”

  “Joseph told you that the Reverend Beasley and his wife and older children have accepted your invitation to dinner this evening?” Lady Dart asked Fairfax. “They are a very pleasant couple and the young people prettily behaved. And five younger children too. That is quite a family, my lord.”

  Fairfax laughed. “You will probably hear Mrs. Beasley complaining that her husband gives away all their money to the poor despite the largeness of their family,” he said. “But then she will assure you in the next breath that they live on love and that love is quite the best sort of wealth to possess.”

  “A very sensible attitude to take, under the circumstances, I am sure,” Lady Dart said. “Are we to take the children out this afternoon again, since we are to have some adult entertainment this evening?”

  “I must admit I have promised to take my girls swimming if the weather is warm enough,” Fairfax said. “I hope none of you will feel neglected?”

  “Mr. Sedgeworth,” Honor said loudly, “you and I must console each other since everyone else seems to dote on the children. You must row me on the lake and show me that island. Unless you want to play hide-and-seek or make daisy chains, that is.”

  Everyone laughed at the world of scorn in her voice.

  “I am afraid I have not offered much in the way of entertainment for a young lady who is making her debut in society, have I?” Fairfax said rather ruefully.

  “Oh, no matter,” she said. “Mr. Percival Beasley and Miss Cora Beasley both assured me earlier that they enjoy charades. We will see tonight if they can beat Mr. Sedgeworth and me.”

  Lady Dart groaned.

  “And Percy is really quite handsome in a very nineteen-year-old way,” Honor whispered to Jane, who sat beside her. “I believe I have enslaved him already.”

  Jane saw no possibility of having any of the serious talks she had planned, during the afternoon at least. She would have liked to excuse herself from the outing, but she did not want to draw attention to herself and perhaps dampen the spirits of some of the others. She stayed to the back of the group on their walk to the lake, talking to Gregory, who confided his indignation at still having to listen to a governess when he was all of ten years old. It would be two whole years before he would be sent away to school.

  Amy, who had been walking sedately at her father’s side, holding to one of his hands, dropped back after a while and took Jane’s hand. Jane smiled down at her. The child said nothing but walked gravely on. Fairfax, looking back after a minute to see what had happened to his daughter, was surprised to see her hand in hand with Jane. He failed to catch the eye of the latter, though. Her head was bent down toward the eldest of Dart’s children.

  “Papa, Papa,” Amy said, pulling at his coat when they had all reached the folly at the lake, “may we swim from the island? Please, Papa. It is so much more fun there.”

  “It would not be polite to abandon our guests to quite that extent, poppet,” he said.

  “Don’t consider us,” Lady Dart said cheerfully. “All my family has a healthy disgust of water. My children have plans of climbing trees and shooting down at savages, I believe. And I imagine Jane and I are unanimously elected as the savages, since I am sure we will not be fool enough to venture off the ground. Wallace will be delighted at the excuse, of course.”

  “Quite right, my love,” he said cheerfully, shrugging out of his coat and proceeding to roll up his shirt sleeves.

  “Please, Papa,” Amy pleaded.

  Fairfax looked down at his younger daughter, who was staring solemnly up at him, thumb in mouth. She smiled broadly around it. “Island, Papa,” she said.

  He grinned. “The island it is, then, poppets,” he said. “Let us go and load up the boat with towels and dry clothes.”

  Honor and Sedgeworth were already settling in one of the boats. Honor was arranging her favorite yellow dress around her and raising the matching parasol.

  Claire was tugging at Jane’s dress. “You come too?” she asked.

  “No, sweetheart,” she said, touching the blond curls gently. “I am not as clever as you. I do not swim.”

  “Papa teach you,” the child offered.

  “Aunt Jane is afraid to put her head underwater,” Fairfax said. “Perhaps we should teach her by taking her out in the boat and throwing her into the deep water. But I think not. She might drown, and then we would not feel very proud of ourselves, would we?”

  “Aunt Jane can watch us,” Amy said, looking eagerly up at her father. “I want her to see me swim, Papa. May she come?”

  Fairfax looked somewhat helplessly at Jane. She opened her mouth to utter a very firm refusal.

  “Oh, do go, Jane,” Joy said from behind her. “I do not know why I did not think of it myself. You are forever spending your time entertaining the children. It is time you had a chance to relax. And the water is beautifully calm for the boat this afternoon. Go on. I shall be savage enough for these children. They will enjoy the opportunity to shoot at me. Thank heaven for imaginary arrows.”

  “Yes!” Amy shouted, jumping up and down in a greater show of animation than Jane had see in her before.

  “Up,” Claire was demanding of her, holding two arms skyward.

  “Much rest from children Aunt Jane is going to have, by the look of it,” Fairfax said. “And, Claire, poppet, I thought we decided at Christmastime that you do not have to be carried everywhere.”

  But Claire was in Jane’s arms already and was not going to lose her perch without a struggle. She wrapped her arms around Jane’s neck and laid one soft little cheek against hers.

  “I can dive and swim on my back and my front, Aunt Jane,” Amy was saying eagerly, clinging to Jane’s skirt as Fairfax went in silence to load the boat and to pull it down into the water.

  “It is going to be crowded,” he said, “with one rower and three ladies. You sit very still beside Aunt Jane, Amy. And, Claire, don’t move, poppet. Aunt Jane will hold you safe.”

  He was prattling, he knew. And he could tell from the look on her face that Jane was every bit as dismayed as he by the way she had been trapped into joining his family party. His palm still burned from contact with her hand as he had helped her into the boat.

  Chapter 13

  “I SUPPOSE you wish you could go to Waterloo with your sketchbook and record the scenes of the battlefield for posterity,” Sedgeworth said conversationally as he rowed Honor out onto the lake.

  She twirled her parasol and lifted her chin. “I did not ask you to bring me out here so that you might insult my lack of feminine charms, sir,” she said.

  He laughed. “That governess must have been a real chucklehead,” he said. “Who could possibly be interested in an empty-headed female who is good for nothing but ... flirtation? I would not wish to be within thirty feet of a woman with nothing between her ears but empty air.”

  “How delicately you do phrase your meanings, sir,” said Honor, giving the parasol another twirl.

  “I have never seen you
so much on your dignity, Miss Jamieson,” he said with a grin. “Have I offended you? I did not mean to. I meant to compliment you. I have liked you much better since discovering that you are a fraud.”

  “Well,” she said, her tone somewhat mollified, “I did not bring you out here to listen to compliments either.”

  “To avoid the children?” he said. “I must admit to a fondness for them all. It is pleasant, however, not to be ‘Uncle Joe’ every ten seconds.”

  “Not for that reason either,” Honor said, the parasol positively whirling above her head.

  “Very well, you have your wish, ma’am,” Sedgeworth said, resting his oars and giving her the whole of his attention. “I am fit to bursting with curiosity. Why did you bring me out here, as you put it? Though to my way of thinking it is I who have brought you out here. At least I have the oars.”

  “I want you to discover that you are madly in love with me and cannot live without me,” Honor said. “And I want you to persuade Jane to release you from your engagement.”

  “Ah, is that all?” he said. “Why did you not say so immediately instead of building such suspense, my dear Miss Jamieson?”

  “I am serious!” Honor said dramatically.

  He looked at her, and his eyes remained steadily on hers for several seconds. “I think you had better start at the beginning, if there is a beginning to all this,” he said, the teasing inflection gone entirely from his voice.

  “Do you love Jane?” Honor asked.

  “She is to be my wife,” Sedgeworth said quietly. “Of course I love her.”

  “Yes, I know that,” Honor said impatiently. “But do you love her is what I mean. Are your feelings deeply engaged?”

  “Forgive me,” he said, “but is that not a private matter between Jane and me?”

  “I need to know,” she said, leaning forward in her seat. “If the answer is no, then I may proceed with Plan A. If yes, then I must move on to Plan B.”

  He did not smile at the absurdity. “Suppose you proceed with Plan A,” he said. “It sounds quicker.”

  “Have you realized,” she asked, “that Jane and Lord Fairfax are head over ears in love with each other?” He did not respond. “It is as plain as the nose on your face.”

  “What has led you to believe so?” he asked eventually. He picked up the oars again almost absently and began to row.

  “I must admit that I did not really notice until last evening,” she said, “though looking back, I believe it has been obvious for some time. When I went to the music room to call them for tea last night, Jane came rushing out of the room before I got there and dashed up the stairs. I do not believe she even saw me. And I do not believe she had a headache, as Lord Fairfax said when he came to the drawing room later. People do not rush when they have a headache. And when I listened at the music-room door, there was no music. Just silence. Yet Lord Fairfax did not come out either.

  “I grant that that is not a great deal of evidence. But I have observed them both closely today. They are both desperately unhappy, and they have a way of looking at each other, or not looking at each other, that tells a clear story.”

  Sedgeworth rowed several powerful strokes before he said anything. “I think perhaps your imagination has been overactive, Miss Jamieson,” he said. “I cannot believe that either Jane or Fairfax would carry on such a ... flirtation behind my back.”

  “Exactly!” said Honor. “That is why they are unhappy. It has obviously taken them by surprise. Do not take my word for it, sir. Observe for yourself later today. But if it is true, then you must set her free. And the best way to do that is to do as I say. Pretend that you are the one wishing to be released.”

  “Do you love your cousin so much that you are willing to become involved in such a way?” asked Sedgeworth. “I thought you were trying to engage Fairfax’s affections for yourself.”

  Honor pulled a face. “I was,” she admitted. “But appearances can be deceiving, you know. Behind the handsome exterior of Lord Fairfax lives a man whose way of life would have me screeching with boredom within a fortnight.”

  Sedgeworth smiled despite himself. “Then why are you willing so actively to intervene on his behalf?” he said. “And to doom your cousin to such a life of boredom?”

  “But you are involved too, sir,” she said. “You would be desperately unhappy, would you not, to discover too late that your wife and your closest friend love each other?”

  “And do I matter to you, Miss Jamieson?” he mocked.

  Honor opened her mouth to reply, blushed scarlet, and suddenly discovered something of remarkable interest to the right of the boat. “Look, the island,” she said brightly. “We are quite close. Do let us land, sir, and see what is here.”

  “Nothing but trees and overgrown grass, I would guess,” he said, turning the boat and pulling directly for the shore.

  Honor vaulted out almost without the assistance of his hand. She left her parasol in the boat. She ran amongst the trees, swinging around some of the narrower trunks, determinedly gay.

  “How marvelous!” she called back to Sedgeworth. “I would love to be marooned here—with the right gentleman, of course.” She laughed brightly.

  “It is a shame I tethered the boat so carefully then,” he said, coming up to her just before she whisked herself away again.

  “Will you please stop?” he said when he came close to her again. “There is more to say, Miss Jamieson. If you are right, and I follow your suggestion, what about the humiliation to you? Your cousin’s betrothal is broken because of you, and then the gentleman escapes alone to the Continent.”

  “Well,” she said airily, swinging around the trunk to which she held, “I could always marry you to make things look more realistic.”

  “Miss Jamieson ... Honor,” he said sternly. “Will you please stand still? I thought I had escaped children for one afternoon, yet here you are behaving worse than the pack of them all together.”

  She stood meekly still before him.

  He looked at her searchingly.

  “You know,” she said, two spots of color high on her cheeks, “it may not be as bad as you think. I really am not such a ninnyhammer as I seem to be. I do not read as much as I ought these days, and I do not have a great deal of interest in music, but I know something about art and history. There are people who have said I have a definite talent in watercolor painting. And I always listen to any talk about state affairs, though I pretend to be playing with my curls or my fan or something like that. I would travel with you without complaint about inconveniences and be ever so interested in all the new people and places. Especially if you were to take me to Italy. And Greece! Oh, certainly if you were to take me to Greece. Home of all those handsome gods!”

  “Honor,” he said quietly, “are you proposing to me?”

  “Yes,” she said breathlessly, the two spots of color merging into one flood that covered her face and neck. Her eyes were on his neckcloth.

  “Why?” he asked. “Because you wish to travel?”

  “Yes,” she said, raising her eyes boldly to his. “But more because I think I love you.”

  “Think?”

  “Well,” she said, “if you were to kiss me, perhaps I would be sure. Lord Fairfax kissed me once and I enjoyed it. But then I realized I had enjoyed it only because it was my first. Will you kiss me? Please? Joseph.”

  “I am not free to do so, Honor,” he said gently.

  “Oh,” she said. “But do you wish to? If you were free, would you wish to?”

  He drew a deep breath. “So many strange things have happened in the last few minutes,” he said. “I do not know what I think or feel. I suppose I have been growing fond of you in the last few days, but I assumed that I was growing fond of you as a cousin. I have a deep affection for Jane, and I do not yet know for certain that she wishes to end our engagement. I am committed to her.”

  “Yes,” she said. “And I do not need to be kissed. I know. I do love you.”


  She looked very crestfallen.

  “I want to kiss you, Honor,” he admitted slowly. “That is not a cousinly urge, is it?”

  She smiled.

  “But I am not free,” he said, “and I will not dishonor my betrothal. Or be unfair to you. We had better get back into the boat.”

  “Yes,” she said. Then she brightened visibly. “I am not betrothed. I have no one to feel guilty toward. I shall kiss you.”

  And she stepped lightly across the distance between them and suited action to words. She twined her arms around his neck and put her lips against his. She kept them there for a long time. Sedgeworth did not move.

  “There,” she said gaily. “Now you know me for the hussy I am. First I propose to a betrothed man, and then I kiss him without his cooperation at all. That governess of mine would commit instant suicide if she knew. To the boat, sir.”

  He followed her back through the trees to the bank where he had tied the boat. The other boat was approaching, Fairfax rowing. Jane sat opposite him, her arm around one child, the other child on her lap. Sedgeworth smiled and lifted his hand in greeting. They looked like a contented family group.

  “My daughters have persuaded me to come here to swim,” Fairfax called. “You would not care to join us, I suppose, Sedge? Miss Jamieson can sit and watch with Jane.”

  Jane! Not “Miss Matthews” any longer?

  “I think my valet would hand in his notice without more ado if I arrived back with these clothes wet,” Sedgeworth called back. “No, Miss Jamieson and I will resume our very dignified row on the lake. Are you to be the audience, Jane?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Amy wants me to see her dive and swim on front and back. And Claire tells me she can swim, though I shall have to see it to believe it.” She smiled down at the small child on her lap.

  “Can swim!” Claire said indignantly. “Papa tell you.”

  “You certainly can, poppet,” he said, stooping down from the bank and lifting her from Jane’s lap. “Just like a cork. Aunt Jane is merely jealous because she cannot put her head under. Come, Jane. Take my hand and I shall try not to drop you in.” He grinned at her, his hand outstretched.