“It won’t be,” he said. “I believe something is happening that will take everyone’s attention.”
She glanced over at the marquee. All the ladies were clustered around the duchess and even Prudence had been swept into the group. “Goodness! Is Her Grace about to bear her child?” she asked, alarmed. “Here?”
“My father will carry her upstairs, if need be,” Alaric said. “The last babe was nearly born in a carriage.”
Childbirth was not an ordeal Willa was eager to experience. Or witness.
She handed her bow to a groom. “If Lady Knowe should inquire, I have taken a stroll with Lord Alaric.”
Once out of sight of the archery field, Alaric dropped Willa’s elbow and pulled her snugly against his side. “Horatius, North, Parth, and I spent our days roaming around these fields, when we weren’t in the bog,” he said, guiding her toward a small apple orchard that clung to the slope of a gentle hill leading away from the castle.
“That sounds like so much fun,” Willa said, a bit wistfully.
Alaric kissed her cheek. His Willa would never be lonely again; he would see to it. They entered the shade of the first apple trees and a narrow leafy lane opened before them. On either side, neat rows of carefully spaced trees stretched away.
“They are alphabetized,” Alaric explained. “Four Costard trees, followed by four Cox, and so on, ending with St. Edmund’s Pippins. The first apples will ripen in September.”
The other side of the orchard opened onto a lane bounded by a tall hedgerow. Swallows were swooping around the hedge, diving as if planning to land, and changing their minds at the last moment.
“This way,” Alaric said, drawing Willa to the left. They followed the hedge around the curve until a pristine ornamental lake lay before them. His favorite willow tree slanted more steeply over the bank than when he had seen it last. Its branches used to dangle above the surface, but now they trailed in the water with the lethargy of a drunk after his fifth whiskey of the morning.
After they reached the lake, he guided her under the willow’s curtain of arrowed leaves and pointed to a platform far above them. “I spent a great deal of time up there. When you’re on top of this willow, you have a bird’s-eye view of the duchy. It feels as if you’re looking at a different country, which was irresistible for a boy always dreaming of traveling to foreign lands.”
“I’ve never climbed a tree,” Willa remarked. “Girls are not allowed to.”
“Ours will be.” He watched with pleasure as rosy spots appeared in her cheeks.
“Surely this isn’t a natural lake,” she said, ignoring his provocation.
It was round as a mirror, as was the circular island in its precise center. It looked like the pad of a water lily that had overgrown and turned to stone.
“It’s like a nursery rhyme,” she added. “In the middle of a round lake was a round island. And in the middle of the round island was a round … What is that, exactly? A folly?”
“It’s a classical rotunda built by the duke for my mother, his first duchess,” Alaric said. He was following a length of rope tied to the willow’s trunk; brushing aside the rushes at the water’s edge, he found the punt still attached to the other end.
Better yet, the punt was dry and reasonably clean. Probably his younger siblings had colonized the island. “Would you care for an excursion in my pleasure boat, my lady?”
A minute later Willa was perched in the bow, her voluminous skirts bunched around her. She looked so fresh, happy, and sensual that Alaric had to wrestle with himself. No, he could not topple her into the bottom of a punt and have his way with her.
“Take care; your gown is billowing over the gunwale,” he observed, for the sake of saying something, while avoiding the uncomfortable emotions crowding his chest.
She laughed. “I’ll have you know this is a remarkably fashionable garment, which means the rear”—she threw him a naughty glance—“is enhanced by a contrivance called a rump.”
He gave a bark of laughter.
“This particular rump,” she continued, her eyes sparkling, “came from Paris and is made of cork. I’m truly surprised that there is enough room in this little boat for myself and my rump.”
“For your two rumps,” he ventured. “May I say that I think your own is in no need of enhancement?”
Her smiling mouth was a strawberry-stained pink that called to him as surely as the plumage of a peacock dazzled its mate. Her hair shone in the sunlight.
“This lake looks as if it ought to be inhabited by swans,” she said, changing the subject.
“There used to be a very disagreeable pair when we were growing up. Horatius had a scar on one foot given to him by the cob.”
Willa cocked an eyebrow.
“Horatius was not one to avoid danger,” Alaric went on. “He was a true Englishman, in the best meaning of the word.” A few more strokes and he drew the punt up to the foot of the marble steps on the island, where he moored it to a ring sunk into the stone.
The rotunda, only a few years older than he, had scarcely altered, save for encroachments of lichen and moss. Like the silver hair he didn’t have yet, he thought, imagining it in another thirty years.
He held out his hand and helped Willa from the punt. Her dress—with its Parisian rump—looked exquisitely ladylike, and yet the expression in her eyes was wanton.
Marriage to her promised to be fascinating. A merger of sorts, likely with a period of adjustment. All he had to do was persuade her.
Though he had the feeling she had made up her mind. Willa would not have joined him in the punt had she not decided to take his hand and his name.
“Did His Grace allow the rotunda to fall into disuse after the death of your mother?” she asked, as they climbed the low steps.
“Yes, although not owing to grief. The second duchess spent all her time in London, and Ophelia is uninterested in nature.”
“Someone has been using it,” Willa remarked when they were under the dome. Against one of the spindly, elegant columns was a pile of canvas pillows, a few candle stubs, and a large tin box with a hinged lid.
Alaric crouched down and lifted the lid. “Clever boy,” he murmured. The box contained a folded blanket, on top of which lay a couple of bottles, a small knife, a lump of what might once have been cheese wrapped in canvas, and—secreted beneath the blanket—a book in Italian notorious for its bawdy illustrations.
He picked up one of the bottles and inspected it. “Ginger beer. May I offer you one?”
“Please,” Willa said. She was standing between two columns, looking back toward the castle, beyond the orchard to the east. “I can’t believe you grew up in a fairy tale.”
Alaric walked over to stand beside her. To his eyes, Lindow Castle bore no resemblance to those in fairy tales. It was low and wide, with a stolid look about it, as if it were challenging all onlookers to a siege. It had battlements and turrets, but little other resemblance to the whimsical stacks of golden stone he’d seen in France.
“From this distance, one can hardly call it a castle,” he said. “My great-grandfather added bits and pieces, and my grandfather built a new tower. We used to spend rainy days exploring little passageways and secret corridors—there are actually three priest holes.”
Willa nodded. Dusky eyelashes exactly matched her hair, so she must have darkened them from brown to black. Knowing that cosmetic secret felt like proof of their intimacy. No other man knew, just as no man knew of the creamy skin of her rounded breast and the satin texture of her thighs.
In fact, he had to swallow hard and look away from her because a primitive roar was rising in his soul, and he couldn’t listen to it.
He had to let Willa accept him in her own time. He cut the string from around the bottle’s neck, and with a grunt, managed to draw out the cork. “Ginger beer has a bite,” he warned, offering it to her. “You can’t find a drink like this anywhere else in the world.”
Willa reached out a hand and he put the bottle into it, wondering how he’d got so lucky as to find a lady willing to take a drink from a bottle without fussing.
He took one more look at Lindow Castle, sitting on the hill like a fat brown hen drowsing on her nest, and turned back to the box. He plucked out the blanket and threw it over the pillows. Held up the book.
“May I show you my engravings?” It wasn’t hard to produce a leer.
Willa strolled over, swinging the bottle from two fingers. “I recognize that book,” she observed, smiling at his surprised look.
“Aunt Knowe is right. Young ladies are not what they used to be.”
“Lavinia and I spent a year in mourning for her father,” Willa said. “There were libidinous Grays among her ancestors, and we made a study of all the naughty books we could find in the family library.”
“As one does,” Alaric said, deeply amused.
“Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same! One of your siblings is enjoying similar literary pursuits.”
“Leonidas, I would guess,” Alaric said. “Though from the look of the cheese he left, he hasn’t been here since he left for Eton.”
Willa’s decision had taken root in her chest and it was only a matter of telling him. She’d had fourteen proposals. That was a respectable number to tell her children about. She’d weighed more than enough evidence before making her choice.