Then Comes Seduction

“Stop dreaming, boy, and find something useful to do,” he said in the mock tones of a stern parent or tutor-his own from long ago, perhaps?

“I would be more inclined to tell my children the opposite,” she said. “Stop being fruitlessly busy and dream. Use your imagination. Reach out into the unknown and dream of how you can enlarge your experience and improve your mind and your soul and your world.”

He chuckled softly.

“And of what does Miss Katherine Huxtable dream?” he asked her. “Love and marriage and motherhood, I suppose?”

He did not get the point at all, did he? He might be intelligent, but there was no spark of the dreamer in him. Perhaps because there had never been anything to dream of that he did not already have. But that was absurd.

Oh, how absurd it was!

“Of flying,” she said impulsively. “I dream of flying.”

She did not, of course. Not literally, anyway. But there were no real words for dreams-even most of the ones that came at night while one slept.

“Ah,” he said, a mocking gleam in his eye. “A worthy activity to replace doing something useful.”

“Through the blueness of the sky and the rushing freshness of the air,” she said, ignoring him. “Close to the sun.”

“Like Icarus,” he said. “To have the wax of your wings melt for your presumption and to hurtle back to the earth and reality.”

“No,” she said. “Not to fall. Dreams do not recognize the possibility of failure. Only the desire, the need, to fly close to the sun.”

She was making an utter cake of herself, of course. She did not often try talking of such things, even to Meg or Nessie. Dreams were very private things.

He drummed his fingers against the wrought iron back of the seat beyond her shoulder, looking at her with narrowed eyes while she tried to focus her mind on the roses again.

“What is so mundane about your life that you wish to escape it?” he asked her.

He was turned almost entirely toward her now, and he was looking fully at her.

“Oh, I do not wish to escape,” she said, exasperated, “only to… to go beyond what I already have and know and am. It is hard to explain. But is it not the way of all humans?”

“Is it?” he asked softly.

“I think we all yearn to expand our… our souls into something… beyond,” she said. “I wish there were words. But you must have felt it too?”

“The need for God?” he said. “I was taken to call upon him every Sunday of my growing years, Miss Huxtable. But though my privileged backside was comforted by the cushions in the family pew, my mind was tortured by a whole lot of tedious and confused double-talk about love and judgment, forgiveness and damnation, heaven and hellfire. It all taught me to avoid such a confused and confusing God and be quite thankful never to look beyond myself.”

“Oh, you poor man,” she said, turning her head sharply again and tipping it to one side so that she was suddenly aware of his arm, less than an inch away from her ear. “You did not get the point at all, did you?”

“On the contrary. I believe I got it very well indeed,” he told her. “It was explained very clearly to me-repeatedly. Apparently I was headed for judgment, damnation, and hellfire. I was incorrigible. Beyond hope.”

He gri

“What clergyman told you that?” she asked indignantly. “My father would have given him a piece of his mind.”

“No clergyman,” he said. “There are other persons in a lad’s life who speak with even more authority for the deity.”

She gazed at him. Was he talking about his father? But his father had died before his birth. His tutor, then? Or his stepfather, Miss Wrayburn’s father?

“What is so mundane about your life as it is?” he asked her again.

“It would be ungrateful to call it mundane,” she said. “By most standards it is anything but. It is just that sometimes when I am alone-and I love to be alone-I feel a welling of something, of a knowledge that is only just beyond my grasp, of a great happiness that is just waiting to be embraced. Sometimes I try to express the feeling through poetry, but even poems require words. You may laugh at me now if you wish.”

He smiled, but he did not immediately say anything. She found herself gazing rather uncomfortably into dark eyes that were only inches from her own. She was aware again of his cologne.

She spread her fingers across her lap.

“Do you dream of marriage?” he asked her. “Do you dream of finding happiness that way?”

“Yes, I dream of marriage,” she said, “and of children and a home of my own. There is not much else for a lady, is there? Even now I worry about being a burden upon Stephen all his life. I am twenty-three years old.”

“You must have had numerous offers,” he said.

“Some,” she admitted. “Good offers from good gentlemen.”

“But-?” He raised his eyebrows.

“I want him to be very special,” she said, looking back toward the rose garden. “Heart of my heart, soul of my soul. It is foolish to wait for him, I know. Very few people actually do find that one unique mate we probably all dream of finding. But I have never yet been able to persuade myself to settle for less.”

She was assailed suddenly by a sense of unreality. Was she actually having this conversation with Lord Montford, of all people? However had they got onto such a topic?

She almost laughed.

“He is a fortunate man,” he said without any apparent irony, “or will be when he finds you. It will be a love to move mountains.”

She turned her face to him again and really did laugh this time.

“I believe it is more likely,” she said, “that he will run ten miles without stopping. Men do not think of love and marriage as women do. I have learned that in my twenty-three years. How would you react if I told you that you were heart of my heart and soul of my soul?”

She could have bitten out her tongue as soon as the words were spoken.

He regarded her from beneath half-closed eyelids.

“I believe,” he said, “I might feel my heart beat faster and my soul stir to life from its long-dormant state.”

She bit her lip.

“Or I might also,” he said, moving his head a little closer to hers so that for one startled moment she thought he intended to kiss her, “claim to have won my wager.”

She smiled again. He held his composure for a moment longer, and then he smiled too-slowly and lazily.

“But you are not going to say it?” he asked her.

“I am not,” she agreed.

“Not yet,” he said. “But you will.”

She laughed softly. No man had ever flirted with her. She had never flirted with any man. Until she met Lord Montford, that was. And why did it happen with him-every time they met? Why did he do it? Why did she allow it?

His gaze had moved beyond her again; and he raised his hand once more and executed a mock salute and a half-wave with it before turning his attention back to her.

“The esteemed Sir Clarence Forester,” he explained, “and his even more esteemed mama. They are no longer coming this way, you will be pleased to know. Probably they saw that Charlotte was not here and lost interest. They will doubtless search for her elsewhere in the garden and on the water-a sad waste of time, of course, as she is not here.”

“They have been here all afternoon,” she said.

They had pointedly avoided an introduction to Meg, Stephen, and her. Katherine had been made to feel as if going walking in Hyde Park with Miss Wrayburn the other day really had been a wicked impropriety. It was quite ridiculous. Even Elliott had said so, and he knew about such things.

“Have they?” he said. “That must have been pleasant for all the other guests.”

“You really do not like them, do you?” she said. “And yet they are your aunt and your cousin?”