There was worse, however. He still wanted desperately to kiss her again. He wanted more than that. She’d set him afire, as he hadn’t been for years. If she felt nothing for him, his prospects were melancholy. The situation seemed all difficulties and little hope.
When he finally made his way down the stream bank, he found her with Tom, admiring a small cascade in the stream. She did not look at him, and Arthur’s spirits sank further. “I meant no insult,” he murmured as they walked back toward the carriage.
“We will not speak of it again,” she snapped and hastened away.
He could only follow.
At Tom’s urging they went on to Penn Ponds, two small lakes in the middle of the park with water birds nesting in the reed beds and groves of massive oak trees nearby.
“This old fellow’s been through a bit,” said Tom, running his fingers over a lightning scar in a huge oak’s bark. “How old do you reckon it is?” he asked Arthur.
“Four or five hundred years, I expect,” he replied absently.
“Here before Mr. Shakespeare then?”
“I would say so. It might have witnessed the Wars of the Roses.”
“Does England have fighting flowers then?” Teresa heard the anger in her voice when she spoke, but she couldn’t help it. She was furious—with the earl, with the world, but mostly with herself. How she had wanted to kiss him! He hadn’t been wrong. Pressed against him, feeling the lean length of his body on hers, she had longed to do more than that. She was still flushed with desire. The mere touch of his lips to hers had told her that lovemaking would be intoxicating with this peligroso earl. Intoxicating and disastrous. It would wreak havoc in her safe, settled life. This was very bad.
“Warring roses, battles among the bluebells,” said Lord Macklin.
Was he joking about it?
“Battles?” asked Tom.
As of course he would, after that remark. And of course he would look from Macklin to her and back again, wondering. Teresa imagined pushing them both into the stream and leaving them to drip their way back to the carriage. Boots full of water, squelching. Hair streaming onto damp and bewildered faces. An image muy agradable. But then Tom would want to know why she had done that.
“A duel at least,” said the earl.
What was he going to say?
“I came upon one, in a bluebell wood a bit like this, when I was nineteen,” he continued. “I’d almost forgotten.” He glanced at Teresa as if she’d made him remember.
“With pistols?” asked Tom.
Naturally he would want all the gory details. Men loved such things. Idiotas.
“Swords,” replied the earl. “Though neither of the fellows really knew how to use them. They were dancing about, waving cavalry sabers like carriage whips. I’ve always wondered where they got the weapons. Because those two were definitely not army officers.”
Yes, that was the important thing, thought Teresa. Where had the sabers come from?
“Their seconds were twittering about in the most distracting way. Obviously they’d never been present at a fight before, but they all looked even younger than I was. I never learned their names.”
“Oh, everyone didn’t pause to exchange bows and visiting cards?” Teresa asked.
Her companions looked at her. “I was on horseback,” said the earl, as if this actually answered her question.
A thread of amusement snaked through her anger.
“What was the affair about?” asked Tom.
“From the taunting, I gathered that the taller one had compared the other’s new hat to an antique chimney pot.”
And so the young man had to skewer him, Teresa thought. Of course that made sense. None. At all.
“Would that be a matter of honor?” Tom asked. “Don’t seem so to me.”
“Well, I didn’t see the hat,” replied Lord Macklin.
Teresa burst out laughing. “Imbéciles,” she said. Their blank looks made her snort. “I don’t suppose you tried to stop them from hurting each other.”
“You can’t interfere in a duel,” said Tom.
“Can’t? I certainly would,” she replied.
Lord Macklin gave her a half smile. “When they noticed me watching, they all ran off.”
“That is something at least.”
“I did worry that one of the combatants might stab himself in the leg with a saber.”
“You should have taken them away.”
They both looked genuinely shocked. “He couldn’t do that,” said Tom.
“Because it would be a great insult?” asked Teresa.
Tom nodded as the earl said, “And I hadn’t the assurance or presence of mind at that age to intervene. I would now, as you say.”
His gaze swept over her like warm sunshine after a chill. A sharp yearning filled Teresa. Was it really so impossible? Immediately, a flood of memories assured her that it was. Hadn’t she learned? Shaking her head, she turned away, and suppressed her emotions, as she knew so well how to do. She would simply make sure she was never alone with him again. “We are wasting time,” she said. “We are here to look for Maria.”
“Right,” said Tom. “Where to next, my lord?”
As if he was the only one to ask. As if no one else could possibly be in charge.
“We will drive out through a different gate and continue our inquiries on the other side of the park,” the earl replied.
He spoke with an air of command that was so familiar to Teresa. He didn’t ask for other opinions. The idea didn’t occur. Teresa wondered what it would be like to be a wealthy, high-born man whose orders were obeyed with deference? Did they even notice the bowing and scraping, the way people jumped to comply? Or was it simply the nature of their world, the atmosphere in which they moved?
They returned to the carriage and drove on, passing more lovely vistas. Teresa drank them in. It had been a long time since she’d walked in a forest, and who knew when she would again. Wild landscapes were not part of her life now. True, commented a cutting inner voice. Nor were many unpleasant things that she’d endured and regretted.
She gave herself a mental shake. She would speak to Mr. Dolan as soon as she got home and engage him to remove the cobbles. Then she would plant a raft of flowers in her small space, and she would be very grateful to have them.
They continued their stop-and-start journey, with no luck in their inquiries until they reached a small inn on the far side of Richmond. There, the innkeeper remembered Maria when shown her likeness. “Yes, my lord,” he said to Lord Macklin. “She was here with a fashionable gentleman like yourself.”