Ash grinned. “Whatever you say, Lord Kilgannon.” He jerked Mr. Reardon up by his collar, dragged him off the dance floor, and over to the chairs lining the wall. He set the dance master on the chair Kit indicated, then sat down beside him.
Holding his hand over his eye, Reardon attempted to make a run for the door, but Ash caught him by the coattails and pulled him back onto the chair. “I wouldn’t if I were you,” he warned. “You’re skating on very thin ice already. Now, sit still and keep your mouth shut.”
Kit walked over to Mariah, gently wiped her tears away with the pad of his thumb, and then bowed at the waist and held out his hand. “May I have the pleasure of this dance, Miss Shaughnessy?”
She shook her head. “I can’t dance. I don’t know how.”
“Yes, you do,” he insisted gently. “All it takes is the right partner.” He put his hand on her waist, gently pulled her forward, and took her hand in his. “Gather your skirt in your hand and spread it out like a fan.” He shook his head at her first attempt and praised her on her second. “There, like that. That’s right.” He turned to Dalton and nodded. “I’ll lead you,” he promised. “All you have to do is take a deep breath, look me in the eye, listen to the rhythm of the music, and step …” Kit stepped into the dance, and Mariah followed, and suddenly, as if by magic, she was dancing. Flying. Waltzing around the room.
They waltzed around the room until Mariah was breathless and giddy with excitement and Dalton was tired of playing. When the music stopped, Kit bowed to her, and Mariah sank down into a graceful curtsy.
“Genuflecting, my lady?” Kit teased.
“No.” She looked at him with joyous wonder. “Simply honoring a true master of the dance.”
“All it takes is the right partner.” He offered her his hand and helped her up, then walked with her over to the dance master.
“That, Mr. Reardon, is how a gentleman teaches a young lady to dance. And as this young lady has proved to be such an accomplished dancer, I don’t believe we require your services. Good day.”
“What about the fee? And my eye?” Mr. Reardon demanded.
Kit smiled. “I don’t believe you should pay me a fee for blackening your eye. It was my pleasure to do so.”
“I recommend ice for the first day.” Ash offered his opinion to the dance master. “And the application of leeches thereafter.”
“Amateurish accompaniment, my arse!” From behind the pianoforte, Dalton launched into a stylish performance of Frederic Chopin’s Concerto for the Piano in E Minor.
“And I suggest you offer Mr. Mirrant your apologies on your way out,” Ash offered another helpful opinion. “Or you may find your other eye blackened before he finishes this concerto.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The lark now leaves his wat’ry nest
And climbing shakes his dewy wings.
—SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT, 1606–1668
SWANSLEA PARK
NORTHAMPTONSHIRE, ENGLAND
Two days later
“We’ve another letter from Kit,” Wren announced as Drew entered the Dowager Cottage where Wren kept her studio. If she was working and he was in the neighborhood of the cottage, Drew always made it a point to join her for tea. “Newberry just sent it over. It arrived with the afternoon post.”
“Have you opened it?” he asked as he walked over to the easel by her worktable.
“No.” She shook her head. “I’ve been tempted, but I hadn’t yet reached a stopping point.” Her work as a botanical and zoological illustrator was exacting, and she prided herself on the quality of her drawings and paintings. “It’s on the table by the door. Give me a second. I’ve almost reached a stopping point.”
Drew retrieved the letter, then walked over to view her progress. “Very nice.” He complimented her renderings of the front, back, side, and cross-section views of one of a species of butterflies found on the island of Gibraltar.
“I like it,” Wren murmured.
“Enough to start work on a miniature of it on silk?”
Wren pursed her lips in thought. “I’m not sure. I may just wait and surprise you.”
Drew leered at her. Kathryn had been surprising him with tiny works of art painted on her silk stockings for nineteen years, and her surprises never failed to excite and arouse him. “I’ll look forward to it.” He walked to the tea table, poured the tea, and arranged Kathryn’s favorite sandwiches on her plate. “Done yet?”
Wren nodded. “All done.” She dropped her brush in a jar of cleaner, cleaned her hands, removed her painter’s smock, and smoothed her hair into place. She knew she smelled of perfume and turpentine, but Drew had never seemed to mind.
She sat down on the small love seat beside him and accepted the plate he handed her. Like their morning rides, this was a ritual they observed while at Swanslea Park, and everyone in the household knew that interruptions were forbidden except in the case of an emergency.
“Well, go on,” she urged. “Open it.”
“Finish your tea like a good little artist and I will.” He leaned over and kissed her soundly. “I venture to say the boy probably wasn’t too pleased to receive my letter. It will be interesting to see how he responds.”
Drew devoured three tiny sandwiches, drank his tea, and bit the head off a gingerbread boy before he set his plate aside and picked up the letter and broke the wax seal.
It was the Ramsey seal once again, and Drew smiled in spite of himself.
“I’m being very patient,” Wren announced. “But I won’t put up with this deliberate dawdling much longer. Read it!”
13 April 1838
Telamor Castle
Inismorn, Ireland
Dear Papa, Mama, and sisters,
I hope this letter finds you well. I haven’t had time yet to receive your post and this letter may cross it along the way, but I felt an urgent necessity to let you know that I have decided to keep Miss Shaughnessy.
Wren frowned. “That’s not a good sign.”
Drew met her gaze. “I think it’s a very good sign,” he disagreed. “It means he’s accepting the responsibility he inherited along with the title.”
“If he’s decided to keep her, there’s an emotional attachment already,” Wren fretted. “And you know how hard it is for Kit to let go of anything he becomes attached to. What will he do when she comes out and someone else offers for her?”
I’ve arranged for a dressmaker and a lady’s maid and a dancing teacher to join us here at Telamor, for we have decided to prepare Miss Shaughnessy for her presentation before we leave for Swanslea Park.
I hope my change of heart has not adversely affected your schedule, and I offer my sincerest apologies if it has done so. But I have come to realize that Miss Shaughnessy is my responsibility, and I did you and Mama and Iris and Kate a great disservice in asking you to shoulder it for me.
Miss Shaughnessy is a very quick learner, and with Everleigh and Mirrant’s help and knowledge, I am certain that she will be most presentable.
My love to you all,
Kit.
“Oh, my stars,” Wren said. “Ally and Iris and you and Kate and I have been laboring for months to prepare Iris. And Kit thinks he and Ashford and Dalton are going to do it in three weeks? He must have lost the good sense he was born with.”
“Or his heart,” Drew murmured. He folded the letter. “He made the right choice.”
“For us or for him?”
Drew glanced down at his wife and saw that she was crying. “Oh, Kathryn, my love …”
“He’s grown up, Drew,” she wept. “Our precious little boy is grown. Nothing will ever be the same.”
“No,” he said gently, pressing his lips to her soft hair. “I don’t suppose it will. But we always knew it had to happen someday.”
“It’s happening too soon.” She looked up at Drew. “I told you not to let him go to Ireland. I was afraid we would lose him if you let him go.”
“And I was afraid we would lose him
if I didn’t,” he admitted. “We always knew the day would come. This is the way it’s supposed to be. We gave him wings so he could fly. And if everything works out the way it should, one day Kit will present us with another precious little boy to love.”
“And then I shall be a grandmother.” Wren looked up at him and cried even harder.
“The grandest,” he pronounced, with more than a touch of humor in his voice.
She glanced up at him between sniffles. “I fail to see what’s so amusing.”
Drew shrugged. “I was thinking that I’ve never been seduced by a grandmother.”
Wren let out a sigh of exasperation. “Is that all you can think about?”
Drew nodded and gave her a boyish grin. “It is when I’m with you.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, 1564–1616
Her lessons began in earnest the day after the dance master departed.
From Lord Everleigh, Mariah learned the conventions of English society. Mariah struggled to memorize Debrett’s and the rules governing every aspect of life in London society. She practiced conversation and forms of address, curtsies, and the all-important rules of behavior, including those concerning her presentation at the drawing room at St. James’s Palace where she would make her curtsy to the queen.
Lord Everleigh had a gift for remembering details, the things a hostess and wife was expected to know, from the wines to serve with dinner to the proper selection of the gentleman’s cigars. He was an excellent arbiter of all that was proper and in good taste, and he taught her as much about the world as he knew it as she could absorb. There were rules and etiquette for every aspect of English society, and Lord Everleigh knew them all.
Lord Everleigh and Ford began instruction in table manners, the proper way to lay a tea table, how to pour, and how to engage in small talk. Ford generally instructed while Lord Everleigh took the opportunity to engage Mariah in the small talk, regaling her with the latest bits of gossip and personal tidbits about members of the peerage, testing her powers of recall. He made it into a game, trying to trick her by using the wrong names or improper titles or forms of address, but Mariah persisted, refusing to be daunted.
Lord Everleigh offered his bits of wisdom to Mariah and she soaked up the knowledge like a sponge. She likened it to learning the catechism she had learned at the convent, where the rules of society were every bit as strict as anything she might find in London.
From Dalton Mirrant, she gained a sense of style and of polish. He was a charming companion, intelligent, witty, entertaining. He had a fine singing voice and an ear for music and languages. He played the pianoforte like a dream and decided to teach Mariah the basics as well as all of the songs she needed to know in order to mix with other young people on musicale evenings. He told her stories and jokes and conversed with her in French and Italian, allowing her to practice the languages she had learned at school, adding a smattering of German to her repertoire, and patiently correcting her pronunciation and refining her accents.
Lord Everleigh could not distinguish colors, while Dalton had a flair for it, so Dalton began consulting with the dressmaker in the cut and color of Mariah’s wardrobe, but did not attend the fittings since he was neither her guardian nor her betrothed.
Dalton had to console himself with the knowledge that he would be allowed to view the wardrobe he had had a hand in creating as she made use of it during the season.
As her guardian, Kit could attend her fittings, but he didn’t. Watching her being fitted for her new wardrobe would have been sheer torture for Kit, who was finding it hard to keep a correct posture and distance during her dancing lessons.
From Kit, Mariah learned confidence. The confidence of knowing she was loved. He hadn’t yet said it to her aloud, but Mariah knew it. She felt it in his touch, in his voice, in the way he looked at her, and in the way he looked out for her. Kit wasn’t as smooth a talker as Dalton or as stern a taskmaster as Lord Everleigh, but he was by far her greatest teacher. She endured the long days of endless fittings, recitation, practice, and drilling in order to share her leisure time with Kit.
With Kit, she danced and painted and explored Telamor Castle and its surroundings. With Kit she shared her dreams and learned of his. He told her of his plans to build a stable at Telamor and to raise Thoroughbreds. She told him of her dream to construct a three-foot-tall wedding cake covered in pink rosebuds. Together, they sketched designs for the stables and the grounds. They mixed the perfect shade of pink for candy rosebuds and the perfect colors for racing silks and selected the names for the generations of horses that would be born at Telamor Stables.
Kit shared his childhood memories and gave Mariah the childhood she had missed. He allowed her to play and helped her remember the childish pursuits she had long since put away. And there seemed to be nothing he wouldn’t do to please her. They walked along the beach, collecting shells and playing tag with the waves. They gathered wildflowers on the moor and sat for hours talking while they wove wildflower garlands for her hair. He taught her to sketch and to paint with watercolors.
Kit was a highly skilled watercolorist. And it only stood to reason that he would have the knowledge, if not the talent, after having grown up in Wren’s studio. But he had talent to go along with the knowledge. He was an artist.
Every afternoon he and Mariah set off to sketch and paint. Mariah’s talent was in landscapes, while Kit’s was as a gifted portraiture artist for both humans and animals. Only a portion of the art lessons was given over to art. The rest of the time was spent in the serious pursuit of play, but Kit made sure Mariah had a box of paints and brushes, a palette, a smock, an easel, paper or canvas, and a minimum of instruction. But the art lessons gave them a reason to escape from the other lessons and concerns of the castle and to run wild, exploring the estate.
Three days after the departure of the dance master, Mariah and Kit set off to paint and to explore the castle grounds. They were playing hide-and-seek in the maze, stealing kisses behind the statuary when all at once Mariah rounded a corner and stumbled out of the maze at the opposite end of the garden from where they started. There, in the far corner of the original garden, was a stone wall over six feet tall with an arched door set into the wall.
“Look, Kit.” Mariah set her paints and easel down and hurried to the wooden door.
“What is it?” he asked.
“My garden,” she answered.
“Yours?”
Mariah blushed. “Well, it’s really yours because the castle belongs to you, but I remember when I was a little girl, I used to play in this garden. My mother had the stonemasons and the gardeners build it for me.”
Kit was puzzled. “Why?”
Mariah laughed. “Because I could get out of the big one. I could climb over the walls or simply unlatch the gate and walk away. She built this one for me so I would be safe.” She reached for the door handle and pushed. “It’s locked.”
She was so disappointed that Kit pulled out his key ring and handed to her. “Try these.”
Mariah took the keys from him and inserted them, one by one, until she reached the key that unlocked the door. She returned his key ring to him, then pushed the door to the garden open.
The garden inside was lush, slightly overgrown, and because the weather had been so mild, in early bloom. The air in the enclosed garden was filled with the salt-air tang of the sea and the heady scent of roses and gillyflowers and lilies—none of them hothouse varieties, but flowers that grew and had grown on the estate for years. At one end of the garden was a child-size cottage complete with a bricked walkway and a sandbox. And at the other end beneath the limbs of a massive shade tree hung a swing.
It was a child’s paradise of a garden, and when Kit looked at it, his mind filled with pictures of children playing here. Not just one lonely little girl, but three or four—all with dark hair and blue eyes like their mother.
>
Their mother.
He glanced over at Mariah. “I never forgot that evening.”
Puzzled, Mariah frowned. “What evening?”
“The evening I met you,” he said. “In the tower. I remembered every detail of that night.”
Mariah laughed. “Except my name and my face.”
“The only time I got a proper look at your face was when I kissed you,” he said. “And your eyes were closed. All I knew was pale complexion, dark lashes, dark hair, and soft lips. And you never told me your name. But for all these years, you’ve been my little girl in the tower.”
“Yet you didn’t recognize me.”
The corners of Kit’s eyes crinkled when he smiled and a dimple appeared in one cheek. “You’ve changed a bit.” He stole a peek at her bosom.
“So have you,” she replied. “You’re a much better kisser now.”
“I’ve had more practice,” he admitted. “You were the first girl I ever kissed.”
“You’re the only boy I’ve ever kissed,” she said softly.
“I’m glad,” Kit told her. “Because I meant what I said when I promised to marry you. I never forgot that I made that promise. I dreamed about you and the tower. I dreamed of rescuing you and marrying you. I didn’t know your name, but I’ve carried a memory of you in my heart ever since.”
“I didn’t recognize you, either—until Mr. Mirrant called you Kit.”
“Then, I’m forgiven?” he asked.
“Always.” Her heart overflowing with emotion, Mariah brushed at the tears brimming in her eyes and focused her attention on the swing in order to keep from crying.
Kit leaned over and brushed her lips with his. “I believe that’s reason to celebrate,” he murmured, reaching over and gently caressing her cheek with the palm of his hand. A strand of her hair was caught on her eyelashes, and he carefully pulled it free.