He did not go unnoticed, as he had hoped he might. Neither did Nora. Several strangers stopped to ask them how they did, to assure them that the accident had not been their fault, to welcome them to the village celebrations, to exhort them to enjoy the day.
But how could they even begin to do that? They were silent and awkward together. They both smiled and spoke to strangers yet did neither to each other. The day stretched endlessly ahead. And the night…Well, he would think of the night when it came. Had he really told her she could take the floor? He resented the fact that she had aroused such spiteful bad manners in him.
Nora! He could still scarcely believe it was really she at his side. He turned his head to look at her and was surprised that he had even recognized her. She was no longer pretty and sparkling with exuberance. She was…But he did not want to think of her as beautiful. His jaw hardened, and he looked away.
She stopped to examine the embroidery and lace the ladies of the church had made to raise funds for repairs to the bell tower while he talked with the ladies. He bought a linen handkerchief that just happened to have his initial embroidered in one corner, and he bought a lace-edged handkerchief for Nora despite her look of alarm and assurance that she did not need it.
The ladies, though, smiled from one to the other of them, clearly charmed.
“You take it, love,” one of them said. “When your husband wants to buy you gifts, you take them and run.”
Both Richard and Nora joined the laughter of the ladies.
“You really ought not to have done that,” she said softly but sharply as they moved away. “I do not want anything from you.”
“It was not a gift for you,” he said curtly. “It is a gift for them. They have put a great deal of time and effort into producing beautiful items that will benefit only the church.”
“You might have made a simple donation, then,” she told him.
“But that would not have been the point at all,” he said.
She folded the handkerchief and put it into her reticule without another word-not even a thank-you-while he frowned in irritation at the top of her bonnet. And then both of them lifted their heads to smile at an elderly couple who hoped they had not sustained any injuries in this morning’s accident.
At another stall Richard hurled balls at a large cabbage precariously balanced on a stand, failed to knock it down with the first set of three, succeeded with the second ball of the next set, and presented the prize length of ribbon to a small girl who was standing beside him, clapping her hands and laughing.
Nora was doing the same two things, he noticed when it was already too late to give the ribbon to her.
“Oh, that was good of you,” she said as the child went darting off with her treasure. “She was thrilled.”
“I had no personal use for the ribbon,” he told her. “Though I might, I suppose, have tied it about my hat and beneath my chin to prevent it from blowing away in the wind.”
“It would have looked a mite eccentric,” she said. “Especially as it was pink.”
“And there is no wind,” he added.
For an unguarded moment they smiled into each other’s eyes as they shared the silly joke. And for that same moment he saw traces of the old Nora in her face. And then they both sobered and turned away in what he guessed was mutual embarrassment.
They paused at the booth of an artist who was sketching portraits in charcoal and doing quite a passable job of it.
“And you, too, ma’am?” he said, looking up at Nora and then at Richard. “Let me sketch your lovely lady, sir. It will be something you will treasure for a lifetime, I promise you.”
“Oh no, really-” Nora turned away.
“Oh, go on, mum,” someone else urged. “It will be something to remember Wimbury by.”
“The day both of you might have got yourselves killed but didn’t,” someone else added.
Other people lent their voices to persuade her, all of them good-natured and jocular. She looked at Richard, her teeth sinking into her lower lip.
“I think,” he said, opening his purse again, “you had better sit for your portrait.”
“Take your bonnet off, if you will, ma’am,” the artist said. “Your hair is too lovely to hide.”
Her fair hair gleamed smooth in the sunlight as she sat very still and self-conscious-though she did relax somewhat after a while as the crowd gathered about spoke with her and teased first a smile and then a laugh from her.
Richard watched in silence. She was indeed lovely. Perhaps lovelier than she had been. It was an odd feeling, gazing at a stranger and yet feeling the pull of familiarity-and hurt and resentment and even hatred. He had thought all those sharp, negative feelings long gone. But they had come rushing back at the mere sight of her, as if the old wounds had not healed at all but had merely festered beneath the surface of his consciousness.
Everyone had to gather about the finished portrait and give an opinion as to whether it was a good likeness or not. Most agreed that it was. Finally the artist handed it to Richard.
Her smile fairly lit up the paper. She looked younger. She looked like the Nora he had known ten years ago.
“It is nothing like me,” she said after they had moved out of earshot of the artist, who was busy persuading someone else to pay his fee. “It grossly flatters me, as of course it is meant to do. He cannot have his subjects demanding their money back, after all, can he?”
“It does not flatter you,” he said as he rolled up the picture and clasped it in his hand. “It considerably underestimates you, in fact.”
She looked up into his face, startled. But he had spoken curtly, even coldly, he realized. If she had been fishing for a compliment from him, she had had it. The leftover smile from her sitting faded, and she turned away. And he felt badly. There had been no need for that tone of voice. She had not asked to have her portrait done.
“You must find somewhere to dispose of it,” she said. “You wasted your money.”
“That is for me to decide,” he said. “It was my money to waste.”
“So it was,” she said.
They were like a couple of children, irritable and squabbling over nothing.
They moved on to watch a fast-talking man perform a series of tricks with a deck of cards that looked as greasy as his hair. But he was good.
“Oh, how did he do that?” Nora asked after one particularly clever sleight of hand. And when she looked up at Richard, he could see that her cheeks were flushed from the heat of the sun despite the shade of her bonnet brim.
She looked as if she were actually enjoying herself, he thought. And he? The festive atmosphere was admittedly hard to resist. He would have enjoyed the day thoroughly if he had been stranded here alone. Or would he? Would he even be out here in the sunshine, participating in all the absurd pleasures of a country fair, if he were alone?
His fingers closed a little more tightly about the charcoal drawing.
When they moved on she laughed outright at the antics of a juggler dressed like a medieval jester. So did everyone else who was crowded about the man. And so, despite himself, did Richard. He looked down at Nora at the very moment she looked up at him, and suddenly the sun seemed very bright and very hot. They both looked away without speaking.
At the next booth a woman was loudly proclaiming to all who would listen that each stone in the jewelry she was selling was precious and priceless.
“But I’ll let you have one of those for a bargain, guv,” she told Richard when Nora ran her hands through the hanging strings of brightly colored beads. “Special for today, even though they are real, genuine pearls. Every one of ’em.”