“Do you think girls are silly?” she asked Andrew after the introductions had been made and Lilias was ushering the marquess to a seat close to the fire.
Andrew looked taken aback. “Not all of them,” he said. “Only some. But then, there are some silly boys, too.”
“Mrs. Crawford’s sons think girls are silly,” Dora said.
“They would,” Andrew said with undisguised contempt.
“And do you squeal and quarrel all the time and run to your mama with tales?” Dora asked Megan.
Megan giggled.
“Dora,” her father said sharply, “watch your manners.”
“Because the children at the rectory do,” Dora added.
“We have no mama to run to,” Megan said. “And when Drew and I quarrel, we go outside and fight it out where Lilias cannot hear us and interfere.” She giggled again. “We have been gathering holly. It is all wet and prickly. But there are so many berries! Do you want to see it?
You may take your coat off and put on one of my pinafores if you wish.”
“Megan,” Lilias said, her voice agonized. One of Megan’s faded pinafores on Lady Dora West?
“What is the holly for?” Dora asked. “And, yes, please.” She looked at her father on an afterthought. “May I, Papa? Where did you find it? I wish I could have come with you.”
“No, you don’t,” Andrew said. “My fingers look like one of Miss Pierce’s pincushions. We found some mistletoe too. It is in the kitchen. Come and look.”
Lilias found herself suddenly seated opposite the marquess in the small and empty parlor, the object of his silent scrutiny. She jumped to her feet again.
“May I offer you tea?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “That is not necessary. We had tea at the rectory not half an hour since.”
She flushed. “I am afraid I have nothing else to offer,” she said.
“Sit down,” he said. He looked over his shoulder into the kitchen, where the voices of the children mingled. “One of my men has been sent into town for your brother’s watch, among other things. I shall have it delivered tomorrow.”
Lilias felt herself flush even more deeply. “You are kind,” she said.
“And thank you for the other things.”
More than ever she felt that she had begged from him and had been given charity. There was no unbending in his manner, not the merest hint of a smile on his lips or in his eyes. He was regarding her with what looked uncomfortably like scorn.
“Dora is lonely,” he said. “She has never had children to play with.
Until less than a year ago she lived with her grandparents.”
Lilias did not reply. She could think of nothing to say.
“Unfortunately,” he said, “when she does find playmates, she demands perfection. She wants them to be the sort of friends she would like to have. I am afraid our visits this afternoon have not been a great success.”
Lilias smiled fleetingly.
“Look, Papa.” Dora was back in the room, holding up one small index finger for her father’s inspection. A tiny globe of blood formed on its tip. “I pricked myself.” She put the finger in her mouth even as the marquess reached into a pocket for a handkerchief. “Megan and Andrew are going to put the holly all about the house for Christmas. May I stay and watch?”
“It is time to go home,” he said.
“But I don’t want to go home,” she said, her lower lip protruding beyond the upper one. “I want to stay and watch.”
“We shall gather holly too, shall we?” he asked. “And decorate our house with it?”
“But it will be no fun,” she said mulishly, “just you and me. I want to watch Megan and Andrew. And I want to watch Andrew carve the Nativity scene he is making. We don’t have a Nativity scene, do we?”
“No,” he said, getting to his feet, impatience showing itself in every line of his body, Lilias thought as she too rose from her chair, “we don’t have a Nativity scene, Dora. Take off the pinafore now. I shall help you on with your cloak and bonnet.”
“They have mistletoe, Papa,” Dora said, making no attempt to undo the strings of her pinafore. “They hang it up and kiss under it. Is that not silly?”
“Yes,” he said, undoing the strings for her, “very silly.”
“Can we have some, Papa?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “We will find some tomorrow.”
“But it will be no fun,” she said again.
“We will come with you,” Megan offered, glancing at her brother. “Won’t we, Drew? We know all the best places to look. Or rather, Lilias does, and she showed us today. Shall we come with you?”
The child looked almost pretty for a moment, Lilias thought, as her face lit up with eagerness. “Yes, you come too,” she said. “We will need ever so much holly because our house is much bigger than yours. Isn’t it, Papa? And mistletoe for every room. And Andrew can carve a Nativity scene just for me.”
“No,” Andrew said, “there will not be time. But I will bring the shepherd with me to show you. It will be finished by tomorrow.”
Lilias found herself suddenly gazing into the marquess’s eyes across the heads of the children and feeling decidedly uncomfortable. His eyes were cold and penetrating. And for the first time there was a half-smile on his lips. But she wanted to shiver. The smile had nothing to do with either amusement or friendship.
“Well, Miss Angrove,” he said, “it would be quite too bad if you were the only one to miss this merry outing. I shall send my carriage for the three of you after luncheon tomorrow and we will all go holly gathering together. You will do us the honor of taking tea with us afterward.”
He did not ask questions, Lilias noticed. He did not even make statements. He gave commands. Commands that she would dearly have liked to refuse to comply with, for if one thing was becoming clear to her mind, it was that he disliked her. Quite intensely. Perhaps it was her temerity in reminding him of a long-forgotten debt that had done it. She could think of no other reason for his hostility. But it was there nonetheless.
And she was glad suddenly that he had come home, glad that she had seen what he had become, glad that she could put to rest finally a dream and an attachment that had clung stubbornly long after he had left in such a hurry the very day after they had spent two hours together strolling the grounds of his home, hand in hand, looking at the flowers of spring and planning what they would do during the summer.
She was glad he had come back, for he no longer lived, that gentle and sunny-natured young man whom she had loved. He was dead as surely as his older brother was dead. As surely as Philip was dead. He had died six years before. She had just not known it.
He was holding her eyes with his own. He was obviously waiting for an answer, though he had asked no question. And how could she answer as she wished to do when there were three children standing between them, all eagerly anticipating the treat that the morrow would bring?
“Thank you, my lord,” she said. “That would be very pleasant.”
Very pleasant indeed, the Marquess of Bedford was thinking the following afternoon as the five of them descended the steps of his house and set off past the formal gardens and the lawns and orchards to the trees and the lake and the hill and eventually the holly bushes.
She was wearing a cloak that looked altogether too thin for the weather.
And beneath it he could see the same wool dress she had worn for her first interview with him. Except that he had realized the day before that it could not, after all, be her oldest gown. The cotton dress she had worn when he and Dora had called upon her was so faded that it was difficult to tell exactly what its original color had been.
The children were striding along ahead, one Angove on each side of Dora, Megan holding her hand. Dora had had a hard time getting to sleep the night before. He had sat with her, as he had each night since their coming into the country, until she fell asleep. He had sat there for almost an hour.