Keeping the Castle - By Patrice Kindl Page 0,55

he stammered. “You were—I suppose you were surprised to hear of it?”

“I was,” I acknowledged, “but this is the last time we should speak of it. You are to wed Charity, which means we will be brother and sister. I would not wish to be at odds with such a close relative.”

He bent forward to say in a lower tone, “I beg of you to believe me that I wished to address you, to ask you to do me the honor of becoming my wife. If I had had the freedom of choice! Then you may be certain—”

“Please,” I said. “Say no more about it. It is in the past, and you must look to the future.”

He scowled at this reminder. “Well do I know it. Fear not, I will pay for having courted you more assiduously than I did Charity. She would not have been so kind as you have just been. I know the character of the woman I will wed.”

In fact, I doubted this, but he would learn.

I reflected that had he married for attraction alone he could have had me. Had he married for money alone, he could have had Miss Vincy. Instead he had chosen a compromise between the two and had ended up with Miss Charity Winthrop.

I did not think he could have done worse for himself if he’d tried.

16

WALKING FROM CROOKED CASTLE to Gudgeon Park on a fine day when there is no fear of soiling one’s stockings, it is faster and more pleasant to use the footpath across Farmer Macomb’s land rather than the high road. One therefore approaches Gudgeon Park from the rear instead of the front.

It was thus that I witnessed Mr. Fredericks assisting a heavily veiled lady to climb a stile over a fence in a surreptitious manner. That is to say, Mr. Fredericks was behaving in a calm and collected way, but the lady cast hunted looks over her shoulder as though pursued by footpads or murderers. Although I could not see her face, I had little doubt of her identity. Shrouding her head and shoulders was the fine lace shawl Miss Vincy had been wearing on our first acquaintance, and unless her maid had chosen this moment to make off with both Mr. Fredericks and her mistress’s lace mantilla, I could not help but feel that this was the lady herself.

That this was an elopement seemed obvious. Not only the haste and secrecy of this back-door exit from the Park grounds convinced me, but the fact that Mr. Fredericks was carrying a bulging satchel, no doubt filled with clothing and other oddments thought necessary for their flight.

Well!

As the stile Mr. Fredericks and Miss Vincy were negotiating led to a path in full view of the one on which I stood, I hastily retreated to a little wood some hundred feet away where I would not be seen. I picked Fido up in my arms and slipped behind a massive old oak to watch them as they passed.

I could not hear what they said to one another, beyond that the lady asked several anxious questions, which were answered by the gentleman in a reassuring tone. She was agitated, while he was soothing.

Perhaps you think it wrong that I should spy on them in this way, but I was not equal to pursuing any other course at the moment. At the sight of these two stealing off together, I felt as though I had been kicked in the midsection by a draft horse. I clutched my dog so tightly that he whined and looked up at me. I kissed his forehead in apology and loosened my grip, bracing myself against the possibility that I might scream or fall upon the ground.

It would have been quite reasonable to have felt a great deal of curiosity at this method of beginning a new life together—why should Mr. Fredericks not have applied to his old friend Mr. Vincy for permission to marry his daughter in the usual way?—but any interest I might have felt in this question was swamped by another, different sensation.

I was furious.

The pain and anger that had swept across me at Lord Boring’s defection were as nothing compared with my feelings now. For months I had plotted and schemed to marry the Baron. And for months Mr. Fredericks had annoyed and exasperated me beyond measure. Even in recent weeks when I had come almost to like the man, I had had no feelings for him beyond friendship. Nor had