A Fresh Perspective, A Regency Romance (11 page)

When they rode on, the steeply wooded fellsides closing in on the boulder strewn track the closer they got to Derwentwater Lake, Lord Frost seemed bent on closing in on her as well, while Reed, if anything, became more distant. In brooding silence, he followed their amiable, chattering progress through a thickly wooded gorge, behind which rose the wild, grand hills referred to as the Jaws of Borrowdale.

It was a beautiful prospect, a sight worth seeing, as was Lodore Falls, though it had not been fed recently by rain and the water’s flow was considerably diminished.

Throughout their progress, Reed remained strangely quiet and distracted, allowing Megan’s attention and conversation to be monopolized by Lord Frost, whose companionship she tolerated more than enjoyed. Why had Reed come so far if he meant to be melancholy? Perhaps this was tame stuff to one so newly returned from a jaunt through the wonders of the Continent. Far more lowering, she must seem fairly tame stuff compared to Laura Frost. Perhaps Reed wished himself on the road to Grasmere.

In the end, it was a mundane encounter with three axemen that got Reed to talking. The axemen were loading two wagons with the long, stripped poles they had cut from the stunted oak boles of a coppice wood.

“Where is the wood bound?” he asked.

One of the men cheerfully explained that the first wagon was bound for a local bobbin mill, while the second was to be fired into charcoal by local colliers. Reed went on to ask several other questions, the gist of which was unintelligible to Megan because Frost, who was not in the least interested, other than to complain that the wood-filled wagons blocked their way, assumed she, too, could not be interested in the exchange. Rudely, he regaled Megan with a long-winded account of his appreciation of her fine seat horseback. In addition, he expounded at length on his own prowess at jumping a hunter when it came to walls and fences.

“I do love a good hunt!” To pass the wagons, he reined his horse off of the road and into the stunted oaks. “Do you care to accompany me, Miss Breech, on a fox hunt the locals form tomorrow? It promises to be ripping good sport over challenging ground. Giovanni and my sister are mad to go.”

Megan might have thought Reed paid them no mind had he not chosen to interrupt before she could so much as open her mouth.

“I would remind you, Megan, that you promised to go boating tomorrow.”

She turned in the saddle, mouth ajar. She had promised nothing of the kind.

He winked at her.

“Another time, perhaps,” said Frost.

“Perhaps,” she said, fervently hoping another time would not present itself. She did not like concocting falsehoods anymore than she liked to make sport of chasing down and killing animals. She reined her mount in beside Reed’s.

He seemed to welcome the opportunity to share a word. “Do you know I have always found the process by which coppicing is done to be rather repugnant?”

“There is something grotesque in the deformed stunting of so much potential,” she agreed.

He nodded. “Yes. I always saw that much of it. The negative. Nothing more. Today, I cannot help thinking that in these mangled limbs there is a positive to be seen.”

“A positive?”

“Yes. A beauty and hope, in the very persistence of these trees to continue to put forth growth despite having been cut off at the knees.”

Megan gave him a searching look. “You surprise me!”

“Do I?”

He smiled and though she steeled herself against it, his smile left her feeling like toffee inside, sweet, soft and gooey.

“I am pleased to hear I can still surprise you, Nutmeg. As many years as we have known one another I might have thought everything about me so well known as to have become completely predictable.”

She studied him thoughtfully. “Am I predictable?”

He looked surprised she should ask before shaking his head emphatically. “No, Megan.” Very softly, he said, “I rediscover you every day.”

With the cool, moist darkness of evening at their heels, the trio returned to Grasmere. The homey odors of cooked turnips, roasting fish and toasted cheese accosted them as they passed through the village. Reed was the first to dismount in the empty stableyard of the inn where they had rented their hacks.

“I shall just go in and settle our accounts for the horses,” he offered.

“By all means,” Frost interrupted another of his self-absorbed diatribes to nod agreeably.

Megan said nothing, but Reed heard her laugh at some witticism with which Frost enthralled her. The man was annoying, so great was the gift of his conversation. Reed turned as he reached the doorway to the inn.

Frost was helping Megan from her horse. A simple thing, really, but so familiar was their pose, it startled Reed. Megan had loosed her boot from the stirrup, unhooked her knee from the horn of the sidesaddle, and placed her hands on Frost’s shoulders. He reached up to grab her by the waist, swung her down from the horse’s back, turning with enough vigor to send her skirts whirling about his torso. For the fraction of an instant all the lines and planes lined up like the pieces of a puzzle, perfectly fitted. There, in front of Reed’s eyes were the lovers--his bronze lovers, come to life.

It crossed his mind that Megan might find Lord Frost attractive--that she saw in him the potential for passion. The idea angered and disappointed him in a way he could not remember feeling angry or disappointed in a long time.

“Do you care for him?” he asked Megan later, when Frost had parted with them at the top of the lane.

“He’s nice enough,” she said noncommittally.

Nice enough for what? Reed wondered.

“He is a prodigious conversationalist.” She laughed.

“As are you,” he said.

“Am I?”

“Mmm-Hmm,” he nodded. The only difference being he never tired of her conversation, whereas Lord Frost was a bloody great bore.

“How lovely it is here,” she whispered. “With nothing but the rustle of the wind in the trees and the distant hoot of an owl.”

He enjoyed the quiet for a moment before he murmured, “A blessed thing, silence.”

“Especially when one’s ears have been jangling all day with unwanted noise.”

She meant Lord Frost. He smiled.

“You have been very quiet today,” she said softly.

“Have I?”

“No more than a dozen words have passed your lips.”

He shrugged. “I am not a prodigious conversationalist.”

She smiled. He knew she smiled from the sound of her voice, though the light was too poor to see much of her expression. “Gabby you have never been,” she agreed.

“There is something I would like to talk to you about.”

“Mmm? What?” She stifled a yawn and slipped her hand into the crook of his arm.

It occurred to him that what he had to say was best discussed when she was fresh. “Tomorrow,” he said softly, patting her hand. “It can wait until tomorrow. Tonight, I prefer to enjoy the silence with you.”

Chapter Twelve

R
eed lowered his Claude glass, to relieve the ache in his arms. The watercolor was almost done. It did not perfectly mimic the landscape to be seen from the bank of Grasmere Lake, but that was entirely intended. His works were usually romantically embellished, according to the artistic license of Claude and Rosa. In this case, the mountains had been slightly rearranged, one hilltop made more rugged, another removed altogether. A clump of trees had been moved from the right side of the middle-ground of reality to the left foreground. Several figures, in addition to Gussie and Tom, had been added as points of interest, afloat and fishing. It was a fine, picturesque bit of work. Not the best Reed had ever done, and yet certainly not the worst. Strangely, he found himself dissatisfied--the work unfulfilling. What business had he moving mountains?

If he blinked, he saw in his mind’s eye rows of numbers that did not add up, taunting him. He tried not to blink. Instead, he feasted his gaze on the sumptuous banquet of beauty spread before him. As if the picturesque were a soporific, he found himself becalmed, thoughts and movements languid, even peaceful. All worries, for the moment, subsided--lost--or if not lost, made very small in the breathtaking sweep of a cerulean sky into which hillside after hillside folded itself, and all of it echoed perfectly in the still mirror of the lake.

For a moment, everything in life and death made sense. There was a pattern to be seen in nature, a grand scheme--the hand of God.

And yet, he sighed and raised his glass again, he could not find the grand scheme in his current situation. He could not rearrange his life as easily as he rearranged the mountains. Where was the pattern in the loss of all that had been certain and secure in his life? Could it be there was none to be seen, no pattern--just chaos?

A splash from the lake and a gleeful, “Aha!” from Tom as he assisted Gussie in reeling in a fish.

Megan looked up from her painting to smile at him. “I am so glad you arranged for us to boat down to this end of the lake today,” she said. “The view is unsurpassed. The reflections from this spot, on such a clear day, are absolutely remarkable.”

“Yes,” he agreed. Still looking at the lake he stood up from his collapsible three-legged stool to stretch his limbs. “Everything perfectly doubled,” he murmured.

“Except that they are upside down.” She pointed at their reflection in the water. “And we are right side up. Or is it the other way around? Perhaps we are the ones turned on our heads.”

Reed turned his back on the lake and bent to search the grass for skimming stones. With childlike whimsy he looked back through his legs, upside down, at the reflections in the lake.

“What are you doing? Giving my sister a grand view of your better half?” she asked.

He laughed. “What would you do, Nutmeg, if you discovered that everything you had believed to be the truth, everything you had counted on, was turned upside down?” He threw a stone between his legs into the Lake, sending ripples through the mirrored image of what appeared to be his sky.

“What would I do?” She took stance beside him, spread-legged, and bent over. “I would wait for my head to stop spinning, take stock of my new surroundings. . .”

He heard her bunch the rustling fabric of her skirt, stole a look at her and realized she meant to look at the lake the same way he did.

“Then I would get on with life with a whole new outlook. How would you respond?”

She was amazing, his Megan. How many young ladies would so blithely risk their pride by standing as she now stood, face flushed, hair falling loose from its pins, ankles exposed for all the world to see? Rather eye-catching ankles they were too, clad in chalk white ribbed stockings. She shot him an amused look, noticed the direction of his gaze and said, “French! Do you care for them?” She seemed beautiful to him in the intimacy of their ludicrous pose, as she had never seemed beautiful to him before.

“Indeed. I think I would panic,” he blurted and then he forced himself to laugh, to make his answer less important.

“Over French stockings?”

“Lovely as they are, I think I would be panic struck in dizzy disbelief for awhile if my world turned upside down.”

She twisted her head to look at him more closely, her expression rather more serious than it had been. “Has your world been turned upside down in some way, Reed?”

“Let’s assume that it has. Otherwise, the blood would not be rushing to my head the way it is.”

She laughed, as he had intended she should. “Well, generally the answers to our troubles are right in front of our noses if we will only look for them. I would ask you, what do you long for most?”

“Long for?” She eyed him keenly, at least he thought she did. Difficult to ascertain with her eyes upside down as they were, and her cheeks sagging the wrong way. “I do not follow.”

“Well, it is a matter of priorities, change. If everything has been turned upside down it would be of highest priority to determine what in your life is most important to set straight. Then, it would be simpler to decide just what you could adapt to in its altered state. The changed perspective might even be a blessing.”

A shout from the lake--Tom demanding,” What arsey-varsey is this then?”

Megan dropped her skirt back into decorum and shot up and around to shout back, “We are engaged in a lesson on perspective.”

“Of course you are.” Tom’s laughter bounced over the water.

Reed stood and turned.

Gussie was laughing. “From our perspective, Megan, your lesson is neither proper nor ladylike.”

Reed murmured. “It all depends on one’s perspective, doesn’t it?

Quick and keen Megan looked at him. “Money woes?”

He felt as transparent as his Claude glass beneath her steady gaze. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, come now. You have had your nose buried in ledgers full of figures since you arrived.” She reached out to touch his forehead. “And there is a line here, where I have never noticed one before. It will not go away, even when you laugh.”

He drew back from her touch--turned to stare at the reflection of the mountain, the whispered memory of her finger against his flesh. “We all have problems,” he said elusively, unwilling to lay another mountain at her feet. “I am happy today to be in your company. I wonder if you would mind me keeping you from your friends for one more day before I leave.”

“You mean to go? So soon?”

“Yes.” He frowned. “I do but wait for correspondence from my father. What he has to say will determine whether I go home first, or straight to London.”

“Will you be in London when I arrive there?”

He shrugged. “I cannot say. I have business that may take me there.”

She seemed content with his answer. “Perhaps we can visit the National Gallery together.”

“Perhaps,” he said doubtfully. Viewing collections of paintings was not going to be the first order of business should he end up in London.

Megan took guilty pleasure in the news that she was to see more of Reed in London. She must not hold onto false hope she reminded herself.

That evening, when Giovanni and the Frosts dropped in at the cottage to see if anyone cared to go for a stroll in the gathering gloom, her hopes were threatened by an event most unexpected. It began when they divided up, and in her estimation the division was a highly unsatisfactory affair.