Ashton Park (30 page)

Harrison could say nothing. He took his fedora from his head.

Holly continued. “I know more about what you have done for our family than you think. Actually, I’ve had my eye on you for years. I’m well aware of what you did for Victoria at Lime Street Station. I know you helped rescue Mrs. Longstaff in London—William shared the particulars and I admit I was looking for that American pistol of yours in that storage room there. I’m also privy to matters William and Elizabeth know nothing about, such as how Machiavellian our Norah Cole can be and how much grief she has caused this family—and how firmly you have stood up to her.”

“I do my best for the Danforths, Miss Holly. For all of you.”

“Now do you know where the scent is coming from?”

“I expect I do.”

“I’m much younger than my brother William, you know. There’s fifteen years between us. That’s why my hair is still black as night. Perhaps it always will be. You’re forty, aren’t you, Harrison?”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

“And I’m thirty-seven.”

She slowly put her arms around his neck. “I think loyalty and devotion should be rewarded.”

“I’m…well taken care of…Miss Holly.”

“Not well enough, I think. You’re still a bachelor. And I’m a spinster—terrible word. But it may be we were meant for each other.” She laughed softly. “Don’t look so terrified, Harrison. I should have said something years ago. But I didn’t feel free. The war has changed all that. Or perhaps it’s the wedding, with the stable boy marrying the youngest of the Danforth girls. Or it may be the way all the Danforths are pairing off—Kipp with a French girl from Amiens, Libby with an American from New York, Edward still mooning over his chambermaid from the Pendle Hills. Something’s in the air. And if the young people can cross boundaries, so can I. Not publicly yet, mind you. But a thousand-year-old castle suits me just fine for now.”

She kissed Harrison on the lips. His hat fell to the floor and he didn’t know what to do with his hands.

“I hope you love my scent,” she purred, “because I certainly love yours. It’s so natural. Earth. Grass. Wood. Leaves. Extremely pleasant. I’ve wasted a lifetime among the lords with their sweet soaps and well-oiled hair and fingers like putty. But it’s a new world now, Harrison. If Victoria Danforth can marry a coach driver with a medal on his chest I can marry a groundskeeper who looks like a real man and acts like one too.”

Her second kiss was longer than the first. She continued until Harrison responded in kind, much to his own surprise.

“Marvelous.” She smiled. “I actually got some life out of you that time. Let’s have a third go, shall we?” She pouted a bit. “Or is all this too much too fast for the groundskeeper? Do you want me to leave? I will, you know, if you ask me politely.”

Her blue eyes and gleaming black hair were only inches from his face. She waited. Harrison finally cleared his throat and found it was possible to take one of his hands from her back and touch it carefully to her face as gently as if she were a kitten or one of his lambs. She closed her eyes and nuzzled his hand with her cheek.

“Don’t go,” he managed to say.

Reverend Jeremiah Sweet pronounced Ben and Victoria man and wife after a long Anglican service under the shade of the ash trees, Ben lifted the elaborate cream-colored veil and kissed his bride, Sir William spoke a prayer of blessing over the couple, Ben’s squadron mates cheered and threw their caps into the air, and a dozen MPs stood in their handsome black morning coats with tails and joined in the applause. Aunt Holly had rushed about making sure as many guests as possible had handfuls of rice to throw, and it began to fly white and thick as Ben, in uniform, and Victoria, in her white and silver gown with a long train held by Libby, made their way back down an aisle between hundreds of chairs set up on the lawn. While they were walking and laughing and ducking showers of rice, three Sopwith Camels roared low over the crowd and dipped their wings, causing everyone to shout and point.

Ben shaded his hand and squinted up at them. “One of them’s Kipp. That’s his new plane. He didn’t even tell me about this stunt. The others look like Hannam and Irving.”

Victoria pinched his arm. “I knew. They flew them over from France a few weeks ago.”

“Look at Peter and James. Running after the planes with all the might their short little legs can offer them.”

Ben looked at her as the Sopwiths swooped down a second time. “I should like our children to be pilots.”

She smoothed his curly black hair back from his eyes. “Are we already talking about children?”

“Not this year, of course—”

“Or next. But perhaps we can agree on nineteen-twenty-one or twenty-two.”

Ben kissed her softly on lips painted a rich strawberry red. “How utterly fascinating you are.”

They kissed and ignored the rice that continued to bounce off their backs until a third pass by the Sopwiths made people stop and glance upward again.

“They’re landing in the field there!” someone shouted.

Ben and Victoria broke off their kiss to see their wedding guests crowding around the three aircraft as they rolled to a standstill in a sheep pasture a hundred yards away. They decided to disappear deep into the ash grove. Only Lady Grace, still seated in her white rattan chair, and a few others remained behind to watch them go.

“Bear in mind you are not on your honeymoon yet!” Lady Grace called. They glanced back at her, surprised by the strength of her voice, and she laughed in a cackling kind of way.

“Which one is she?” Lady Caroline Scarborough asked. Her cool gaze made contact with Kipp’s sunlit green eyes.

He was standing by his plane, still wearing his leather helmet and white scarf. “Hullo, Caroline. She’s with the other two pilots over there by Hannam’s plane.”

She glanced over, a white parasol above her head against the hot sun. “Their conversation seems quite animated.”

“Christelle knows them both fairly well.”

“Christelle, is it? So she worked her way through the squadron until she hit upon the squadron leader, did she?”

Kipp’s eyes flashed. “Don’t, Caroline. You’re better than that.”

“Am I?” Her eyes glistened. “I love you, Kipp.”

“And I loved you. Then the war changed everything, didn’t it?”

She turned her face away in disgust as tears struck her cheeks. “You men and your wars. You make them your excuse for everything.”

“Caroline. You’re a beautiful woman. We both know there’s never been a shortage of men.”

“Yes. Millions of men. But how many Kipps?”

She held up her hand as he started to speak again and began to walk away as several MPs came around the side of the plane. “I won’t be gone from your life. I love you too much. Please enjoy your sister’s wedding day.”

Kipp watched her drift over the field in her shimmery pale blue dress. She moved with such poise and grace that it was as if a breeze gently lifted her slender figure between earth and sky. His eyes remained on her until a man who said he was Lord Carlisle began to pump his hand.

Edward was sipping from a glass by one of the crystal punchbowls as Lady Caroline walked by and stopped. “Edward Danforth. It’s been ages.”

He nodded, his face dark. “Hullo, Caroline. How are you?”

“Not much better than you appear to be. I just hide it better.”

Edward looked off across the field at the planes and the crowds of people. “Excuse me. I find the day difficult.”

“Why is that?”

“Not on Victoria’s account, I assure you.”

Caroline shaded her eyes with her parasol to get a better look at him. “You’re the eldest son. The world is at your feet.”

He gave a harsh laugh. “The world? My youngest sister can marry the groom from our stables and Kipp can prance about with a baker’s daughter from France, but I cannot have permission to so much as look at a woman better bred than any of them.”

“Your parents are denying you a woman’s hand?”

“I shouldn’t get into it. I don’t mean to spoil your day.”

“Edward. I think you know my circumstances. No one could ruin the day for me more than your brother already has done.”

He looked at her as he swirled the punch in his glass. “Yes. Of course. Forgive me.”

Caroline saw that her parents were engaged in conversation with several of the MPs just ahead of them. “I have some time on my hands. Would you care to go for a walk? Perhaps we could commiserate with each other.”

She smiled gently. Edward stared at her for several moments and watched the light flicker over her dress and hair and pick out the gold in her blue eyes. Finally he smiled back.

“Yes. I’d like that.”

The day after the wedding, Holly was standing in front of the Castle keep at six in the morning. She expected to see Harrison emerge from his rooms off to the right but he surprised her by coming around the far side of the Castle, where most of the ruins were. Until he spoke she did not hear a thing, waiting and looking toward his door.

“Miss Holly.”

She spun around. “Harrison. You gave me a start.”

He took off his brown fedora. “I’m sorry for that. It’s how I move. Ball of the foot.”

“What are those sticks?”

“Why, one’s the staff I’ve carried for years. I’ve carved the other for you. From thousand-year oak.”

She took the staff from him. It had been shaped and polished so that it glistened as if wet. When she held it upright it rose a foot taller than her head.

“It’s lovely.” She gave him one of her best smiles. “And quite unexpected. I wish I’d brought you something.”

“Well. And you have.”

She saw he was gazing approvingly at how she held the staff and how she was dressed—khaki blouse, brown tweed shooting jacket set off by a royal-blue scarf at her throat that picked up on her eyes, a long khaki skirt, tall brown walking boots fastened tight. No jewelry. No perfume.

“Do I pass inspection, Harrison?” she asked.

One side of Harrison’s mouth curled up in a smile and his brown eyes smiled too. “You do.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Well, let’s be off then. I told you I wanted to see the woods through your eyes. We’re losing the morning.”

Harrison glanced at the oak trees and at the sky where a few thin white clouds were vanishing as the sun continued to rise. He made a soft clicking sound with his tongue.

“It’s not six-ten. We’ve plenty of time. Are you in a rush?”

“Certainly not.”

“That’s good. You can’t rush the forest, Miss Holly.”

She had felt in control of the relationship she’d sprung on him until that morning. The moment he had approached her with the two staffs in hand he had become a different man from the one she’d wrapped her arms around the night before the wedding. Then she had overwhelmed him and he had been awkward and hesitant with his words and his movements. Now he was in his element with the earth and the oak trees and ashes, and she was out of hers.

“Come along then, Miss Holly.”

They began to walk side by side, at first saying very little. She matched him stride for stride.

“The birds have different songs in the early morning,” she said, to see if she could get him talking.

“And different ones at night before they tuck themselves in,” he responded.

Then he was silent.

And they kept walking.

For the longest time she felt like a nine-year-old being led about the estate she had thought she knew like the features on her face. He showed her fox dens she had never noticed, rabbit warrens, nests for robins and starlings and blackbirds, old trees full of holes that were homes for bats, tracks in the dirt that showed the comings and goings of field mice and hares.

“Amazing.” Her smile was like light in the forest. “Amazing, Harrison.”

He kept moving. “I’m very glad to hear you say so, Miss Holly.”

Even though her life had been built around the power of being in control, especially when it came to men, and even though she disliked the feeling of not having that advantage, an unpleasant feeling she now had in the forest with Harrison, she also found that what had attracted her to him was not simply quiet eyes joined to a strength in his blood and to ways as natural as rainfall or starlight…it was his appreciation for life, all life, his extraordinary kindness, and his ability to utterly calm her spirit and make her feel safe and cherished, as cherished as the plants and animals he loved, sensations no one had ever instilled in her before.