Carola Dunn (14 page)

Robin looked much better, and his welcoming smile was all she could have hoped for. However, between Toby’s chatter and the baron’s inhibiting presence, Philo was unable to return to their accustomed easy cameraderie. After a stiff enquiry about his health she spoke only when directly addressed. Sitting silent at the kitchen table, she was miserably aware of Robin’s puzzled glances.

Matters did not improve. She never saw Robin without his brother, or Aquila, or Cressida. Sometimes she felt as if the whole village was there. He was not well enough to walk far, so they did not even have the privacy that falling behind a group in the fields might have allowed.

Lord Mayhew brought him to the house in his carriage one rainy afternoon. Tea was served in the drawing room, to the accompaniment of energetic trills and warbles from the conservatory. Philo remembered the first time she had taken tea at Marsh Cottage. She caught Robin’s eye, and he grinned. Certain that he was remembering the same event, she was oddly reassured.

“I should like to see the canaries,” he said, setting down his cup. “Will you introduce me, Miss Philomena?”

She looked at Cousin Cressida, who nodded permission. Robin followed her through the French doors.

Philo was shy. They were alone, but the knowledge that everyone in the next room was aware of their once-secret friendship oppressed her. She showed him her birds. The females were busily constructing nests, while Talleyrand and Metternich sang as if they had not a care in the world.

“That’s right, fellows, let the women do the work,” Robin told them. “You can scarcely hope to improve their voices,” he observed to Philo. “Poor Faraday cannot compete with such splendid singing. He will come into his own when I begin my experiments again. The new equipment arrived this morning, and I left Bodiham unpacking it.”

“I meant to offer to help pay for it, but somehow the right moment never came. Will you take—?”

“I certainly will not! Broken glass is a hazard of the profession.”

“So is poisoning. You will remember you promised not to taste the chemicals?” Anxiously she searched his face.

“An extorted promise, when I was
in extremis
,” he teased, but his eyes were warm. “No, I shall not forget.” He reached for her hand.

Cousin Cressida called from the next room. The momentary intimacy was lost. By the time Philo retired that night, she wondered whether she had imagined it.

* * * *

Afraid that she had misread Robin’s intentions, Philo let several days pass without visiting Marsh Cottage. She could not bear him, or anyone else, to think she was pursuing him. Their friendship was changed by the unvoiced conjectures and expectations of those who knew of it.

In the end, she gave in to Toby’s incessant demands and they walked down to the cottage. It was a grey, chilly day, the hedgerows still showing no signs of breaking into leaf, but like the canaries, optimistic birds were nesting anyway.

Bodiham answered the door. Robin was in the middle of an experiment involving numerous bubbling retorts linked by yards of glass tubing.

He looked up, smiling but preoccupied. “I’ll be with you in a moment. I can’t leave this just now.”

Toby rushed to his side. “What are you doing?”

Philo hesitated, then went to join them as Robin explained the process of distillation. His kindness to the little boy, his animated enthusiasm for his profession, his deft movements as he made a precise adjustment to a spirit lamp, all filled her with admiration and a vague longing.

Bodiham brought tea a quarter of an hour later, just as Robin straightened with a sigh, saying, “There, it will take care of itself for a while.”

Philo poured, very much aware that only fifteen minutes remained of the half hour Cousin Cressida had limited her to. Stupidly, she could not think of anything to say, and Robin, too, had fallen silent.

Toby was under no such constraint. “Wilhelmina and Dorothea have laid some eggs,” he announced importantly.

“Wilhelmina?” asked Robin.

“Mrs Metternich,” Toby explained, “and Dorothea is Mrs Talleyrand.”

Robin shouted with laughter, and Philo knew her face was scarlet. She had never mentioned her female canaries’ names to him, for the very good reason that they were not those of the famous statesmen’s wives but of their mistresses. She had correctly guessed that even a gentleman as engrossed in his experiments as Robin must have heard some of the scandal from Vienna.

“They are funny names,” Toby agreed indulgently. “Aunt Philo says I can give the babies their names when they get hatched. Look!” He pointed at the window. “There’s Aquila and sir my lord riding horses into your garden!” He jumped down from his stool and ran outside.

“‘Sir my lord’ has a poor sense of timing.” Robin sighed, and regarded Philo with a quizzical look. “I suppose we must go and speak to them.”

Though Robin had regained most of his strength, Lord Mayhew showed no sign of leaving the village. He had sent for a couple of hacks so that he and his brother could ride together, and he often lent one to Aquila, presuming on old acquaintance. Philo was grateful to him for giving her sister an occupation, but she wished the two of them had not arrived just now. Suddenly there were a thousand things she wanted to say to Robin, and by the time the others left, her half hour would be over.

* * * *

Aquila went riding again the next morning with Lord Mayhew. Toby was doing his lessons. Philo found it impossible to settle to any occupation. She decided to walk down to the stream.

She would not go to the cottage, but if Robin happened to look out and see her, surely no one could object if he came out to exchange a few words.

Climbing the stile from the field into the lane, she saw Bodiham tramping towards the village. He waved and called a greeting but continued on his way, turned a corner, and disappeared. Robin was alone, then.

When she reached the point of the lane where she and Toby had stopped, the day before Valentine’s Day, to look down at the wizard’s house, she paused. To the outward eye the view was unchanged: the dilapidated cottage, the overgrown garden, a thin spiral of smoke from the chimney. Yet all was different now, because she knew the wizard. Without taking the trouble to cast a spell, he had enchanted her heart.

Philo smiled as she recalled her first sight of Robin, his face black with soot.

For an instant the explosion seemed a part of her memories. Then a second thunderous boom split the air and the cottage’s tile roof sagged.

Horror rose in her throat, stifling a scream. The brick chimney toppled with agonising slowness.

Her skirts gathered in both hands, Philo raced down the hill, pounded across the bridge, darted between the clutching branches in the garden. The window glass lay in shards on the ground; even the leading was torn and twisted.

Inside, an orange-yellow light danced.

Fire!

A blast of heat met her as she sped up to the gaping hole. The paint on the frame

blistered.

       “Robin!”

He must be in there. A dry sob shook her. She ripped off her pelisse and flung it across the sill. Taking a deep breath, she nerved herself to climb in.

“Philo...Philomena...” It was little more than a croak, behind her. She swung round.

A black tatterdemalion stumbled towards her. She ran into Robin’s arms.

“Philo, don’t cry, my darling.” His tender words were cut short by a spasm of coughing. “I’m all right, honestly, but I think I had better sit down.”

Pulling her with him he sank to the ground, his back against a tree trunk. She leant against his chest, oblivious of the filth, unable to stop weeping, conscious only of his strong arms holding her close.

A crash followed by a crackling roar made her look up.

Flames leapt from the roof. The heat dried the tears on her face.

“We must move farther away.” She scrambled to her feet and reached for his hands. “I’ll help you. Put your arm around me. That’s it. Just a little farther. There, I think that will do. You can lean against the gate post.” She knelt beside him, took his soot-blackened face in both hands, and gazed lovingly into his bloodshot eyes. “You are really not hurt?”

“Just a little shaky. Come here.” He pulled her to him and kissed her. His kiss was anything but shaky. It left her breathless.

Another crash from the blazing cottage drew their attention. One wall was gone, and another fell inward as they looked.

“What were you doing?” Philo asked, awed.

“Kissing you. A most successful experiment. Would you like another demonstration?”

“Yes, please.”

Robin obliged. After he had once again robbed Philo of breath, he dropped gentle little kisses all over her face. Then he held her away from him and studied the effect.

“Black measles,” he said with a satisfied grin. “Adorable. I think I can fit another one in there.” He aimed at the centre of her forehead.

She pushed him away. One more kiss and she would melt altogether. “That’s all very well,” she said, trying to sound prim, “but I meant the experiment that caused that.” She waved at the remains of the cottage, now little more than a pile of glowing embers. “You cannot call that successful.”

“I certainly can. I learnt a great deal from it. I learnt always to have a back door. I learnt the advisability of a reinforced roof. And, most important, I learnt that you love me. You do, don’t you?”

“Oh yes, I fell in love on St Valentine’s Day.”

“Me too.” He laughed, and filled the space on her forehead with another sooty smudge. “Considering our names, I daresay it was inevitable. You know what the next experiment is, don’t you?”

“No, what?”

There was a wickedly teasing twinkle in his eye. “Why, we get married and then, my darling, we shall try a little scientific breeding!”

* * * *

WOOING MARIANA

Chapter 1

 Hearing hoof-beats in the lane, Mariana straightened, leaning on her spade. She resisted the impulse to press one muddily gloved hand to the small of her back.

 Above the beech hedge, still thick with wrinkled brown leaves, appeared the head of a black horse, followed by the upper half of its rider. They moved slowly, at a steady walk. The gentleman wore military uniform, blue with silver lace and gleaming buttons, neat as a new pin.

 Mariana was not familiar with the regiment, but she recognized the insignia of a lieutenant-colonel. She did not recognize the gentleman, hardly surprising considering she had resided in the village for no more than two months.

 He sat bolt upright and poker stiff in the saddle, his gaze fixed straight ahead between the horse’s ears. His rigid posture reinforced the impression of tiredness, perhaps of pain, which she observed in his thin face, as if he held himself on his mount’s back by a vast effort of will. The very sight of him reminded Mariana of the ache in her back.

 Time to stop digging, though she hated to waste the cloudy but mild and dry day, rare enough in mid November. She would just finish pulling up the weeds from the last patch she had turned.

 As she stooped to move the oilcloth-covered pad she had been kneeling on, a lock of greying hair escaped its pins and fell into her eyes. Forgetting the mud on her gloves, she poked it back into place.

 At that moment, Lyuba howled. Poor pup! She hated being shut in the house while Mariana was outside, but the sight and smell of the rich, damp earth being dug was always too much temptation for her. If she was allowed out, in no time she would be mud-coloured all over, instead of her usual pretty pale yellow.

 Her howl attracted the soldier’s attention. He glanced over the hedge at Mariana. His indifferent gaze moved from her hatless head and dishevelled dark hair, touched with frost, past her shabby though well-cut midnight blue dress, mired at the hem, to her muddy boots.

 As his eyes returned to her face, his mouth twisted in distaste and disapproval.

 She must have mud in her hair, Mariana realized, as well as on her skirts. Too bad! One could not work in the garden and stay as spotless as the critical lieutenant-colonel appeared to be.

 It was none of his affair. Obviously what she had taken for weariness and discomfort was nothing but the odious inflexibility of a certain type of military officer. Her sympathy and interest vanished, and without sparing him another glance she sank to her knees on the pad, reaching for her trowel.

 All the same, interest was not quite banished.

 Mariana possessed a lively curiosity about her fellow-beings. Since her sphere had contracted to this small Hertfordshire village, none of its limited number of inhabitants could be dismissed without a second thought.

 She had exchanged many a “Good day” across the hedge since settling at Merriman’s Cottage. She had exchanged remarks about the weather with Mrs Bradley, who kept the tiny village shop. The elderly rector had called to welcome her to the parish. In vain she had awaited other callers.

 The truth was, she suspected, they simply did not know what to make of her.

 Miss Mariana Duckworth’s manner was ladylike, yet she lived alone and dabbled in the soil like any farmer’s wife. She hired a village woman, Mrs Plunkett, to do heavy cleaning and laundry, but her cook-maid, Hetta, her only live-in servant, was from London.

 Perhaps she should not have gone to the domestic agency in Town, Mariana reflected, yanking up a dandelion by the roots. A local girl might have helped her integration into village society. At the time, to arrive in a strange place entirely alone, and then to have look about in an unfamiliar neighbourhood to find a maid, had seemed as disagreeable a prospect as it was impractical.

 Hetta, though competent, was dour and uncompanionable. Hence the impulsive acquisition, on a visit to the nearby market town, of a small, wriggly, yellow puppy.

 Lyuba howled again.

 A mullioned casement window opened and Hetta’s head poked out.

 “She’s scratching the door to pieces, miss!”

 “You may let her out now,” Mariana called. “I have finished digging.”