Learning to Waltz (29 page)

It wasn’t. The face she turned to her gallant was too young, too round, and much too happy.

Somehow he found the way back to his lodgings. It was a wonder because he could not remember doing so. He must have earned wary looks from passersby as he staggered down the hill. Probably they thought him drunk.

Grady seemed to know better. He jumped up from a chair at first sight of his master’s face.

“Why, sir! What’s happened? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

Hit the nail on the head, Grady.
“No, no. Just a… a bit of the headache.”

He let Grady help him out of his coat as he spoke and stripped off his cravat, which felt like a noose around his neck.

“Let me get you out of your boots, an’ I’ll get you a headache powder.”

He didn’t need the powder, but it was far easier to comply. He took it with a brandy, drunk much too fast. “Thank you, Grady. I’ll just lie down for a bit.”

He made the effort to smile reassuringly, though judging by the look on Grady’s face, he failed in his objective. Well, it was the best he could do.

He went into his bedchamber and shut the door.
Dear God.

Had he really thought he’d need to see her again to sear her face into his memory? Right now, her image burned so clearly in his mind that the fixtures and furnishings of the room appeared as faded, nebulous things.

He pressed his hands over his eyes but fancied he could smell her scent on them, that compound of citrus and rosemary and other things he could not name. He cradled his elbows in his hands, but instead of the fine lawn of his shirt, he felt the silk of her gown and the silk of the skin beneath as he peeled the fabric away, inch by intoxicating inch.

Leaving the support of the door, he threw himself prone across the bed. He could, possibly, have shaken off the delusion, but he had little desire to do so. He would take what he could get of her, though it be fallacy. And after a time, the waking vision followed him into sleep, where most any delusion could be deemed sane.

He slept the clock ’round and then some. Grady must have come in at some point and removed his shoes, his waistcoat, laid a blanket over him—he remembered none of it.

He woke early, too early for Mrs. Puddlemire’s breakfast. The smell of it wafting up from the kitchens belowstairs was not encouraging. He stepped outside. The air felt dull and thick, like his head.

In the cobbled street, vendors peddled gingerbread and oysters, newspapers and rags. A milk man trudged homeward pulling a tired horse and wagon. Two housemaids emerged with shopping baskets from the house next door.

Farther along, a carriage was being loaded with a quantity of trunks and bandboxes for a journey, apparently one of some length. A dog sniffed hopefully for leavings along the pavement but ran off when one of the footmen aimed a kick in its direction, tail between its legs. Across the street the bathing machines were drawn up on the strand for use later in the day, and two women with their skirts tucked up trolled for anything saleable that might have washed in with the overnight tide. And the sound of the sea rolled over it all, in and out, Aeschylus’
myriad laughter of the ocean waves
, restless yet soothing.

Breakfast was executed every bit as poorly as Evan had feared. The eggs had the consistency of India rubber, the sausages were cooked to some stage beyond either flavor or succulence. The kidneys he did not even attempt. The toast was cold, but it generally was. He could not fault Mrs. Puddlemire on that score. He dabbed some apricot preserves on a couple of slices and ate them with his coffee. Surprisingly, his fellow guests seemed to have no complaints.

He supposed, uncharitably, the fat man at the end of the table would eat most anything, and there was a trio of youths—on some sort of walking tour, he gathered—who probably fit the same category. He could not account for the rest of the company. It was possible the difficulty lay with him rather than them.

He climbed the stairs back to his rooms. Grady, he hoped, was somewhere in the kitchens overseeing their laundry. Evan pared a fingernail that was bothering him and scanned the newspaper he had bought outside. Little enough of interest there.

In his other life as a thinking man with some curiosity about the workings of society and politics, he would no doubt have followed the progress of the bill to abolish sinecures. And in his former guise as a good-humored man who found amusement in the foibles of his fellows, he would have chuckled over the activities of the Princess of Wales, parading herself through Munich in Turkish costume. As it was, he could hardly have cared less about any of it.

He picked up his book instead, but Emma Woodhouse had no power to hold his attention. That was occupied by another sort of woman entirely.

Despite the threat of rain, he decided to go riding. He walked up the hill to the livery stable, where it seemed at first he would be obliged to find some other way to fill his afternoon.

“I dunno, sir. Y’re come a bit late, y’s ee. A party o’ gents from Lunnon, they took all the best early this mornin’ to ride out Teignmouth way. An’ I’ve got a real nice gelding what’s got a spavin an’ another that needs ’is hooves seen to.” He looked Evan over critically. “Got a mare should be up to your weight, though. Not much to look at, an’ I’ve not rid her meself, she not bein’ here long. Would you be wantin’ to see ’er?”

Evan would. As the proprietor had warned, she was no beauty—not quite white but not gray either, not dappled but blotched. She was too thin, and her mane looked like it had been hacked off in segments and was trying to grow back. Her conformation was better. She looked like she might be capable of some speed.

“Looks a durn sight better ’n she did when she come in here. Them saddle sores are most healed up, and she’s fatted up a bit. Groom says she rides nice.”

She rolled a long-suffering eye as Evan swung up into the saddle, reminding him of Grady. He smiled and turned her toward the street. “You’re the lucky one, lass. You only need to put up with me for a couple of hours.”

He opted to head in the direction “the Lunnon gents” had not, north along the clifftop toward the Exe estuary. He was hardly a demanding rider this afternoon, and the mare took full advantage of the slow pace, snatching at leaves or grass as the opportunity arose. He let her as long as she kept moving. There was no hurry to get nowhere.

They followed whatever road or track took them closest to the cliff’s edge. This allowed plenty of fodder for the horse, and for the rider there were plenty of views out over the busy gray sea. Occasionally a ray of sunshine would pick out a gull and give it life as some sort of spirit gleaming white against the darkening clouds, but none of those rays touched ground. If any breeze blew off the water, it did not scale the cliff to rustle the trees or relieve the weight of the air. There were few travelers in evidence. Not more than a handful of times did Evan need to acknowledge another rider or carriage.

The Langstone headland came into view, guarding the Exe estuary, unmistakable from the description given him by the fellow at the stable. And at length, when he began to think he’d missed it, Evan found what he was looking for: a horse-worthy path that dropped down to the strip of sand below them.

The mare was inclined to cavil at the steep slope but succumbed to his urging without much of a fight. They had to scramble at one point as they dislodged a patch of earth, sending soil and pebbles rolling down the cliffside. But they emerged unscathed and reached the bottom safely.

The tide was well out. They rode clear around the broken promontory and passed through the tunnel carving its way through the rock. Then they turned south, back toward Dawlish.

Down here on the strand, out from under the trees, Evan expected it to be brighter. In fact there was not much difference. The sky had turned leaden, the air had come alive. As horse and rider left the shelter of the rocks, wind and water vied to win their attention from whatever grim thoughts preoccupied them.

The horse began to curvet in excitement. Evan realized he had moped far too long and was doomed to a wetting.

She wanted to run. He gave her her head.

Along the beach she galloped, in and out of the shallow water as the waves rolled up. Wet sand flew in clods off her hooves. The storm winds blew sand and salt spray in their faces. Evan leaned low to avoid the worst of it; the mare snorted and tossed her head in glee. Then the clouds opened above them. There was no shelter, nothing to do but laugh and urge the horse to still faster speeds, and laugh some more.

By the time they reached Dawlish Water and made their way to Mrs. Puddlemire’s establishment, the horse had just about spent herself and so had the rain. Fat droplets collected on eaves and leaves and railings, falling as they achieved some certain mass onto the heads passing below.

Evan was wet to the skin with sand crusted in all sorts of unlikely places. He might as well have rolled in the stuff. It was extraordinarily uncomfortable, far more so than he’d realized as he sped up the beach cackling like a madman. But the despondency that had paralyzed him lifted. For the first time in months, he felt energetic, engaged in the world.

He brushed himself off as well as he could, but still he shed sand all the way up the stairs and into his rooms. Grady was folding a stack of freshly laundered cravats.

“I see you got caught in the rain, sir.”

Evan grinned. “I did indeed. I’ve ruined my new gloves and lost my hat, and if you can salvage the coat and breeches, you’re a miracle worker.”

“We’ll see. Stop there now, sir, before you get sand all in the rug. Let’s get those clothes off you, and then I’ll order up a bath.”

“Already done; I saw the maid downstairs. It can’t possibly come too soon; my hair feels like a broom.” Off came the coat, the waistcoat, the cravat, the shirt, to drop in a gritty pile on the floor. “I need you to take my mount back to the livery stable. She’s tied out front, an unprepossessing white thing.” He picked his coat out of the pile again and reached inside for his pocketbook.

“And Grady? Buy the horse. Make sure she gets cleaned up. We’ll take her with us tomorrow.”

Grady’s eyes widened in surprise. “Tomorrow, sir?”

“It’s time,” Evan said, “as you’ve been telling me this month past. We have weddings to attend.” And under his breath, as he peeled off his stockings, “Who knows, one of them might be mine.”

He had neglected his correspondence. Badly. There were letters from Frank Latimer, from both his sisters, and increasingly petulant ones from his mother, dutifully forwarded from Shrewsbury and left unread. These he determined to answer with no further delay. The scratch of quill on paper filled the parlor all evening, the sea murmuring on the strand as background music.

Latimer must be advised that Evan would miss the ball, and almost certainly Amanda’s wedding as well. But he would brave hell itself, Evan wrote, to be there for Frank’s own nuptials. Given the hell he’d inhabited since the year began, the expression seemed apt.

His letters to the women of his family consisted mostly of travelogue. It wouldn’t satisfy them as to the cause of his long silence, but it was the best he could do. His mother made a peculiar reference to Elizabeth visiting in Whately, so implausible he ignored it. Her handwriting was sadly deteriorated in the past year or so, and her mind not always as clear as one might hope. Elizabeth’s own letters certainly made no mention of such a thing.

Reading over what he’d written to Alberta and his mother, Evan decided he’d managed well enough. The tone was lighter than he could have hoped to achieve at any other time these last three months, and although
he
knew it was pretense, he did not think the recipients would recognize it as such.

To Elizabeth he had let his guard down somewhat without noticing as he wrote. He included many of the same passages, copied more or less verbatim, but interspersed with these were rather too many mentions of the miserable weather, the miserable roads, the tedium of traveling every day. Likely she would read quite easily between those lines and come to the wrong conclusion—that is, the right conclusion, but not the one he wished her to draw. It would have to do. He was too tired to start over.