Newport Summer (14 page)

Stella popped her head into the room. “Am I interrupting?”

“No,” Lionel drawled lazily from his chair. “We’re
trying to figure out why Audrey St. Clair won’t marry
Gannon.”

Stella fixed him with a considering look, her eyes
mirroring something close to pity. “She’s refused you,
Camberly?”

Gannon felt ridiculously awkward. It was embarrassing discussing his love life with his friend and his friend’s
wife. He was a grown man, for heaven’s sake. He offered
the only defense he could summon. “No, not exactly”

Lionel groaned. “Stop saying that” Lionel shifted in
his seat toward Stella. “She won’t marry him, but she
will kiss him. In fact, we were just discussing her exuberance in that area”

“That’s enough, Lionel,” Gannon growled.

Lionel let loose a loud laugh at his friend’s distress.

“Enjoying this, are you?” As Gannon ran a hand
through his hair, a small smile made a fleeting appearance
at his mouth. If it wasn’t happening to him, he’d find the
whole situation comical too.

Stella put a hand on Lionel’s shoulder. “He’s just remembering what it was like when he fell in love with
me” She gave her husband a warm smile.

“I seem to recall that too” Gannon grinned, ready to
get a little of his own back. “He spent a week deciding
how to approach you”

Lionel began to protest. “I’d heard that English women
were a bit on the snobby side. I wanted to make sure I impressed you, dear.”

Stella warmed to the opportunity to tease. “It took a
week to come up with, `Hello, I am the American shipper in town’?

“In my defense, I had something much better to
say, something about your eyes being the color of river
agates, but I was rendered speechless by your beauty up
close, darling. I was lucky to get that much out”

Stella patted Lionel’s sleeve affectionately. “Well, it
all turned out all right in the end for us, and I am sure it
will turn out for Camberly too. Here, I almost forgot. This is what brought me up here” She handed Gannon
a heavy white envelope. “A messenger brought it from
Briar Cliff.”

Gannon opened it. It was a check for his amount of
the railroad profits. The amount would cover this year’s
shortfall and expenses for the following year with a little left over. Camberly would have time to get back on
its feet and make adjustments.

“What is it?” Stella asked when he said nothing.

He managed a smile, trying to master the emotions
set free within him at the news. “It’s a check. Camberly
is saved”

“Congratulations,” Lionel said.

Stella moved to hug him, her face wreathed in a joyful smile. “We’ll celebrate with Champagne tonight!”

Gannon accepted their good wishes. Empirically, he knew he was thrilled. Camberly was saved. The point of
his mad gamble in America was achieved, even if it was
by different means than he had envisioned. But in spite
of the facts, true elation escaped him in the flush of his
triumph. His victory was oddly empty, knowing that at
the end of the summer, Audrey would not be at his side
when he crossed the Atlantic and returned home.

In that moment, he knew he’d trade the check for Audrey at his side. Not because she represented an infinite
source of wealth but because he loved her. She cared
for him, but she loved her freedom more.

Unless he could change her mind.

He had four short weeks to do it. But Gannon was not a man to back down from challenges of any sort. From
bad harvests to poor finances, he’d overcome plenty of
obstacles to make it this far. He’d wagered his fortune to
save Camberly. Now he’d make one more gamble, this
time with his heart.

In the privacy of her bedchamber, Audrey sat at her
white Louis XV writing desk, turning the page of her
lady’s calendar, a daintily flowered pink notebook of
dates that she used to keep track of important reminders.
Such organization was a useful habit, even if her mother
had been the one to suggest it.

However, her mother might be surprised to see the
kinds of things Audrey wrote down in the date book.
Since March, the calendar had become a countdown to
Vienna. She’d written down the application deadline in
April. She’d written down speculative dates it would
take the application to travel from New York to Vienna,
possible dates by which a response would be likely.
Since her acceptance into the conservatory, she had new dates to write down. She was expected at the school by
September 20. Classes started on September 22.

It didn’t leave her much time to make the necessary
arrangements. Audrey blew out a steadying breath. After such a long period of waiting when it seemed as if
time stood still, there was suddenly not enough time.

Today was the sixth of August. Crossing the Atlantic
was a two-week affair. She needed to book passage soon.
She made some notes in the margin of the page. She
needed a ship that left during the first part of September,
giving her enough time to complete the overland journey
to Vienna. Ideally, she’d prefer a ship that docked in Amsterdam, making a shorter journey by train to Vienna. But
a ship to Cherbourg, France, would do as well. Under the
circumstances of such late notice, Audrey was prepared
to be flexible.

There were other, more immediate considerations before she could worry about the ship’s destination and
what to do once she arrived in Europe. Before she could
even speculate on those details, she had to find a way to
book passage, and that required getting a hold of a sailing schedule and some money. It was the epitome of
irony that she, an heiress, had no money of her own. She
couldn’t very well ask her parents for funds. They’d
want to know what it was for. Neither could she ask her
father for a sailing schedule. He’d want to know why
she wanted it.

Audrey drummed a hand on the desk. Perhaps she
could say the schedule was for Gannon, that he needed it to plan his return trip to England. She discarded the
idea. It would seem odd that Gannon hadn’t bought
round-trip passage already. In all reality, Gannon already knew when he was returning, and he might have
mentioned it in passing to her father. No, pretending it
was for Gannon was too risky.

But maybe she could ask Gannon to get one for her.
Maybe she could go so far as to ask Gannon to book
passage for her. But then she’d have to tell him about
her plan. Audrey bit her lip. Could she trust Gannon to
keep her biggest secret?

Audrey flipped ahead through the pages and marked
the days on which she’d prefer to sail. She flipped back,
counting the weeks. Four weeks. Four weeks until she
embarked on her dream. Four weeks until she and Gannon parted ways.

The prospect of leaving Gannon dimmed her excitement over Vienna. She would miss him. He’d become
a good friend over the summer. They were more than
merely co-conspirators. Perhaps more than friends. None
of her male acquaintances had ever kissed her the way
Gannon kissed her. To be honest, only Daniel Sutherland
had ever tried to kiss her, and that had been a furtive peck
on the cheek at a birthday party. The few suitors she’d
bothered to encourage had not dared. She didn’t have
anything to measure Gannon’s kisses against. But intuitively she doubted that any kiss, irrelevant of its source,
had the power to render her so weak in the knees, or to fill
her stomach with warm heat, as did his.

More than friends or not, her association with Gannon would come to an end in a few short weeks, she
told herself firmly. It wasn’t the right time in her life for
a romantic entanglement. She would look back on her
time with Gannon over the years and remember his
kisses fondly.

Audrey shot a quick glance at the little clock sitting
atop her desk. Eleven o’clock! She must have been daydreaming about Gannon longer than she’d thought. Gannon was supposed to be at the house at eleven-fifteen to
take her and her mother shopping. She was helping Gannon pick out gifts for his family back in England. She
wasn’t even dressed. She was still in her dressing gown,
having taken breakfast in her room in order to write in
her date book.

Audrey rang for her maid and strode to her wardrobe, a
room devoted entirely to her clothing and accessories. No
mere carved wooden cabinet for her-such a piece of furniture would hardly begin to hold her gowns. She picked
a carriage gown of lightweight blue fabric trimmed with
white ribbons and lace, fresh and simple.

Her maid turned her out in record time, sweeping her
hair up into a simple chignon that lay at the base of her
neck beneath the wide brim of her hat. Audrey grabbed
up a matching reticule and gloves and shot another
glance at the clock. Eleven-forty. She wasn’t too late,
although her maid informed her that the Earl of Camberly had arrived punctually at eleven-fifteen and was
downstairs in the front drawing room with her mother.

“Go on ahead and tell them I am coming,” Audrey said, looking around for a parasol and debating whether
she needed one, since she had her hat.

By the time she made her way down the hall to the
main staircase, parasol in hand, Gannon and her mother
had ventured out into the foyer to wait. “I’m sorry to
keep you so long,” Audrey called from the top of the
stairs.

Gannon turned to look up at the sound of her voice,
and her heart nearly stopped at the sight of him, although
she couldn’t figure out why. There was nothing different
about his appearance. It was as immaculate and conservatively stylish as it always was; his hair, dark and sleek,
his shoulders still as broad, his legs still as long, his bearing still as confident. Yet there was an aura about him
when he smiled up at her that was utterly riveting. Perhaps it was only because she’d been thinking about his
leaving and the recognition that they had only a few
weeks together left.

“Beauty in any form is worth the wait,” Gannon
replied easily, offering his arm to her at the bottom of
the stairs. “You look ravishing. Blue becomes you,” he
said quietly for her alone.

Audrey couldn’t tear her gaze away from his face. Il-logical thoughts of kissing those lips, of feeling his arms
about her again, tumbled through her mind. Where had
such images come from? She felt her cheeks heating.
Would the simplest comment from him always conjure
such remembrances? It was hard to look at him with such things running through her mind, and yet it was too
hard to tear her gaze away.

In that moment, Audrey made an impulsive decision.
If she had only four weeks left with Gannon, she would
make the most of them, starting today.

The day was bright and warm. In Gannon’s borrowed
open carriage, Audrey snapped open her parasol, glad
she’d spent the extra minutes searching for it. She sat
next to her mother, and Gannon sat across from them, his
back to the driver. “How old is your sister, Camberly?”
her mother asked by way of small talk.

“Moira is fourteen” Gannon smiled fondly at the
mention of his sister. It must bode well that a man cared
so much for a younger sister as Gannon obviously cared
for his.

“She’s so much younger than you. Is your brother
closer to your age?” Violet probed.

“No, Andrew is seventeen. My father and mother were
blessed later in life. I was away at school during their
early childhood, but that didn’t stop us from becoming
close”

“What’s the difference in years, then?” Violet mused
out loud. “You’re what? Thirty-two, Camberly? You were
in your late teens when they were born. And when did you
inherit? I was under the impression you’d inherited at
quite a young age”

“Mother, I hardly think discussing age is appropriate,” Audrey gasped, aghast at her mother’s audacity. Did she think they were such bosom beaus with the earl
now that she could invade his privacy?

“Camberly doesn’t mind, do you?” Violet said to
Gannon.

“Not at all,” Gannon replied. “I am actually thirtythree. I did inherit quite young, at twenty-two. Andrew
was barely ten when Father died, and Moira was eight.”

Audrey hoped that would be the end of the inquisition. But her mother wasn’t done yet. “What about your
mother, Camberly? Does she live in London or on the
estate?”

Audrey thought a brief shadow passed across Gannon’s face. “She didn’t live long after my father passed.
She died two years later for no apparent reason except a
broken heart.”

“So you became a father figure of sorts at the age of
twenty-four,” Violet mused. “That’s very admirable of
you, Camberly.”

Gannon managed a tight smile and called to the driver
to pull over to the curb. Audrey breathed easier. The ride
to the Casino shops had seemed interminable. She’d
never noticed how long the short drive could be.

Gannon leaped down and handed her mother out first.
He reached for her, and Audrey leaned close to whisper,
“I am sorry. She was out of line.”

Gannon kept a gentle hand under her elbow. “Don’t
worry about it. It’s nothing.”