Secrets of a Summer Night (12 page)

“No, no, it was a trifle,” Annabelle said instantly. “Just a little scratch or two. And the fault was entirely mine — I’m afraid I wore the wrong kind of shoes.” She stuck out her foot to show Kendall one of her light slippers, making certain to display a few inches of trim ankle.

Kendall clicked his tongue in dismay. “Miss Peyton, you need something far sturdier than those slippers for a tromp through the forest.”

“You’re right, of course.” Annabelle shrugged, continuing to smile. “It was silly of me not to realize that the terrain would be so rugged. I’ll try to choose my steps more carefully on the way back. But the blue-bells are so heavenly that I think I would wade through a field of prickly fern to reach them.”

Reaching down to a stray cluster of bluebells, Kendall broke off a sprig and tucked it into the ribbon trim of her bonnet. “They’re not half so blue as your eyes,” he said. His gaze dropped to her ankle, which was now covered by the hem of her skirts. “You must take my arm when we walk back, to avoid further mishap.”

“Thank you, my lord.” Annabelle gazed up at him admiringly. “I’m afraid that I missed some of your earlier remarks about ferns, my lord. You had mentioned something about… spleenwort, wasn’t it?… and I was
thoroughly
fascinated…”

Kendall obligingly proceeded to explain all one would ever want to know about ferns… and later, when Annabelle chanced to glance back in Simon Hunt’s direction, he was gone.

“A
re we really going to do this?” Annabelle asked somewhat plaintively, as the wallflowers strode along the forest path with baskets and hampers in hand. “I thought that all our talk of Rounders-in-knickers was merely amusing banter.”

“Bowmans
never
banter about Rounders,” Daisy informed her. “That would be sacrilegious.”

“You like games, Annabelle,” Lillian said cheerfully. “And Rounders is the best game of all.”

“I like the kind that is played at a table,” Annabelle retorted. “With proper clothes on.”

“Clothing is vastly overrated,” came Daisy’s airy reply.

Annabelle was learning that the price of having friends meant that on occasion one was compelled to defer to the group’s wishes even if they went against one’s own inclinations. All the same, this morning Annabelle had privately attempted to sway Evie to her side, unable to fathom that the girl truly intended to strip down to her drawers out in the open. But Evie was rashly determined to fall in with the Bowmans’ plans, seeming to consider it as part of a self-devised program to embolden herself. “I w-want to be more like them,” she had confided to Annabelle. “They’re so free and daring. They fear nothing.”

Staring at the girl’s eager face, Annabelle had given in with a huge sigh. “Oh, all right. As long as no one sees us, I suppose it will be fine. Though I can’t think of any purpose it will serve.”

“Maybe it will be f-fun?” Evie had suggested, and Annabelle had responded with a speaking glance, making her laugh.

The weather, of course, had decided to cooperate fully with the Bowmans’ plans, the sky open and blue, the air stirred by a soft breeze. Laden with baskets, the four girls walked along a sunken road, past wet meadows sprinkled with red sundew blossoms and vivid purple violets.

“Keep your eye out for a wishing well,” Lillian said briskly. “Then we’re supposed to cross the meadow on the other side of the lane and cut through the forest. There’s a dry meadow at the top of the hill. One of the servants told me that no one ever goes there.”

“Naturally it would be uphill,” Annabelle said without rancor. “Lillian, what does the well look like? Is it one of those little whitewashed structures with a pail and a pulley?”

“No, it’s a big muddy hole in the ground.”

“There it is,” Daisy exclaimed, hastening to the sloshing brown hole, which was being replenished from a bank beside it. “Come, all of you, we must each make a wish. I’ve even got pins that we can toss in.”

“How did you know to bring pins?” Lillian asked.

Daisy smiled with bright mischief. “Well, as I sat with Mama and all the dowagers while they were sewing yesterday afternoon, I made our Rounders ball.” She unearthed a leather ball from her basket and held it up proudly. “I sacrificed a new pair of kid gloves to make it — and it was no easy task, I tell you. Anyway, the old ladies were watching me stuff it with wool snippets, and when one of them could bear it no longer, she came out and asked me what in heaven’s name I was making. Of course I couldn’t tell them it was a Rounders ball. I’m sure Mama guessed, but she was too embarrassed to say a word. So I told the dowager that I was making a pincushion.”

All the girls snickered. “She must have thought it was the ugliest pincushion in existence,” Lillian remarked.

“Oh, there’s no doubt of that,” Daisy replied. “I think she felt quite sorry for me. She gave me some pins for it, and said something under her breath about poor bumbling American girls who have no practical skills whatsoever.” Using the edge of her nail, she pried the pins out of the leather ball and gave them over.

Setting down her own basket, Annabelle held a pin between her thumb and forefinger, and closed her eyes. Whenever the opportunity presented itself, she always made the same wish… to marry a peer. Strangely, however, a new thought entered her head, just as she cast the pin into the well.

I wish I could fall in love.

Surprised by the wilful, wayward notion, Annabelle wondered how it was that she could have wasted a wish on something that was obviously so ill-advised.

Opening her eyes, Annabelle saw that the other wallflowers were staring into the well with great solemnity. “I made the wrong wish,” she said fretfully. “Can I have another?”

“No,” Lillian said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Once you’ve thrown in your pin, it’s done.”

“But I didn’t mean to make that particular wish,” Annabelle protested. “Something just popped into my head, and it wasn’t at all what I had planned.”

“Don’t argue, Annabelle,” Evie advised. “You d-don’t want to annoy the well spirit.”

“The what?”

Evie smiled at her perplexed expression. “The resident spirit of the well. He’s the one to whom y-you make a petition. But if you annoy him, he may decide to demand a terrible price for granting your wish. Or he may drag you into the well with him, to live there forever as his c-consort.”

Annabelle stared into the brown water. She cupped her hands around the sides of her mouth to help direct her voice. “You don’t have to grant my rotten wish,” she told the unseen spirit loudly. “I take it back!”

“Don’t taunt him, Annabelle,” Daisy exclaimed. “And for heaven’s sake, step back from the edge of that well!”

“Are you superstitious?” Annabelle asked with a grin.

Daisy glowered at her. “There’s a reason for superstitions, you know. At
some
point in time,
something
bad happened to
someone
who was standing right next to a well, just as you are.” Closing her eyes, she concentrated intently, then tossed her own pin into the water. “There. I’ve made a wish for your benefit — so there’s no need for you to complain about having wasted one.”

“But how do you know what I wanted?”

“The wish I made is for your own good,” Daisy informed her.

Annabelle groaned theatrically. “I
hate
things that are for my own good.”

A good-natured squabble followed, in which each girl made suggestions as to what would be best for the other, until finally Lillian commanded them to stop, as they were interfering with her concentration. They fell silent just long enough to allow Lillian and Evie to make their wishes, then they made their way across the meadow and through the forest. Soon they reached a lovely dry meadow, grassy and sun-drenched, with shade extending from a grove of oak at one side. The air was balmy and rarefied, and so fresh that Annabelle sighed blissfully. “This air has no substance to it,” she said in mock-complaint. “No coal smoke or street dust whatsoever. Much too thin for a Londoner. I can’t even feel it in my lungs.”

“It’s not that thin,” Lillian replied. “Every now and then the breeze carries a distinct hint of
eau de
sheep.”

“Really?” Annabelle sniffed experimentally. “I can’t smell a thing.”

“That’s because you don’t have a nose,” Lillian replied.

“I beg your pardon?” Annabelle asked with a quizzical grin.

“Oh, you have a regular sort of nose,” Lillian explained, “but I have
a nose
. I’m unusually sensitive to smell. Give me any perfume, and I can separate it into all its parts. Rather like listening to a musical chord and divining all its notes. Before we left New York, I even helped to develop a formula for scented soap, for my father’s factory.”

“Could you create a perfume, do you think?” Annabelle asked in fascination.

“I daresay I could create an excellent perfume,” Lillian said confidently. “However, anyone in the industry would disdain it, as the phrase ‘American perfume’ is considered to be an oxymoron — and I’m a woman, besides, which throws the caliber of my nose very much into question.”

“You mean, men have better noses than women?”

“They certainly think so,” Lillian said darkly, and whipped a picnic blanket out of her basket with a flourish. “Enough about men and their protuberances. Shall we sit in the sun for a little while?”

“We’ll get brown,” Daisy predicted, flopping onto a corner of the blanket with a pleasured sigh. “And then Mama will have conniptions.”

“What are conniptions?” Annabelle asked, entertained by the American word. She dropped to the space beside Daisy. “Do send for me if she has them — I’m curious to see what they look like.”

“Mama has them all the time,” Daisy assured her. “Never fear, you’ll be well acquainted with conniptions before we all leave Hampshire.”

“We shouldn’t eat before we play,” Lillian said, watching as Annabelle lifted the lid of a picnic basket.

“I’m hungry,” Annabelle said wistfully, peering inside the basket, which was filled with fruit, cheese, pâté, thick cuts of bread, and several varieties of salad.

“You’re always hungry,” Daisy observed with a laugh. “For such a small person, you have a remarkable appetite.”

“
I,
small?” Annabelle countered. “If you are one fraction of an inch above five feet tall, I’ll eat that picnic basket.”

“You’d better start chewing, then,” Daisy said. “I’m five feet and one inch, thank you.”

“Annabelle, I wouldn’t gnaw on that wicker handle quite yet, if I were you,” Lillian interceded with a slow smile. “Daisy stands on her toes whenever she’s measured. The poor dressmaker has had to recut the hems of nearly a dozen dresses, thanks to my sister’s unreasonable denial of the fact that she is short.”

“I’m not short,” Daisy muttered. “Short women are never mysterious, or elegant, or pursued by handsome men. And they’re always treated like children. I refuse to be short.”

“You’re not mysterious or elegant,” Evie conceded. “But you’re very pr-pretty.”

“And you’re a dear,” Daisy replied, levering upward to reach into the picnic basket. “Come, let’s feed poor Annabelle — I can hear her stomach growling.”

They delved into the repast enthusiastically. Afterward, they reclined lazily on the blanket and cloud-watched, and talked about everything and nothing. When their chatter died to a contented lull, a small red squirrel ventured out of the oak grove and turned to the side, watching them with one bright black eye.

“An intruder,” Annabelle observed, with a delicate yawn.

Evie rolled to her stomach and tossed a bread crust in the squirrel’s direction. He froze and stared at the tantalizing offering, but was too timid to advance. Evie tilted her head, her hair glittering in the sun as if it had been overlaid with a net of rubies. “Poor little thing,” she said softly, casting another crust at the timid squirrel. This one landed a few inches closer, and his tail twitched eagerly. “Be brave,” Evie coaxed. “Go on and take it.” Smiling tolerantly, she tossed another crust, which landed a scant few inches from him. “Oh, Mr. Squirrel,” Evie reproved. “You’re a dreadful coward. Can’t you see that no one’s going to harm you?”

In a sudden burst of initiative, the squirrel seized the tidbit and scampered off with his tail quivering. Looking up with a triumphant smile, Evie saw the other wallflowers staring at her in drop-jawed silence. “Wh-what is it?” she asked, puzzled.

Annabelle was the first to speak. “Just now, when you were talking to that squirrel, you didn’t stammer.”

“Oh.” Suddenly abashed, Evie lowered her gaze and grimaced. “I never stammer when I’m talking to children or animals. I don’t know why.”

They pondered the puzzling information for a moment. “I’ve noticed that you never seem to stammer quite as much when you’re talking to me,” Daisy observed.

Lillian could not seem to resist the comment. “Which category do you fall into, dear? Children, or animals?”

Daisy responded with a hand gesture that was completely unfamiliar to Annabelle.

Annabelle was about to ask Evie if she had ever consulted a doctor about her stammering, but the
red-haired girl abruptly changed the subject. “Where is the R-rounders ball, Daisy? If we don’t play soon, I’ll fall asleep.”

Realizing that Evie didn’t want to discuss her stammering any longer, Annabelle seconded the request. “I suppose if we’re really going to do it, now is as good a time as any.”

While Daisy dug in the basket for the ball, Lillian unearthed an item from her own basket. “Look what I’ve brought,” she said smugly.

Daisy looked up with a delighted laugh. “A real bat!” she exclaimed, regarding the flat-sided object admiringly. “And I thought we’d have to use a plain old stick. Where did you get it, Lillian?”

“I borrowed it from one of the stableboys. It seems they sneak away for Rounders whenever possible — they’re quite passionate about the game.”

“Who wouldn’t be?” Daisy asked rhetorically, beginning on the buttons of her bodice. “Gracious, the day is warm — it will be lovely to shed all these layers.”