Page 43 of A Baron's Disguised Lady
“For as long as you wish,” he replied.
They walked on, arm-in-arm through the gardens, emerging through a gap, cut as an archway through a hedge, and found themselves looking down on a walled orchard. Hundreds of trees grew in neat rows, some tall, some short, and all of them loaded with apples and pears, the fruit hanging invitingly on the boughs. There was a sweet scent in the air, as though the trees themselves were already exuding their juice and causing Lavinia’s mouth to water. It was beautiful.
“Isn’t this wonderful?” she exclaimed, as he led her through a gate into the orchard itself.
As they walked along the rows of trees, Archie pointed out the various varieties: some crisp, some soft, some tart, some sweet. The pears, too, were almost ripe for picking, and Lavinia could imagine their sweetness, the perfumed flesh almost melting in her mouth.
“It was planted just after the civil war in the late seventeenth century. We’ve never had a bad crop—or a failed crop. The blossom comes in the spring, and to walk here then… well, it’s like a snowfall of pink and purple flowers. It’s quite magical,” Archie said, and Lavinia closed her eyes, imagining herself walking beneath the trees as the blossom fell in gentle drifts.
“I’d love to be here then, to see it in all its grandeur,” she said, and the baron smiled.
“I’d love you to be here then, too,” Archie replied, and Lavinia blushed, not knowing how to interpret his words.
Did he mean them by way of invitation? Was there, like the apple trees themselves, a blossoming of something more between them? Lavinia smiled back at him. She liked him—more so than that, her feelings for him were growing stronger with every passing moment. They were blossoming.
“I don’t know how long my mother intends for us to stay. It seems she and your mother still have a great deal to catch up on with one another,” Lavinia replied, and Archie laughed.
“They’re as thick as thieves. It’s been good for her. After Gwendolene’s death, she… well, it was strange. I don’t know how she managed it. There were days she seemed almost normal, and other days when grief simply overwhelmed her. She’d stayin bed the whole day, sobbing uncontrollably. There was no in-between,” he said, shaking his head.
Lavinia was curious about the baron’s own grief. There was a quietly persistent sorrow about him; his daily visits to the churchyard, his ponderous melancholy, the way he withdrew into himself at times, shutting himself away. Lavinia knew grief was different for everyone.
Her own for Theodora had been quite different to that of Archie for Gwendolene. She had been just five years old and had not entirely understood what had happened. She remembered her mother and father clinging to one another, sobbing uncontrollably, and her father holding her in his arms, as though terrified she would be next. Lavinia had feared it, believing it was only a matter of time before she, too, would die.
“I want to be with Theodora,”she had once said, only for her mother to scold her for wishing such things, even as they had been said in the innocence of a childish misunderstanding.
But now, Lavinia no longer wept for her sister. She missed her, or rather, she often imagined what her life would have been if the two of them had grown up together.
There was so much to share, and moments such as the reunion with her grandfather, or the arrival at Sarum Lacy House and the encounter with the baron, were just those sorts of moments when sisters would share their thoughts and feelings with oneanother. But Lavinia had grown up with no one to share such thoughts and feelings with, and for this, she knew she was the poorer.
“And what about you? Is your grief like that?” Lavinia asked.
She felt she knew him well enough now to ask such questions. There was an intimacy between them; their having danced with one another, the kiss that had almost happened, and the sharing of intimacies such that neither had shared with another. He gave a weak smile and shook his head.
“No, my grief is just what my sister would’ve hated. The daily visits to the churchyard, the searching for the living among the dead. She told me as much, but oh, I can’t do anything more. Not until I know the truth…” he said.
Lavinia slipped her hand into his and squeezed it. She did so quite instinctively. There was nothing forced about the gesture, even as she knew it was an imposition. They were unchaperoned, alone in the orchard, and yet there was nothing scandalous in their behavior. Archie had acted entirely chivalrously towards her. He was an absolute gentleman compared to the likes of Lord Bath, and Lavinia trusted him entirely.
“And you’ll find it. We’ll find it together. But perhaps… well, perhaps you shouldn’t go back to the churchyard today. Your sister won’t mind, you said so yourself. And there’s so muchmore of the garden to explore. I haven’t seen half of it yet; the estate, the woods, and the meadows. It feels like an enchanted land, hidden away, but waiting to be explored, like in a fairytale,” Lavinia said, and the baron smiled.
“It’s certainly a special place, but I suppose I’m overly familiar with it. I know it so well. But to see it through another’s eyes… well, where would you like to go first?” he asked.
Lavinia smiled, glad to have his agreement, and she pointed to the far end of the orchard, where a gate led through a hedge, into a meadow beyond, where ancient oak trees grew tall and proud, their bows arching over a path, like the vaulted ceiling of a great medieval cathedral.
“This way,” she said, leading him by the hand.
“Lead on,” he said, smiling at her.
For the next few hours, they wandered aimlessly together through the gardens and across the estate. Through wooded glades, by gushing streams, across flower covered meadows. The sun shone down on them, blessing their progress, the dew-covered morning giving way to the warmth of a summer’s day.
Everywhere she looked, Lavinia saw abundance; the outpouring of nature in the beauty of the landscape. Itwaslike another world, and Lavinia could only feel a deep sense of privilege in accompanying Archie through it.
“Look at this,” she exclaimed, as they came to a bank of wildflowers rising above the bend in a stream, where the crystal-clear waters looked inviting enough to swim in.
“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine: There sleepsTitaniasometime of the night, Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight…” Archie recited, and Lavinia looked at him and smiled.
“Shakespeare?” she asked, and he nodded, as they sat down amid the wildflowers. Sitting close to one another, the folds of Lavinia’s skirt covered Archie’s left leg, their hands resting back, almost touching.
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream.I often think of those words when I see this bank in the summer. Who knows, perhaps Titania, the fairy queen, really does sojourn here,” he said.
