Page 13 of Second Chances
“Continue where you left off, if you please,” he said. “There is a certain...sadness in you, Eleanor, that is of concern to Christine and therefore to me. What is it, my dear?”
She looked sharply at him. Wulfric was not usually lavish with endearments. And was it true that Christine was concerned about her?
“I fear I must disappoint you,” she said. “I fear you will think me lacking in perseverance and a knowledge of what I want of life. I fear you will think me a failure.”
“And does my opinion matter to you?” he asked.
She sighed. “And Mama’s opinion and Hazel’s and Charles’s and Christine’s too,” she said. “But most of all yours because you have invested in me.” Also because despite herself she was a little afraid of him, as she suspected all people were except her sister.
“You had better tell me,” he said.
“All that I told you about my school and the teachers and the girls is true,” she told him. “But it was a mistake to take over so impulsively from Claudia when she married the Marquess of Attingsborough. There, I have said it. I do not enjoy the administration, the business, the responsibility, the loneliness. And I have been so endlessly tired. And yes, unhappy. I made a mistake, but you believed in me and made it happen for me with your loan.”
Purchasing the school was not the only mistake she had made, she feared. She had botched the whole of her adult life since Gregory’s death. She had prided herself upon being the one woman who would be steadfast in her grief over the loss of the love of her life. She had lived by that decision even after the rawness of grief had passed and even its gentler melancholy aftermath. Sometimes she had had to whip up her memories. Sometimes she had not thought of him for days, even perhaps weeks at a time. Sometimes she could not remember either his face or his voice. In the meanwhile she had lost her youth, her chance to find someone else for whom she might feel an affection even if not the passion of her young love, her chance to marry and have children of her own. She had been proud of her devotion to a memory. Yet now her fight against loneliness was almost constant. Her fortieth birthday was creeping up with very little to show for all the years. And now she had fallen in love again—with a man who was probably about to marry a young lady quite unworthy of him.
“It was a gift,” Wulfric said. “And I neither regret giving it nor blame you, Eleanor. Sometimes our dreams lead us in the wrong direction and it would be foolish to continue pursuing them out of sheer stubbornness or the fear of disappointing others. There are other dreams waiting to be dreamed—the right dreams, the ones that will lead to contentment.”
She turned her head to look at him in some surprise. She had never heard him talk thus before.
He met her gaze. “I am a happy man, Eleanor,” he said. “I want your happiness too, not your fear of disappointing me. You surely cannot doubt that your mother and sisters too want nothing but your happiness.”
She drew a slow breath. “I have a potential buyer,” she said. “If I sell, I will repay your loan, Wulfric, though I will not insult you by offering any interest on it.”
“And what will you do then?” he asked. “Will the new owner wish to keep you on staff as a teacher?”
She had been keeping her mind away from that question. She was not sure of the answer. She was not even sure she would be able to recapture the pleasure she had felt as a simple teacher at the school.
“I do not know,” she said.
“Your mother and Christine would be ecstatic to have you live here,” he said. “It would please me too.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Wulfric, I am so sorry. I feel so...defeated.”
“Only you can wrestle with that demon,” he said. They had been making their way back gradually to where everyone else was thronged. “Christine is wrestling with a couple of her own. She was neatly maneuvered into inviting Lady Connaught and her daughter here, but she swears she would have resisted to the death had she not believed Staunton was courting the daughter. Is it as clear to your eye as it is to Christine’s and mine that he is trying desperately not to do so but is perhaps too much the gentleman to be firm with them? The mother is appalling, is she not? One can only hope that the man the daughter eventually marries will be capable of tearing his wife—and himself—from her pernicious influence. However, while they are at my home they must be treated as welcome and valued guests. Will the wilderness walk be too much for them, do you think?”
Was it as clear to her eye? Perhaps her eye had been clouded by her anxiety for the future of the Earl of Staunton’s children. Oh, and by her own inappropriate feelings for him. One might as well be honest at least within the confines of one’s own mind. Was he trying to avoid Miss Everly?
“Not if you escort them there,” she said. “They will see it as an acknowledgment of their superiority over all your other guests.”
“Quite so,” he agreed, and a few minutes later he was leading them away, one lady on each arm, and Eleanor was moving off in some confusion when she realized she had been left alone with the Earl of Staunton, slightly removed from everyone else.
“Miss Thompson,” he said, stopping her. And oh, she knew as she looked back at him that she was doing exactly what Wulfric had just suggested she do. She was dreaming another dream. Very foolishly. Very unwisely. Unfortunately, however, dreams seemed to be beyond the control of the rational mind.
Soon she was strolling away from the crowd yet again, toward the lake this time and on the arm of the Earl of Staunton.
Chapter 6
“My children have taken a liking to you,” he said as he turned their steps in the direction of the lake. “I hope they have not been making a nuisance of themselves.” And he fervently hoped Georgette had not told her, as she had Lady Connaught and Miss Everly, that she was to be their new mama, that it was only a matter of time before he got around to asking her.
“I have been touched,” she said. “Although I love young children, I have never considered myself good with them as my sisters are.”
“But I daresay,” he said, “they have never been as good with older children as you are.”
“You are kind,” she said. “Your son is enjoying himself, is he not? Has he never had children younger than himself with whom to play?”
“All his cousins and all the children of our closest neighbors are older,” he said. “Young Tommy was a godsend. He and a few other infants see Robert as an older, bolder boy who will condescend to play with them. And I believe he is seeing himself through their eyes.”
“Yesterday,” she said, “when several of us climbed the tower folly on the wilderness walk, he took my hand to help me up the winding stairs and then pointed out for my edification all the landmarks we could see from the top.”
