Page 26 of Second Chances
It had been entirely her own fault. It was evening and growing dusk and she had wanted to be among the trees with him, where several other couples—all considerably older than she—strolled. Somehow it had happened—she must have maneuvered it so—and he had clasped her hand that was resting on his arm and dipped his head and kissed her. But his lips had only grazed her cheek because she had turned her head in panic, and had torn her hand from his arm and made a sound that was not quite squeak, not quite scream, but an approximation of both.
“Don’t be frightened,” he had said, grasping her arm, and smiling at her—as he would have smiled at a very young child. “You are too young, aren’t you, Constance? Just a child still. You had better run along and play with Sidney.”
She had run. And felt dreadful humiliation for days afterward. And enormous relief when Sidney had brought the news less than a week after the picnic that Jonathan had taken himself off to a friend’s house, bored with life in the country. And then anger at his dallying with her and hatred at the fact that he had witnessed her humiliation. And shame that she had behaved in such a way as to make him see her as a child—as he always had.
She hated the thought of seeing him again now, Constance thought, grasping her knees more tightly and resting her chin on them. What if he remembered? But it was foolish to dread meeting him. It had all happened four years ago. Doubtless he had forgotten about it long before. Besides, everything had changed since then. She had grown up and Sidney had grown up. And this summer she was to be Sidney’s betrothed.
She was going to be Lord Whitley’s sister-in-law.
He would have forgotten, she persuaded herself, feeling her cheeks grow hot. Of course he would. But there was still discomfort in the knowledge that she must face him in less than five hours’ time.
She must concentrate her mind on the positive, she thought. In less than five hours’ time she would be seeing Sidney.
He was feeling nervous, the Viscount Whitley realized with some annoyance as he handed his hat and gloves to Sir Howard Manning’s manservant that evening and waited to be announced. He had not felt nervous during any of the afternoon calls he had made earlier. And he had always been on friendly terms with the Mannings, as had his parents before him. Sir Howard could not have been more hearty with his welcomes that morning.
Perhaps if he had not had a particular message to deliver, he thought, he would be feeling quite in command of himself. Damn Sid! But no, he would be feeling apprehensive anyway, in all probability. Somehow four years seemed to have rolled away in the familiar surroundings of home and it could all have happened yesterday. He just wished that at least he had not run away as he had. He wished he had stayed and had some sort of talk with her, made some sort of explanation or apology. An apology, certainly. She had been only fifteen years old.
She would have forgotten, he thought, running his hands over the sleeves of his blue coat and touching his neckcloth with light hands to make sure that the folds were still as they should be. Of course she would. As he had forgotten until he had made the decision to come home again this year. Though if he had forgotten, why he would have stayed away so long from a home he had always loved, he did not try to explain to himself.
The viscount followed the servant to the small, square drawing room, smiled, and walked through the doorway. Lady Manning, who had been a semi-invalid for as far back as he could remember, was on her feet, leaning heavily on Sir Howard’s arm. Lord Whitley did not immediately look beyond them, but proceeded with his greetings.
“And Connie,” Sir Howard said at last, the greetings over. “She has grown up since you saw her last, my lord, eh?”
She certainly had. She had been lovely and coltish when he had seen her last and fallen quite unexpectedly in love with the girl he had always thought of as a mischievous child, inseparable from his brother. She had been developing interesting curves, and her dark auburn hair, piled in curls instead of being worn in braids, had drawn attention to her large hazel eyes. She had been a lovely girl—a girl he had felt guilty for finding attractive.
She was beautiful now, those curves fully developed, though she was still slender, her hair cut into short soft curls that made her eyes appear even more enormous than they had seemed the time before. She was nineteen, he thought, soon to have her twentieth birthday. Definitely a woman.
Her eyes were looking beyond his shoulder when he first turned his own on her. Then she curtsied and looked at him. “My lord?” she said.
A curtsy? My lord? Things had certainly changed.
“Miss Manning?” he said and immediately felt uncharacteristically tongue-tied. He could not remember ever calling Constance Miss Manning.
“Where is Sidney?” she asked quickly. Her face was flushed, eager, a little anxious.
There had been kisses and promises, Sid had said, and letters exchanged all winter and spring. And she was expecting to be betrothed on her birthday. A thousand damnations to Sidney. How could he say the words and watch their effect on her face?
“Held back, I am afraid,” he said, “by friends who insisted that he accompany them to Brighton for a few weeks.”
He knew that he should not have mentioned a time limit. He should have given the message just as it was and allowed her to deal with it in her own way.
“For a few weeks?” she asked, and the disappointment in her eyes was quite unveiled. Had she spent time in London and acquired some town bronze, she would have learned how to make a mask of her face. “But he will be here for my birthday?”
“It is soon?” he asked.
“In three weeks’ time,” she said. “Oh, he promised to be here then.”
“Then I am sure he will make every effort to do so,” he said, mentally kicking himself for raising hope where there could be none. “How could he not? I am sure he would far prefer to be here now than in Brighton, but some invitations are not to be denied.”
“Oh.” She looked relieved. “Yes. And Sidney is so good-natured that he never could put people off, even when he knew he ought. But he will come for my birthday. He will tell them that it is a former commitment.” She smiled dazzlingly. “How glad he will be for the excuse. He hates to be away from Esdale during the summer.”
And from me, her tone and expression said, though there was no apparent conceit in the girl. It was just that she had not learned to dissemble.
But Sir Howard was offering him a drink at that moment, and Lady Manning was asking him how he found Esdale after an absence of several years, and he withdrew his mind thankfully from a message that had been bungled.
There were to be no other dinner guests, the viscount was half relieved and half sorry to find. The relief came from the tiredness following his journey the day before, several visits both made and paid that day, and a lengthy interview with his bailiff. But he was sorry that he had to lead Constance in to dinner and address all his conversation to her and her parents. And yet, all the time he could not stop himself from remembering that she was the very girl who had kept him so long away, and from wondering if she remembered as clearly as he.
He grew cold at the thought. All that summer, while he had grown more and more besotted with her, he had been aware of her extreme youth and of her discomfort with him and of her obvious preference—though quite unromantic at that time—for Sid. And yet during the picnic, after having fought a battle with himself all afternoon, he had finally given in to temptation during the evening and lured her away among the trees and tried to steal a kiss from her there. The memory of her terror and revulsion made him almost squirm now, and he laughed more heartily at something Sir Howard said than the joke really called for.
