Page 28 of How to Cross a Marquess (The Way to a Lord's Heart 3)

“I’ll come again.”

Unsettled by how much she wanted him to do so, Fenella sent him off with the housemaid to retrieve his hat and leave her home. Could anything be more foolish than mooning over a man she’d run away from a few years ago? How her father would laugh if he found out. Laugh and then argue for his marital plan until he drove them all mad. Fenella shook her head. They’d been through that fiasco. She’d refused to be pushed even then, when she was timid enough to jump at shadows. She certainly wouldn’t be now. And Rogerhadcompared her to a sodding sheep.

Pulled by irresistible currents, she walked to the end of the corridor and looked out the window. Roger was mounting his horse on the sweep of gravel before the front steps. In the saddle, he paused and looked back. Fenella couldn’t judge his expression from this distance, but he sat there for a full minute before he turned his horse and rode away. She would have given a good deal to know what he was thinking.

“Sodding sheep,” she muttered, a warning reminder. The note crackled as her fingers closed into fists.

Shoving the past aside, Fenella opened the missive and read it. Harold Benson wondered if she might know of a boy who could take a part in their Lindisfarne pageant. A lad of ten years old or so would be perfect. The message was disingenuous. Mr. Benson knew she had a nephew staying for the summer holidays. Clearly, he intended John for the role. Wondering why, when he must have a number of boys to choose from, she read over the description of the scene. Ah, that was it. Laughing, she went in search of John.

Ten minutes later, Fenella knocked on the closed door of her sisters’ old playhouse. The little building, built for Greta and Nora when they were small, nestled among flowering bushes at the back of the Clough House garden. Fenella couldn’t count the times she’d been denied admittance, and then lurked in the undergrowth trying to overhear her sisters’ secrets, before she stopped trying.

“Come in,” called Greta’s son.

With a tiny, ridiculous thrill, Fenella bent under the low doorway and entered.

John sat on a stool before a wooden table holding some botanical specimens. He’d removed the frilly curtains that used to hang at the windows, Fenella saw. Most of the scaled-down furniture was gone as well. She wondered where he’d put it. What had been a girlhood bower was now neat and functional. Fenella checked for snakes. She didn’t see any. But she asked to make certain.

“No,” replied John. “I haven’t found any worth keeping so far. And I’ve nothing to keep them in. You can’t just shut them in a dark box.”

Fenella was reassured by this sign of compassion. John worried about the well-being of reptiles, at least. “I came to ask if you would take a role in the historical pageant on Lindisfarne Island at the end of the month.” It would be just before he needed to return to school.

“Pageant? Like a church pageant?”

“A bit like that, yes.”

“I don’t think I can act.” John looked uneasy.

“It’s hardly that. More like posing, really.”

“Are you in it?”

“Yes.” A vivid memory of being hefted over Roger’s shoulder intruded. Warmth washed over Fenella.

“What would I have to do?”

“You would be a boy receiving a homily from St. Cuthbert.”

“Homily. That’s a kind of sermon?”

John was really quite intelligent. Fenella wished he was just a bit more sweet-tempered. “Shorter than that.”

“That sounds pretty limp. I don’t think I want to.”

“You did offer to help me should I need it,” Fenella said.

“Does this help you?”

Really very intelligent, Fenella thought, because strictly speaking, it did not. But Mr. Benson would nag, and she thought it might be good for John to join a group effort. Still, she wouldn’t lie to him. “I’ve been asked to help,” she said. “And so I’m trying to do so.” There was also deceit by omission, Fenella thought. That wouldn’t do. “You would have to be covered in mud, apparently,” she added. “And a bucket of water would be thrown over you at the end.”

Oddly, John’s expression brightened. “Right over my head?”

“I suppose so.”

“Ha.” He smiled at the thought. “All right. I’ll do it.”

Boys were just odd, Fenella thought as she turned to go. “There’s a rehearsal tomorrow afternoon.”

“Rehearsal? Do I have to memorize? I’m no good at memorizing.” John looked anxious again.

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