Page 41 of How to Cross a Marquess (The Way to a Lord's Heart 3)

“Or perhaps not. One can’t know in such a case. For me, the only answer is to try to do better as time goes by and I learn.”

“You?” Macklin seemed a paragon.

“Of course. Do you think I’ve made no mistakes?”

It felt like a kind of absolution. Roger drew in a breath, slowly let it out. He meant to improve. He intended to take every care. If Fenella would give him the chance, he would show her that he could be a better man. “How do you avoid them now?” he asked. Because it seemed to him that Macklin never made a misstep.

“I don’t, of course.”

That wasn’t good news.

“But I find that I make fewer when I take care to discover others’ opinions.”

“You make that sound simple.”

“Did I?” Macklin shook his head. “Then I have created a misimpression. Asking properly can be quite difficult. And then one must work very hard to hear the answer.”

“To hear?” This wasn’t the type of advice Roger had expected.

“People aren’t always eloquent. And then, we often hear what we wish for rather than truth, do we not?”

Roger hadn’t thought so. All he could think now was: here was another social pitfall waiting to trip him up.

Eight

When Fenella next rode out, as the neighborhood was accustomed to her doing, she turned her mount to the ancient oak that had been a fixture of her childhood. The great tree stood alone on the side of a low hill, where a spring arose and marked the beginning of a stream, hardly more than a trickle in this spot, though it gathered force nearer to the sea. The oak leaned toward the slope, and its branches dipped down to create a secret space in this spot the tree had guarded for hundreds of years. Had it been a sapling when the Vikings harried this coast, as Roger was supposed to be doing in the pageant? Perhaps that was stretching the tree’s age, but it was fun to think so.

She stopped beside the spring and gazed up through the arching branches. During her childhood, the youthful ringleaders of the neighborhood had gathered here, lords of the juvenile set. Finally, after all these years, she felt like one of them. Fenella laughed aloud. Ridiculous to care, but she couldn’t help it. Though she was twenty-three, she’d had no social triumphs to overshadow old memories. Her grandmother didn’t entertain a great deal, and she’d never thought it right to take Fenella to London for the season and presentation at court without her father’s approval. Grandmamma hadn’t really wanted to go in any case, Fenella thought. She had no love for cities, or the English.

She’d assured Fenella that a person didn’t need the approval of society to be strong and self-assured. Which was true, Fenella supposed, but it required a marked degree of resolution. And there was this. Grandmamma had attended the balls and routs and soirees she now rejected when she was a girl. By all accounts, she’d been lavished with society’s approval. So her arguments weren’tquitedefinitive.

These thoughts went out of Fenella’s head as Roger appeared, riding up the slope toward her, straight and strong on his spirited horse. She couldn’t see his eyes from here, but she remembered their fierce blue, the glint of his red hair in candlelight. Fenella felt a tremor in the region of her heart. Was it wise to be meeting him this way? She found she didn’t care.

He pulled up and gazed at her as if they hadn’t seen each other recently. “A fine day.”

It was a balmy northern morning. Clouds lazed across the blue sky. The hum of insects and birdsong wove a pleasant counterpoint. “It is,” Fenella agreed.

“We can count on August to give us sun.”

“Yes.” Their conversation had gone stilted. They had been talking so freely on their last ride. These were the sorts of bland remarks strangers exchanged in a drawing room. Disappointment loomed over her.

“How I hate society chatter,” Roger blurted out, echoing her thoughts. “It’s the next thing to meaningless, and yet it can be so difficult to produce. Why is that?”

“Because one doesn’t really care?”

He looked a question.

“It’s not worth much attention,” Fenella added. “You know the other person isn’t really listening. And most likely doesn’t care about your opinion. Probably they’re simply marking time until they can walk away.”

“Not the case here!” Roger said.

“And so we needn’t talk about the weather.”

“No.”

He looked at her. Fenella stared back and realized that she hadn’t improved matters with her disquisition on idle chatter. In fact, she’d sounded fatuous, or pompous. She ought to have said… She didn’t know what she ought to have said. It was difficult to think of anything except their visit to the stone circle and the fact that she’d kissed him. Just stood up on tiptoe and kissed him, as if that wasn’t a terribly improper thing to do. She ought to be mortified, to be putting distance between them. In fact, she was remembering how much she’d enjoyed the experience.

Of the three kisses in her life so far—kisses from gentlemen, that is—one she had endured in a spirit of inquiry; one she had repulsed, revolted; and the third had made her body tingle and her head spin. It was marvelous how a simple pressure of lips could vary so radically. What did her childhood acquaintance have that other men didn’t, to make her feel so dazzlingly alive?

---