Page 42 of How to Cross a Marquess (The Way to a Lord's Heart 3)

Roger looked self-conscious. She’d been staring…hungrily? Not that, surely. The word was completely inappropriate.

He turned away, rode closer to the tree, and reached down into a hollow in the trunk. “No messages in here. The neighborhood children don’t use it, apparently.”

“There aren’t many about these days. We all grew up.”

He nodded. “We lost Donald in the war. James lives in London. Your sisters married and moved away.”

“Alistair is still here, and married. His children may use the oak when they’re a bit older.”

“He’s gone stiff and prosy, though.”

Fenella wouldn’t have said it herself, but this was undoubtedly true of Roger’s old crony Alistair Byrne. “I remember when he walked across that gully on a fallen tree trunk. It bent in the middle, and I was terrified he’d drop onto the rocks.”

“By Jove, yes. He did it on a dare. Were you there?” Roger realized at once that the question was tactless. He ought to remember her better from their youth.

But Fenella only nodded. “Among the rank and file, at the back of the audience. How we cheered when he finished.”

“He was vastly proud of himself. Never stopped talking about it. And I do mean never. If I called on him tomorrow, I daresay he’d bring it up.”

“Despite the prosiness?”

She smiled, and Roger was flooded with relief. The ride was going to be all right. He’d feared, at the beginning, that the proprieties would stifle them, a bitter disappointment after that memorable kiss. But she’d come to the oak, he reminded himself. So she didn’t regret it.

They rode up a narrow lane between fields of stubble from the first harvest. The wind rose, bringing a touch of chill. “The days are shorter already,” Fenella said. “Sometimes I think of winter hovering in the north like a Viking fleet, waiting to sweep down on us.”

“And throw you over its shoulder and carry you off?” Roger frowned at this ill-thought-out remark. But then their eyes met, and he wasn’t sorry after all. He was nearly certain that their local historical pageant had set a spark alight in her as well. How to be certain? Macklin had said to ask, but how was he to put the question, precisely?

“It can feel a bit like that when a storm roars in from the sea,” she said. “I know some people find that lowering. But I always loved the wildness. I suppose it comes of growing up here. Long, dark winter nights are as much part of home as a day like this.” She gestured at the August landscape.

That was exactly it, Roger thought. The rhythm of the seasons and the sea became engrained in the spirit. He’d taken his love of his home country for granted until he was faced with Arabella’s hatred of the Northumberland winter. Over and over, she’d urged him to take the revenues his lands generated and move them to a permanent place in London. When he refused, that hatred had been transferred to him, he thought. And her mother had taken it up after Arabella died, as if she owed it to her daughter’s memory to despise him.

Roger didn’t want to think about Arabella here and now, and yet in a way she stood between him and Fenella. His marriage, and its aftermath, had stopped them from speaking to each other for months. It had prevented them from becoming reacquainted on her return. And Fenella had witnessed some of their difficulties. Probably more than he knew, because Arabella had most likely confided in her. She must have a poor opinion of his judgment. “You probably wonder why I married Arabella.”

Fenella blinked at this sudden change of subject. She looked uncomfortable. “It was, and is, not my place to wonder.”

She might feel that, but Roger was determined that there should be honesty and openness between them. He’d learned that the lack of those things brought disaster. “I was herded by her mother like a—”

“Sodding sheep?” she interrupted.

Was she angry or amused or embarrassed? Roger couldn’t tell. He hated that he couldn’t tell. He hadn’t realized until this moment how much he wanted Fenella’s approval. He longed to show her that the wreck of his marriage hadn’t been his fault.

She glanced at him, her blue eyes cool and inquiring. They seemed to look right through him.

He’d seen that expression before, Roger noted. When he’d railed at her about that ill-fated ride in the rain. Skeptical, he thought, and…weary? In a moment of rare insight, he realized that she was waiting for him to bluster and blame someone else for his problems. She’d heard him do that before, to her. And he’d been wrong. Dead wrong.

A flock of excuses rose up to distract him—reasonable, tempting. But under her even scrutiny, Roger had to admit that the core of the matter lay with him. Yes, Arabella’s mother had taken advantage, but his own shortcomings had given her the opportunity. “An exceedingly stupid sheep,” he said finally. “Stubborn as well.”

Fenella cocked her head, surprised.

Roger forged ahead. “I’d been hanging about Arabella at thetonparties, along with a bunch of other fellows. She was—” He hesitated.

“Very beautiful,” said Fenella.

Roger nodded. There was no denying that. Everyone had agreed that Arabella Crenshaw was an absolute dazzler. “There was a sort of competition among us, to get her alone. We didn’t mean anything by it. She was so strictly chaperoned. It was just a lark.”

“Like climbing onto the roof of the castle tower?” asked Fenella.

Her tone was very dry. Roger winced under it. “We were a pack of young fools, me most of all, I suppose. Well, obviously.”

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