Lady In Waiting Part 10

She swallowed the hard lump that formed in her throat. "What a wretched thing to say to a lady, my lord."

He studied her for some moments before speaking again. "Och, dinna fash. 'Tis quite all right, for I fancy ye as weel. But ye know that already."

Jenny disliked feeling so completely tilted from her footing. "I suspect, being the rogue you are, you've fancied a great number of women over the years."

He laughed at that. "I find ye verra attractive, 'tis true. But ye intrigue me as weel. Ye're verra different, Lady Genevieve, from any other gentlewoman I've ever had the pleasure to know."

A cold hand seemed to squeeze Jenny's insides. He thought her... different? Well of course he did-because she was different. "W-whatever do you mean, my lord?" she somehow managed to ask.

"I'm not sure what I mean exactly." Remaining silent for some seconds, he seemed to ponder his reply as he peered back at her. "Ye are... like this day, a warm spring breeze, yearned for and welcome, but so out of place in the depths of winter."

Golly. That was really nice. She had to admit, she especially liked the "yearned for" part. Liked it quite a lot.

Oh, she wished Meredith had been awake to hear what he'd all but admitted. Just so she could be sure she wasn't contriving the whole thing in her mind.

Jenny fashioned a demure smile for him. "How kind of you to liken me to a spring breeze."

"I dinna say it to be kind or to flatter ye... I meant only to explain myself." He flushed a little then and looked out the window, which struck Jenny as being entirely out of character for such a strong and imposing man.

"I understand... Callum."

The instant he heard Jenny utter his name, he turned back to her, his eyes lit from within, making her heart flutter.

My, my... if she was not mistaken, the viscount had just dropped his roguish flag and hoisted his true colors.

She could scarce believe it.

"We'll be arrivin' soon." With deliberation, he reached out his fingers and lifted Jenny's hand from her lap. He looked deep into her eyes. "Will ye walk with me, alone-if yer duennas will allow it, of course. I wish to explain what happened in Bath Abbey."

"Of course." Her voice sounded unusually high and nerve-strangled. "Anything you wish."

No more than five minutes later, the carriage slowed and halted, but Jenny's heart still galloped at breakneck speed.

"Here we are, Dyrham Park," Callum announced as the stairs were let down. He practically leapt from the cab and promptly drew in an astonishingly deep breath of the fresh country air.

Somewhat apprehensively, for she'd never ever set slipper outside the cities of Bath or London, Jenny took Callum's proffered hand and started down the steps. But as her foot touched the earth beneath her, she realized her apprehension was all for naught, for the landscape that stretched out before her was certainly the most beautiful she'd ever seen.

Lush gardens tumbled toward a manor house to her left, while to her right ran a wide swathe of gra.s.s sloping toward what appeared in the distance to be a water garden.

It must have taken quite a lot of money to maintain something like this. For it was simply gorgeous, and here it was the bones of winter.

Meredith emerged, blinking and sleepy, from the carriage and came to stand next to Jenny. "Oh, jolly good. Plants. Loads of plants," she droned. "At least you will be in paradise, Jenny."

Callum's attention caught. "Do you study flora?"

Jenny opened her mouth, but Meredith answered in her stead. "Lady Genevieve is quite the botanist. She's always fiddling with some plant or another."

The viscount turned and looked at her in astonishment. "I hadna any idea yer interests included botany."

Jenny shrugged and with a faint smile, turned away. She wasn't about to discuss her experiments with plant extracts. That'd be all she needed for Callum to connect her with the Lady Eros on-dits in the newspaper!

Walking to the edge of the road, Jenny stooped and quickly categorized several of the plants and shrubbery before her.

This place was amazing. Why, she couldn't even imagine the gardens in the spring, blooms would be everywhere. Oh, she'd have to come back then. She'd just have to find a way.

Her excitement burst forth in an exultant giggle and it was all she could do to keep from lifting her skirts and skipping across the sweeping lawn.

The Featherton carriage rolled onto the gravel a moment later and the two elderly ladies stepped out into the daylight.

"Lovely, just lovely," exclaimed Lady Viola.

Two footmen rounded the carriage with several baskets and coverlets and looked at the ladies for direction.

"Over there, I think." Lady Let.i.tia gestured to a low, sun-dappled outcropping of stone.

"Isn't it peculiar. A day warm enough for a picnic-in January. Perhaps after our meal, Lord Argyll will be good enough to show Lady Genevieve the exterior of the manor house. I recall the structure is quite commanding."

"Well, I, for one, am positively famished. My mind has been riveted on the thought of Cook's pigeon-pie and apple dumplings."

Lady Let.i.tia's stomach gave a loud, deep growl, which sent her and her sister into fits of laughter. "You see," she struggled to say through her pants of laughter. "What did I tell you? Even my belly is calling for the pies. Come, let us dine."

While Lady Viola argued the wisdom of her sister taking a third serving of apple dumpling, Meredith wandered off toward the water garden, and Jenny and Callum walked toward the manor house.

As they rounded a natural hedge of boxwood, a large spotted animal with great horns bounded out of the trees and seemed to charge straight for them.

With a yelp of fright, Jenny yanked her skirts to her knees and took off running down the path.

"Jenny, stop! What's wrong?" Callum called out.

Though she could hear his rapid footfalls behind her, she daren't look back, not with that thing coming for her!

A moment later, Callum seized her left arm and whirled her around to a stop. "Why are ye runnin' away? 'Twas just a wee fallow deer."

Jenny looked around him at the animal now grazing on the stubble of gra.s.s jutting up from the cold earth. Was he blind? There was nothing wee about that creature.

She studied the graceful animal as her breathing slowed. So that was a deer. Lud, she must seem the goose. But how could she be expected to know what a deer looked like? She'd spent her entire life in the cities of London and Bath after all. In fact, the only deer she'd ever seen was a roast of venison skewered on the kitchen spit.

Callum waggled his brows at her. "Ye're afeart of deer?"

"Don't be daft. Of course not!" Jenny shook his hand from the sleeve of her Witzchoura and folded her arms over her chest. "The beast just... startled me, 'tis all."

"The beast. Och, I see." Amus.e.m.e.nt still glowed in Callum's eyes, but he politely dropped the matter and instead surveyed the rolling hills in the distance until she fully gathered her wits about her.

He offered Jenny his arm once more and together they retraced their steps toward the manor house.

"Isn't the land beautiful?"

"Aye. 'Tis almost like being at hame in the Highlands." Callum breathed the air deep into his lungs as they walked, almost as if hoping to catch the scent of heather in Dyrham's breeze.

"Do you miss Scotland?"

"I do. But I have me work here and until 'tis done, I'll not be goin' hame."

"Really?" Here was the opening in the conversation Jenny had been waiting for-her chance to piece together the mystery of Lord Argyll. "What sort of work?"

Callum stopped walking altogether. He turned Jenny to face him fully, and exhaled a long sigh before speaking. "I came here, to Bath, to learn about me mother."

Jenny knew better than to speak, for to do so might put a halt to Callum's willingness to provide more information.

Callum cupped her elbow and led her to a waist-high retaining wall just out of view of the Feathertons, then lifted her up to sit upon it.

"When I was but a lad, I awoke one day to find my mother leaving. Every trunk she owned, every portmanteau, was filled with her things." His words were slow and deliberate. "I knew she wasna coming back and I ran to her, cryin'. I begged her not to go or, at the verra least, to take me with her. But she wudna."

In Callum's eyes, emotion collected, and his voice grew husky. "She told me she would come back-come back for me. But her eyes were red, like she'd been sheddin' tears all the night before."

He took each of Jenny's hands into his own and pressed them tight as he stood before her. He swallowed deeply, but said nothing more.

"And did she come back?" Jenny asked in a small voice.

"Nay. I never saw her again." His voice was so low, she hardly heard what he said.

"After a few weeks, my da told me she'd died."

"How awful for you."

"Awful, aye. But not true." Callum set his gaze to the horizon. "One night, I found a letter she'd written to me in his chamber, and then another a month after that, and I knew fer certain he had lied."

Jenny gasped before she could stop herself, but Callum continued on.

"Though I was but a wee lad, I called me father a liar and threw the letters at him. That's when he struck me, his Lord Lyon signet cuttin' into me face."

Unconsciously, he brushed his cheek with his own fist. When he drew his hand away, Jenny noticed, for the first time, a whitened scar just above his cheekbone.

"I dinna cry and I wudna take back my words. So he struck me again, until he drew blood. And so it continued over the years. Until one day, I finally believed his words, for I knew me mother would have never allowed me da to hurt me fer so long." He fumbled for her hand again.

Tears burned in Jenny's eyes for him. She pulled her right hand from his grip and raised it to his cheek, tracing the scar with her fingertips.

Meaning only to kiss his scar, Jenny leaned forward, but Callum jerked back and turned his head away from her.

How she wanted to hold him in her arms, and kiss the pain away. But it was clear he would not have her pity, her sympathy. Or even her comfort.

"Callum?" she whispered.

Slowly he turned his reddening eyes toward hers.

"The day I found you in the abbey-"

He sighed and distractedly focused his attention on a gray stone near his boot. "Even after all these years, though I had no reason to believe it, something inside of me held out hope that she still lived."

Abruptly Callum stepped back from her, and as he straightened his back, steeling himself for the words to come, he let her left hand, the one he still held, fall to her knee.

"Me father died late last year, and when I went to Argyll to settle his affairs, I found a pa.s.sel of letters from me mother, hidden inside his desk. Three years' worth of letters. Three."

Jenny slid down from the ledge and took a step forward. Callum raised a hand, tilting his head away from her sad gaze.

"Allow me to finish."

Jenny tipped her head forward once, and he continued.

"The letters told of her life in Bath, visits to the Pump Room, tea with the Feathertons, but little more-except that she held out great hope that she would be coming home soon."

A notion suddenly sparked in Jenny's mind. "She was ill. Dying."

"I believe she was."

"But she never told you. Never told your father?"

"She never told me, but I was little more than a bairn. But me father knew. In several of the missives, me mother mentioned that she hoped me father explained it to me... in such a way that a wee lad could understand her need to leave." He paused, and Jenny uttered the words he could not say.

"But he didn't explain it to you." Her throat felt tight as she spoke. "Instead, he told you that she had died."

"Aye." Callum stepped backward before meeting Jenny's gaze once more and looked down the curved road to where the Feathertons sat. "When ye came in from the rain and found me in the abbey, I had just found my mother's memorial stone."

Clear understanding dawned on Jenny. "And at last you knew for certain she was gone."

Heedless of his wishes, she rushed to Callum, clasped him in her arms, and held tight. "Oh, Callum, I am so sorry."

He pulled his shoulders back and tried to gently break from her grasp, but she wasn't about to let him go. Not now.

Why else would he have told her what he had? He needed her comfort. Whether he realized or not, he needed her.

Slowly, she felt his arms raise up and wrap around her, and the span of his wide hands press against her back, pushing her body tightly against him. Jenny lifted her head from the mound of his chest, and turned her face upward to look at him.

He was already looking at her, and what she saw in his eyes made her tremble within. In all her life, she'd never seen anyone so vulnerable.

As if he sensed her acknowledgment of his emotional state, he cupped her chin with his palm and pressed his lips against hers. He kissed her roughly then, a punishing kiss, the sort a rake would ply, but she didn't pull away.

For she knew what he was doing. He sought to raise the wall around him once more, and banish his feelings of weakness by driving her away.

But it would not work.

"I'm not going anywhere, Callum. I am here for you and you cannot drive me away. It's far too late for that." She looked him straight in the eye. "I know you are not the rogue you pretend."

Releasing her from his arms, Callum stared incredulously at her. "I pretend nothing. Truth and honesty are everything to me. 'Tis the way I have chosen to live."

"Then be truthful with yourself." She pinned him with her gaze and stood firm in her footing, knowing that what she was about to say would shake the both of them. "You need me and I am here for you. But unlike others you have cared for in your life, I won't leave you."

Like a crack of blinding lightning from the sky, her words seemed to shatter him to his core. He stared, in shock and awe of what she said, before turning and walking alone toward the manor house.