A few men, all smiling and jovial, were shooing everyone off the grass. Fiddlers and pipers were tuning their instruments on the far side of the green. Two young girls were straightening out the ribbons about the maypole. The dancing was about to begin.
“Stay,” he said, getting to his feet and reaching out a hand to help her to hers. “Let’s watch the dancing together, Nora. One gets a chance to watch maypole dancing only once a year, after all.”
“Oh,” she said, her eyes traveling up the maypole and down to note all the activity about it, “it would be a pity to miss it.”
And she smiled again as she looked about, a bright, warm, happy expression. The sun glinted off her gaudy beads-her rare and priceless blue pearls. And he wondered if after all he was sorry that this had happened today. There was something undeniably seductive-
But he shook his head slightly, pushing aside the thought.
And then girls and young men took the ribbons in their hands, the musicians struck up a merry, toe-tapping tune, and the dancing began.
He stood watching, his shoulder almost, but not quite, touching Nora’s. And he felt a sudden welling of nostalgia for his youth, for those days of charmed innocence, when he had had employment that satisfied him and when there had been Nora, his employer’s daughter, to admire from afar. To weave dreams about. To fall headlong in love with, long before he knew she returned his feelings. And finally to hold and to kiss and to rescue from an undesirable marriage-rushing her off to the border and beyond like the proverbial knight in shining armor rescuing his damsel in distress.
Except that there had been nothing final about it.
No happily-ever-after.
She was tapping her foot and clapping her hands, as were most of the other spectators about the green. She was smiling again, her eyes sparkling with pleasure.
She looked up at him.
He looked back.
And, God help him, he smiled at her.
Chapter Five
It struck Nora that she had been terribly, terribly lonely for a long time. So long a time, in fact, that it seemed to her she had always been lonely.
She had been a pampered and adored child, it was true, even though her mother had died when she was but a year old. But she had rarely had companions of her own age, and she had never been sent away to school. As a girl she had been taught to expect a glittering come-out Season and a match with a wealthy, distinguished gentleman. But then, before she could even be taken to London to participate in a Season, she had been told that she would marry Sir Cuthbert Potts, who was amiable and good-hearted-but on the wrong side of his sixtieth birthday. She had not understood until she had objected that he was also to be her father’s savior-she had not known how close to financial ruin her father was.
She had been a lonely girl.
And for the last several years-well, “loneliness” was not a powerful enough word. Not that she was in the habit of feeling sorry for herself. But now, when she was in the very midst of such exuberant celebrations and watched the dancers weave their colored ribbons about the maypole while the sun beamed brightly down on them all-now it struck her that she was lonely.
For Richard stood at her side, almost shoulder to shoulder with her, in fact. But they were as far apart as if they had been standing on opposite sides of the globe. Her loneliness was worse than if she stood here alone and hungry and homeless, as she would have been if the owner of the crashed curricle had been anyone but him.
And yet a perverse part of her was undeniably happy. This day was like a time out of time, something to be lived and hugged to herself and remembered-even if only with pain. Her cheap, garish, bright blue beads caught her eye as they glinted in the sunlight, and she knew she would keep them and treasure them as if they really were the costliest of jewels.
The human heart was an incomprehensible thing.
Her right foot beat out the time of the music against the grass. She clapped her hands, as most of the spectators were doing, and smiled. It was May Day and she was alive and healthy and…
Well, why not be happy when the chance offered itself?
It does not flatter you. It considerably underestimates you.
And how ravishing you look.
He had spoken those words to her today, and he was standing beside her now-Richard was. It was still an incredible thought. The last time she had seen him was in the dining room of their inn in Scotland. He had not stopped her father from taking her upstairs to pack her belongings. He had not come after her either then or when they left the inn. He had never come after her. She had not heard from him again except for one strange, brief, formal letter in which he had offered to marry her. It was after he had unexpectedly inherited his title and fortune, six months after their elopement, no more than a week after the final horrible crash of her father’s fortune and ruin of all his prospects.
It was an offer that had been made out of pity-perhaps. Or out of a desire to gloat over her father, who had pleaded with her to accept.
She had refused.
She turned her head now to look up at him, and he looked back-and smiled.
He had been a serious young man, her father’s secretary. She had admired him for a long time before she had walked past the open door of his study one day and he had looked up from his books and their eyes had met and he had smiled at her-and she had plummeted all the way into love with him.
His smile had not changed. It began in his eyes, crinkling them attractively at the corners, and spread to his mouth.
Nora was smitten with a yearning nostalgia that reached back beyond the empty, bitter years since they had last smiled at each other. That had been on their wedding day.
His eyes lingered on hers, and surely-ah, surely-there was an answering longing there.
Why had everything gone so terribly wrong?
The music and the dancing had stopped, and one of the men who had shooed them all off the green fifteen minutes ago was circling it again, beckoning with both hands, urging other people to take the ribbons and dance with the May Day.
“Come along, sir,” he called when he arrived close to them. “Mr. Kemp, is it not? Bring your lady and dance, sir. It was a happy chance that stranded you here today. It is said that couples who dance together about the maypole dance together through eternity.”
There was a burst of merry laughter and a few cheers from those standing nearby, and then he moved on, calling similar persuasions to other people as he went.
Richard was still half smiling.
“Shall we?” he said, gesturing toward the maypole.
And the yearning was there again, more intense than ever.
“I have not danced about a maypole since I was a girl,” she said. But her eyes said that she was ready to try again.
“It has been at least that long for me,” he said. “If you get hopelessly tangled up in the ribbons, I will be right there with you. Shall we try anyway? At the very least we will provide these villagers with a good laugh.”
And then he did something that fairly took her breath away. He lifted one hand and pulled free the bow of her bonnet ribbon beneath her chin. She felt the warmth of his fingers against the bare flesh of her neck and gazed into his eyes, which seemed very blue and very close to her own.
And then her bonnet was off and being tossed to the grass with his tall hat and the rolled-up drawing, and a laughing young girl was placing a blue ribbon in her hand, a yellow one in his. They were going to dance about the maypole together to welcome the spring.
To welcome all that was new and bright and hope-filled.
They were going to dance together through eternity, if the leader was to be believed. The memory of his words filled her with sudden laughter, and she saw an answering amusement in Richard’s face when she looked at him.