Carola Dunn (23 page)

 In fact he was more of a distraction to Mariana than to her pupils. Reluctantly, for she enjoyed their talks, she asked him to limit his visits to five minutes.

 He complied, but he continued to turn up daily. He also, unless out on business, joined the schoolroom party’s daily walks on fine days.

 The baskets of provisions continued to arrive regularly at Merriman’s Cottage, and the gardener called weekly to ask if there was work for him. Mr Perrincourt instituted thrice-weekly afternoon tea drinkings in his mother’s sitting-room, which he invariably attended. When the weather was the slightest bit inclement, Mariana found the landau at the door waiting to take her home. She was invited to stay for dinner far more often than she felt it proper to accept.

 In short, Mr Perrincourt continued to dance attendance on Mariana. The attraction she had felt for him from their first meeting, in spite of his then gruffness, grew as she came to know him better.

 She might very easily fancy herself in love, she realized, if she were not well past the age for such nonsense.

 Sometimes she suspected his mama might be right about his feelings for her. More often, she convinced herself that he, too, was past the age of romantic attachments. And if not, then a younger woman was far more likely to catch his eye.

 But if, by chance, he had come to care for Mariana, why did he not speak? He had every opportunity, and nothing she could see to make him hold back.

 No, she decided mournfully, his mother must be mistaken, misled by the sentiments aroused by Valentine’s Day.

* * * *

 Damian groaned.

 Lyuba looked up from her place on the hearthrug. She had taken to following him down from the schoolroom sometimes, after his daily visits. Now she came over to the desk where he sat and laid her head on his thigh, gazing up at him with sympathy in her big brown eyes.

 Pirate, curled up on one corner of the desk, slept on, oblivious of Damian’s travails.

 He fondled Lyuba’s silky head. “It is hard for an inarticulate soldier,” he told her. “I have been trying for days, and somehow I simply cannot get beyond ‘My dear Miss Duckworth.’ Or do you think it ought to be ‘My dearest Miss Duckworth’? No, that sounds ridiculous. ‘My dearest Mariana...’?”

 The pup shook her head. Actually she shook all over, really more a wriggle of pleasure in his caress, but Damian chose to interpret it as a negative.

 “You are quite right,” he went on, “I have no right to speak her christian name. But that brings up another question: Shall I speak, or shall I address your mistress by letter, the coward’s way? Either way, I must plan my approach.”

 He turned back to the desk and picked up his quill. Lyuba sighed and settled at his feet.

 “My dear Miss Duckworth,” he read on the sheet of notepaper lying in front of him. He dipped the pen in the inkwell, and stopped with it poised over the paper.

 Too formal. He crumpled the sheet into a ball, set it aside, and began again.

 “My very dear Miss Duckworth.” Ah, that was better. She was very dear to him.

 He had felt a physical attraction right from his first sight of her in her muddy gardening dress, mud streaked on her forehead. It had grown until it kept him awake at night, aching with desire, and haunted his dreams. Since he had come down off his high horse—or toppled off, rather—and learnt to know her, he had come to love her gentleness and humour, to admire her competence and her independent spirit.

 Her independence, there was the trouble. How could he expect her, after years of living at the beck and call of others, to give up her independence and become his wife?

 It went without saying that she would never marry him for his wealth or position. All he had to persuade her with was his love.

 The best he could do was to stop dithering and pour out his heart, whether he decided in the end to send the letter or to con it well and utter the carefully prepared phrases aloud. He dipped the pen again, and wrote.

 This time the words flowed easily.

 “Your...most...devoted...loving...,” he said aloud as he wrote the final line. “Damian,” he signed it.

 Damian? Damian Perrincourt? D. Perrincourt Esq.? In any case, that would be left off if he made a speech of it. Was last line above his signature too effusive? It might embarrass her, he thought, frowning.

 He read what he had written. The whole thing was too emotional. All very well if she accepted his offer, but shockingly embarrassing to her, and mortifying to him, if she refused him.

 “Damn!” he swore.

 Lyuba raised her head. Pirate stood up and stretched.

 “Damn,” Damian repeated more softly. He picked up the sheet of paper, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it onto the desk-top.

 Pirate sprang upon the splendid new toy. He patted it back and forth. The ball slid across the polished wood as if it was alive. He pounced. The paper made a fascinating crackling noise. He hit it again, and chased it as it slithered to the edge of the desk and fell off.

 Lyuba seized it. She pranced around the library, tail swishing, eyes turned to Damian as if to say,
look at me, aren’t I clever?

 “Lyuba, come! Bring it here!” Damian jumped up and reached for her as she passed nearby.

 She eluded him with ease. A few feet away, she stopped to look at him teasingly. As he strode towards her, she dashed to the half-open door, and disappeared into the hall.

 Mariana was half way down the stairs when Lyuba galloped into the hall. The puppy scampered up to meet her and proudly dropped a ball of paper at her feet.

 Holding one of the carved oak banister-posts for balance, Mariana stooped to pick up the crumpled paper. It was damp, but only one corner was irretrievably soggy. In an attempt to salvage whatever her naughty pup had stolen, she smoothed the creases.

 The first few words caught her eye: My very dear Miss Duckworth.

 “Oh!” she said faintly, and sat down upon the stair.

 The sudden weakness in her lower limbs did not affect her eyes. She read on.

 Footsteps sounded in the hall below, unmistakably a man’s hurried stride.

 “Oh, the devil!” groaned Mr Perrincourt.

 Feeling her mouth quiver in a tremulous smile, Mariana kept her face averted.

 “Miss Duckworth, I did not mean you to read that!”

 She held up her hand to stop him. “One moment, sir, I have all but finished.” Your most devoted, loving...

 “Please...”

 At last she looked at him, puzzled and a trifle apprehensive despite the warmth which flooded through her. He stood at the foot of the stairs, his hand on the carved waterlily topping the bottom post, his eyes cast down as if the toes of his boots had suddenly become objects of the greatest interest.

 “I would not have read it had I not seen my name. It is addressed to me, yet you say you did not wish me to read it? Why not?”

 “Sentimental claptrap,” he muttered, scarlet-faced.

 “Oh,” Mariana exclaimed joyfully, “I was afraid perhaps you might have changed your mind since writing it. There is nothing wrong with sentiment, if these are your true sentiments. And it is not claptrap, I hope, if you take claptrap as a synonym for mendacity. Or have you changed your mind?” she asked anxiously, in a small voice.

 “No, my beloved governess, I have not changed my mind!” He took the stairs two at a time. “I used claptrap as a synonym for verbosity, and those are indeed my true sentiments.” Stopping on the step below her, he said seriously, “I was afraid of embarrassing and disgusting you with unwelcome ardour. Is it unwelcome?”

 “No,” Mariana admitted, smiling up at him without a trace of the maidenly modesty she had so often recommended to her former pupils.

 Damian sat down beside her and took her in his arms.

 Sometime later, this idyllic interlude was interrupted by a butlerian cough from below.

 “Ahem! Mrs Perrincourt desires to know, miss, whether you will be joining her for tea?”

 As Lyuba, who had been lying on the stairs, skittered down to greet her friend Perkins, Mariana emerged with a dreamy smile from Damian’s embrace.

 “Yes, Perkins, I am on my way.”

 “We are on our way,” Damian corrected, his arm still about her waist as she stood up.

 “Are you going to be married?” asked a youthful voice hopefully.

 Mariana realized Thomas and Lucinda had been sitting at the top of the stairs for some time, quiet as mice. She blushed as she thought of what they had been watching. So oblivious had she been that Pirate had somehow gone past her up to the children without her noticing. He was draped in his usual pose on Lucy’s shoulder.

 “Yes, we are going to be married,” Damian told his niece and nephew, “as soon as possible. At my age I cannot afford to wait.”

 “The first of May,” said Mariana, “after the daffodils bloom, the ones I planted myself.”

 He laughed down at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling. How she loved him!

 “Very well,” he said. “That will give us time to look about for a new governess. I fear, however, it will prove utterly impossible to find another the equal of the incomparable Miss Mariana Duckworth!”

Copyrights © 1999/1991/1999 by Carola Dunn

“Frost Fair” originally published in Zebra collection MY DARLING VALENTINE (0821761250)

“A Maid at Your Window” originally published in Walker collection A REGENCY VALENTINE (0449220818)

“Wooing Mariana” originally published as “A Kiss and a Kitten” in Zebra collection SNOWFLAKE KITTENS (0821764500)

Electronically published in 2008 by Belgrave House/Regency Reads

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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.