Page 52 of A Lady of Conscience

Hannah glanced behind him. “Is it only the two of you, sir?”

“Lord, no,” he replied. “We’ve made a party of it.”

“The others are in the churchyard,” Miss Paley said as the four of them continued up the tower steps. “Miss Fieldstone has brought a hamper.”

The remainder of the picnic passed in a blur of activity. Miss Paley, Lord Fennick, and the others chattered, laughed, and made raucous sport with each other as they explored the ruins, dined in the churchyard, and duly walked back over the hill to rejoin the rest of the party.

Hannah endured it all with what she hoped wasn’t too much shyness. She smiled when she was expected to and politely made her replies to questions, all the while privately possessed of a tumult of emotion.

If James was similarly afflicted, she couldn’t tell. The moment the others had arrived, his face had reverted to its cooly unreadable mask. He was still civil. Still attentive. He’d brought her a plate of bread, cheese, and nuts, and had sat beside her on the picnic blanket, gallantly peeling her an orange, but there was no more privacy to be had with him. No chance for a quiet moment alone and no opportunity for intimate conversation.

Hannah supposed it was for the best. What could she possibly say to him after they’d shared a kiss like that?

It had been her first. That much must have been evident to him. She was grateful he hadn’t remarked on it. It was bad enough that he’d apologized to her—and multiple times too.

A disconcerting end to an otherwise wonderful experience.

She was resolved not to be offended by it. No doubt most gentlemen who had kissed a respectable young lady would have behaved thus. To be sure, many of them would have followed their kiss with a proposal.

The possibility that James’s thoughts might be trending in that direction, did nothing to calm Hannah’s already frayed nerves.

She was growing closer to him, it was true, but she wasn’t prepared to revisit her decision on spending the rest of her life with him. It was too soon. There was too much about their fragile future that was still uncertain.

At the end of the picnic, James handed her up into the Carletons’ barouche himself. “Will you be attending the dance at Lord and Lady Teesdales’ Friday evening?” he asked her.

“I will,” she said. “Might I see you there?”

James’s gaze held hers, unwavering. “You may depend on it.”

* * *

James was halfway to his waiting curricle when Fennick’s voice sounded behind him.

“Didn’t expect to see you back in Bath so soon after you left it,” he drawled. “But then, your family estate is near here, is it not?”

James was in no mood for Fennick’s needling. Not after he had just spent several hours privately fuming at having his limited time with Hannah interrupted by Miss Paley, Fennick, and the others. A party, they’d called it. Torture more like. All that affected laughter and inane conversation as they’d wandered the ruins and irreverently dined among the headstones.

The worst of it was that James suspected he should be grateful for the interruption. In the aftermath of kissing Hannah, his normally functional brain had been running on more instinct than sense. A gentlemanly instinct, to be sure. Given the chance, he’d like have proposed to Hannah again. And when she’d rejected him—as she was sure to have done—he would have been honor bound to leave Bath, just as he’d promised her father he would.

It was a damnable situation. And not at all like him, either. He didn’t go about kissing young ladies indiscreetly. And he didn’t lose control. Not like that. Not ever.

He continued to his curricle where Bill awaited him, holding the horses’ heads.

“Beasley Park, wasn’t it?” Fennick pressed, following after him. “Your mother’s ancestral home as I remember.”

“Do you have something you desire to say to me, Fennick?” James inquired as he came to a halt beside his team of matched grays.

Fennick stopped next to him. His mustache was drooping, his pale face slightly sunburned from lounging on the lawn without his hat. He’d spent many moments during luncheon observing James and Hannah with a malicious gleam in his eye. “Merely indulging my curiosity.”

“Indulge it elsewhere,” James said.

Fennick chuckled at James’s tone of command. “You haven’t changed a whit since school, have you? Every inch of you the same—too arrogant by half. The only oddity is why a man of your ambition has lowered himself to spending the season in Bath.”

“You presume I owe you an explanation?” James turned to address Bill. “How are they?”

“Ready to go, my lord,” Bill said. “I watered them and walked them not half an hour ago.”

“Good lad,” James said.