Page 20 of Their Wildest Dreams

The space beside the oak was empty.

She searched beyond it, catching only the movement of branches and a brief confusion of shadows between the trunks. No hoofbeats reached them. No rider appeared upon the higher path. Selby had vanished so completely that Harriet might have doubted anyone had stood there at all.

Benedict guided his horse nearer. “Near what?”

Harriet let her hand fall. If she named Selby, Benedict would ride into the wood. She knew it with the same certainty that had made her call to him. He would search the boundary, question every laborer upon the road and delay their arrival at Everton until he had satisfied himself that no threat remained. Perhaps that was precisely what should be done. But Selby had been too far away to approach her, and she possessed no proof beyond a glimpse caught between shifting shadows.

The last time Benedict had intervened on her behalf, Selby's steward had delivered a warning upon the public road. Harriet had no wish to provoke another response because imagination had supplied a familiar face where none existed.

“It was nothing,” she said. “I thought I saw someone among the trees.”

Benedict did not look away from her. “Who?”

“I could not tell. Whoever it was has gone.” She gathered the reins more firmly and urged her mare forward. “The carts will overtake us while we stand here, and I was promised a view of Everton before they arrive.”

He rode beside her, though his attention remained upon the wood. Harriet felt the question he had chosen not to repeat. It accompanied them along the lane, as persistent as the sense of eyes upon her back.

When they emerged from the trees, Everton House appeared across a broad stretch of lawn, dull with the coming winter. The pale stone had darkened with age, and ivy climbed one end of the house nearly to the roof. It was smaller than Denham Park and less imposing than Alderley, but the long windows reflected the morning light and smoke rose from three chimneys. Servants crossed the drive in preparation for their arrival. The sight ought to have reassured her.

Instead, Harriet looked back once more.

The lane behind them was empty. Yet the feeling remained, cold and insistent, that Selby had watched her ride toward her new home and had not done so from idle curiosity.

Chapter

Nine

Everton House smelled of beeswax, woodsmoke and rooms too recently opened after a long absence of human inhabitance. Benedict stood in the entrance hall while servants carried the first of the trunks up the dark and slightly narrow stairs and tried to reconcile the house he remembered with the home his parents had given him.

His grandmother had died nearly twenty years earlier, after failing health confined her to Denham Park during the final years of her life. Benedict had been a boy when Everton was last fully occupied. In his memory, the hall had been crowded with polished tables, enormous arrangements of hothouse flowers and small dogs that appeared determined to kill anyone who approached their mistress. Now the furniture was spare, the marble floor echoed beneath every step and pale rectangles upon the walls marked the places where paintings had been removed.

Harriet turned slowly beneath the central chandelier. “It is not precisely welcoming.”

“It has been closed for nearly two decades. Welcome requires more than a day's work, even with an army of housemaids.” Benedict removed his gloves and laid them upon a table. “The roof is sound, the chimneys draw and my mother assures me every mattress has been beaten within an inch of its life. We must be grateful for practical comforts until you have decided what else the place requires.”

“I have decided it requires lamps. The hall is gloomy even at noon.”

“One decision accomplished. At this rate, we shall be comfortably established by Christmas… next Christmas.”

She gave him the look he had intended to provoke, but it lacked its customary force. Since leaving the wood, Harriet had been quieter than usual. She had insisted that she had seen nothing, then looked over her shoulder three times before they reached the house. Benedict had not challenged the contradiction. He meant to question her when they were alone and when doing so would not encourage her to retreat behind irritation.

For the present, he offered his arm. “Come. You should see the rest before our possessions make passage impossible.”

The drawing room overlooked the front lawn. In the spring and summer, that would be a lovely vista. In the deepest part of autumn with winter just around the bend, it was rather bleak. Still, the room had great potential. Its proportions were graceful, though the green silk wall coverings had faded almost to gray and the matching draperies had suffered an even worse fate wherever sunlight reached them. Harriet pinched a fold of fabric between her fingers to lift it and the fabric simply tore, shredding between her fingertips from dry rot. .

“Those cannot be saved,” she said. “Nor should we attempt it. At least we know why the curtains have been left open. They would have disintegrated the first time a maid drew them.”

“Then they shall be replaced.”

“Not until I have seen the accounts.” Harriet released the fabric with care. “Your father has provided an income for the house, but that does not mean we ought to spend it merely because the present furnishings offend us. The draperies may be removed from this room and no doubt there will be others in the house that have fared better. They will serve until we know what can be afforded.”

Benedict felt an absurd impulse to tell her she might cover every wall in Chinese silk if it pleased her. The impulse had less to do with the expense than with imagining Harriet making the choices that would transform this faded house into theirs. Since the wedding, he had discovered how readily every ordinary thought could be made dangerous when it included his wife.

Before his marriage, he had assumed agreeing to Harriet's terms would require only restraint. He possessed restraint when it mattered. He could occupy another chamber, conduct himself with courtesy and wait for whatever trust might grow between them. What he had failed to consider was the daily intimacy of marriage. Her gloves lay beside his upon the hall table. Her books would fill shelves next to his. At breakfast, he would know whether she had slept and whether the day pleased her before she uttered a word.

He had also failed to consider that she might sit upright in his bed, her hair loose and one shoulder bare, and invite him beneath the covers as if no man could mistake such an invitation for anything but practicality.

“Benedict?” Harriet had crossed the room and stood before the doors to the terrace.