“That house is a death trap.”
“It’s a sanctuary.Mysanctuary. And Lucidora and Coraline are as real to me as any live persons. I made the mistake of expressing that opinion to Mr. Pilkington at dinner one evening, and he was aghast. He assured me that believing in ghosts is evil and sinister.”
“Mr. Pilkington thinks drinking ale is evil and sinister. He ministered about it at the taproom yesterday. Not that anyone listened to him. You absolutely can’t marry that sanctimonious man.”
“I’ve no choice in the matter. My mother has my life all planned out for me. I’m to marry the vicar, though I don’t love him and he doesn’t love me. The only way I can resign myself to it is to picture a large brood of children running about this garden. I’d put them to work weeding between the rows, and soon we’d restore it to its former glory.”
“You’d still be married to that sanctimonious blowhard.”
Her laughter was tinged with sadness and a hint of desperation. “I know. That’s the problem. He’s stern and pious, but I’ll have my family and my historical society and charities to manage. It will be a good, useful existence. Or at least that’s what my mother assures me. Although I do wish she could marry him—they’d make such a perfect May December couple.”
Dane chuckled. “Don’t you have any relations in London? Mightn’t you have a Season?”
“My mother was raised in London, and both her parents died there. She won’t tell me the particulars, but I can only imagine it must have been something terrible because she believes London to be the most wicked, immoral, and dangerous city on earth. She won’t allow me to so much as mention it without her flying into a fit of anxiety. You’ve been to London, and Brighton, and probably many other cities. You must find us hopelessly provincial here in Squalton.”
“I find it quite charming.”
“I do sometimes grow tired of the sameness, knowing what everyone will say and do, never anything new or exciting. That’s why I read history books. They’re filled with the noteworthy stuff of life. No one writes a history about everyday experiences or petty village gossip and squabbles, the silly feuds that everyone’s forgotten the origins of.”
She brushed her fingers through a clump of lavender, picking one of the stalks and waving it at Squalton Manor. “Like the feud between my ancestor and the Duke of Rydell that resulted in the Oliver family losing the manor house. I’ve scoured the history books and the house and asked everyone in town, but no one knows why the Duke of Rydell hated the earl enough to want to ruin him. There are several theories involving a lady of questionable virtue, a racehorse, or an insult hurled over a gaming table.”
Sounded like activities an ancestor of his wouldhave engaged in. Dane stayed silent, afraid of saying something incriminating. Every day he remained meant more lies, more evasions. Every day he lied to her, the more she would resent him when she learned the truth.
“If the manor house had stayed in my family, I’m sure we would have tended it and cared for it and made it the glowing jewel of Squalton. The entire fate of this village rested on that feud. I wish I could travel back in history and prevent it from happening. I’d talk some sense into the both of them.”
Dane could imagine her suddenly appearing at a gaming table to chastise his ancestor and hers, shaming and cajoling them into harmony with a sweet, earnest speech about the ghosts of their future.
“If you could travel back in time, where and when would you go, and what would you do?” she said.
He didn’t have to even think about it. He’d wished for it so many times. “I’d go back to before I was born and inform my mother that my birth would kill her.”
“You would prevent your own birth? How tragic.”
“If it meant she could live a full and happy life.”
“I don’t like you preventing your own birth. Please pick something else.”
“All right, then. I would travel back in time and attempt to prevent Napoleon from taking power so that he wouldn’t start the war that claimed so many of my friends and maimed one of mybest friends.” His friend, Deckard Payne, Duke of Warburton, had returned from the war a changed man, with scars on the outside and even deeper wounds within.
“Preventing war and bloodshed would be an excellent use of traveling back in time. Just think of what we could do if we had the ability to travel through history. The people we could warn, the wars we could prevent. I’d like to save Anne Boleyn from having her head chopped off.”
“I’ve visited the Tower of London to see where she was executed. They say they brought an expert swordsman from France for the occasion.”
“How gruesome! Her death was so unnecessary. I’ve always wanted to visit the Tower where so many spine-chilling things occurred. I think it’s because my mother is forever warning me about the dangers lurking around every corner, and I take a certain pleasure in reading about the times when she would have been proven right.”
“My friends and I like to race our curricles. It’s a dangerous pursuit.”
“Why do you like it so much?”
“I live for those moments when the horses’ hooves are flying and the world flashes by in a blur. Nothing else matters except riding hard, fast, and far. In those brief moments, I’m free.”
“Then, you’re a thrill-seeker, Mr. Smith?”
Flirtation in her voice and a sidelong glance from under long golden lashes.
“Always, Miss Oliver.” Somehow, she made picking herbs as thrilling as any carriage race or gambling table. Talking with her, laughing withher, made him feel vividly alive, his body aware of even her smallest movements.
The ladies he knew would laugh at her, slight her, whisper about her work-roughened fingers, her outmoded gowns, the way she wore her hair in a simple twist at the nape of her neck. And yet she glowed with vitality, sweetness, and beauty in a way that would put any debutante glittering with diamonds to shame.