it?”
“Polonaise Hunt, you are a naughty, naughty girl—for eavesdropping so, and for not telling your only sister sooner.”
***
“I want to show you something, Mr. Haddonfield.” Sara’s tone made it plain, if the crisp Mr. Haddonfield did not, that she wasn’t going to show him how much she’d missed him that day. “Come along, we haven’t much light left.”
Beck ignored the glance exchanged between Polly and North, ignored everything except Sara, rising from the table and moving off to the back hallway.
“Polly, my thanks for an excellent meal.” The compliment was sincere. That he’d again beaten North to expressing his appreciation for Polly’s cooking was no little satisfaction.
“Where are we going?” Beck asked as Sara held his coat out for him.
“A short walk. I won’t keep you long.”
Pity, that. When she would have swished off ahead of him across the yard, Beck instead captured her hand and put it on his sleeve. “I’m not in any hurry, and I think Polly and North might appreciate a few minutes’ privacy.”
North might also kill him for it, but men were fools where true love was concerned. This truth might not be universal, but in Beck’s experience, it was at least international.
Sara’s steps slowed. “Do you think so? I used to be able to read my sister like a simple etude—you look at the melody on paper and you can hear it in your head and feel it in your fingers and your bowing arm. Now I must interpret her cooking spices and her silences.”
“While I interpret your caps and the way your skirts whip and swish as you rampage through the house.” They reached the end of the garden, and Sara kept moving Beck away from the house. “I’m glad you’re not avoiding me, Sara. Did I offend last night?”
He wasn’t going to mention her lack of cap. He was instead going to hope that if he had offended, he’d also disappointed a bit too, when he’d chosen to limit his offenses.
“You did… not offend. I’m a widow, not some pampered lady.”
She was taking him in the direction of the trees that formed the hedgerow of the home wood, a dark, tangled mess sporting two decades of deadfall and windfall.
“I’m told widowhood can be lonely.” God knew, being a widower was lonely. “That it can feel like an ongoing wound, an indignity, not just a loss. I’ve wondered why you and Polly use the same last name.”
And yet if she was lonely, like him, she hadn’t remarried.
“Lonely is a good word, an honest word, but I don’t think you mean lonely, exactly.”
“Where are you taking me, Sara?” Because she was leading him down a declivity, such that the house had disappeared from view.
“To the springs.”
“One suspected a property named Three Springs might boast some of same.” He switched his grip on her as they approached the trees, linking his fingers with hers. They circled around the side of a medium-sized pond and traveled a little ways into the woods along the stream feeding the pond.
“Hot springs?” Beck guessed. Steam rose from the water in the deepening twilight, creating a land-of-the-faery quality. He took a whiff of the air. “And not sulfurous. Shall we sit a moment?”
Because hot springs were worth noting, but they weren’t the reason she’d dragged him away from home on an increasingly chilly night, nor why she’d dodged his question about her surname.
“We can’t sit for long. It will be dark in just a few minutes.”
Dark enough for kissing? As a very young man, Beck had cadged a tumble or two under the stars, but always with the benefit of a blanket and some congenial weather. Then too, Sara was giving off not a single hint she intended to tumble him.
Which ought to have occasioned more disappointment than it did. If Beck coaxed Sara Hunt into intimacies, he’d be using sex with her as an antidote to lust and something else—grief, maybe. That she would use him wasn’t the comfort it ought to have been.
“There’s a
“Polonaise Hunt, you are a naughty, naughty girl—for eavesdropping so, and for not telling your only sister sooner.”
***
“I want to show you something, Mr. Haddonfield.” Sara’s tone made it plain, if the crisp Mr. Haddonfield did not, that she wasn’t going to show him how much she’d missed him that day. “Come along, we haven’t much light left.”
Beck ignored the glance exchanged between Polly and North, ignored everything except Sara, rising from the table and moving off to the back hallway.
“Polly, my thanks for an excellent meal.” The compliment was sincere. That he’d again beaten North to expressing his appreciation for Polly’s cooking was no little satisfaction.
“Where are we going?” Beck asked as Sara held his coat out for him.
“A short walk. I won’t keep you long.”
Pity, that. When she would have swished off ahead of him across the yard, Beck instead captured her hand and put it on his sleeve. “I’m not in any hurry, and I think Polly and North might appreciate a few minutes’ privacy.”
North might also kill him for it, but men were fools where true love was concerned. This truth might not be universal, but in Beck’s experience, it was at least international.
Sara’s steps slowed. “Do you think so? I used to be able to read my sister like a simple etude—you look at the melody on paper and you can hear it in your head and feel it in your fingers and your bowing arm. Now I must interpret her cooking spices and her silences.”
“While I interpret your caps and the way your skirts whip and swish as you rampage through the house.” They reached the end of the garden, and Sara kept moving Beck away from the house. “I’m glad you’re not avoiding me, Sara. Did I offend last night?”
He wasn’t going to mention her lack of cap. He was instead going to hope that if he had offended, he’d also disappointed a bit too, when he’d chosen to limit his offenses.
“You did… not offend. I’m a widow, not some pampered lady.”
She was taking him in the direction of the trees that formed the hedgerow of the home wood, a dark, tangled mess sporting two decades of deadfall and windfall.
“I’m told widowhood can be lonely.” God knew, being a widower was lonely. “That it can feel like an ongoing wound, an indignity, not just a loss. I’ve wondered why you and Polly use the same last name.”
And yet if she was lonely, like him, she hadn’t remarried.
“Lonely is a good word, an honest word, but I don’t think you mean lonely, exactly.”
“Where are you taking me, Sara?” Because she was leading him down a declivity, such that the house had disappeared from view.
“To the springs.”
“One suspected a property named Three Springs might boast some of same.” He switched his grip on her as they approached the trees, linking his fingers with hers. They circled around the side of a medium-sized pond and traveled a little ways into the woods along the stream feeding the pond.
“Hot springs?” Beck guessed. Steam rose from the water in the deepening twilight, creating a land-of-the-faery quality. He took a whiff of the air. “And not sulfurous. Shall we sit a moment?”
Because hot springs were worth noting, but they weren’t the reason she’d dragged him away from home on an increasingly chilly night, nor why she’d dodged his question about her surname.
“We can’t sit for long. It will be dark in just a few minutes.”
Dark enough for kissing? As a very young man, Beck had cadged a tumble or two under the stars, but always with the benefit of a blanket and some congenial weather. Then too, Sara was giving off not a single hint she intended to tumble him.
Which ought to have occasioned more disappointment than it did. If Beck coaxed Sara Hunt into intimacies, he’d be using sex with her as an antidote to lust and something else—grief, maybe. That she would use him wasn’t the comfort it ought to have been.
“There’s a
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