He did not go away. A cloud suddenly came between her closed eyes and the sun—except that there were no clouds. She opened her eyes to find him standing beside her and looking down. And now she could see his face, shadowed though it still was. His eyes were green and heavy lidded, as she remembered them from the night of the ball. His left eyebrow was partly elevated. His mouth was curled up at the corners, though whether with amusement or scorn or both, she could not tell. One lock of blond hair lay across his forehead.
“I could offer a h-helping hand,” he told her. “I c-could even play the gallant and carry you to the h-house, though I daresay I should expire at your feet of some h-heart condition after arriving there. Are you hurt or indisposed?”
“I am not,” she assured him. “I am merely viewing the world as the daffodils view it.”
She winced—quite visibly, she feared. Was it possible to feel more mortified than mortified? What a ridiculously stupid thing to say! Oh, please let him just go away, and she would gladly agree to forget him for all eternity.
His right hand, clad in the finest, most costly kid, disappeared beneath his coat and came out with a quizzing glass. He raised it to his eye and unhurriedly surveyed the meadow and then, briefly, her. It was a horrible affectation. If there was something wrong with his sight, he ought to wear eyeglasses.
And through it all she lay where she was, just as though she were incapable of rising—or as though she believed she could hide more effectively down here.
“Ah,” he said at last. “I g-guessed there must be a perfectly sensible explanation, and now I see there is. I r-remember you as being sensible, Mrs. Keeping.”
He had remembered her name, then—or he had asked Sophia. She wished he had not.
“No,” he said, removing his hat and tossing it carelessly in the direction of her easel and bag, “that is not strictly c-correct, is it? I expected you to be s-sensible, but you were enchanting instead.”
The sun turned his blond hair to a rich gold as he sat down beside her and draped his arms over his raised knees. He was wearing tight buckskin breeches beneath his coat. They hugged powerful-looking thighs. Agnes looked away.
Enchanting.
Oh, dear, he had remembered that waltz.
“And your being here among the d-daffodils now makes full sense,” he said.
Why? Because she was not sensible but . . . enchanting? Oh, she wished he spoke as other people did, so that one might understand his meaning without having to wonder and guess.
She was still lying full-length in the grass. She ought at least to sit up, but that would bring her closer to him.
“I came here to paint,” she told him. “But I will go away. I have no wish to intrude upon your privacy. I did not expect any of the guests to come this far. Not so early in the day, at least.”
Finally she would have sat up and got to her feet. But as soon as she moved, he set a hand on her shoulder, and she stayed where she was. His hand stayed where it was too, and it scorched through her body right down to her toes—even though he was wearing gloves.
Why, oh, why had she risked coming here? And what unhappy chance had brought him here too?
“You have intruded upon my p-privacy,” he said, “as I have upon yours. Shall we both turn h-homeward disgruntled as a r-result, or shall we s-stay and be private together for a while?”
Suddenly the daffodil meadow seemed far lonelier and more remote than when she had had it to herself.
“How do the daffodils view the world?” he asked, removing his hand and grasping the handle of his quizzing glass again.
“Upward,” she said. “Always upward.”
One of his eyebrows rose, and he looked mockingly down at her.
“There is a l-life lesson here for all of us, is there, M-Mrs. Keeping?” he asked her. “We should all and always look upward, and all our t-troubles will be at an end?”
She smiled. “If only life were that simple.”
“But for daffodils it is,” he said.
“We are not daffodils.”
“For which f-fact I shall be eternally thankful,” he said. “They never see August or D-December or even June. You should s-smile more often.”
She stopped smiling.
“Why did you come out here alone,” she asked him, “when you are with a group of friends?”
He had the strangest eyes. At a cursory glance, they always looked a bit sleepy. But they were not. And now they gazed at her and into her with apparent mockery—and yet there was something intense behind the mockery. As if there were a wholly unknown person hiding inside.
The thought left her a little breathless.
“And why did you c-come here alone,” he asked, “when you have a s-sister and neighbors and f-friends in the village?”
“I asked first.”
“So you did.” She pressed her head and her hands more firmly into the grass when he smiled. It was a devastating expression. “I c-came here to commune with my soul, Mrs. Keeping, and I found enchantment among the daffodils. I shall go back to the house presently and write a p-poem about the experience. A s-sonnet, perhaps. Undoubtedly a sonnet, in fact. No other verse form would do the incident j-justice.”
She smiled slowly and then laughed. “I deserved that. I had no business asking.”
“But how are we to discover anything about each other,” he said, “if we do not ask? Who was Mr. K-Keeping?”
“My husband,” she said and smiled again when his left eyebrow mocked her. “He was our neighbor where I grew up. He offered for me when I was eighteen and he was thirty, and I was married to him for five years before he died almost three years ago.”