Croesus was the only one who didn't pose questions she couldn't answer. But he looked dejected and listless in Camden's absence. She'd find him in the conservatory, napping on Camden's favorite rattan chair, the one with faded blue paisley cushions and cigar burns on the armrest, as if waiting for his return.
Maintaining this intractable status quo was like juggling flaming scimitars. She woke up tired and went to bed dazed with fatigue: parrying a thousand acquaintances' curiosity, keeping her mother at arm's length, cosseting Freddie as best as she could, and withholding the truth even from her few trusted friends.
The end of the season brought little relief. With rail travel as instantaneous as it had become, even her retreat to Briarmeadow provided no refuge. At the end of every week she hosted a three-day house party so that she and Freddie could see each other without any hint of impropriety. As a result, half of the time her house was swollen with people. Torrents of eager, unsatisfied inquisitiveness eddied and swirled, driving poor Freddie to distraction and making her as cross as a stranded dowager with a bladder full of tea and no place to empty it.
And guilt-ridden. And ashamed. And despondent.
She knew what she was doing, of course. She was doing her damnedest to postpone the moment of reckoning, the moment when she must either step forth to marry Freddie or at last face the fact that she could not, not even with Camden having completely removed himself from the melee.
But how could she tell Freddie that? He had been her faithful friend from the very first. Never in all this chaos had he blamed her, explicitly or implicitly, for anything. He had stood by her with courage and humility, enduring gossip that painted him as either a fool or a fortune hunter of the highest order.
She owed him. He should be rewarded for his loyalty and his trust in her. He'd done so much for her, the steadfast Sancho Panza on her wild-eyed quixotic quest. How could she do any less for him?
The brook was clear and shallow this time of the year. It murmured and soughed, with the occasional burble of a sunlit splash. The willows languidly trailed the tips of their soft branches on the surface of the stream, like a coy woman flaunting the luxuriance of her unbound hair with slow, teasing turns of her head.
Gigi didn't know what she'd expected to find here. Camden flying down the hill like a Cossack and sweeping her up, perhaps. She shook her head, amazed at her own persistent idiocy.
Still she didn't leave. In ten and a half years she'd forgotten how pretty this spot could be, how quiet, with no sounds except for the soft laughter of the brook, the rustle of the morning breeze as it skittered between leaves and branches, the lowing of sheep in the meadow behind her, grazing on a high green carpet of lucerne, and . . .
Hoofbeats?
Her heart ricocheted against her rib cage. The horse was coming from her own property. She whirled around, picked up her skirts, and sprinted up the slope.
It was not Camden but Freddie. Her surprise was almost stronger than her disappointment. She didn't even know Freddie could ride. He had an awkward seat but hung on stubbornly, somehow zigzagging the horse forward on a prayer.
She ran toward him. “Freddie! Be careful, Freddie!”
She had to help him untangle his boot from the stirrup as he dismounted, the heel having caught on the way down.
“I'm fine. I'm fine,” he reassured her hastily.
She glanced at her watch. Freddie usually arrived on the 2:13. But it was not even eleven o'clock yet. “You are early. Is everything all right?”
“Everything is as it should be,” he answered, as he inexpertly tethered the horse to a salt lick. “I didn't know what to do with myself. So I caught an earlier train. You don't mind?”
“No, no, of course not. You are always welcome here.” Poor Freddie, he'd become thinner each time she'd seen him. She felt a pinch in her heart. Her darling. How she wanted him to be happy.
She kissed him on his cheek. “Did you paint well yesterday?”
“I'm almost done with the picnic blanket.”
“Good,” she said, smiling a little to herself, enjoying his enthusiasm the way a parent enjoyed a child's. “What about the items on the blanket? The picnic basket, that one remaining spoon, the half-eaten apple, and the open book?”
“You remember?!” Freddie looked to be in shock.
So he'd noticed her preoccupation. She supposed it would have been too much to hope that he hadn't. “Of course I remember.” Though only vaguely. And only because she'd asked him repeatedly. “How are they coming along?”
“The book is giving me fits, half in the sun and half in the shade. I can't make up my mind whether the shadows should be tinged with ochre or viridian.”
“What does Miss Carlisle think?”
“Viridian. That's why I'm not sure. I thought they'd be ochre.” He took a few steps in the direction of the stream. “Are we still in Briarmeadow? I don't remember ever being this far from the house.”
“That's Fairford land over there, beyond the water.”
“Land that would have been yours one day.”