Page 80 of A Foolish Flirtation

“Well, I do not mean to interfere with your pleasures,” she assured him, though oddly enough, he found he was not particularly pleased to hear it. He could not think why, and he pondered this as she stood appreciating the view. Finally, it hit him. She was not acting remotely wife-like and strangely, this displeased him. Displeased him a good deal. How to address it though?

“I don’t know about interfering with my pleasures, Emmeline,” he said at last. “You are my wife. I think I would rather have you join me in them. What do you think?” He earned a surprised look in return. “Do you think you might ever like to try accompanying me, perhaps to one of the larger meets,” he suggested. “Ascot maybe, on Gold Cup Day, when there will be lots of ladies present. You don’t need to be a good rider yourself to appreciate the spectacle.”

Emmeline’s face flushed. “I would love to,” she said, squeezing his arm. “Thank you.” Well now, that was rather more like it. “When is it held?”

“June.”

“Something to look forward to, then,” she said cheerfully.

“Yes, something to look forward to,” he agreed, pointing into the distance. “If we carry on walking this way, we will reach the folly and if you walk even further on, then you will reach a path that leads to our own private beach.”

They had left the curricle and horses under the cover of some large oak trees, so they made now for the folly which stood atop a grassy slope. As they headed up the bank approaching it, rain started to fall.

Seizing her hand, Jeremy dragged her the last few feet, and they ducked inside the miniature temple. Inside, it was rather dark and a good deal dingier than he remembered. “This place needs sweeping out,” he observed, noticing the accumulation of old leaves.

“Here’s a bench,” Emmeline said, plying her handkerchief over its surface before lowering herself gingerly onto it. “I hope it’s not covered in cobwebs.”

“There are candles somewhere hereabouts,” he said, feeling along a ledge until he found matches and a box of candles. “Here we are.” He lit one after the other and set them onto the spikes set up for that purpose before joining her on the stone bench.

Emmeline looked about her with much interest, but in truth there was not much to see other than gray stone walls. “Which god or hero of antiquity is this place sacred to?” she asked with a slight shiver as the rain fell steadily beyond the columns. He passed an arm about her shoulders.

“My father was not the fanciful type,” he answered, “so it was never dedicated to anyone. When I played here as a child, I used to pretend it was a gladiatorial training school. I was both chief trainer and star pupil. I used to run up and down the bank as part of my training one hundred times, and I had a wooden sword, a gladius that I used to attack the columns with. I wanted my father to add a miniature amphitheater to the back where I could fight the minotaur, but he never would.”

“Surely the minotaur would have resided in your maze, poor thing,” Emmie pointed out. “Not here in the folly.”

He laughed. “The maze was not here when I was a boy. I had it planted…later.” As though noticing his hesitation, she turned her head to look at him. Luckily it was dark in the folly. “When I got married,” he admitted with some reluctance. “It’s a sort of tradition here at Vance to add something new to the house when someone marries in.” Silently, he prepared himself to answer the inevitable question, but Emmeline did not ask it.

“Of course.” She nodded. “This folly was built when your father married your mother, was it not?”

“That’s right.” Once again, he felt that strangely thwarted sensation. He had been apprehensive to tell her his plans to build a conservatory in her honor, for obvious reasons, but for her to not even ask made him feel deeply uneasy. Why was she sidestepping such issues?

“I want to build something new to commemorate our marriage too,” he pressed on, realizing she was not going to rise to the bait. “There’s an architect coming down for that express purpose.”

“Goodness,” she said lightly. “We will soon be inundated with architects and decorators! Will we have to dine formally every night when they are here?”

“Aren’t you going to ask?” he said abruptly but at the exact same moment, Emmeline asked brightly, “What is in the center of your maze?”

He recovered first. “The center of the maze?”

“Yes. I’m curious.”

You’re curious about the wrong thing, he thought wryly but after all, perhaps the subject of conservatories was also prohibited. He focused instead on her query about the maze. “It’s not a minotaur,” he admitted half-regretfully. “Just a small fountain featuring a hippocampus.”

“You will think me terribly ignorant, but what is a hippocampus?”

“It’s a mythical beast, half horse, half fish.”

“Oh, because of your shared love of horses?”

Shared? Oh, she meant him and Amanda. “I confess I thought only of myself,” he said quite truthfully. “I’d always wanted a maze here at Vance and horses have always been close to my heart. I rather wish I’d had a minotaur now. Teddy would no doubt approve.”

She smiled. “I am sure a hippocampus is just as good.”

A silence that was not altogether comfortable stole over them as they both gazed out of the doorway at the falling rain.

“Shall we dine informally tonight?” he suggested. “Just the three of us.”

“In the breakfast room on the second floor?” He nodded. “I’d love to. I haven’t seen that room yet.”