She was a small woman, particularly compared to Fabianus, but she was steering him, physically directing his steps to the terrace, and conversationally setting his feet on the path of small talk and pleasantries.
She was also attractive, or as attractive as any fair-complected lady could be when wearing weeds. Her features were not exactly delicate—the chin firm, the nose a bit bold—but the whole was interesting and set off by a somewhat full mouth.
What raised her appearance beyond mere prettiness, though, were her eyes. Their color was an unusual lavender hue, which was remarkable in itself, and illuminated her countenance aesthetically. The directness of her gaze, though—un-widowlike, almost unladylike—turned that color to cool amethyst fire.
“Your brother tells me you are recently bereaved, my lady,” Fabianus said as they ascended to the terrace. “My condolences on your loss.”
She gazed out over the snowy garden at the crows now squawking and flapping at the fountain.
“My thanks for your kind words, my lord. You are without a coat. Let’s get you inside, shall we?”
Fabianus revised his earlier assessment of her as she escorted him back to the Dorning Hall library. She was not in the indomitable phase of widowhood. Lady Daisy was simply, absolutely, unto her soul, indomitable. The intriguing question was, why had an earl’s pampered daughter had to develop that trait, much less raise it to a high art?
And then another question popped into Fabianus’s head: Who had taught this lady to play pirates and to entrap escaped prisoners with a smile and a promise of lemon drops?
Losing a spouse, even a spouse of middling qualities, was many blows all in one.
Erickson DeQuervain Fromm had pitched from his horse while riding home on a frosty autumn night and had expired where he’d landed. The abruptness of his passing had been the first blow, leaving Daisy figuratively jumping at shadows.
What great upheaval would life throw at her next? Was little Henry coming down with a lung fever? Would the Americans declare war on Britain again? If a youngish squire who’d practically been born in the saddle could end his life at a stile he’d jumped hundreds of times, then the king might abdicate and the sea rise up to inundate Britain.
Finding Viscount Penweather in Casriel’s garden had thus set Daisy off on several mental flights. Had she forgotten what day it was? Immediately following Eric’s death, when the routine of going to market, making calls, and attending the church committee meetings had been taken from her, she’d become that disoriented.
Her next fear was that Casriel had told her of company at the Hall other than Lord Penweather, and the entire conversation had slipped her mind.
But no. Penweather had explained his presence, and more than that, he had offered the standard platitudes with a sort of dry dispatch that relieved Daisy of awkwardness. Then too, Penweather looked at her, not at her bonnet brim, not at the frogs of her black wool cloak, not at the winter-clad Dorsetshire hills in the distance.
His gaze was calm, and he sauntered along as if the wind were the fairest May zephyr rather than a biting February breeze. Were he younger and inclined to smile, he’d be attractive. Not handsome—his features were too severe for that—but striking.
His dark hair was so far beyond unfashionably long as to be caught back in an old-fashioned queue. His eyes were a deep brown rather than the Norse blue so favored by Society. His nose was an aquiline lordly proboscis, and his mouth was nearly grim.
Eric had had a winsome smile, and his sons had inherited that gift.
Penweather’s voice, though, was all smooth fire and sweet honey. A voice like that was meant for reading naughty poems late at night, for whispering compliments no gentleman spoke to a lady in company.
“You have my thanks too,” Penweather said, “for taking the fugitive in hand. I keep expecting Pandora to settle down, but her behavior becomes only more outlandish.” His tone was one of long-suffering rather than censure.
“She is your only child?” Daisy asked.
“Yes, and you will doubtless think ill of me, but I shudder to contemplate what she’d get up to if she had a few comrades-in-arms. I employ three nursemaids, a nanny, and a rotation of footmen to keep peace in the nursery as it is.”
He escorted Daisy up the steps, and then she was facing Casriel. He, despite being her oldest brother, one of her closest neighbors, and also Henry’s god-father, gazed at her left shoulder after a fleeting glance at her bonnet. Did he but know it, Daisy would gladly have begged off this weekly ordeal, except that she was determined to have some answers from him.
“Daisy, I see you’ve made Lord Penweather’s acquaintance.”
“His lordship’s and Miss Pandora’s. What is amiss with your hospitality, Casriel, that the poor child went scampering into the elements like that?”
Daisy had meant the question as a jest, but Casriel’s brows twitched down in consternation.
Penweather kept his hand over Daisy’s where she’d rested her fingers on his forearm, or Daisy would have simply ducked into the house and declared herself in need of a few minutes’ privacy in a guest room. The gentlemen would assume she was tidying her hair, while she would in fact be calming her temper.
“Lord Casriel could offer blandishments without number,” Penweather said, “herds of stuffed animals, fairytale books without limit, and Pandora would still get up to mischief. I vow she is a changeling.”
“Perhaps she is bored,” Daisy said, which caused Casriel’s brows to rise. “A pet might help.”
Penweather’s gaze went to the windows on the third floor. “She regularly tosses her stuffed elephants out the window. One does not trust her deportment with a hapless pet.”
Daisy had lately felt like pitching all manner of valuable objects out the window. Eric’s pipes, his field boots, his collection of farrier’s puzzles and snuff boxes. They remained as he’d left them and would be packed away for his children, just as soon as Daisy could stand to look at the damned things.
Then too, she really did need to know if Eric had made any specific bequests to his offspring before she consigned the once-cherished detritus of his life to the attic.
“The solution to your dilemma is plain, my lord,” Daisy said, tugging Penweather toward the house. “You will simply have to provide Pandora with a bevy of younger siblings, and she will be so busy managing them that she’ll no longer take the air in shocking dishabille. Come along, Casriel. His lordship has no coat, and one wants a cup of tea after capturing the escaped princess.”
The comment about younger siblings was apparently another opportunity for Casriel, the oldest of nine, to take offense where none had been intended. His expression became that of the polite host, which in its way was worse than the wary older brother.
Daisy felt a sob building, for no earthly reason, so she kept up a brisk pace into the house and prayed that Lord Penweather was adept at idle conversation, for her attempts at small talk were apparently doomed. She hated these visits to the Hall, but she was determined that she and her brother have a frank and detailed discussion.
Soon. Very soon, if not today.
“Siblings,” Casriel said as they approached the library, “can be among life’s greatest comforts. They are both friend and family, if all goes well, and they know us longer than even our parents do, in the usual course. I consider my brothers and sisters among my greatest treasures.”