Secrets of a Summer Night (Wallflowers #1)(29)

Annabelle gave Kendall her most dazzling smile. “Of course we have,” she said. “You’re the Pied Piper, my lord. Wherever you go, people follow.”

He blushed, pleased by the bit of nonsense, and murmured, “I hope that you have enjoyed the walk so far, Miss Peyton.”

“Oh, I have,” she assured him. “Although I will admit to having blundered into a patch of prickly fern.”

Philippa gave a soft exclamation of concern. “My goodness…were you injured, dearest?”

“No, no, it was a trifle,” Annabelle said instantly. “Just a little scratch or two. And the fault was entirely mine—I’m afraid I wore the wrong kind of shoes.” She stuck out her foot to show Kendall one of her light slippers, making certain to display a few inches of trim ankle.

Kendall clicked his tongue in dismay. “Miss Peyton, you need something far sturdier than those slippers for a tromp through the forest.”

“You’re right, of course.” Annabelle shrugged, continuing to smile. “It was silly of me not to realize that the terrain would be so rugged. I’ll try to choose my steps more carefully on the way back. But the blue-bells are so heavenly that I think I would wade through a field of prickly fern to reach them.”

Reaching down to a stray cluster of bluebells, Kendall broke off a sprig and tucked it into the ribbon trim of her bonnet. “They’re not half so blue as your eyes,” he said. His gaze dropped to her ankle, which was now covered by the hem of her skirts. “You must take my arm when we walk back, to avoid further mishap.”

“Thank you, my lord.” Annabelle gazed up at him admiringly. “I’m afraid that I missed some of your earlier remarks about ferns, my lord. You had mentioned something about…spleenwort, wasn’t it?…and I was thoroughly fascinated…”

Kendall obligingly proceeded to explain all one would ever want to know about ferns…and later, when Annabelle chanced to glance back in Simon Hunt’s direction, he was gone.

CHAPTER 9

“Are we really going to do this?” Annabelle asked somewhat plaintively, as the wallflowers strode along the forest path with baskets and hampers in hand. “I thought that all our talk of Rounders-inknickers was merely amusing banter.”

“Bowmans never banter about Rounders,” Daisy informed her. “That would be sacrilegious.”

“You like games, Annabelle,” Lillian said cheerfully. “And Rounders is the best game of all.”

“I like the kind that is played at a table,” Annabelle retorted. “With proper clothes on.”

“Clothing is vastly overrated,” came Daisy’s airy reply.

Annabelle was learning that the price of having friends meant that on occasion one was compelled to defer to the group’s wishes even if they went against one’s own inclinations. All the same, this morning Annabelle had privately attempted to sway Evie to her side, unable to fathom that the girl truly intended to strip down to her drawers out in the open. But Evie was rashly determined to fall in with the Bowmans’ plans, seeming to consider it as part of a self-devised program to embolden herself. “I w-want to be more like them,” she had confided to Annabelle. “They’re so free and daring. They fear nothing.”

Staring at the girl’s eager face, Annabelle had given in with a huge sigh. “Oh, all right. As long as no one sees us, I suppose it will be fine. Though I can’t think of any purpose it will serve.”

“Maybe it will be f-fun?” Evie had suggested, and Annabelle had responded with a speaking glance, making her laugh.

The weather, of course, had decided to cooperate fully with the Bowmans’ plans, the sky open and blue, the air stirred by a soft breeze. Laden with baskets, the four girls walked along a sunken road, past wet meadows sprinkled with red sundew blossoms and vivid purple violets.

“Keep your eye out for a wishing well,” Lillian said briskly. “Then we’re supposed to cross the meadow on the other side of the lane and cut through the forest. There’s a dry meadow at the top of the hill. One of the servants told me that no one ever goes there.”

“Naturally it would be uphill,” Annabelle said without rancor. “Lillian, what does the well look like? Is it one of those little whitewashed structures with a pail and a pulley?”

“No, it’s a big muddy hole in the ground.”

“There it is,” Daisy exclaimed, hastening to the sloshing brown hole, which was being replenished from a bank beside it. “Come, all of you, we must each make a wish. I’ve even got pins that we can toss in.”

“How did you know to bring pins?” Lillian asked.

Daisy smiled with bright mischief. “Well, as I sat with Mama and all the dowagers while they were sewing yesterday afternoon, I made our Rounders ball.” She unearthed a leather ball from her basket and held it up proudly. “I sacrificed a new pair of kid gloves to make it—and it was no easy task, I tell you. Anyway, the old ladies were watching me stuff it with wool snippets, and when one of them could bear it no longer, she came out and asked me what in heaven’s name I was making. Of course I couldn’t tell them it was a Rounders ball. I’m sure Mama guessed, but she was too embarrassed to say a word. So I told the dowager that I was making a pincushion.”

All the girls snickered. “She must have thought it was the ugliest pincushion in existence,” Lillian remarked.