Free Cousin Cecilia by Joan Smith Page B

call on Cecilia after lunch, bringing Lady with him.
    While the ladies stood chatting together outside the old stone church, their gentlemen came up to join them, one by one. First came Sproule, a tall, thin, tow-haired young man. His interest in Mohammadanism never kept him from church. His own brother was in Holy Orders, and his whole family was religious. Next came Wideman. Dallan hung back a moment, perhaps because Miss Cummings was of the group. But when Lord Wickham headed toward the same party, he fell in with him and they came together to give their greetings.
    Dallan bowed stiffly to Cecilia and said, “Good morning, ma’am,” with only the remnants of a sneer.
    The sneer soon faded when Wickham said to her, “A fine day for our ride, Miss Cummings.” Dallan looked nonplussed, and turned aside to speak to Martha. He was soon complimenting Cecilia on her bonnet in a much warmer tone, and when she returned a compliment on his jacket, he began to find her a pretty good sort of woman.
    “Daresay Stultz made my jacket a trifle tight about the waist,” he admitted to Martha. “Mama can let it out.”
    A regular caravan set out for Meacham’s house three blocks away. Sally Gardener took the ill-advised idea of trying to crash the charmed circle, but Mrs. Meacham diverted her to warn her she had best get a good grip on her reticule, in case she should drop it. This jibe was softened by an offer of a drive home, which Mrs. Gardener accepted on behalf of herself and her daughter. At Meacham’s, the group divided, with Sproule, Kate, and Wickham continuing to the vicarage. They would all return after lunch.
    Dallan and Wideman accepted an offer to remain to lunch with the Meachams, and as Wickham was lost to them for a few hours, they arranged to drive out with the girls. Sproule and Kate, they were sure, would want to be of the party as well. They would all drive halfway to Tunbridge Wells and back. It sounded a flat enough outing to Cecilia, but her cousins considered it a treat of the highest order. There was much dashing talk between the gentlemen of their bits o’ blood, sixteen miles an hour, and a mention of a race which would likely come to nothing, but made them feel bang up to the mark in front of Cecilia, whom Dallan now permitted to be top o’ the trees.
    They could not set out till Wickham had come, but as he did no more than stand at the door bowing and offering Cecilia his arm, they were soon off on their jaunt halfway to Tunbridge Wells. Mrs. Meacham whispered aside to Cecilia that she must feel free to invite Wickham back to dinner if she wished. Cecilia decided to wait till they had returned and see if the others were remaining.
    Lady was a frisky, silk-mouthed filly. As there was no mounting post, Wickham had to lift her into the saddle. It was a lady’s saddle, brown with blue trim. She wondered if it had belonged to his wife. “You were to alert me to her tricks,” Cecilia reminded him.
    She made a pretty picture, looking down on him from the horse’s back, with the sun lighting her youthful face. There was health as well as beauty in her countenance and a general air of charm in her fashionable outfit. A feeling of well-being came over him, as if life might be worth living after all. Some elemental emotion had already assaulted him when he sat in the old stone church, where he had sat so many times in happier days. But that had been more nostalgic. Out in sunny nature with a pretty young escort, it felt like a new beginning. He must tread softly or he’d find himself in danger. “You must know a lady uses no tricks, ma’am,” he replied lightly.
    “You leave me to deduce that a gentleman does, then, as your pretext for escorting me on my first ride was to introduce me to Lady’s quirks.”
    “Ah, a gentleman, that is another matter. We are all full of tricks,” he laughed. “That is a very becoming riding habit, by the by,” he added, skimming his eyes over her lithe body, that sat