Secrets of a Summer Night by Lisa Kleypas Page B

“I find reticence to be a most attractive quality in a man. Gentlemen with dignified reserve are so much more pleasant than those who are forever swaggering and boasting about themselves.”
Like Simon Hunt
, she thought darkly, whose high self-opinion couldn’t be more obvious.
    Before Lady Olivia could reply, her gaze was caught from afar by that of a tall golden-haired gentleman who had come to stand in the entrance hall below. He stood in a cultivated slouch, resting his shoulder against a column, his hands thrust into his coat pockets. Annabelle knew instantly that he was an American. His irreverent grin and blue eyes, and the relaxed way he wore his elegant clothes, gave him away. Moreover, Lady Olivia blushed and seemed to require an extra breath or two, from the way he was looking at her. “Do pardon me,” she said absently. “I… my fiancé… he seems to require me for something…” And she drifted away with a dreamy over-the-shoulder comment about their room being the fifth on the right. Instantly, a housemaid appeared to show them the rest of the way, and Annabelle heaved a sigh.
    “There will be vicious competition for Lord Kendall,” she fretted aloud. “I hope he hasn’t already been taken.”
    “He can’t be the
only
unmarried gentlemen here,” Philippa remarked hopefully. “One must not forget Lord Westcliff himself.”
    “Don’t entertain any hope in that direction,” Annabelle told her wryly. “The earl was distinctly
under whelmed by me when we met.”
    “That was a great lapse in judgment on his part,” came her mother’s indignant reply.
    Smiling, Annabelle reached down and squeezed Philippa’s gloved hand. “Thank you, Mama. But I had better set my sights on a far more attainable target.”
    As guests continued to arrive, some went immediately to their rooms to refresh themselves with a midday nap, in anticipation of the supper and welcome dance that would be held later. Gossip-minded ladies congregated in the parlor and cardroom, while the gentlemen played billiards or smoked in the library. After their maid finished unpacking their clothes, Philippa decided to doze in their room. It was a small but lovely bedchamber, with flowered French paper on the walls and windows swathed in pale blue silk.
    Too impatient and excited to sleep, Annabelle reflected that Evie and the Bowman sisters had probably arrived. Even so, they would want some time to restore themselves after traveling. Rather than endure hours of enforced inactivity, Annabelle decided to explore the grounds outside the manor. It was a warm, sunlit day, and she craved exercise after the long carriage ride. Changing into a blue muslin day dress shaped with rows of tiny box pleats, she left her room.
    She slipped out a side entrance, passing a few servants on the way, and walked into a gentle flood of sunlight. There was something wonderful about the atmosphere at Stony Cross Park. One could easily imagine it as some magical place set in some far-off land. The surrounding forest was so deep and thick as to be primeval in appearance, while the twelve-acre garden behind the manor seemed too perfect to be real. There were groves, glades, ponds, and fountains. It was a garden of many moods, alternating tranquillity with colorful tumult. A disciplined garden, every blade of grass precisely clipped, the corners of the box hedges trimmed to knife blade crispness.
    Hatless, gloveless, and infused with a sudden sense of optimism, Annabelle breathed deeply of the country air. She skirted the edge of the terraced gardens at the back of the manor and followed a graveled path set between raised beds of poppies and geraniums. The atmosphere soon became thick with the perfume of flowers, as the path paralleled a drystone wall covered with tumbles of pink and cream roses.
    Wandering more slowly, Annabelle crossed through an orchard of ancient pear trees, sculpted by decades into fantastic shapes. Farther off, a canopy of silver birch