"Papa, Papa," Davie yelled when he discovered the contents of the shed, "take us out in the boat. Oh, famous. Can we fish?"

"You know Kitty is frightfully nervous of water," Meggie said. "It would not be fair to her if we dragged off Papa so early, Davie."

"Pooh," said her brother. "She is just a stupid girl. She can stay with Mamma and Cousin Anne. Come on, Papa."

But, as it turned out, Kitty gathered together her courage when she knew that her mamma was willing to ride in a boat and hold her close. Soon the family was being rowed from shore by Stanley, Davie loudly excited, Meggie sitting primly on her seat, instructing her brother to sit still before he overturned them all into the water.

Jack, Freddie, Miss Fitzgerald, and Rose soon followed in a second boat. Claude called after them, warning them not to go too far as it seemed likely to rain before the afternoon was out.

"I will have no use for a company of actors with hacking coughs or pneumonia on the night of the performance," he yelled.

Jack waved gaily back and put an arm around Rose's shoulder as the boat tipped alarmingly. Since the water was perfectly calm at that moment, it was not at all clear what had caused the near accident, but Jack was obviously not chancing a recurrence that might dump his companion overboard. He kept his arm where it was.

Everyone else sat down on the grass or pulled the picnic baskets from one of the gigs they had brought with them. More than one of them glanced uneasily at the sky, wondering if they would have a chance to eat before the rain came. It seemed so unfair, Hortense said, that the weather was breaking now, just when they had wangled a free afternoon for themselves. There had not been a drop of rain since they arrived more than a week before, and for most of that time they had been cooped up indoors trying to act.

"Shall we walk, Anne?" She looked up, startled, into her husband's face from her kneeling position on the ground, where she was straightening out one of the blankets they had brought with them to sit on.

"Yes, of course," she said, getting rather hesitantly to her feet and smoothing out the skirt of her pink wool dress. She picked up her shawl from the ground, where she had flung it while busy with the blankets.

She took Merrick's arm and he led her along the grassy margin of the lake, away from the marshy side. The towering old trees that grew almost to the water's edge were reflected sharply in the glassy surface of the water. There was not a breath of wind.

"It is quite lovely here," Anne said. "I do believe that if the land had been mine before the house was built, I would have chosen a site close to this lake. It seems sad that such a beautiful spot should be seen so rarely. I did not even know it existed until today."

"I am not at all pleased with your behavior, madam," Merrick said.

"What?"

"I believe you heard me," he said, "and I believe you know the causes of my displeasure."

"Indeed I do not," Anne replied, "except that you did not wish me to be here at all. What have I done, pray?"

"I am well aware," he said, "that when I met you, you were very much a spinster who had been left on the shelf, so to speak. You lured me into marriage, whether deliberately or unintentionally I neither know nor care at this late date. But I do know you are an opportunist. You saw your chance to come here and meet all the members of my family, and you maneuvered it so carefully that even I cannot accuse you absolutely of having openly disobeyed me. And I have watched you, madam, inveigle yourself into the good graces of one after another of my relatives here. What do you hope to accomplish, Anne? Do you hope that if enough of my cousins and uncles speak favorably of you to me and show disapproval of my living apart from you, I shall take you with me when we leave here?"

"Alexander," Anne said. She still held his arm, but she looked out across the lake, her chin held high. "My experience of the world has been necessarily small. I have not met a great many people in my life. But I believe I would have to travel a wide area and a long time to find another man as conceited as you. Why, pray, would I wish to live with you? So that I might gaze on your handsome person every day and tell myself what a grand catch I have made? So that I might listen to you list my shortcomings every day and grow more and more sensible of the great honor you have done me by condescending to marry me? You flatter yourself, my lord."

Merrick stopped walking and turned to face her. A quick glance showed him that they were out of sight of the group sitting on the bank. "Since when have you decided that you may talk to me like this?" he asked. "You forget yourself, I believe, madam, and to whom you speak."

"You are Alexander Stewart, Viscount Merrick, and my husband," Anne said coolly, looking directly into his eyes. "And I would you were not."

He stared at her, completely dumbfounded for a moment. "Have you taken leave of your senses?" he said. "You are my wife, Anne, whether you like it or not. If you believe you can speak to me as you wish and defy me and flirt openly with other men before my eyes, you will be forced to learn the truth in a most painful way, I can assure you."

"Flirt?" she said, eyebrows raised. "Have you really seen me flirting, Alexander? And with whom, pray? I do believe I smiled at Grandpapa this morning."

He caught her by one arm and shook her. "Come, madam," he said, "this defiance and sarcasm and assumed innocence do not suit you. My cousin Jack has been a womanizer since he was little more than a boy. He cannot resist trying to prove that he can conquer every pretty woman he meets. And it matters not to him whether the woman be married or not. In fact, I do believe he prefers his women to be already married. There is less likelihood that he will be trapped into marrying them himself. And I must say from personal experience that I can now appreciate his reasoning. Don't make the mistake, Anne, of believing that he is really interested in you. He merely wishes to amuse himself and enrage me. You make a fool of yourself by playing his game."

"Do I?" said Anne sweetly. "But then I am just the frustrated-spinster type, who has had her head turned by the practiced charms of a rake, am I not, Alexander? You should pity me, my lord, not be angry with me."

Merrick grabbed Anne's free arm and shook her until she caught at his lapels to steady herself. "Stop this!" he said through clenched teeth. "I have not seen this side of you before, Anne, and I do not like it. I will not have you behave this way before my family, do you understand?"

"Alexander," she said, still clinging to his coat, "there was a time when I was awed by your good looks and your title and obvious knowledge of the world. There was a time when I felt that if you did not love me or want me or even treat me with common courtesy, the fault must be in me. I have had much time to myself in which to think. You have kindly provided me with that time. And I have come to realize that you are a selfish and conceited man, who is not worthy of my love or even of my respect. I am your wife, as you say, and you will find that in all public ways I shall be obedient to you. I shall return to Redlands next week without a murmur of complaint. You need not fear that I shall cry and plead with you to take me to London. But in essential matters I am not part of you. I am a person in my own right, my lord, and you will not crush me again. I invite you to try."

She pulled free of his hands and moved away from the margin of the lake into the shade of the trees. Indeed, she was not as calm as she hoped she had appeared. She walked until she had reached the cover of the trees, and then she began to hurry, and soon she was running almost in panic farther and farther into the forest. He must not follow. She must not let him catch up to her and see that her control had broken. Fool! She must be the greatest fool in Christendom. All that she had said about him was true. If she had not been convinced of his overbearing arrogance before today, she had had ample proof in the last half-hour. He was insufferable. She hated him. How, then, could she love him so much? It was all physical, she told herself again and again, as if the repetition in her mind would finally convince her. If he were not so handsome, if he were not such a good lover, she would be free to hate him without reservation. She did not love him. She merely lusted after him. Her tears began to fall as she plunged deeper among the trees.


************************************

"We should get back to the others," Miss Fitzgerald said. "They will be wanting to eat tea and will be waiting for us. It would not be wise to delay. Even as it is, the rain may not hold off until we have finished our picnic."

"Oh," said Rose, pouting, "but Jack has promised to take us as far as the bridge, Ruby, so that we might walk to the center arch and see the house. I have not seen that view since I was quite a young girl."

"And now you are in your dotage," her sister said. "There will be plenty of other occasions for that walk, Rose."

"But goodness only knows when Jack will be here again," her sister argued.

"I have realized since returning here," Jack said, smiling down at Rose, "that I have much neglected my grandparents in the last few years. I am determined to mend my ways. There are many attractions to a stay in the country."

Rose blushed.

"Turn around here, Frederick," Miss Fitzgerald ordered, "and let Jack here take the oars. You are not accustomed to heavy work, and I would not wish to see you get blisters on your hands."