From this day on, the tense atmosphere between them was a daily challenge. Charlotte avoided him on the farm as much as she could. Only rarely did she run into him unprepared. Then they greeted each other as decency expected. She avoided her father's study as soon as she even suspected that he had Mr Parker as a visitor. Rarely did she allow herself a dreamy glance in his direction when he felt unobserved and joked with the helping children or chased them across the hazelnut grove.
Charlotte told herself she wasn't asking the children about him, just teaching them the art of conversation. Just as she told herself, just out of boredom, to play through hundreds of scenarios in her head of her escape from Willingden. After overhearing her parents saying that it was time for their daughter to find a husband to marry in the spring, she began thinking about packing her bag with the most necessary things. Getting back the money debts of her siblings, lending books and other things for a few pence, counting her savings almost daily. Above all, to ask her father what kind of work he would trust her to do if she were allowed to work.
She also thought she was being extremely clever by asking the children of the workers of other towns, the work of the females there and so many questions about Mr. Parker until they came back with the answers she wanted to know. She had learned how many siblings he had, that his sister would soon marry a lord, and that he had once lived in faraway Antigua.
On the last day in the hazelnut grove, he seemed so relaxed that Charlotte wondered if it was just because he would soon be leaving the farm for a few days with her father or if he was happy to finally be released from the sight of her. Because every time their eyes did meet, he looked at her with unconcealed anger that almost caused Charlotte physical pain.
Although she would never have admitted it, because of one of these evil glances she hid far away from everyone else at one of the trees to make her selection of the nuts. She allowed herself one last secret look at him before turning her back on him and the laughing children who were playing hide and seek, final try to put him out of her mind.
When her father emerged abruptly from behind her tree deep in conversation with Mr. Parker, Charlotte was so startled that she knocked over her basket.
"Oh, here she is, Mr. Parker." Her father beamed as if he was truly relieved to find her. He leaned a little toward his daughter and said, "now you can ask Mr. Parker anything you want to know."
Panic that her father knew about her asking the children about him and her secret research in his study sent heat through her body. But her father was not upset, he was in a good mood. Perhaps he was also looking forward to leaving the farm for a few days, even though he always pretended to be unwilling to travel. He was clearly enjoying the challenge of negotiating with the liquor manufacturer more than he would like to admit.
"She always asks me about the faraway countries." He father said chuckling to Sidney as he
turned around, slapped him on the upper arm, and walked over to one of the other helpers to help them. Determined not to give Mr Parker a glance, Charlotte knelt back on the ground and sorted her hazelnuts once again.
"Miss Charlotte."
Apparently he had been talking to the children about her, or he would hardly have addressed her that way. She passed over the dawning feeling, a little prickle in her heart, as he pressed out her name in such a breathless voice, and without looking up, returned in a frosty manner, "To you Miss Heywood, Mr. Parker."
Never before had he felt his own name simultaneously as a curse word and as a kind of tender rebuke. His lips twisted into a small smile as if of their own accord. He had really tried everything neither to meet her nor to observe her for a longer time. He had paid only the most necessary attention to her, using every waking moment to work and worry in his mind about Mr. Heywood's requests. This ignoring during the day had only made him think of her all the more at night.
