“Not really,” he said after giving it some thought. “I must confess that I was a bit dismayed when Avery and Alexander confirmed me in my fear that everyone would probably come. And I still hope nobody stays longer than a few days. But it is good to know that people care, Abby. That one’s own family cares. For a time six years ago I expected that no one would. I am sure you and Camille feared it too. But they do care. Even Grandmama is coming, I understand, though she is surely in her middle seventies by now.”
“Sometimes caring relatives can be a burden,” she said.
“Have they been a burden to you?” he asked.
But she was prevented from answering by the arrival of a maid with the coffee tray. Abigail poured them a cup each and took Harry his along with a raisin muffin on a plate. She sat back down with her own cup.
“You cannot imagine,” he said, “what it feels like to be able to sit here, Abby, in a spacious room in a familiar home. To sleep in my own old bed upstairs. To look out a window—any window—and see sky and grass and trees and flowers. To be in England. And at home. I will be fine now. You need not worry or be afraid to look at me lest I take my final shuddering breath even as you watch.” He ate half the muffin before setting his plate aside.
Abigail pondered trying to coax him to eat the other half but said nothing.
“Icanimagine,” she said. “Maybe not as acutely as you. But thisishome, and I have been homesick for it since Mama married Marcel and we moved to Redcliffe. May I remain here, Harry, when everyone else leaves? I can makemyself useful by running the household, though Mrs. Sullivan is perfectly capable of doing it on her own, I know. I can offer you some sort of companionship, though I would not press my company on you when you would prefer to be alone. I like being alone too. And I think my presence here might reassure Mama, who dreads the thought of leaving you alone when you have not yet recovered your full health.”
“Abby,” he said, “you do not have to trot out a dozen or more arguments to persuade me to allow you to stay. Hinsford is your home as much as it is mine. Literally, of course, it is Anna’s. She inherited it from our father along with everything else that was not entailed. Oh, I know she is always hoping to persuade me to accept it from her as a gift and has already made arrangements to leave it to me and my descendants in her will, but it is not mine yet for all that. If you wish to live here, you must do so. Were you afraid I might say no?”
“Yes,” she admitted.
“Goose,” he commented, sounding for the moment like the old Harry. “I had forgotten how strong coffee is.” He grimaced and set down his cup, only half empty.
Abigail got to her feet and returned their cups and the plate to the tray. “I daresay you want to rest for a while,” she said. “I will not keep you talking.”
“A nap in the morning,” he said, “and probably another in the afternoon. Just like an old man. But not for long. I am not ready to be old yet. Who is playing the pianoforte, by the way? One of the infants? I can remember doing that when I was small but rebelling mightily a few years later when Mama forced me to have some lessons.”
“It is Nathan,” she said. “Alexander is with him.” She turned to look back at him when her hand was on thedoorknob. “Harry, I am so,soglad you are home at last.” And the tears sprang even before she could turn her head away.
“Goose,” he said again as she let herself out of the library.
Harry napping in the morning and probably again in the afternoon. Just six years ago he had been a vividly good-looking, carefree, energetic young man, slightly on the wild side, very often exasperating to her and Camille because they thought he did not take his responsibilities seriously enough. It seemed like something from another era or another lifetime. He had been the wealthy, fashionable, enormously popular young Earl of Riverdale in those days. Would he ever return to being that person? Without the title and the enormous wealth, of course.
But he was twenty-six now, no longer a boy or even a very young man. He was not an old man either.
She ought to join Jessica and Estelle in the morning room, she thought as she stood hesitating outside the library door. She had letters of her own to write, most notably to Marcel’s elderly aunt, who lived in the dower house at Redcliffe. Abigail was fond of her, and had promised to write frequently from London. It was more than a week since she had last done so. She was not in a letter-writing mood this morning, however, and did not want to face the chatter of her cousin and stepsister. She might do something as silly as bursting into tears.
She went out for a walk instead, not bothering to stop to fetch a bonnet or pelisse. The air was fresh but not uncomfortably chilly. There was no discernible wind. And there was no need for formality within the confines of the estate’s park. She considered the summer house to the east of the main building as a destination, but set out the opposite wayinstead, across the lawn toward the trees and the small lake beyond. As she walked, she waved to Josephine, who called out to her excitedly from high on the back of Bertrand’s horse, where she sat cradled within the safety of Avery’s arms and thighs. Marcel and Bertrand were standing in the large gateway into the stable yard, watching. Who would have expected Avery, Duke of Netherby—elegant, bored aristocrat, who nevertheless exuded power, even danger, through every pore—to turn into a doting papa?
Abigail was soon deep among the trees, her favorite place in the park. She always felt perfectly a part of nature when she walked here, every sense alive. There were tree trunks and leaves to look at as well as the sky scored across by waving branches. There were rough bark and smooth leaves with their ribbed undersides to touch and the distinctive smells of the woods to inhale. There was the wonderful sound of silence except when the wind was sighing through the boughs or rustling through the leaves. She stopped walking for a moment and set her hand against the trunk of an ancient oak. She could almost feel the life in it, old and steadfast and wise—a foolish conceit, perhaps. But she felt the balm of peace seep into her soul.
Harry had said she could stay. She would not have to return to London, where everyone was constantly trying to persuade her to join in some carefully selected entertainments of the Season. And where she had to face the constant disappointment and reproach in Jessica’s eyes when she refused. She could stay here instead and perhaps at last—oh,at last—find some definite purpose for her life, which had changed so drastically when she was eighteen that she still had not fully recovered her balance.
She tipped back her head and looked up through thebranches of the great tree to the sky above. She breathed in peace and freedom, even happiness.
•••
Gil had considered coaxing Harry into taking a short walk outside after breakfast, but his mother had settled him in the library instead with a fire and a book and a blanket and the point was not worth contesting. There would be time enough after everyone left to supervise a more purposeful convalescence, and he did not believe Harry would resist. For the present, however, it really was good for him to be in the company of his family for a few days.
Gil fetched Beauty and went for a walk. It was a lovely cool, bright morning, and he drank in the sights and sounds and smells of the English countryside with all his senses on full alert. He put the dog on a long leash when they passed beyond the confines of the park. One never knew when one might encounter other people or animals who might be startled, even frightened, by her size and enthusiasm, as Miss Westcott had been yesterday.
Damn it, he owed that woman an apology.
He definitely did.
The walk was sometimes a brisk one as Beauty strained on the leash, eager to break into a run. At other times it was excruciatingly slow, as when she insisted upon sniffing every tree in a neat row along the edge of one field. She had to stop again to bark ferociously at a flock of sheep grazing peacefully in a meadow. The sheep favored her with a steady look through the bars of the stile, found themselves unimpressed, and returned to their grazing. She barked a greeting at a farmer and his lad who passed them in a loaded wagon and touched their hats to Gil.
And he felt a sudden yearning for his own home. For Rose Cottage. His own space on this earth. There was and always had been so little that was his own. And so few people. He had an unbidden memory of taking his daughter, all wrapped up warm in a blanket in his arms, to look at the rose arbor on the west side of the house. There had been no roses to see—it was too early in the year. But there they were, the plants in beds and climbing over trellises, and the promise of their blooming had excited him. The warm bundle in his arms had excited him too. He had been filled with a contentment he had never known before—or since. And life, even with the growing difficulties of his marriage, had seemed very, very good.
“Time to go back, Beaut,” he said, turning abruptly, the joy suddenly fled from the morning. He had no idea how long he had been out, but from the position of the sun he guessed it must be close to noon.
Beauty turned obligingly, stopped with ears erect—except for the one tip, which could never straighten up—to contemplate a distant rabbit, which was cheekily looking right back instead of fleeing. But the dog must have decided that even without the leash she would have no chance of catching it or even scaring it badly. She trotted cheerfully homeward. Gil removed the leash after they had passed through a side gate into the park. The dog bounded joyfully forward and dashed once completely around the lake while Gil waited for her.
