“We are neglecting our duty,” she said.
A wave of something so fleeting that it was impossible to name passed across his face. Amusement, perhaps? Regret? Longing? None of those? All of them?
“You are the one who told the young people you trusted them,” he said. “I would have remained right behind them, treading upon the heels of the last in line.”
“Oh, you would not,” she said. “You were the one who told them you needed ten minutes up here before following them.”
“Because I am an old man and needed to catch my breath and give my arthritic knees a rest,” he said.
“Nonsense.” She was very aware that they were still touching each other, front to front, and their fingers were still tangled up together.
He released her and took a step back. There was definite laughter in his eyes now. “I am sorry for discomposing you, Matilda,” he said.
“You have done no such thing,” she assured him.
“There is another reason why you are cross, then?” he asked.
“I am not cross,” she protested, running a hand over the front of her dress and making sure her bonnet was still straight. “But we came as chaperons and …”
“And ended up needing some of our own,” he said. “Come. We will go down. I will go first so that you do not have to peer into the abyss with every step.”
Oh.Oh.He had surely said exactly the same thing the last time. But how ridiculous to believe that she could remember such a trivial act of gallantry thirty-six years later.
“Thank you,” she said, and wanted to weep.
Yet again.
Five
During the week following the excursion to Kew Gardens, Charles concentrated upon getting his life back to normal. The only trouble was that he was not sure it was going to be possible—not, at least, ifnormalmeant the way it had been until a month or so ago.
For one thing, he had let go the mistress he had employed since not long after his wife’s death. He had paid her off abruptly the very evening after Matilda had made her unexpected call at his house, though at the time he had not believed there was any connection between the two events. He had assumed that he would replace his mistress soon. But he had not done so in the ensuing weeks, though he was not at all sure celibacy suited him. Neither was he sure it did not. Actually, it was sex for sex’s sake that no longer satisfied him, but he did not know whatwouldsatisfy him instead. Or if he did, he was not willing to give it serious thought.
For another thing, there was Gil. His son had been in his life for thirty-four years, in a purely peripheral way, but that had changed with all the business over the custody battle and then the breakfast to which his son’s wife had invited him and his first-ever face-to-face meeting with his son. To say that meeting was uncomfortable would be to severely understate the case, but it had been difficult afterward to accept the possibility that he would never see Gil or hear from him again.
But hear from him he had a couple of days after Kew—or at leastabouthim from Abigail, Gil’s wife. She had written a letter filled with cheerful details about the Gloucestershire village in which they lived and their house and garden, which was dominated by both the sight and smell of roses. Interspersed with those details were seemingly random anecdotes about Katy, his granddaughter. And there had been one mention of Gil, who was being transformed from soldier to farmer, complete with muddy boots, for which Abigail had scolded him when he stepped inside the house with them one day without cleaning them off adequately on the boot scraper outside the door. Charles found reading the letter painful more than pleasurable, yet he read it at least a dozen times in the course of the rest of the day.
Then there was Adrian, who had renewed the friendship he had enjoyed with Bertrand Lamarr at university. He had also become friendly with Lamarr’s sister and with Boris Wayne. The four of them had apparently called upon the Dowager Countess of Riverdale the day after Kew in order to thank Lady Matilda Westcott for accompanying them and making the day such fun for them—Adrian’s word. She had apparently tried to persuade her mother to put her feet up on a stool while they were there, but the dowager had declared she was quite capable of keeping her feet on the floor and became quite cross with her daughter for fussing.
“AndIended up feeling quite cross too,” Adrian reported. “There were none of the smiles and twinkly eyes from Lady Matilda that we saw yesterday, or the mock severe admonitions. I think the dowager countess stifles her, Papa. It is a shame, and it is not right. It is not easy to be a woman, is it? Especially a spinster. I wonder why she never married.”
“Perhaps she chose not to,” Charles suggested.
“But thealternative…” his son protested.
Charles ended up feeling irritated himself—but as much with Matilda as with her mother. Why did she behave like that? Why had she allowed herself to become the stereotypical fussy spinster daughter of an autocratic mother? He did not want to think about Matilda. He wished he could erase the memory of the day at Kew, especially of that half hour or so at the top of the pagoda. He did not know what to make of what had happened there. She had aroused in him memories that had been so deeply buried that he would have thought them completely obliterated if her reappearance in his life had not brought them flooding back. Not just memories of facts, however, but memories also of feelings and passions that should be laughable now but were not.
Matilda! There was no way on earth he wanted to become involved with her again. It would be ridiculous. And his guess was that she would agree with him.
Then there were his daughters. Barbara and her family returned from her in-laws’ anniversary celebrations on the same day as Jane arrived in town with her family after recovering from her bouts of nausea. They came together the following day to call upon Charles, bringing their children with them. He talked and played with all three of his grandchildren and admired various toys and treasures they had
brought with them for his approval—including the proud treasure of a bruise the size of a bird’s egg acquired from slipping off the back of a pony that had become suddenly frisky. The children were then taken up to the nursery by Barbara’s nurse, and Charles was left alone with his daughters. Barbara had an invitation for him. Her birthday was coming up soon.
“I know,” Charles said. “I never forget birthdays, do I?”
“I wish every man were like you in that regard, Papa,” Jane said, shaking her head, and clucked her tongue. “Wallace, for example.” Wallace, Lord Frater, was her husband.
“Instead of having a family dinner at home as usual,” Barbara continued, “we are going to have a family celebration at Vauxhall Gardens. Edward has reserved a box and we will feast there and listen to the orchestra and dance and watch the fireworks. It must be three years or more since I was last there.”
