“About Mrs. Bennington, yes,” he said.
“She is the youngest of my brother’s children,” she told him. “She was always sweet and quiet, but a happy girl, I thought. She was on the brink of making her come-out into society when her father died and the discovery was made that he had never been legally married to her mother. She seemed to be the one who took the blow the best. She remained quiet and sweet. But her happiness was gone. And actually she became quieter than she had been—withdrawn and insistent upon being left to live her life her own way. We were all worried. My heart ached for her with that helpless feeling one gets when one wants desperately to help while knowing that all one’s efforts to do so are not wanted and are therefore useless.”
The story of her life.
“Ah, but she would have known herself loved,” he said. “That is invaluable in itself, ma’am.”
He was a kind young man, she thought. Some young lady was going to be very fortunate when he decided to settle down.
“And then this year she met Gil Bennington,” she told him, “and married him without a word to her family—except her brother, who was the sole family member at her wedding. None of us were quite easy in our minds about it, for he is a taciturn, stern, dour man, very military in his bearing. But it became clear to us at the custody hearing and afterward that he loves his daughter to distraction and probably—veryprobably—Abigail too. And she glows with happiness, though she is as quiet and reserved as ever. There is a certain look about two people in love, Mr. Sawyer.”
Matilda was surprised to realize that they were still waltzing, surrounded by other couples. She had forgotten her fear of tying her feet in knots.
“She is my half sister–in-law,” he said. “If there is such a relationship.”
“Your father loves you and your sisters no whit the less for the fact that he also loves his natural son,” she told him. “Love is not a finite thing to be equally apportioned among a limited number of people. It is infinite and can be spread to encompass the whole world without losing one iota of its force. And goodness, just listen to me. If you wish for life advice, come to Aunt Matilda. Tell all your friends.”
He laughed. “It is a jolt to the system, you know,” he said, “to discover at the age of twenty-two that one has a thirty-four-year-old brother. And now I will not rest until I have met him. And Mrs. Bennington. And Katy.”
Matilda smiled. How she liked this young man. Under other circumstances he might have been hers. But no. What a stupid, ridiculous thought. He was the son of Charles and his late wife.
“When you and my father knew each other as young people,” he said, “were you in love, Lady Matilda? And what an impertinent question that is. Do please ignore it.”
She continued to smile at him as Charles and Barbara danced by, laughing over something one of them had said.
“We were both very young,” she told him. “Just twenty. Whatever was between us, Mr. Sawyer, was over long before your father met your mother. I saw very little of him during the years of their marriage, and even that little was from afar. We never spoke. There was never anything between us.”
“Except when you were very young,” he said. “As though young love is foolish and not to be taken at all seriously. I am twenty-two, Lady Matilda. Only two years older than my father was then. I know I am young. I know it will be years before I acquire any serious sort of wisdom. But the feelings of the young ought not to be dismissed or made light of. They are very real. I am sorry that something happened—and I amnotgoing to ask you what it was—to separate you and my father. I like you.”
Matilda smiled and blinked her eyes rapidly. Was it because of something to do with life after the age of fifty-five that she was becoming a watering pot these days?
“Thank you,” she said. “It was not your father’s fault, you know. It was mine. But it is also ancient history.Veryancient.”
They lapsed into a not-uncomfortable silence for what remained of the waltz. How lovely it felt to beliked, Matilda thought in some surprise. One tended to imagine sometimes that only beinglovedwas of any significance. But there was something enormously touching, something genuine, about being told that one was liked. By a young man who had no reason to feel anything at all for one.
Charles’s son.
After the dance was over and while the orchestra took a break they all indulged themselves with the strawberries with clotted cream for which Vauxhall Gardens was famous. And then Jane suggested a walk, something they all agreed they needed after feasting upon such rich foods. Besides, during the darkness of evening there was about Vauxhall a beauty that beckoned one beyond just the area around the boxes.
They all set off together, Mr. Sawyer and Estelle leading the way along the broad, tree-lined avenue, well illumined by the light from the colored lanterns, Charles and Matilda bringing up the rear “like a couple of conscientious chaperons,” Charles remarked.
“However,” he added a minute or two later, “I believe it is to Barbara that the Marquess of Dorchester entrusted Lady Estelle’s care this evening. That leaves us free of all responsibility, Matilda.”
For some reason his words left her feeling breathless.
The avenue was crowded with revelers. It was difficult for a group of eight to remain together. But she and Charles did not need to try. Both his daughters were with their husbands. Estelle was under the care of one of them and being escorted by surely a very respectable young man.
How lovely, Matilda thought, to be without responsibility and walking alone with a man in the crowd.
As she had been with the same man in the same venue thirty-six years ago.
Seven
Thirty-six years ago they had walked this avenue with a group of other young people. Oddly—or perhaps not so strangely considering how long ago it had been—Charles could not recall who any of the others had been, though he thought Humphrey had been there. The parents of one of the young ladies had chaperoned them, but they had been a cheerfully careless pair and had enjoyed the pleasures of Vauxhall on their own account without keeping too close an eye upon their charges, a fact that had delighted those charges.
Charles and Matilda had turned off onto a side path, narrower than the main avenue, more thickly enclosed by trees, more sparsely lit by lanterns, and close to being deserted. They had been able to walk side by side, but only because each had an arm wrapped about the other’s waist. Her head had come to rest upon his shoulder after a while until, in a small clearing to one side of the path, they had come to a halt and he had kissed her.
He had stopped short of making full love to her, and she had indicated just as he was pulling back that she would not have allowed it anyway. But they had shared a long and passionate embrace before that moment. Afterward, while they were recovering their breath, his forehead against hers, her hands spread over his chest, he had told her again that he loved her, that he wanted to marry her. She had said yes, oh yes, oh yes, she wanted to marry him too. She would love him with all her heart forever and ever.
