She turned her attention toward Mr. Adrian Sawyer, several inches shorter than his father and fuller faced, fair-haired rather than dark—a pleasant-looking young man. He too was smiling as he bowed to Wren and said something that caused her to twinkle back at him. What reason had his father given him for their attendance at this family dinner? Had he told him the truth? Bertrand was making his way toward his former university friend, and the two shook hands warmly before Bertrand bore him off to introduce him to Estelle, his twin sister, and to an openly eager Boris.
Seeing Alexander begin to lead Charles about the room to make sure he knew everyone—though he surely did—Matilda stepped farther behind the chair and bent over the back of it to adjust her mother’s shawl.
“Don’t fuss, Matilda,” her mother said just as the two men arrived before her chair.
“The Dowager Countess of Riverdale,” Alexander said, “and Lady Matilda Westcott.”
“I have an acquaintance with Viscount Dirkson,” Matilda’s mother said, her voice regal and a bit chilly, “though it has been a while since we last spoke. I did see you in the judge’s chambers a couple of weeks ago but you did not remain after the proceedings were over. You used to be a friend of my son’s.”
“I did indeed, ma’am,” he said, bowing to her. “The late Riverdale and I were acquaintances for a number of years. I also know Lady Matilda. How do you do, ma’am?”
He was looking very directly at her over her mother’s head, and Matilda felt as flustered as a girl at her firsttonparty, her heart pounding hard enough in her bosom to rob her of breath, her brain spinning and fluttering with a thousand bees’ wings so that no sensible answer presented itself immediately to her tongue and lips. No one was looking at her, she told herself. Not with any particular attention, anyway. And why should they? She was just Matilda. And why be so flustered? She had actually called upon him and stepped into his garden with him and spoken with him there less than a month ago. But that was half the trouble. What must he have thought of her bold presumption?
“I am well, I thank you,” her mother said in just the words Matilda ought to have uttered in the brief moment of hesitation that had followed his question.
His eyes remained on hers a moment longer before he looked down to acknowledge her mother’s reply, and then he stepped away with Alexander to shake someone else by the hand.
Matilda leaned over the back of the chair again to adjust her mother’s shawl, remembered that she had just been told not to fuss, and straightened. She, who never wept, even when there was good cause, wanted to weep now when there was none.
“It is easy to see where Gil got his height and his looks, is it not, Matilda?” her former sister-in-law, Viola, said, moving up to her side. “He and Abby and Katy arrived safely home in Gloucestershire. I had a letter today. Abby loves the house and the village and the countryside. I have rarely if ever had such an exuberant letter from her. I do believe she is going to be happy.”
“Iknowshe will be,” Matilda said, patting Viola’s arm. “She already is. They both are. He has a way of looking at her and she at him, and they have the child. And their cottage in the country with a garden full of roses.”
“Now if I can just see Harry happily settled I will consider myself the most blessed of mothers,” Viola said.
Her son, Harry, had very briefly been the Earl of Riverdale following his father’s death—before it had been revealed that his birth was illegitimate.
“He will have his own happily-ever-after, never fear,” Matilda assured her.
“You cannot be certain that anyone will be happy, Matilda,” her mother said. “What do you know of marital bliss, never having been married yourself?”
Matilda did not wince, not outwardly at least.
“But Matilda knows a great deal aboutlove, Mother,” Viola protested, linking her arm through her erstwhile sister-in-law’s. “I will take her word about Abby and Gil’s future because I want to agree with her and actually do. And I agree about Harry.”
Charles was bending his head to listen to the conversation of the small group to which he had been led. He was smiling, his eyes crinkling attractively at the corners.
He had fathered Gil very soon after she sent him away, even though he had sworn undying love and fidelity when he went. And for years afterward he had had what Matilda believed to be a well-deserved reputation as a rake and a gamester and a man who lived hard and behaved recklessly. He had perhaps mellowed with age. She could not know for sure. But surely her father had been right to refuse his consent to their marrying and her parents had been right to insist that she put an end to her acquaintance with him.Acquaintance!Ah, it had felt like far more than that. But surely she would have been miserable had she married him.
Wouldn’t she?
Love would not have been enough.
Would it?
But they were pointless questions to ask herself. She could not know the answers. There was no going back to do things differently. There was no knowing how happy or unhappy their marriage would have been. There had been no marriage.
Dinner was being announced and Matilda entered the dining room with her mother. Fortunately she was able to sit halfway along the table, some distance from Charles, who was seated beside Wren at the foot. Unfortunately, perhaps, she had not thought to go to the other side of the table so that she would be on the same side as he and therefore unable to see him every time she looked up from her plate and turned her head that way. But it did not matter anyway. He was never looking back at her when she did inadvertently glance at him. He was always politely focusing his attention upon Wren to his left or Louise, Dowager Duchess of Netherby, Matilda’s middle sister, to his right. Conversation was lively along both lengths of the table.
Matilda discovered without surprise that she had little appetite. She also felt like bawling for no good reason whatsoever—again. She sincerely hoped she was not about to develop into a watering pot at her advanced age.
It was a somewhat more pleasant evening than Charles had anticipated. For one thing Adrian was taken almost immediately under the wing of young Bertrand Lamarr, who introduced him to Lady Estelle, his twin sister; to Boris Wayne, Lord Molenor’s son; and to Lady Jessica Archer, half sister of the Duke of Netherby, who was married to a Westcott. And since Adrian was a young man of generally even temper and easy manners, he appeared to be right at home with all of them and actually enjoying himself.
The dinner was excellent, the conversation pleasant. He had agreeable table companions. Only at the end of the meal was the subject of Gil raised when Riverdale got to his feet, a glass of wine in his hand.
“We Westcotts are always ready for an excuse to gather together,” he said when everyone had fallen silent and turned his way. “We are happy this evening to have Viscount Dirkson and Mr. Sawyer with us too. Perhaps none of us needed to be present in the judge’s chambers for the custody hearing a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps young Katy would have been released into Gil and Abigail’s care even if we had all stayed away. But I am glad we went. Even if our presence did not weigh with the judge, at least we demonstrated to the newly married couple that we care, that we consider them family, that we will concern ourselves with their well-being and stand with them whenever it is threatened for any reason. It is what we Westcotts do for our own. It is what no doubt you do for your own, Viscount Dirkson. We are happy that your son came with you this evening. Shall we drink a toast to family—to all branches of it no matter how slight the connection?”
They drank, even Adrian, who looked steadily at his father as he did so.
