Lydia laughed as he stepped outside and strode around the corner of the house on his way out. She hoped very much that no one would see him cross the road. Had anyone heard the axe all morning? It would surely have been very obvious to anyone who had that she was not the one doing all that chopping.
She wandered outside to eye the neat pile of chopped wood with satisfaction and stooped to pick up one small stick he had missed when tidying. It was as she was straightening up that Snowball began dashing along the line of the back fence again, yapping. Two hands clutched the top of it, and a head from the nose up appeared between them, peering over and down at the woodpile.
Both face and hands disappeared in a hurry. But they did not vanish before she had identified the intruder.
Jeremy Piper.
Annoyance at his cheekiness, however, was soon replaced by a feeling of enormous relief that he had not come slinking by any earlier. Five minutes ago, for example, when she had been standing just inside the open door being kissed by Harry Westcott.
Take warning, Lydia. Oh, take warning. You are playing with a terrible danger.
Seven
By the time Harry returned from the farm late in the afternoon, having settled the dispute over the barn by suggesting that repairs be made to the loft to allow for more storage space and agreeing to an addition larger than originally suggested being added to the back of the building to make more room for the livestock, he felt both sticky and grimy and sent word to his valet to prepare a bath for him. While he waited for the water to be heated and carried up to his dressing room, he went into the library to look through the day’s mail.
There were two personal letters, one from his cousin Jessica, whom he had not seen since her marriage two years ago to Gabriel, Earl of Lyndale. He had been present for their wedding when, quite coincidentally, he had been making one of his rare visits to London to be measured for a new coat and boots after his valet had warned him that the old ones would simply fall off from sheer old age one of these days. The other letter was from Aunt Matilda, Viscountess Dirkson, his father’s eldest sister. He sat down behind his desk to read.
Jessica’s letter was full of enthusiastic descriptions of her life in the north of England. She was a few years younger than Harry. She and Abigail had always been very close friends. As essentially an only child—Avery, Duke of Netherby, her half brother, was years older—Jessica had always adored all three of her cousins, and they had been dearly fond of her. One paragraph of her letter was devoted to details about Evan, her one-year-old son. They were going to London soon for the parliamentary session and the Season, she reported. Was Harry going to be there too? Jessica hoped so. She had missed seeing him at Christmas.
He had missed her too, Harry thought as he folded the letter and set it aside. And the rest of the Westcott family also, much as he had been relieved not to have to go to Brambledean for Christmas. But no, he was not going to London. Not this year. He knew what would almost surely be awaiting him there if he did—thirtieth birthday celebrations, for example.No, thank you, Jessica, he thought.
Aunt Matilda and Viscount Dirkson, her husband of four years, had just been on a visit to Gloucestershire to see three of their grandchildren, whom they had missed dreadfully over Christmas, though it was perfectly understandable that Abigail and Gil had wanted to spend the holiday in Bath. Gil Bennington was Viscount Dirkson’s natural son. The two had been estranged through most of Gil’s life until a few years ago but had edged warily about each other for a while after Abby and Gil’s wedding and during the court case over the custody of Katy. Father and son seemed now to be cautiously fond of each other, due in large part to the influence of Abby on the one side and Aunt Matilda on the other, Harry suspected.
Everyone was well and thriving, his aunt reported, though of course Harry would know that since he had seen them all for himself very recently. Both fond grandparents—and totally unbiased, of course, Harry—were agreed that Ben was the most gorgeous baby ever, while Seth was the most gorgeous infant and Katy the loveliest little girl. Harry chuckled. Aunt Matilda had married late in life and was very obviously extremely happy. Even exuberant. Who could ever have predicted it?
Marital happiness reallywaspossible, he thought. His mother had been quite right about that. The Westcotts seemed particularly good at it. Why, then, was he contemplating an affair that was not going to lead to marriage and would be risky besides, to say the least, given the size of the village and the fact that everyone in it and for miles around knew everyone else’s business almost before the everyone else in question knew it themselves? Why was he going to see Lydia Tavernor tonight with a view, he supposed, to having an affair with her sometime in the foreseeable future, when he could simply go to London and find a wife? Surely if he set his mind to it he could findsomeoneto suit him.
The inevitable question came in the next to final paragraph of his aunt’s letter. Was Harry planning to spend at least a part of the Season in town this spring? Harry spread one hand over his eyes and laughed. For it was obvious now that this was a concerted family campaign. First his mother at Christmas, and Cam and Abby to a lesser degree. Then his mother again after his return home. And now his cousin and his aunt. It would be his grandmother next, he could confidently predict, and then his other aunts. Maybe Alexander or Wren. And Elizabeth, Alex’s sister. Had he missed anyone? Ah. And possibly Anna, his own half sister.
Harry folded Aunt Matilda’s letter and set it on top of Jessica’s. He wasnotgoing to London, no matter how often they asked. Sometimes being a Westcott was a massive pain. But he smiled even as he thought it. He would never forget how they had all rallied around, and continued to do so, after the Great Disaster, when they might just as easily have dropped his mother and Cam, Abby, and him as unworthy of their acquaintance.
And if he sat here any longer, he thought, getting resolutely to his feet, his bathwater would be cold or at least tepid, and he hated cool bathwater.
As he was climbing the stairs to his dressing room, he remembered that he had admitted this morning—to Lydia Tavernor of all people—what he had not confessed to another living soul in ten years. He had scarcely admitted it even to himself. He had resented and even hated Alexander when Alex became the Earl of Riverdale after he himself had been stripped of the title. He had resented and even hated Anna, who had stepped into the family as a full member, Harry’s father’s daughter and only legitimate child, at the very moment when Harry himself and his sisters had been bastardized. He had even hated Avery, his guardian at the time, for stopping him from enlisting as a private soldier and insisting upon purchasing a commission for him instead. He had seethed with hatred and impotent fury for a long time after he went to the Peninsula with his regiment even while he wrote cheerful letters home, claiming it was all a great lark and he was having the devil of a good time. He had poured out the whole shameful litany of his resentments to a woman he scarcely knew. One with whom he was contemplating having an affair.
What the devil must she think of him?
“You had better not come too close to me, Mark,” he told his valet when he stepped into the dressing room. “I smell of barnyard and stale human sweat. I stink, in other words. You would be well advised to stand well back and hold your nose while I strip.”
Mark Mitchell grinned and stepped forward to help him off with his coat. “One of these days when you tell me that,” he said, “I will take you at your word. And then see how easily you can sack me for merely doing what I was told.”
“Insubordination,” Harry muttered.
Lydia also had a letter. After going outside to admire her woodpile and being a bit jolted by the sight of Jeremy Piper peeping over her back fence, she went to call upon Denise Franks to pick up her cake plate, and stayed to share a pot of tea. She called at the village shop on her way home to purchase a few items and was handed her letter. It was from William, her middle brother, she could see. She always loved having letters from home.
Back at her cottage, she waited a little impatiently in the doorway while Snowball dashed over to the trees, did what she needed to do there, and came meandering back, stopping to sniff the ground in a few places and then eyeing a bird that was pecking at a worm down by the fence before deciding that it was not worth laying chase to. She trotted back inside, drank noisily from her water bowl, and plopped herself down before the fireplace.
Oh lovely, Lydia thought as she broke the seal of her brother’s letter, for there was another enclosed within it. Her name was written on it in the small, neat handwriting she recognized as Esther, her sister-in-law’s. She read William’s letter first.
Their father had taken a chill a couple of weeks ago after being out in a heavy rain while he was far from home. After a few days spent unwillingly in bed, however, he was recovering fast, though his temper had some catching up to do.
Lydia smiled. Her father had always despised any weakness in himself. He fretted whenever he was forced to be inactive. How on earth had James and William managed to keep him in bed for a few days? Had they tied him down?
Anthony, the youngest of the family, was almost finished with his studies at Oxford. He had abandoned his plans for an academic career, William reported, in favor of one with the diplomatic service. He had decided that he wanted to travel the world, preferably the hot, sunny parts of it. He was sick of the dismal weather that seemed always to settle over Britain to stay, summer and winter. He was convinced that it must be the most dismal country in the world.
I will give him a few years at the longest, William had written,before he discovers himself only too happy to return to this dismal country. Can you seriously imagine anyone, Lydie, choosing to live anywhere else?
No, Lydia thought, amused, she could not. But she had never tried living anywhere else. Orbeenanywhere else, for that matter. Neither had William. And perhaps all people considered their own country the best on earth in which to live. But she felt a surge of envy for her youngest brother nevertheless. At least he was free to dream large dreams and even to make plans for making them come true—because he was a man. So could she, of course—dream large dreams, that was. She could dream of living alone and having the means with which to sustain herself, for example. Shehaddreamed it, and now she was doing it. And she could dream of having a lover. Shehaddreamed it, and now …
