“She was on her way out as we got there, Mama,” he said. “She was not cowering beneath her bedcovers or behind drawn curtains, or both, as I feared she might. She has backbone.”
“When the two of you put an end to your … acquaintance a few weeks ago,” his mother asked, “did you do so happily, Harry?”
“It was a relationship that was headed nowhere except possible disaster,” he said. “She had made it clear from the start that there could be no courtship. She had a restrictive girlhood and what I understand was an unhappy marriage, though I know no details, and is enjoying her freedom. She is quite determined that she will never marry again. It did not take long to discover that it was impossible for us to have any other sort of relationship, even friendship. Not here, anyway. Present events have proved just how right we were.”
“But were youhappythat all ties were broken?” She was persisting with this line of questioning, it seemed.
“No, I was not,” he admitted. “Perhaps you were right at Christmastime, Mama. Perhaps I have been a bit lonely. I have a few close friends here and a host of friendly acquaintances. Perhaps they are no longer quite enough. But I amcontentedhere. This is where I belong and where I want to be. Forgive me, please. I am feeling a bit confused at the moment. I wish this had not happened at this precise time. It was very good of everyone to make the effort to come here. Even the grandmothers. EvenCamille and Joel.I really was not—”
“Do you love her, Harry?” she asked softly, interrupting him.
“Lydia?” he said. “Good God, no. Pardon my language.”
“That is what I thought,” she said just as softly, though strangely he was not sure quite what she meant.
He had no chance to ask her. And she had no chance to explain. Three people were approaching down the drive, arm in arm—Winifred Cunningham, Camille and Joel’s eldest; Ivan Wayne, Aunt Mildred and Uncle Thomas’s youngest; and Gordon Monteith, Great-aunt Edith’s great-nephew. Winifred was in the middle and laughing at something.
“I noticed at Christmas,” Harry said, “how Winifred has suddenly grown up. She is no longer a girl, is she? She makes me feel like an elderly uncle. She has grown really rather pretty.”
Winifred had been at the orphanage in Bath where both Anna and Joel Cunningham had grown up and where Camille had taught for a while after the Great Disaster. She had been very needy then. She had apparently tried to stand out by being almost ostentatiously well behaved and eager to draw attention to all the other children who were not. She had been more than a bit obnoxious, in fact—or so Harry had been told. Camille had seen something of herself in the girl, however, and when she and Joel married they had surprised everyone by adopting her.
“She is seventeen, Harry,” his mother said. “And a real gem. She is not pretty. She never will be. But she has an inner beauty that transcends looks. Some man who is worthy of her is going to notice one of these days, though not just yet, I hope. She isonlyseventeen.”
It was Winifred who had devised a sort of hand language to use with her deaf brother, who was not particularly good at reading lips.
“Well, Harry?” Ivan called, raising his voice when the two groups were within earshot of each other. “Will she have you?”
Harry winced inwardly. He had hoped yesterday to keep the situation with Lydia quiet, mainly in the hope that by today or tomorrow at the latest it would have died down, as gossip usually did. His mother had soon disabused him of that notion. Gossip that involved a respectable woman—“and a vicar’s widow, Harry!”—could not be expected to die down quickly, she had warned, especially when the woman’s name was being linked with Major Harry Westcott’s. The arrival of the whole of the Westcott family on the scene just when the scandal was breaking, far from dousing the flames, would probably fan them. Everyone would be agog to find out what the Westcotts would do to squash Mrs. Tavernor beneath their collective heel. It was only fair to warn the family.
His mother, Harry had noticed, used the wordscandalrather than justgossip.And Harry had realized, perhaps for the first time, just how bad this whole ridiculous situation might become. After he had talked with his mother in the privacy of the library last night, he had gone back to the drawing room, late as it had been by then, and told the whole story, barring only those details that were absolutely no one’s business.
The family had, of course, stayed up very late in the hope of finding out why he had needed to take his mother away for some private consultation. He would be surprised if during his absence this morning the family had not been discussing how they were going to deal with the crisis.
Gossip. Scandal.Crisis?
Had the world gone mad? He had kissed Lydia’sforeheadon that fateful night. If it had lasted ten seconds he would be very surprised.
“She will not,” he said curtly in answer to Ivan’s question.
“I am so glad, Uncle Harry,” Winifred said.
“What you don’t have in your whole body, my girl,” Ivan told her, “is a romantic bone.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “What woman would find it romantic to be forced into marriage by a little spiteful gossip? Andstupidgossip too. You agree with me, Grandmama, do you not?”
It occurred to Harry suddenly that not so long ago his mother had almost been forced into marrying Marcel for just such a reason. She had run off with him one day for a romantic fling without a word to anyone but had been tracked down by separate search parties sent out by the Westcotts and Marcel’s family. She had resisted all pressure and married him later for her own reasons. Not that Harry had witnessed any of those sensational events except the actual wedding one Christmas Eve. He had been overseas with his regiment.
“I agree, Winifred,” his mother said. “Men knownothingof romance, alas.” She was laughing.
“But did you go down on one knee, Harry?” Gordon asked, grinning at him. “It is no wonder she said no if you did not.”
Winifred tossed her glance at the branches over their heads. “If any man went down on one knee to me,” she said, “I would laugh at him.”
“You see?” Ivan said. “Not a romantic bone.”
They all turned to walk back to the house together. Winifred took Harry’s arm. “The great-aunts and great-grandmothers all have their heads together,” she told him. “But Mama says there is nothing they can decide upon until they know if Mrs. Tavernor will have you or not. That is not stopping them, however, from discussing what is to be done if she will not.”
“Personally, Winnie,” he said, “I keep hoping I will wake up any moment now. I have never got tangled up in a more ridiculous dream in my life.”
