“Alexander has grown in dignity in the past ten years,” he said. “He did not want the life he is now leading, but he has put everything that is himself into doing a conscientious job of it, both at Brambledean and in London during parliamentary sessions. He is very obviously happy with Wren and their children. He would not have met or married her if he had not had the title foisted upon him. When I look at him now, I see the Earl of Riverdale. And a cousin of whom I am proud and very fond. The title does not seem part of me any longer. I do not want it. I feel aghast when I realize that if my father had only waited a month or two to marry my mother, the title and all the rest of it would be mine. I wouldhatethe life I started to live after he died. Or at least the man I have become would hate it. I would have been a totally different person if my fatherhadwaited, of course, because the past ten years would have unfolded differently and I would have been different as a result. So manydifferents.Am I making any sense?”
“Yes, you are,” she said.
“As for Anna, I have unfinished business with her,” he said. “It mustbefinished, though. Soon. I have not treated her well. I have not been cruel, except perhaps at the start. I have not been openly unkind either. I have not shunned her or treated her with less civility than I have shown other members of the family.”
“But … ?” she said when he did not proceed.
“But I have not treated her as I treat Cam and Abby,” he said. “I have not fully accepted her as my sister. Yet I believe it is what she needed and craved more than anything else when she learned of our existence and our relationship to her. I have to put that right.”
“You saidsoon,” she said. “Before you leave tomorrow?”
He gazed at her. “Yes,” he said. “Before I go.”
She smiled and burrowed her head more comfortably between his shoulder and his neck.
“Your father may disapprove of me,” he said.
“Because you are illegitimate?” she asked. “You are also a Westcott, son of the late Earl of Riverdale and of the present Marchioness of Dorchester. You have a ridiculous number of titled relatives.”
“Ridiculous?” he asked. “You had better not let any of them hear you call them that, Lydia, or you will find yourself cast into outer darkness.”
“Oh.” She laughed softly. “I took the measure of the Dowager Countess of Riverdale almost the moment I met her. She wants to be seen as the crusty matriarch at the head of the family. In reality she loves you dearly and wants desperately for you to be happy, not to become the victim of a woman who might bring you shame. I suspect she feels the same of all her family.”
He grinned back at her. “You saw all that in one brief meeting?” he asked. “Even while she was trying to squash you like a bug?”
“I did,” she said. “I like her. She cares. But, Harry, what my father thinks of you and my marrying you will be his concern. I do believe, though, that he will be happy to know that I have a man again to support and protect me and guide me through all the dangers of life.”
They smiled at each other and rubbed noses.
“Well, you know,” he said, “you must allow me if ever you are attacked by bears or wolves to do the manly thing and come roaring to your rescue and tear them limb from limb with my bare hands.”
“Or force them to their knees and then to attention before apologizing for frightening me,” she said. “You do that awfully well, Harry.”
“You made me redundant when I tried it, though,” he told her. “You tore young Piper limb from limb without even raising your voice, Lydia. I do not believe, alas, that you are ever going to need me to ride into the lists to your defense.”
“Thank you anyway,” she said, settling her head against his shoulder again, “for forcing him to his knees.”
“I will be leaving you to face the gossips alone for two whole days,” he said.
“So you will,” she said. “How dreadful. I shall be quite without male protection. I might crumble. I might—”
He stopped her by settling his mouth over hers.
“I must go,” he said with a sigh a minute or so later.
“Yes, you must,” she agreed.
And he did indeed leave less than twenty minutes later.
Dinner at Hinsford was half an hour early that evening and ended with the men leaving the dining room with the women rather than remaining to enjoy their port and their male conversation. Everyone headed for the music room rather than the drawing room.
The children were to perform a show for their entertainment, organized by Winifred, Elizabeth, and Joel. Sarah and Alice Cunningham, Josephine Archer, and Eve Handrich, dressed in flowing white with floral wreaths in their hair and floral streamers in their hands, danced to accompaniment provided by Elizabeth; Jacob Cunningham and George Handrich in black, and Jonah Archer and Nathan Westcott in white, engaged in a ferocious fencing match with wooden swords to rescue a wilting Rebecca Archer, who was bound with pink silk ribbons and jealously guarded by Robbie Cunningham, who was dressed all in black with matching fingernails that were hooked into claws as he hovered, hissing and panting, over his intended prey. Winifred played a gentle rhythm on the lower keys of the pianoforte while her brother Samuel plonked out an almost-accurate tune on the upper keys. All the children, with the exception of the babies and Andrew, who was deaf, had been conscripted into a choir and sang a few folk songs with lusty good cheer and questionable musicality, to Elizabeth’s accompaniment.
Andrew disappeared with Joel during the singing and came back afterward carrying a large rock—“which came with us all the way from Bath,”Joel explained with a grimace that turned to a grin when he saw Camille toss a glance at the ceiling. The rock was set carefully down on a small table Colin had placed in front of the pianoforte, and Andrew, smiling broadly at his audience, indicated it with one hand and beckoned with the other. When they all came for a closer look, they could see that the stone enclosed on three sides the chiseled form of a cat—a domestic cat, surely—curled up and contentedly asleep with its head turned to rest on its paws. Yes, contentedly. One could almost hear the cat purr.
“I have a talented boy here,” Joel said, ruffling his son’s hair while everyone exclaimed with wonder and smiled at the boy or hugged him. “I could not get him interested in drawing or painting. Then I found him one day doing this sort of thing, with a knife he had borrowed—and ruined— from the kitchen.”
There was more singing and dancing. The show ended with the littlest children—except those who could not yet walk—playing three rounds of ring a ring o’ roses, shrieking with glee every time they all fell down, and looking to parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents for approval.
