Alexander and Wren were standing close to the orchestra dais so Alexander could hop up onto it as soon as Brown, Harry’s butler, appeared in the doorway to give the signal.
“Do you think Harry has finally and fully forgiven you for taking his title?” Wren asked.
“I think he has.” He smiled down at her. “I think he did it with his intellect a long time ago. I believe he has done it with his heart more recently. Just as I have forgiven him for loading my life down with such helpless guilt.”
“Oh, Alex,” she said. “I do love you.”
“Exactly as much as I love you,” he said.
Winifred, at her first ever ball, dressed all in white with her hair prettily styled by her mother’s maid, was wondering if she looked foolish or if it was just that she was feeling very, very self-conscious. She glanced gratefully at young Gordon Monteith, who had come to stand beside her and compliment her on her appearance before turning as red as a beetroot. She was grateful for his blushes and his freckles and the spots that had broken out on his chin. Bertrand Lamarr—thegorgeousBertrand—had complimented her earlier with great kindness and courtliness of manner, and she had almost crumpled into a heap of stammers and terror.
Three plushly upholstered chairs with arms had been placed side by side along the far wall of the ballroom for the comfort of the Dowager Countess of Riverdale in the middle, and Mrs. Monteith and Mrs. Kingsley on either side of her.
“They look a bit like thrones,” Thomas, Lord Molenor, commented to his wife and her sisters.
“The queen and her princesses,” Charles, Viscount Dirkson, his brother-in-law, agreed.
“That is horribly disrespectful, Charles,” Matilda scolded before laughing.
“Well,” her husband said, “I was going to call the other twoattendants, my love, but that seemed definitely disrespectful.”
“Mamadoesfancy herself as something of a queen,” Mildred said. “She was very hard on Mrs. Tavernor—onLydia—just a few days ago. Is she here on sufferance tonight, do you think?”
“Mildred!” Louise said, all amazement. “Mamaadoresanyone who stands up to her.”
“As I know from personal experience,” Charles said with a grin.
“Yes.” Matilda heaved a heartfelt sigh and then smiled fondly at him.
Mrs. Kingsley was looking toward the doors. The three chairs had been placed with a direct view across to them. “Harry deserves happiness more than anyone else I know,” she said. “I am partial, of course, since he is my only grandson.Willhe be happy with Lydia? I do hope so.”
The dowager’s tall pink and purple hair plumes nodded as she turned her head.“Happy?”she said. “He is over the moon. That was as clear as day this morning. So is she. And so they ought to be. It was extremely naughty of them to meet in that cottage when not a soul lives there with her unless you count that ball of fluff that calls itself a dog. Goodness knowswhatwent on in there.”
“But we can guess, Eugenia,” her sister said. “Harry would have to be a dreadful slowtop fornothingto have gone on, and I do not believe he is a slowtop. Just as he was not this afternoon, I daresay.”
Mrs. Kingsley looked a mite shocked. The dowager countess merely nodded her head and her plumes slowly.
Abigail and Gil were strolling about the room, stopping to exchange words with some of the guests. But they were between groups at the moment, and he covered her hand on his arm with his own.
“Do you feel any regret,” he asked, moving his head closer to hers, “that we did not wait to do something like this four years ago?”
They had married in the village church and returned here for a wedding breakfast. But apart from Harry and the vicar and Mrs. Jenkins, there had been no guests. They had spent their wedding night here at the manor and then gone to London to convince a judge to release Katy from her grandparents’ care into theirs.
“This is a lovely wedding,” she said. “But it is Harry’s, Gil. And Lydia’s. Our wedding was ours. And it was perfect. I would not have had a single detail of it different.”
“Even though there was no mention of love?” he asked her.
“Even though,” she said. “We grew into love. And oh, it was worth every moment of the journey.”
“Do you remember how angry you were with me the first time you saw me?” he asked her.
“Well,” she said, “youwereshirtless and chopping wood and looking for all the world like a servant who was taking unpardonable liberties by being so close to the house. And then you allowed Beauty to come galloping around the corner from the stables to attack me, and I saw my life flashing before my eyes.”
“I should have called her Lamb,” he said, grinning at her.
“Yes, you ought,” she said, smiling back. “Sheisa bit of a lamb. She is all beauty, though. Gil, Ilovedour wedding day.”
“So did I,” he said.
