After eating their fill, those who lived close by dashed home to wash and change into evening finery, while those who did not retired to guest chambers assigned to them in order for them to get ready for the evening ball and—yes—a late supper. Those who had young children and no one at home to look after them were not doomed to miss all the fun. Nurses and maids who had volunteered for the task—and a generous monetary reward for their services—looked after the children in the nursery and put the babies and infants to sleep, sometimes two or even three to a bed or cot, while their parents frolicked.
Eager anticipation of the fete always grew for weeks beforehand. Many kept an anxious eye upon the western sky for days in advance, as though it were possible to will the arrival of good weather for the occasion. And perhaps itwaspossible, for almost no one could remember a time when the whole thing had been washed out by rain—a remarkable record when one considered the notorious unpredictability of English summers.
—
The anticipation had begun this year. The Countess of Stratton, who was always exclusively in charge of the fete, was already busy planning it with her large staff of helpers—which included her children but not her husband. The Earl of Stratton generally stayed well out of his wife’s way, since the organizing of social events was a woman’s work—or so she reminded him whenever hedidinterfere. For instance, this year he had suggested impulsively to some of his neighbors at the village tavern one evening that they introduce something new to the fete in the form of a few boxing matches for the men to watch and even compete in.
Although his suggestion had been loudly cheered and toasted with mugs of ale, the countess was not at all enthusiastic about it when her husband arrived home and broached the subject with her. She vetoed the idea without any discussion. There would almost certainly beblood, she pointed out to him, and that was not something anyone would want to cope with on a fete day. Besides, a boxing contest would draw away all the men and leave all the women to entertain themselves and their children.
The women wouldnotbe amused.
“Really, Caleb,” she said, shaking her head, though she smiled at his exaggeratedly chastened expression. “Please leave everything concerning the fete to me.”
Which he did happily enough, though there were going to be a few disappointed men in and about the village. He could watch boxing matches to his heart’s content throughout the spring months each year, of course. Many of the other men could not.
The Earl of Stratton went to London each spring for the parliamentary session—something that coincided with the social Season, for which large segments of thetonflocked to town to mingle withtheir peers and enjoy themselves for the few months following Easter with a frenzy of parties and balls, routs and concerts and soirees, and too many other social entertainments to name. The countess was not often of their number. She preferred to remain at Ravenswood with her children and neighbors and friends except for one or two brief dashes up to town to attend some special event that had arisen and to look in upon all the shops on Bond Street and Oxford Street to view the newest fashions while her husband was in attendance at the House of Lords.
It was an arrangement that somehow suited them both and aroused little adverse comment among their neighbors. The earl was admired for doing his duty without complaint, while the countess was commended for keeping her children in the country, where they had far more fresh air and freedom than they would find in town. Despite the enforced separation of a few months each year, the earl and his countess were widely believed to be a close couple, warm and charming, with a happy family.
While the countess was busy with preparations for the fete, the earl spent his time inspecting his farms, which Ben Ellis and Devlin ran flawlessly between them, and calling upon his neighbors to catch up on all their news, which in most cases was in short supply, though the tellers generally made the most of what little there was. He enjoyed listening to their stories and eating the cakes that were offered him and drinking ale, and even cups of tea when there was no other beverage on hand. And he called upon everyone, regardless of age or social status. He called upon his family members and upon Sir Ifor and Lady Rhys. He called upon the blacksmith at his smithy and the blacksmith’s wife and mother-in-law in their home. He called upon the doctor, a single man he had known from boyhood, and upon his old nurse, now retired and living in the village with her great-niece. He even called upon the widowed Mrs. Shaw,a recent newcomer to the village, whom most of her neighbors treated with some reserve since they did not know her or anything about her except that her husband, an officer with the East India Company, had been killed in action during the Indian wars, poor man.
And the earl assured everyone, as he did each year, that this summer’s fete would outshine all others because his wife was planning it more meticulously than ever. No one must eventhinkof missing it. If anyone did, he would come in person to fetch them. Let them never say they had not been warned.
No one, as it happened, was thinking of missing the fete. Everyone looked forward to it as the high point of their summer, perhaps of the whole year, and smiled at the earl’s needless threat and at his beaming pride in his wife’s efforts.
Chapter Two
One person who was waiting with more eagerness than usual for the Ravenswood fete was Gwyneth Rhys, daughter of Sir Ifor and Lady Rhys. A gentleman of Welsh birth and upbringing, Sir Ifor had inherited his title, land, and fortune from an uncle who had never married. At the time Sir Ifor had already owned land in Wales, and he had had a beloved younger brother with no land of his own and with a growing young family to feed. With the full knowledge and agreement of his wife, Sir Ifor had sold his land and home to his brother for five guineas and moved to England with her and Idris, his infant son. The following year Gwyneth had been born.
Sir Ifor missed Wales, for he had a large family of relatives there and a wide circle of friends and had lived a rich life in his home country. Wales returned the favor and missed him too, or at least the southwestern part of it, in which he had grown up, did. For as well as being a sociable, good-hearted gentleman, he was an organist of considerable talent and local renown. And he was a singer and a conductor ofchoirs. Music was in his soul, as was the case with many of his fellow Welshmen. And Welshwomen too, of course—that went without saying. He had brought his passion and his talents with him to England, however. Having discovered that there was no sizable pipe organ within an hour of his home in any direction, he had purchased one and had it installed in the village church, where he played it for Sunday services and upon numerous other occasions too.
He had inherited a church choir, all boys, and had trained them until they sounded like junior angels instead of a pack of disgruntled, growling dogs that would not have recognized a tune if one had tapped them on the shoulder. Soon after, he had added a few girls to their number, despite the misgivings of the elderly man who was vicar at the time. Sir Ifor had fixed him with a long stare, and the vicar had capitulated rather than find himself embroiled in an argument concerning the inferior status of women in the church. These volatile Welsh persons must be humored, he was rumored to have explained to a deputation of elders who had called upon him to question his decision. Sir Ifor had trained an all-women’s choir too and a mixed choir, and occasionally an everyone-together choir. So far he had been unable to gather enough men for a choir of their own despite his rapturous descriptions of the male voice choirs in Wales.
Most of the residents of Boscombe and its surrounding areas considered Sir Ifor Rhys something of a local treasure. For everyone who did join his choirs—even the boys, for the love of God—actually enjoyed going to practice. Sir Ifor made them all laugh. More important, he made them want to sing. He convinced them that theycouldsing even though they suffered from that dreadful handicap ofbeing English.And if they genuinely could not—there were, after all, a few people who were born with the affliction of tone deafness—there was nothing that could be done about it except to let them sing anyway.
It was not just Sir Ifor people valued, however. Lady Rhys—Bronwyn to her husband and close friends—had a lovely soprano voice, and Idris was a fine tenor. Gwyneth, after being dismissed for a few years by her fellow sopranos as one of those rare Welsh persons without a distinguished singing voice, had been discovered as she grew older to have a rich alto voice. But even apart from that, she was a fine harpist, though she was not heard nearly as often as many people would have liked, because the instrument was big and heavy. It could not simply be hauled about for all the impromptu concerts with which people entertained themselves at private gatherings.
Fortunately for everyone in the neighborhood, Sir Ifor had never expressed any intention of returning to his original home, which no longer belonged to him anyway. His English house had been named Cartref—the Welsh word forhome, and that was exactly what it was to him and his Bronwyn. As for Wales, it was notthatfar away and could be visited at any time, despite the deplorable condition of the roads. And visit it he did. He spent a few weeks of every summer there with his family.
Gwyneth had turned eighteen just after Easter. She was no longer a girl but a woman, and her thoughts had shifted inevitably toward her future—toward romance and love and matrimony, that was. Not that she had not thought of those things before, of course. Like most of her female friends, she had dreamed of boys and happily-ever-after since she was twelve, maybe even younger. But there was a difference now. She was eighteen, and everyone would fully expect her to be seriously contemplating courtship and marriage. The young men she knew, and there were quite a few hereabouts, had begun to eye her with increased interest, just as she was eyeing them. Last summer, even though she had been only seventeen at the time, a few young neighbors and friends of her uncle and aunt and cousins in Wales had begun to look upon her with aninterest they had not shown to any marked degree before. She had looked back with an answering awareness that they were no longer boys but young men. Attractive young men in some cases.
There was one problem, though. Or perhaps two.
One of those young men was Nicholas Ware, the Earl of Stratton’s second son, who was just a year older than she. He was truly gorgeous to look upon, though she had fully noticed it only recently. Before then he had been merely her very best friend. He was good-natured and sociable and a huge favorite with all her friends, some of whom claimed to suffer heart palpitations if he should merely happen to glance their way. He was not a flirt, however, and was perhaps not even aware of the effect he was having upon the young female population of their neighborhood.
Nicholas had been Gwyneth’s friend as far back as she could remember. A closer friend, in fact, than most of her female companions, who as children and growing girls had not been free to come visiting whenever they wished and, even when they did come, had been expected to remain in the drawing room with the adults or at least to stay somewhere within their sight while behaving with ladylike decorum.
Nicholas had come riding over to Cartref frequently, and it was for Gwyneth’s company he came. They had spent hours and days of their childhood chasing each other and playing hide-and-seek among the trees and skipping rope and tumbling and climbing trees and chasing sheep—though that last was strictly forbidden and earned them a scolding if they were caught. They had talked and laughed endlessly and occasionally squabbled. She had ridden with him, at first on her pony while a groom hovered close by, and then on her horse, neatly seated on the sidesaddle she despised, or bareback and astride whenever she could avoid the scrutiny of that same groom.
As they grew older, Nicholas had still come when he was notaway at school. They had talked and talked, sitting up in a tree if it was a summer day, shut up in the parlor on colder days. She had told him about the freedom she always enjoyed when she was in Wales, running along the wide sandy beaches with her cousins and their friends, climbing the cliff faces, even swimming in the sea and diving beneath the foam of the waves. He complained to her of the tedium of school and the tyranny of the masters there and the bullying of the older boys, whom he delighted in defying. He even told her about the girls he and his friends would see occasionally despite the cloisterlike nature of the school, and of sneaking out occasionally to meet them—only to be disappointed by their giggling silliness.
Gwyneth’s female friends were envious of her, for the gorgeous Nicholas Ware had eyes for no one but her. Yet to Gwyneth he felt a little like Idris did. Like a brother, that was, except more so. She tried sometimes to see him as her friends did and succeeded for a few moments. He was handsome and vibrant with life. Quite the stuff of romantic dreams, in fact. But then it was as though her eyes refocused and all she saw was Nick, her friend.
It was actually a little annoying.
He usually chose to sit beside her rather than anyone else at neighborhood parties and concerts, perhaps because conversation with each other never required any effort, or because they shared the same sense of humor. He always asked her first of anyone to dance with him at the assemblies—once she was deemed old enough to dance at them at all, that was. They could often amuse themselves for hours on a chilly or a wet day, singing duets while she played the spinet or the harp in the parlor. Occasionally her father came in to make a suggestion, the most common being that a duet was made to be sungtogether, in harmony with each other, not attacked as though they were in a competition to see who could finish first.
Sometimes she and Nicholas sang together at social gatherings during which all or most of the guests were expected to share their talents, however meager. And the suspicion gradually grew in Gwyneth’s mind that perhaps the two of them were being looked upon as a couple, as potential marriage partners, even though Nicholas would be going away soon to begin his military career. The realization was a bit disturbing because the perception was not true. Moreover, it was actually damaging, for other potential suitors might be keeping their distance from her.
