“When I see that kite,” she said, “I feel a great yearning to fly up there close to the clouds. But I would not be able to even if I had the full use of my legs. No one can fly. I suppose it is human nature to long for what is just beyond our reach. To envy birds. As for being confined to a chair, it has been a reality for me for so long, Pippa, that I hardly remember anything different. And I can jerk along with great inelegance whenever I want, you know, with the crutches that have been specially made for me. It is sometimes a pleasure to see the world on a level with the people around me.”
While they talked, they watched the kite flying. The other children, including Raymond and Roger, took their turns with it with varying degrees of success. But the kite seemed to have been constructed with some considerable skill. Even after it had crashed to the ground from a great height twice in a row under Patty Bonham’s guidance, it was still found to be undamaged. Lord Mayberry’s brother helped a sobbing Patty and her little brother fly it with more success, Philippa noticed. He seemed to have just as much patience with his children as Viscount Mayberry had with his.
After less than an hour, though, the children were all satisfied and the viscount picked up the kite and carried it to his carriage. Everyone else drifted after him but veered off to come to the barouche to assure themselves that the two ladies had had a good view. Jenny introduced her brother-in-law’s relatives to Philippa.
“It went so quickly,” Susan said with a sigh. “I am not ready to go home yet, Mama.”
“Then it is a good thing our cook has baked lots of her special small cakes and piled them to twice their height with creamy icing that is all colors of the rainbow,” the Marquess of Roath said. “Theyare the sort of things mamas and papas everywhere regard with horror because the icing finds its way all over hands and mouths and clothes and even onto the ends of noses. Cook is also making a very large jug of lemonade to wash the cakes down. Perhaps you would all like to come to Arden House to help us eat them and celebrate the successful launch of the kite.”
The young children all cheered. Their parents looked a bit reproachful. Someone muttered about appetites for luncheon being ruined.
“How splendid it was of you to have had the forethought to arrange it, Luc,” Lady Catherine said, beaming at him. “I ought to have thought of it for myself. I daresay we were all feeling a bit anticlimactic a moment ago, just as Susan was. But if we had decided upon the spur of the moment to go en masse to a tearoom to celebrate, the proprietors would surely have had an apoplexy when they saw our numbers—and heard the volume of our conversation.”
Everyone dispersed to their various carriages—with the exception of Stephanie, who, after one inquiring glance at Philippa, disappeared into a carriage with Lord and Lady Patterson, young Roger Quick, and Patty Bonham. Sir Gerald Emmett handed his mother into the barouche and mounted his horse.
“No, no,” she said when Philippa would have moved back to her original seat. “Do stay where you are, Pippa. It is no great hardship to sit with my back to the horses. I must admit that I came here for the children’s sake. But there is something of the child in all of us when we see a kite fluttering away in the sky, is there not?”
Philippa was perhaps the only one in the whole party who was feeling a bit awkward. She was not a member of this family, a fact that would not perhaps have been bothersome if the family concerned had not been the Marquess of Roath’s. However, she couldnot now suggest being taken back to Grosvenor Square instead of Arden House. For Stephanie had gone with someone else.
She hoped the Marquess of Roath would not be annoyed that she had failed to make an excuse to avoid his cream cakes and lemonade feast. He had even glanced at her while issuing his invitation, but it had been impossible to interpret what his look had meant—if it had meant anything at all.
Whycould he not have chosen to stay away from London this year? Or if he must be here, why could he not be a member of a family with whom she had no acquaintance at all?
Chapter Nine
Lucas was enjoying being in London far more than he had expected. He had made several new acquaintances and become reacquainted with some old ones. He had become involved in activities not available to him in the country, like boxing and fencing, and had attended a number of social events, including one ball. But it was family he was enjoying most—his sisters and nephews and niece, his aunt and cousin, his brother-in-law’s family. It was rare for them all to be together in one place instead of scattered across England.
It always felt very good to belong.
Today he had thoroughly enjoyed being with them all as they watched the children fly their kite in Hyde Park. They were all seated now about the round table in the breakfast parlor, which had been chosen over the drawing room since there was bound to be at least one mishap with an iced cake. The youngest children had large linen napkins tucked in beneath their chins and spread down over their laps. So of course it was the eldest, Timothy, who upended the top half of his cake onto his unprotected lap while he tried to eatthe bottom, less interesting half first. His napkin meanwhile lay untouched in its crisp folds on the table beside his plate.
“Ha!” Lord Patterson said in his hearty, booming voice. “I was about to try the same thing, lad, but now maybe I had better not. Your grandmama may scold. I never could understand, though, why a person is expected to eat the cake when the icing looks so much more inviting.”
Sylvester and Charlotte meanwhile cleaned up Timothy as best they could with a couple of spare napkins, and the conversation proceeded as cheerfully and noisily as before, with a number of voices speaking at once and the children’s merry voices rising above them all.
There was only one discordant note as far as Lucas was concerned, thoughdiscordantwas an unfair word to use even in his own mind. There was nothing discordant about Lady Philippa Ware. Jenny was glowing with the delight of having a new friend who did not condescend to her or continually fuss over her. Gerald was clearly taken with her—he had sat beside her. Everyone else was careful to draw both her and her sister into the conversation, and she made it easy for them by smiling and responding just as she ought. She scarcely glanced his way, though she did not pointedly ignore him either. He behaved the same way toward her.
If only he could think of her as the children’s guest or Aunt Kitty’s or Jenny’s, then perhaps...
But no. It would make no difference.
He wished toGodhe had not gone into the country with James Rutledge for Easter that time. How differently he would be looking upon Lady Philippa Ware now if he had not done so. It was a pointless thought, though. If he hadnotgone, she would have had her debut Season four years ago and would without any doubt be married by now with a few children of her own.
His eyes met hers briefly across the table, and he felt the now-familiar sinking feeling of guilt. For her eyes were the most expressive part of her face, and for that brief moment there was a soft wistfulness in them, a trace of sadness. Or perhaps he was just imagining it, for a moment later she was laughing over something Sylvester had said, her eyes twinkling with merriment. Hers was a delicate beauty. Her face was heart shaped, Lucas decided. Her complexion made him think of peaches and cream. Her eyes were as blue as an early summer sky, her hair pure blond. Her teeth were white and even.
She was the sort of woman a man instinctively wanted to honor and cherish and protect. But whathehad done was call her soiled goods.
“And our next plan,” Susan announced to the whole table, “is to make a hot-air balloon. Timothy is going to make it, and I am going to help him. And Papa, of course.”
“Of course,” Sylvester said meekly.
Lucas caught Charlotte’s eye and she shook her head and tossed her glance at the ceiling.
“And I am going to ride in a big basket beneath it,” Matthew cried. “I am going to fly to America or to Richmond Park.”
“Lord love us,” his mother murmured.
The door of the breakfast parlor opened abruptly at that moment and a small, elderly man, dressed for travel in a greatcoat that still swayed about his booted ankles, stood framed in the doorway and looked about the gathering with a frown upon his face.
