They had been deemed very special guests, then, had they?
After she had stepped inside the room, Anne turned to look at her mother, who was hovering in the doorway, looking anxious.
“I am glad you have come home, Anne,” she said. “I am glad you have brought David. And I am glad you have married Mr. Butler.”
“Sydnam, if you please, ma’am,” he said.
“Sydnam.” She smiled nervously at him.
Anne stepped forward without a word and wrapped her arms about her mother’s stout form. Her mother hugged her back tightly and wordlessly.
“Rest now,” she said when Anne stepped back.
“Yes.” Anne nodded. “Mama.”
And then the door closed and she was alone with Sydnam.
“Excuse me,” she said, “but I think I am going to weep.”
“Anne,” he said, and he was laughing softly as his arm came about her and his hand drew her head down to rest on his shoulder. “Of course you are.”
“Was painting again this difficult for you?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said with conviction, kissing the top of her head. “And there is much anguish to come. I have only just begun, and the first effort really was quite abysmal. But I am not going to stop. I have begun and I will continue—to failure or to success. But failure does not matter because it will only spur me on to try harder as it always used to do. And even if I never succeed, at least I will know that I tried, that I did not hide from life.”
“At last,” she said, “I have stopped hiding too.”
“Yes,” he said, laughing softly again. “You surely have.”
The tears came at last.
Both the younger Jewells and the Arnolds remained at the manorfor longer than the one night they had planned.
David was in heaven. Though he dragged Sydnam off one morning to paint, taking Amanda with them, he was content to spend almost all the rest of his time with his cousins, particularly Charles Arnold, who was only a few months younger than he.
Sydnam went out riding a few times with the men after they discovered—through David—that hecouldride. He found them all very willing to make his acquaintance. He had been prepared to dislike them—the elder Mr. Jewell no less than Henry Arnold, but though he had seethed with rage while listening to what they had to say to Anne on the first day, he discovered on closer acquaintance that they were just ordinary, basically amiable gentlemen with whose views on life and justice he could occasionally disagree.
Anne spent most of her days with her mother and sister and sister-in-law, and her evenings with everyone. They all appeared to be making a concerted effort to be a family together again.
It would take time, Sydnam guessed, remembering how it had taken a while for him and Kit to feel thoroughly comfortable with each other again after their lengthy estrangement following his return from the Peninsula. But it seemed to him that Anne and her family had been restored to one another and that the last of the dark shadows had been lifted from her life.
She seemed happy.
And he? Well, he could not forget one thing Anne had said to Arnold in the parlor that first afternoon—If I had married you, I would not have been able to marry Sydnam. And so I would have lost my chance for a lifetime of happiness.
How much of that was the truth and how much had been spoken entirely for the benefit of the man who had rejected her and promptly married her sister, Sydnam was not sure. But hethoughthe knew.
Yes, he was happy too.
They had intended to stay for a few days if they were made welcome, less if they were not. But Anne seemed in no hurry to leave now that she had found her family again, and Sydnam was content to give her time. They stayed even after Matthew and his family returned to the vicarage where they lived and Henry Arnold took his family home—bearing David with them for a couple of days.
Mrs. Jewell, who was clearly beside herself with delight to have her elder daughter at home, planned a whole series of visits to neighbors and teas and dinners for various guests. And the younger Jewells and the Arnolds were eager to entertain them in their own homes.
And so the planned few days stretched into a week.
And then on the eighth day a letter arrived for Anne. Mr. Jewell brought it to the breakfast table one morning and set it down beside her plate.
“It is from Bath,” she said, picking it up to examine it. “But it is not Claudia’s handwriting or Susanna’s. I have seen it before, though. I should know it.”
