“There is one way of finding out,” her father said dryly.
She laughed and broke the seal with her thumb.
“Lady Potford,” she said, looking first to the signature. “Yes, of course, I have seen her hand before.”
“Lady Potford?” Sydnam asked.
“Joshua’s grandmother,” she explained. “She lives in Bath. I have visited her several times.”
She read the letter while her mother plied Sydnam with more toast and then watched as he chased it around his plate with the butter knife.
“Oh, Sydnam,” Anne said, looking up, “Lady Potford is quite hurt over the fact that I did not inform her of our nuptials. She would have come, she writes here, and she would have arranged a wedding breakfast for us. Is that not kind?”
“It is very obliging of her,” her mother agreed. “She must be fond of you, Anne.”
But there was more in the letter than just regrets.
“Oh,” Anne said, her eyes moving over the rest of its contents. “Joshua is expected in Bath next week. Lady Potford is quite convinced that he will be upset at missing our wedding and not even seeing us afterward. She wants us to return to Bath before going on into Wales so that she can arrange a small reception for us.”
She looked up.
It was not a great distance to Bath. However, going there would take them in the wrong direction. And really, Sydnam thought, hewaslonging to be home. He wanted to establish his new family at Ty Gwyn. And Anne was increasing. She ought not to be traveling more than was necessary.
But Bath had been Anne’s home for a number of years. Her friends were there. Hallmere was a relative—of David’s anyway—and had been remarkably kind to her. Without the Hallmeres he, Sydnam, would never have met her.
Her teeth sank into her lower lip.
“Do you wish to go?” he asked.
“It would be foolish,” she said. “All that way in order to have tea or perhaps dinner with Joshua and Lady Potford.”
“But do you want to go?” he asked again.
He knew the answer, though. He could see it in her eyes.
“He invited David and me to Penhallow for Christmas this year,” she said. “We will not be able to go, of course. David will probably not see him for a long time. But…” She bit her lip again. “But heisDavid’s cousin. I…”
He laughed. “Anne, do you wish to go?”
“Perhaps we ought,” she said. “Will you mind terribly?”
Ty Gwyn, he thought, would have to wait.
“Next week?” he said. He turned to Mrs. Jewell. “May we impose upon your hospitality for a few days longer than expected, then, ma’am?”
“Amonthlonger if you wish, Sydnam,” that lady said, and clasped her hands to her bosom.
Mr. Jewell smirked slightly at some private thought—or as if he knew a secret no one else even suspected—and left the breakfast parlor, presumably to return to his study.
And so in the middle of the following week, well after they had originally expected to be home in Wales, Anne and Sydnam were on their way back to Bath, David sitting with his back to the horses, partly tearful at having just taken his leave of his grandparents, partly excited at the prospect of seeing Joshua again—and Miss Martin and Miss Osbourne and Mr. Keeble, the school porter who apparently used to slip him sweets from the depths of his pocket whenever no one was looking.
Anne had been a little tearful at the parting too, but her father had assured her after kissing her on both cheeks that they would all doubtless see one another again before they knew it, and her mother had hugged her and agreed with her husband.
Now Anne sat with her hand in Sydnam’s, her shoulder resting companionably against his.
Marriage was beginning to feel like a very pleasant state indeed.
They had been invited to stay at Lady Potford’s in Bath. When their carriage drew up outside the tall house on Great Pulteney Street, the door opened almost immediately and her ladyship’s butler peered out. But David’s whoop of joy as Anne descended to the pavement, her hand in Sydnam’s, alerted her to the fact that Joshua was already here. And sure enough, David dashed out and past her and up the steps to be scooped up and swung about in a circle.
