She remembered Frances shedding tears over her.
She remembered Lauren’s happy smile and the young man she introduced—Viscount Whitleaf, her cousin, a young man who had her lovely violet eyes. He had come to Alvesley to visit the week after Anne and Sydnam left.
She remembered what Claudia said to her when they hugged.
“Anne,” she said severely, “I hope you realize just how much I love you. I have actually consented for your sake to be in the same room withthat womanandthat man. I feel as sorry for the Duchess of Bewcastle as I feel for the Marquess of Hallmere. She is remarkably sweet—but one wonders for how long underhisinfluence.”
Anne remembered that Claudia and Miss Thompson sat together talking through much of the afternoon.
She remembered her father laughing and telling her what a splendid joke it had been to keep secret the fact that he had received a letter from Lady Potford on the same morning that Anne’s had arrived.
She remembered her mother’s happy tears—and Sarah’s.
She remembered the cousins of Sydnam’s who had been located in time and brought to Bath and were introduced to Anne—though he had to remind her of all their names the next day.
She remembered that for the first chaotic minutes children dashed noisily about getting under everyone’s feet until someone arranged to have them all shooed into the ballroom. Anne suspected it might have been the Duke of Bewcastle—he had probably raised an eyebrow or perhaps even his quizzing glass in the right direction.
And she remembered Sydnam’s bright and happy look, his laughter—and of course the impromptu speech of thanks he gave from both of them for such an unexpected gathering.
“You may all expect,” he said to much laughter, “that Anne and I will put our heads together over the winter when there is nothing else to do and devise a suitable revenge.”
But there was one part of the reception that was not at all jumbled in with all the other memories.
Music had been wafting from the ballroom all through the tea—or thebreakfast,if one wished to humor the duchess. No one seemed to have been paying it much attention. But Joshua, seated close by, must have noticed.
“It was just here that we waltzed for the first time, Freyja,” he said. “Do you remember?”
“How could I forget?” she said. “It was while we waltzed that you begged me to enter into a fake betrothal with you, and before we knew it we were in a marriage together—but not a fake one at all.”
They both laughed.
“And it was here we danced together, Frances,” the Earl of Edgecombe said, “though it was not quite the first time, if you recall.”
“The first time,” Frances said, “was in a cold, dark, empty ballroom with no music.”
“It was heavenly,” the earl said with a grin.
“It would be a shame,” Kit said, “to have an orchestra and the use of one of the most famous ballrooms in the country and not dance. I shall instruct the orchestra to play a waltz. But we must remember that this is a wedding celebration. The bride must dance first. Will you waltz with me, Anne?”
But he was looking, Anne noticed, at Sydnam.
Sydnam stood up.
“Thank you, Kit,” he said firmly, “but if it is not the custom for the bridegroom to be first to dance with his bride, then it ought to be. Anne, will you waltz with me?”
For the merest moment she felt alarm. Everyone had hushed and was listening. They all would doubtless come and watch. She had not done a great deal of dancing herself, except at school, but Sydnam—
But Sydnam could do anything in the world he set his mind to—except perhaps clap his hands.
She smiled at him.
“Yes, I will,” she said.
She did not think it was her imagination that the guests gathered around them let out a sort of collective sigh.
She set her hand on Sydnam’s offered sleeve and he led her into the ballroom. Almost everyone, it seemed to her, followed them and arranged themselves about the perimeter of the room while Kit spoke to the orchestra leader. The children were drawn back too, though most of them ran off into the tearoom to play.
And they waltzed together, Anne and Sydnam, three weeks after their wedding while their wedding guests looked on.
