“I had better go back,” she said. “After I have been away from David for an hour or two, my heart yearns for him—and what a foolish way of expressing myself. Thank you for walking with me, Mr. Butler. This has been a pleasant half hour.”
“Perhaps,” he said, “if your son is well occupied with the other children and you feel somewhat uncomfortable with being a houseguest here, you would care to walk with me again some other time, Miss Jewell. Perhaps…Well, never mind.” He felt suddenly, horribly embarrassed.
“I would,” she said quickly.
“Would you?” He stopped and turned to look at her, deliberately presenting her with a full-face view of himself. “Tomorrow, perhaps? At the same time? Do you know where I live? The cottage?”
“The pretty thatched one close to the gates?” she asked him.
“Yes,” he said. “Will you walk that way tomorrow?”
“Yes,” she said.
They looked at each other, and he noticed her teeth sinking into her lower lip.
“Tomorrow, then,” she said, and turned and hurried away barefoot across the sand in the direction of the cliff path.
He watched her go.
…after I have been away from David for an hour or two, my heart yearns for him.
She had apologized for the sentimentality of the words, spoken of her son. But they echoed in his mind and for a moment he indulged in a waking fantasy without even the excuse of sleep.
What if those words had been spoken of him, Sydnam Butler, instead of David?
…my heart yearns for him.
The Reverend Charles Lofter and his wife drove into the nearbyvillage the next morning to pay their respects to the vicar. They took Mrs. Thompson and their children with them, including ten-year-old Alexander. The Duchess of Bewcastle went calling upon some neighbors with Lord and Lady Aidan, who had met them during a previous visit to Wales. Davy and Becky went too, though both her grace’s baby and Lady Aidan’s two-year-old daughter, Hannah, remained in the nursery.
Both groups invited David Jewell to accompany them, but he chose to remain behind. Anne found him in the nursery, playing good-naturedly with several of the younger children, who were squabbling fiercely over which of them was to ride on his back next.
“It is Laura’s turn,” he was telling Daniel, “and then Miranda’s.”
One of Lord Alleyne’s young twins climbed triumphantly on and David crawled across the floor with her, bucking and neighing a couple of times as he went and causing her to squeal and giggle and grasp him more tightly about the neck while Lord Rannulf’s Miranda and the other children jumped up and down in anticipation of their next turn.
Ten minutes later he announced that the horse needed its oats and came toward Anne, his hair tousled, his face flushed, his eyes sparkling and happy.
“They wanted me to stay,” he explained, “and so I did.”
“That was good of you,” she said, pushing back an errant lock of hair from his forehead. Almost immediately it fell back into place again, as it always did. She realized how much it meant to her son, who had always been very much the youngest of all the pupils at the school in Bath, to be the older hero to the little children.
“I am going to play cricket with everyone again this afternoon,” he said. “Cousin Joshua is teaching me to bowl.”
CousinJoshua? For a moment Anne felt angry. She had never wanted to acknowledge that relationship between the Marquess of Hallmere and her son, much as she was fond of Joshua and much as she appreciated all he had done for her and continued to do. But she curbed her first instinct, which was to instruct her son rather sharply to call JoshuaLord Hallmere. Calling himCousin Joshuahad clearly not been David’s idea.
“And are you good at it?” Anne asked.
“Not yet,” he admitted. “But the duchess told me I had promise after she had hit a four off me, and I shattered the wickets when Lord Rannulf was up at bat, though I think he let me do it.”
“And so,” she said, smiling at him and stooping to pick up Jules Ashford, the toddler son of the Earl of Rosthorn, who was pulling insistently at David’s leg, “you are going to learn how to bowl him out even when he is not letting you, are you?” She held the young child suspended above her head until he giggled, and then lowered him far enough to rub noses with him.
“Mama,” David said, a renewed element of eagerness in his voice. “Lady Rosthorn is going painting this morning, and she has said I may go with her. She has an easel and paints I can use. May I go?Please?And will you come to watch?”
“That is remarkably kind of her,” Anne said, while the child in her arms bounced and giggled and otherwise indicated that he wanted to be lifted into the air again. Anne obliged him and laughed up at him.
David had always loved to draw and paint, and she had always thought him good at it. Mr. Upton, art master at Miss Martin’s school, insisted that he had real talent that should be nurtured.
“You have made a friend for life, Miss Jewell,” the Earl of Rosthorn said from behind her. “But he will exhaust you given half a chance. Come here,mon fils.”
