“No, ma’am,” Anne said. “I will remain at the school. Miss Martin takes in charity pupils as well as paying ones, and they must be cared for through the holidays.”
Of course, there was no need for Claudia, Susanna, and Anne all to remain. But none of them had anywhere else to go unless their close friend Frances Marshall, Countess of Edgecombe, a former teacher at the school, arrived home from the Continent, where she had gone with the earl on a singing tour, and invited one of them to Barclay Court in Somersetshire, as she often did whenever she was at home during a school holiday.
“You still have not been home, then, Anne?” Joshua asked.
“No,” she said.
Not since the year before David was born—more than ten years ago now. It was a long time. She had been only nineteen then, her sister Sarah, seventeen. Matthew, their brother, now a clergyman, a mere twenty-year-old, had still been up at Oxford. Henry Arnold had just turned twenty at that time too—she had been home for his birthday. They had spoken of his coming-of-age birthday the following year, and she had felt no premonition at all of the fact that she would not be there for that occasion—or ever see him again, in fact.
“We have a request to make of you, Anne,” Joshua said.
“Oh?” Anne looked from him to Lady Hallmere and back again.
“I am increasingly aware,” Joshua said with a sigh, “that David is my blood relative, Anne, my cousin.”
“No!” Anne stiffened. “He is my son.”
“And he would have had my title too,” Joshua continued, “and everything that came along with it, if Albert had married you.”
Anne shot to her feet, slopping some of her tea over into the saucer before setting it down on a table beside her chair.
“David ismy son,” she said.
“Of course he is,” Lady Hallmere said, sounding haughty and even somewhat bored, though her eyes regarded Anne keenly. “It occurred to Joshua as we left Lindsey Hall that your son might enjoy a summer in the company of other children, though most of them admittedly are considerably younger than he. There will be Davy, though, Aidan and Eve’s adopted son, who is now eleven. It is rather unfortunate that he and your son have the same name, but I daresay everyone will contrive to know them apart—and it might actually be fun for each of them to ignore unwelcome orders and claim afterward that they thought the command was for the other. The duchess’s nephew Alexander will also be there, and he is ten.”
“We would really like to take the lad with us, Anne,” Joshua said. “What do you say?”
Anne bit her lip and sat down again.
“It is always one of my greatest concerns,” she said, “that he is growing up at a girls’ school with women teachers except for the art and dancing masters. He is a general favorite and is made much of by everyone—I could not be more fortunate in that respect. But he has very little contact with men and almost none at all with boys.”
“Yes,” Joshua said, “I realize that. I still intend to send him to school when he is older, with your permission, of course, but in the meantime he ought to have some contact with other children. Daniel and Emily are much younger than he, but theyarehis second cousins. And therefore all the other Bedwyn children are loosely related to him too. I will not press the issue because I know it distresses you, but it is the truth nevertheless. Will you let him come?”
An unreasonable sense of panic balled in the pit of Anne’s stomach. She had never been separated from David for longer than a few hours at a time. He washers. Though he was only nine, she knew she would lose him in the not too distant future. How could she deny him a proper schooling with boys of his own age, after all? But must it start even now? Must she give him up for a whole month or longer now, this summer?
But how could she say no? If the question were put to David, she knew very well that she would see that brightness of excited anticipation in his eyes as he looked to her for permission.
Her hands, she realized as she spread them across her lap, were actually shaking. For the first time in the more than ten years that she had known him, she resented Joshua. She almost hated him, in fact—especially his insistence that David was his blood relative and therefore partly his responsibility.
David wasnothis relative.
He washer son.
“Miss Jewell,” the marchioness said, “a child of nine is too young to be separated from his mother for a whole month. And though I can speak at present only as the mother of a three- and one-year-old, I am even more convinced that no mother is ready to be separated from her child when he is only nine. Of course you must come to Wales too.”
“You are quite right, Freyja,” Lady Potford said. “Is your presence at the school for the summer quite essential, Miss Jewell?”
“No, ma’am,” Anne said. “Miss Martin and Miss Osbourne will both be remaining there too.”
“Then it is settled,” Joshua said cheerfully. “You and David will both come, Anne, and Daniel will be so excited that we may well have to tie him down.Willyou come?”
“But how can I?” she asked, aghast. Inviting her, she was well aware, had been an afterthought. “It is the Duke of Bewcastle’s home.”
“Oh, pooh,” Lady Hallmere said with a dismissive gesture of one hand. “It is a Bedwyn home, and I am a Bedwyn. It is also a very large home. You must certainly come.”
The Duke of Bewcastle, Anne reflected, was reputed to be one of the coldest and most toplofty aristocrats in the country. All the Bedwyns had a reputation for being impossibly high in the instep. She was the daughter of a gentleman of very little social significance beyond the neighborhood in which he lived. She was also a teacher, an ex-governess. All of which paled beside the fact that she was alsothe unmarried mother of an illegitimate son.
How could she possibly…
