Lucas picked up his youngest child while the nurse supervised the unloading of the children’s baggage from the carriage in which she had traveled with Pippa’s maid and Lucas’s valet.
And they were all present and accounted for. Matthew’s relatives had arrived earlier, his brother and wife to stay at the cottage, his nephew and family to squeeze into the rooms above the smithy. There was room for them all at the cottage and certainly at Ravenswood Hall, but apparently they all considered a few days spent in those rooms a special treat.
Stephanie was coaxing Pamela out of her father’s arms and distracted the child by taking her to the edge of the terrace and pointing at the sheep down in the meadow. Nicholas smiled down at Belinda Ellis, who was watching them, and she opened her arms to him, wanting to come up. And what a crowning joy it was in these dizzyingly busy days, Nicholas thought as he picked the child up and took her to join Stephanie, to hold a chubby child who was still little more than a baby, and to feel her hand about his neck while she bounced in his arms and pointed at the sheep.
“Shall we go a little closer?” Stephanie said, and stepped out onto the grass.
Why, oh why had he not married and had children of his own long before now? But it was not too late. Although he was about to marry a woman who was close to thirty and he was past that age, there was still plenty of time to have children. Plural. A family of his own. A family oftheirown.
Grace would want children too.
She had greeted his siblings and their spouses as well as his grandparents with her customary courtesy and charm. She seemed happy to see Uncle George and Aunt Kitty and Bertrand, with all of whom she already had an acquaintance. Mrs. Haviland was everything that was gracious, and General Haviland beamed about him with genial goodwill. He looked like a man who thoroughly approved of the family into which his daughter was about to marry.
Meanwhile, in the house and in the village, busy preparations were being made for the upcoming festivities on Saturday. Tables were being set up about the perimeter of the courtyard for the displays of needlework and baking, and a gaily striped tent was being erected in the northeast corner for the fortune-teller. More tables were ready on the terrace for the wood carvings—and one stone carving.
Andrew Cunningham had finished creating an exquisitely realistic sheep, solid and woolly and placidly maternal, with a spindly legged lamb at her side, leaning against her but looking outward with an eager, barely contained energy that would soon send it gamboling away from her to explore its new world. It was not just a skilled carving. It pulsed with life and had movement and joy, though all were illusions, of course. In reality, it was just a block of stone. Mr. Cunningham and Matthew had somehow persuaded Andrew—Winifred with her signed messages had helped a great deal—to enter it in the contest at the fete. The contest was, strictly speaking, for wood carvings, but that was only because no one had ever tried to enter a stone carving.
“Andthatcame from the ugly old stone we lugged home from ten miles away?” Nicholas said to Winifred when they were both out in the stables to view the newly finished work of art with herparents and Robbie, Matthew and his brother, Bertrand and Owen. He had studiously avoided her since the afternoon of their ride, just as she had avoided him. But she was looking so happy for her brother that he could not continue to keep his distance from her. “Now I know what your mother means when she says Andrew sees something in stone, something full of energy that he absolutely must release. It is quite exquisite, though somehow that seems to be not quite praise enough. Language can be very limiting.”
“I do indeed say that,” Mrs. Cunningham said. “I always find it astonishing. I am so very proud of my son.”
“I believe Matthew may have competition this year,” Owen said. “Andrew may tip him off his throne.”
“I would not stop sulking this side of Christmas,” Matthew said.
“It was not ten miles,” Winifred said to Nicholas. “You do like to exaggerate.”
“What?” he said. “You mean it waseleven? It is no wonder my back has been protesting ever since.”
She laughed.
Mr. Cunningham was hugging his deaf son, the suggestion of tears in his eyes.
—
The summer fetes had halted abruptly after the year of what most people in the neighborhood thought of as the great catastrophe. When it resumed a few years later, it had been on the initiative of an organizing committee of volunteers drawn from among the villagers and people of the surrounding countryside, who sorely missed the annual frolics. One of the first decisions of the new committee was to move a number of the events to thevillage itself—the vending booths, the maypole dancing, the children’s races, to name a few.
Nicholas liked the changes, for the burden upon his mother had been enormous. However, it was because of those changes that he hesitated over his original plan to have Devlin announce his betrothal at the evening ball. It would be inappropriate to put the focus upon the Ware family when it was the community that had planned the whole thing—music, decorations, and refreshments. It would feel very like stealing their thunder to intrude upon their community ball.
He had decided instead that the traditional family dinner on the eve of the fete, when the house would be full of guests, both family and close friends, would be by far the more appropriate setting for the announcement. All of which meant that Friday was going to be a busy day for him.
It began after he asked General Haviland for a private word in the library after breakfast. The general put him through his paces, just as though he had not been working toward this very moment with Mrs. Haviland for the past year or more and just as though he knew nothing of Colonel Ware’s circumstances and ability to give his daughter the sort of life she had been raised to expect. It ended as Nicholas expected, of course. Permission was granted, and all that remained for him to do was pay his addresses to Grace herself.
He had indeed cut off all possibility of retreat now, he thought as he left the library with a jovial General Haviland and escaped for a while to the stables, where Devlin and Ben, quite like old times, were making sure all was ready for the archery and log-hewing contests. Both welcomed him. Neither made any mention of the meeting in the library, though they must have been fully aware of it.
Everyone had plans for the afternoon, some to entertain thechildren, others to help however they could with preparations for the events that would take place at Ravenswood. Aunt Kitty was helping Mama set up the needlework displays in the courtyard, though she did explain to Winifred, who went to help too, that they might as well stand back and admire and not interfere. Her sister-in-law was very fussy about what went where on that table. The baked items would not arrive until early on Saturday morning.
Mr. Cunningham, who had finished the portrait, was helping Gwyneth set up the wood-carving display on the terrace, though the wordwoodwas going to have to be dropped this year. Young Andrew Cunningham’s stone sheep stood prominently on the table with Matthew Taylor’s pensive shepherd, Uncle George’s cockerel greeting the morning and looking for all the world as though it were waking all sleepers within a wide radius, and numerous others. Bertrand had gone out to the poplar alley with Owen to supervise the setting up of the targets and the marking of the line from which each archer would shoot.
Nicholas found Grace in the drawing room with Mrs. Haviland, Miss Delmont, and his grandparents. He made general conversation for a few minutes, but he could tell instantly that all of them knew full well why he was there. Mrs. Haviland in particular was tense with waiting. Grace herself, dressed in a manner more suited to a London drawing room than an informal house party in the country, sat very upright on her chair, her hands clasped in her lap, her face looking rather as though it had been carved of marble.
“Grace,” he said, getting to his feet and bowing to her. “With your mother’s permission, may I take you for a stroll along the river path below the meadow? It is very picturesque. Much of it is shaded by trees and is cooler in the heat of the afternoon than the more open paths and carriageways in the rest of the park.”
He was babbling a bit.
“Do go, Grace,” Mrs. Haviland said. “I will stay and give Mr. and Mrs. Greenfield and Miss Delmont my company.”
“Thank you, Colonel Ware,” Grace said, getting to her feet. “Some fresh air will be welcome.”
