He hired an agent to find a house for him and undertake all the tedious business of looking over likely prospects to see if they fulfilled the detailed list of essential criteria with which Nicholas had provided him. The man first recommended a house in Richmond, which backed onto the River Thames and came complete with a long, beautifully landscaped garden and a jetty for a boat. Nicholas went to see it and agreed it was gorgeous. Winifred would love it. But probably not to live in, he decided a bit reluctantly. The neighbors were exclusively upper-class people and frequently opened their homes to their peers for dinners and soirees and garden parties. Winifred would not be intimidated by them—her uncle and aunt were the Duke and Duchess of Netherby, after all, and her grandmother was a marchioness. But she would soon be bored by them. She would consider their lives frivolous. She would consider them shallow. Boring. She would never be able to have what she called arealconversationwith any of them.
He rejected the Richmond house and settled instead for a small manor south of the river. The agent referred to it as a cottage despite the fact that it boasted twelve bedchambers upstairs and comfortable servants’ quarters in the attic. Nicholas went to see it, expecting that he might find it rather too pretentious for his needs. But he knew instantly that it wasthe one. It was on the edge of a small village and within relatively easy reach of London. It was surrounded by a garden almost large enough to be called a park, a lovely expanse of lawns and trees and flower beds and sitting areas and kitchen gardens. The village boasted a church, a school, and an inn with sizable assembly rooms used for balls and community feasts and school concerts and rehearsals and performances by a drama group and a book club anda knitting club and an occasional debating chamber, the landlord explained when Nicholas bought a pint of ale and settled at the bar for a chat. A few other customers joined in, uninvited and unrebuked. There were people of all social classes in the village, and on the whole they mingled happily with one another and with neighbors, mostly farmers, from the surrounding countryside.
It was a friendly place to live, the landlord added, swiping at the counter with a wet cloth. There was no better in all England.
Except perhaps Boscombe, Nicholas thought. This place sounded rather similar.
He purchased the house and then hired a husband-and-wife team to decorate and furnish it for warmth and comfort more than for pure elegance. When they showed him some samplings of furniture and draperies and carpet and paint and wallpaper they hoped would suit him, he knew that they did indeed understand, almost as if they knew Winifred. He gave them carte blanche to proceed, hoping he would not live to regret it.
He ought, of course, to have consulted Winifred—on both the house and its furnishings. It would, in addition to anything else, have given him something to write about. But it would be too cumbersome and too frustrating to check every detail with her. And inviting her to London to see for herself was out of the question, though he longed to see her. The Netherbys, who would have welcomed her as a guest, were not in London. She would have had to stay at a hotel. And someone would have had to accompany her here—her mother or her father, who were busy people and had children at home in need of their care.
So he said nothing.
Every day he expected her to ask about the house search, but surprisingly she never did.
She had other things on her mind, of course. There were wedding preparations in progress in Bath, and he guessed that the women at least were fully occupied with all the busy details. He was surprised, however, when he learned that his mother was on the way there so she could more comfortably help Mrs. Cunningham with the plans. But it was just like Mama, he decided. Everything was going to have to be perfect for her second son’s wedding, as it had been for Devlin’s and Ben’s. Pippa’s had been a rushed affair, occasioned by the imminent death of Lucas’s grandfather, who had wanted to see his grandson and heir married before he passed. That must have been a severe disappointment to Mama.
And so the months crawled by for Nicholas. If he had feared doubt would set in once he was back in the familiar surroundings of his bachelor rooms and his work in London, he was proved very wrong. He looked forward to everything that was being planned. And he looked forward to bringing his bride home afterward to their new house.
He could scarcely wait.
—
From the beginning of September, which Joel and Camille Cunningham had always declared to be the end of their family summer, the arts center that was also their home was busier than ever. Its reputation had spread, it seemed, and all sorts of music and drama and art and literature groups wanted to conduct a workshop or retreat there. It came of having a talented cook who produced three plentiful and excellent meals a day, Camille said. It came of being perfectly situated among quiet hills, overlooking Bath, with endless views in all directions, Joel claimed. Winifred thought it came from the atmosphere of the place, from the fact that the housewas also a private home and peopled with congenial, welcoming hosts and a large, diverse family of children, who seemed obviously happy despite various handicaps. They were always willing to carry bags and instruments and easels and such, and always eager to watch the development of various art projects or listen to music or poetry readings or watch drama rehearsals without ever seeming intrusive or getting in anyone’s way.
Winifred welcomed the busy life. Time seemed to go faster when there was a group staying there. And everything else somehow got done.
There were the wedding invitations to be sent out. She had the list Nicholas had given her of everyone on his side. She and her mother between them, with a few interjections from Sarah and Alice, compiled their own list. The combined lists were dauntingly long. Would all these people actually come? Would even half of them? Where would everyonestay?
There were several comfortable and prestigious hotels in Bath, her mother reminded her. There was the sizable house on the Royal Crescent, where her grandmother—Winifred’s great-grandmama—had lived until her quiet passing in her sleep one night last winter. It now belonged to Winifred’s grandmother and her great-uncle, the Reverend Michael Kingsley, whose church was in Dorset. A number of people would stay with the Cunninghams since there would be no group booked into the house at that time. Grandmama and Grandpapa, the Marquess of Dorchester, surely would stay there, Winifred thought, and probably Uncle Gil and Aunt Abby, her mother’s sister, and Uncle Harry, her brother, and Aunt Lydia. And their children, of course.
Would everyone who did come for the wedding also stay for Christmas? They must all be invited to do so, Mama said, and thenthey would plan Christmas around those who said they would stay. But that was a separate issue, which they need not think about at present. It was enough to concentrate upon the wedding itself.
The wedding would definitely be at Bath Abbey two days before Christmas. The wedding breakfast would be in the famed Upper Assembly Rooms, setting of many formal assemblies held in Bath during what passed for a Season there, though sadly the city had fallen somewhat out of fashion in recent years. The rooms would be preferable to their own home as a venue for the reception, Mama said. They would be a bit squashed here, assuming that all or most of those who were invited actually came.
Winifred wrote every invitation herself, having refused her mother’s help. Mama was already rushed off her feet with other things, but ever cheerful about it, it must be added.
There was a wedding dress for which to be fitted and a style and fabrics and accessories to choose. And since this dress was to bespecial—Mama put great emphasis upon the word—it must be professionally made. There was a dressmaker to be chosen.
Winifred gave in on the matter since it seemed important to Mama. However, she insisted upon a design that was starkly simple, a round-necked, high-waisted, slender-skirted, long- and slim-sleeved dress of white velvet. The dressmaker and Mama had the last laugh, however—though the former did not appear to have much of a sense of humor, being a bit too intent upon cultivating a French accent and exaggerated French hand gestures that did not seem quite authentic.
She followed Winifred’s instructions to the letter, but the dress she produced succeeded somehow in making Winifred look rather stunning. Even she admitted it as she stared at herself, a bit goggle-eyed, in the full-length mirror. How was that possible with a dressthat had no discernible shape and was to be worn by a woman with no discernible shape either? The dressmaker had somehow done it. Slim as it was, the dress moved about her when she moved and looked luxurious as the light caught various facets of the white velvet.
Winifred chose a white cloak with a wide hood, the whole lined with lambswool, to wear with the dress—it was going to be late December, after all, and the insides of churches were never really warm even in summer. She would wear Papa’s gold chains and earbobs as her only accessories, she decided, with the gold slippers she had worn at Aunt Anna’s ball in London. And her daisy brooch, of course.
An hour of each day was spent at the escritoire in her room, writing her daily letter to Nicholas and reading and rereading his letter of the previous day to her, even when it was no more than a few lines long—andeven whenthere was nothing but blank space between the greeting and the closing. She had a good chuckle over that particular one. So did Robbie when she showed it to him. She did not usually share her letters with anyone, but she had learned to recognize the small absurd things that were likely to draw a rare smile and even a laugh from him. Robbie, she thought, was slowly, ever so slowly, healing from whatever hurt he had held inside himself since early childhood.
She never quite understood why Nicholas found it so difficult to find things to write about. His daily life was a busy one. She would have loved to read details of his work, especially as it related to horses and their training. She would have loved details of his social life beyond just a stark sentence or two. He was good with facts, but details eluded him when one was not present to coax and question them out of him. Were all men the same? One could nevergeneralize about a solid half of the population of the country, of course, but she did believe there was a great deal of truth in her suspicion. How many men did she know who sat down almost daily to write letters? She knew plenty of women who did so. Her mother, for example, wrote regularly to Grandmama and her siblings, including Aunt Anna, among others. And they all wrote back—well, Aunt Lydia did on behalf of Uncle Harry. Papa did not write many letters, though he did write to Mama when a painting commission kept him from home for longer than a few days.
She would not grow cross with Nicholas, then, Winifred decided. He did at least keep his promise to write daily, and he always assured her that he loved her.
He made no mention whatsoever of a house search. And she would not ask him and seem to be pestering him. She was disappointed, however. She had expected that he would give the search priority over almost everything else during the months they were apart. She had expected him to describe properties and settings and neighborhoods and to ask her opinion. She had hoped, if he purchased a home, to be consulted on furnishings and draperies and decorations. She had wanted to beinvolved. But perhaps that was the whole point for him. Perhaps he had decided to wait until after they were married so they could look together and share opinions and choices.
It was an attractive idea in one way. But…
Well, what would they do right after their wedding? Would he take her to live with him in his bachelor rooms? Would it be allowed? She knew that some areas of London were reserved exclusively for gentlemen. So would he rent somewhere while they looked? For how long would she have to remain in London? And it would be during the winter, long before the spring Season broughtthetonback to town in large numbers for the parliamentary session. There would be no Aunt Anna to visit or Great-Aunt Louise. Or Great-Aunt Matilda. No Bertrand or Estelle.
Oh, shewishedNicholas had done what he had said he would do. He did not have to do anything else in preparation for their wedding, after all. Surely he could have found some time to look for a house outside London but close to it to which to take her.
