“A visit to Stellenbosch should only take three days, whereas one to Cape Agulhas is much longer,” his mother explained.
“And three days is too much for you?”
“Yes, well, I have reconsidered. It was a poor idea to suggest a visit Cape Agulhas to begin with and no doubt my health would have suffered from such travels.”
His mother was going to drive him to madness! Yes, she may be getting on in years, but there was nothing fragile about her, nor was she in her dotage.
“Why is it that Mrs. Sutcliffe will be visiting Stellenbosch when it is your family, and mine, who lives there?” Sterling asked, quickly coming to the end of his patience.
“To chaperone, of course,” she answered as if he should have already known. “Please ring for tea, Caroline.”
“Chaperone?” Caroline asked as if she was as confused as him.
“Yes. Kaya cannot travel a full day, alone with two men. It simply is not done.”
Caroline sighed and walked to the bellpull shaking her head.
Did he ask who Kaya was and why she was going to Stellenbosch with two men, one he assumed was him?
As her answer would likely frustrate him all the more, Sterling decided to offer a different argument. “I do not know anyone there any longer,”
“All the more reason to enjoy a reunion with your cousins.”
“It will take too long,” he insisted. He needed to remain at Wyndview Farm and not waste time on a holiday.
“It is one day there, you will spend the night, spend the day withyour family, then return the following day. I expect you home at the end of three days. Therefore, do not dawdle.”
Though in retrospect, why was he arguing with his mother? Was it simply because he did not like being manipulated or told what to do? Which was foolish on his part since he had not given any thought to the one advantage of this trip—he would be with Caroline, without his mother’s interference. It would be a chance to know her better, learn what he could. It was what he had wanted, so why was he so quick to dismiss the opportunity?
Because his mother had exasperated him with first a trip to the coast then, suggesting Stellenbosch and becoming suddenly too fragile to leave her chair. Sterling did not know her reasons or what plan that she might have brewed in the back of her mind and found he did not care when he would be given three days, nearly alone, with Caroline.
*
Caroline strolled tothe bellpull and gave it a gentle tug.
She did not want to travel to Stellenbosch either yet feared that whatever objection she offered would be dismissed even though Lady Wyndham knew that she could not be gone from Wyndview Farm for three days.
“What of Livia? I cannot leave her.”
“Livia will keep me company when not at her studies,” Lady Wyndham insisted. “I do enjoy having her around and she is coming along very well with her stitches for one so young.”
Lady Wyndham had begun to teach Livia needlework because Caroline had no time to teach the finer arts, nor had she thought Livia old enough, but Lady Wyndham was eager to do so because she had never gotten the opportunity since she’d never had a daughter.
“What troubles you, Mrs. Sutcliffe?” Wyndham asked. “You have been frowning ever since my mother decided that the two of us shalltravel together.” The corner of his mouth tipped. “Is it because you do not wish to spend so much time in my presence?”
That certainly was not the reason, though it should be. Wyndham caused her to think of matters that a respectable widow should not and long for intimacies now missed.
“I believe you will find the travel tedious,” she answered. “All day in a wagon, a night in uncomfortable quarters, though a day spent in Stellenbosch should be pleasant enough, but then you would need to spend another uncomfortable night before you start out again the following morning. The travel can be tiresome.”
“Why not take a carriage?”
“For such a distance and difficult roads, a wagon is better. I can assure that you will find the trip most uncomfortable.”
Maybe if she made the trip sound horribly inconvenient and wearying, Wyndham might reconsider and remain here, then she could as well and someone else could be sent along to chaperone Kaya, especially since Caroline suspected that Malik would also join the young woman, whom he wanted to wed.
“I begin to think that you see me as a pampered gentleman who could not cross a county without a cushioned seat in a well-sprung carriage.”
If she agreed, it would be seen as an insult. Of that she was certain.
