“Do you truly have no interest at all?”
Emily shook her head.
“Not at present, for there has been enough excitement in this family to last me several years,” she gestured lightly toward Poppy and her attentive companion. “Let someone else enjoy it for a while.”
Margaret could hardly argue with that. Their mother appeared beside them a moment later, setting down her teacup with the quiet care of someone who had finally learned how to relax. Lady Fairleigh looked different. The sharp edge of worry that had once defined her had softened considerably, replaced by something calmer.
“Margaret,” she said gently. “May I borrow you for a moment?”
Margaret rose at once and followed her a short distance along the terrace where the others could not easily overhear them. For a few seconds, Lady Fairleigh watched the garden in silence.
“I owe you an apology,” she said at last.
Margaret looked at her in surprise. Her mother had never been one to apologise, but there she was having folded her hands together as though carefully choosing each word.
“When everything began to unravel before your wedding, I believed I was protecting you. Protecting all of you. I fear I may have lost perspective.”
Margaret knew exactly what she meant.
“There was a moment,” her mother continued quietly, “when I truly thought sending you to a nunnery might be the only way to save us.”
Margaret remembered it well. The panic, the desperate search for solutions for their troubles.
“I am sorry,” Lady Fairleigh said simply. “I allowed fear to guide me.”
Margaret considered the words for a moment before answering.
“You were trying to protect us,” she said gently. “And I was hardly making matters easy at the time by disappearing with a duke.”
Her mother let out a quiet breath that sounded almost like relief.
“I pushed you too hard,” she admitted.
“And yet,” Margaret said with a faint smile, “everything worked out rather differently than either of us expected.”
Lady Fairleigh glanced toward the far side of the terrace. Nathaniel stood near the garden steps speaking with Mr. Ellsworth, his posture relaxed but attentive. Even from a distance, it was clear that he had already assessed the young man courting Poppy and found him at least acceptable.
As though sensing Margaret’s gaze, Nathaniel looked up. Their eyes met across the terrace. The small smile that appeared on his face was immediate and unmistakably meant for her. Margaret felt warmth settle quietly in her chest.
Her mother noticed.
“Well,” Lady Fairleigh said softly, “I cannot pretend that I arranged matters so perfectly.”
Margaret laughed.
“No,” she agreed. “But perhaps we managed something worthwhile despite it all.”
Her mother reached out and squeezed her hand briefly.
“I believe we did.”
They stood together for a moment longer before returning to the table where the rest of the family waited, the afternoon sun stretching gently across the gardens of Ravensmere.
The conversation they stepped back into was not the one Margaret had expected.
Emily had abandoned her earlier quiet position and now leaned forward with unusual animation, her elbows resting lightly on the table as she spoke to Nathaniel. A small collection of leavesand flower stems had been gathered from the garden and lay between them as though they had already been part of a demonstration. Nathaniel listened with patient interest.
“But if the soil changes the color,” Emily was saying, holding up a small hydrangea bloom she had plucked earlier, “then surely it must mean something in the earth is reacting to the plant itself.”
