Fletcher sighed. “I am running out of time. I may have to be that man who shows up at the wedding and objects to the union.”
“That would keep tongues wagging,” said Lark, sounding delighted.
“Larkin Woodville,” said Hugh. “What has gotten into you?”
Lark shrugged. “It’s good that everyone is making summer plans, because it looks like I won’t be staying in London this summer, either. Anthony and I will head to his country estate to hide for a bit. See if we can make a go of things.”
This was not met with the enthusiastic response Lark was probably expecting.
“Are you sure?” asked Hugh.
Lark laughed ruefully. “No. I’m not really sure about anything except that I love him. Maybe us spending a summer inclose proximity will inspire enmity. That feels likely, in fact. Or perhaps we will discover that we are in fact well-suited, and we’ll spend the rest of our lives together, albeit not publicly. That little boy is precious and deserves all the love in the world now that his mother is gone, and I can contribute to that.”
“What an odd, untraditional assortment of men we turned out to be,” said Hugh. “My mother didn’t approve of my wife. Owen planned to install his wife in Wales so they could lead separate lives and fell in love with her anyway. Fletcher has to rescue his love from a nefarious duke. And Lark is going to build a family with a man who, until a few years ago, we all found irritating.”
“Your mother still doesn’t approve of your wife,” Lark pointed out.
“And even so,” said Hugh, “the next Duke of Swynford is walking around and sassing his grandmother, so I feel like I got the last laugh there.”
“Sassing her? Really?” said Lark.
“Mother came for luncheon a few days ago and wanted to visit with her grandson, who told her, repeatedly, that she was old and boring.”
“Isn’t he two? Does he know the wordsoldandboring?” asked Fletcher.
“He knows a frightening number of words. Some of them are nonsense, but he’s stringing sentences together now and it’s both adorable and alarming.”
“I hope you know what you’re in for, Lark,” said Owen. “The nursery is directly above my bedroom, and I woke up this morning to the sounds of the nanny running after my son. Like this.” Owen drummed his hands against his thigh todemonstrate. “For a half hour. Until Grace woke up, too, and went up there to see what was going on. The nanny suggested we let the boy run around the garden during the day. To let him outside like we would a dog, basically.”
Hugh nodded. “You need to let them tire themselves out sometimes.”
“Having anything to do with your children is… Is it a new development for this generation?” asked Fletcher. “I imagine if you’d asked my father what I was like as a child, he wouldn’t be able to tell you.”
“It’s likely not normal,” said Hugh. “I don’t think it’s the done thing for fathers to be so…hands-on. Nor to talk about their children over whisky like this. But as I’ve established, we are…outliers.”
“I regret that my father and I were not closer,” said Fletcher. “So I understand why you are behaving as you are. It just struck me as odd, but maybe it shouldn’t have.”
“Perhaps the key to becoming an adult is that you realize you don’t have to do things the way your parents did,” said Lark. “My own parents have stopped asking me when I’m going to get married. They have, perhaps, given up.”
“My mother hasn’t,” said Fletcher. “Since Father died, she’s been somewhat relentless. But I haven’t wanted to tell her about Louisa until I know how everything will be when the dust settles.”
“The dust settles where?” asked Anthony, suddenly appearing.
“Ah, you made it out after all,” Lark said.
“I was going to go mad if I spent any more time glaring at the wallpaper in my sitting room,” said Anthony, settling intothe chair an attendant brought over. “Mrs. Church, little Henry’s nurse, insisted I leave the house for my own sanity, so here I am. But I promise to try to be the most delightful company. What are we discussing?”
Fletcher gave Anthony an appraising look. He’d cut his hair shorter recently and he wore all black, making him look decidedly not like himself, but he had a familiar glint in his eye.
“Well, darling,” said Lark, “we are discussing Fletcher’s impending nuptials, or not.”
“Oh, right, the business with Rotherfeld.” Anthony leaned forward as though he were interested in these proceedings.
Fletcher assumed Lark had already filled Anthony in, but he said, “There is a precarious financial transaction at the heart of all this.”
“How foolish we have been as a society to make something so intimate into a business transaction,” Anthony said.
“Or, how foolish of modern society to make a business transaction about love and intimacy,” said Lark. “For decades, our royals, for example, have married European princesses but carried on affairs with the women they truly cared for or were attracted to. Are we moving into an era in which men choose wives they truly love instead? It seems to me it makes married life far more pleasant.”
