Page 88 of The Luckiest Lady in London

Traces of boyish good looks were still detectable when he occasionally broke into a self-conscious smile. But Louisa could not imagine that he was anywhere near as beautiful as the late Lady Wrenworth, even if one took away thirty years of aging in the harsh climate of the subcontinent.

Could he really be the one for whose loss two generations of Wrenworth men had paid so dearly?

She glanced at her husband. He was being the perfect host.

“When did you leave for India, sir?” he asked amiably.

“Oh, must have been December of fifty-nine.”

Six months before Felix was born. Six months after Mary Hamilton married Gilbert Rivendale.

“Was it a difficult decision to leave?” She took it upon herself to ask that potentially significant question. It wouldn’t do for it to look as if Felix were grilling him.

“I was the fourth son of a baronet, Lady Wrenworth. It was largely a foregone conclusion that I’d have to venture abroad to seek my fortune.” He smiled ruefully. “I’d have gone sooner, but I was a young man madly in love and couldn’t bear to tear myself away.”

Louisa stirred her tea. “And Mrs. Lucas, did she not accompany you today?”

“There is no Mrs. Lucas—I never married.” Mr. Lucas raised his teacup to his lips and gazed wistfully at Felix. “Forgive me, sir, but you are the very image of your late mother. How beautiful she was, how devastatingly lovely.”

“Did you know her well, by any chance?” Felix’s voice was slick as marble, but behind his urbane smile, Louisa detected ripples of tension.

“I hardly know how to answer that question, sir.” Mr. Lucas shook his head. “We exchanged correspondence—I still keep every one of her letters—but we rarely had the opportunity of speaking to each other. She was well guarded and I didn’t see her as much as I would have liked to.”

“I see,” Felix murmured.

“That does not mean that I didn’t gain any insight into her character,” Mr. Lucas said staunchly. “As I’m certain you can attest, sir, she was the sweetest, kindest angel God ever put on earth.”

For an instant Felix froze. That moment passed, however, before it even registered on Mr. Lucas. “Yes, indeed. Now, sir, if you are finished with your tea, I would be happy to show you the way.”

* * *

Louisa, for all that she was the mistress of Huntington, had never been to the private cemetery. It was small and without ostentation, the marble grave markers laid out in neat, well-tended rows.

From a package he carried, Mr. Lucas carefully extracted a dried and faded wreath and placed it on Mary Hamilton Rivendale’s tombstone.

“Amaranth. Her favorite flower,” Felix said in a low voice.

Mr. Lucas looked up, his eyes misty. “Yes. I had the wreath made shortly after she passed away—and I always hoped that one day it would find its way to her even if I couldn’t.”

A silence fell. Mr. Lucas’s gaze returned to the tombstone, as if he could penetrate the layers of marble and earth to the bones below of the woman he loved. Felix watched him. Louisa watched her husband.

A few moments later, he asked, “Would you like to see some of her favorite places around Huntington, sir?”

Louisa tried to conceal her astonishment.

Mr. Lucas’s face lit. “Would it not be too much trouble?” He almost squeaked in his excitement.

Felix was solemn. “No. Not at all.”

They went on a grand tour. There was the small stone bridge that spanned Huntington’s trout stream, where the late Lady Wrenworth had set up her watercolor easel on many a sunny spring day. There was the pier at the far end of the lake, where she liked to read on summer afternoons under a large canopy. There was the cloistered ornamental garden she had designed herself, and greenhouses filled to the brim with exotic flowers of all descriptions, her true legacy to Huntington.

What stunned Louisa was not so much the tour in itself, but how her husband conducted it. He spoke at length of his mother, fluently, easily, as if that woman had never caused him a shred of pain in his entire life. He described her daily habits, her improvements to Huntington, and her many charitable works. He painted a picture of a grand lady who lived a life above any mortal reproach.

Mr. Lucas listened with the rapture of an aspiring young soldier before a celebrated war hero, holding fast to Lord Wrenworth’s words as if they were so many gleaming pearls. He devoured the locales they visited, looking about them as if he could transport himself back in time, to the side of his beloved, if only he stared fiercely enough.

They ended the tour back in the house, the formal, majestic portion of it, where Mr. Lucas was shown an elegant parlor where every stitch of needlework had been done by the late marchioness’s own hand. Gingerly, he touched his fingers to the meticulous embroidery, to the fastidiously and beautifully rendered irises, roses, and tulips.

The very last place he was taken to was the gallery, so he could see the three large portraits of her on the wall and the dozen or so photographs in a glass-topped display case.