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Did the absence of that indefinable spark matter? He had not come here expecting to find romantic love, after all, only the assurance of compatibility and the hope of companionship and comfort.

A dreary-sounding threesome.

A sensible threesome.

One decision over whether to continue his tentative courtship of Miss Easton had to be made the very next day, after an invitation was delivered by hand to his rooms. Mr. and Mrs. Easton would be honored if Viscount Watley would join them and an informal party of friends in their private box at Vauxhall Gardens four evenings hence.

He dithered, but only very briefly, as the messenger was waiting downstairs for his answer. One thing was certain. He had to make a determined push this year to choose a bride. His habit of procrastinating on the issue could only carry him from one year to another until he declined into middle age and a confirmed bachelorhood. There was no point in dreaming of that perfect someone. There was no such person for him. Affection he must have, however—and give. Affection would surely grow into love, something longer lasting than that silly heart of my heart rubbish that could overtake his fancy when he allowed his rational mind to flee.

In the weeks since his arrival in town, he must surely have met every eligible young lady currently on the market. He had danced with many of them or spent a few minutes in conversation with them at various soirees or garden parties or the like. He had not met anyone he preferred to Miss Easton. Some had pursued him quite openly, as had their mothers and, in a few cases, their fathers too. Those ladies he had rejected out of hand. He would not be forced into a marriage in which his title and wealth and prospects and even perhaps his looks were of greater significance than his personhood.

Would accepting this invitation be an irrevocable step forward? Was he in peril of finding himself betrothed to Miss Easton before they even had a chance to get to know each other? Just by attending an evening at Vauxhall as one of a party of friends? Surely not. It was maybe a bit arrogant of him to fear that he was. There might well be other would-be suitors in the party.

He really was going to need far more time to get to know Miss Easton before he could feel confident that they would indeed deal well enough together to spend the rest of their lives with each other. Equally important, she would need more time to get to know him. Marriage required both give and take, after all.

He almost pitied her. He guessed that she was close to ten years younger than he. She might even be just out of the schoolroom and brought straight to market. How he hated the social system by which persons of his class were expected to live. Thank God—and no, that was no blasphemy—no one had tried to marry Estelle off when she was eighteen. That person would have had a fight on his hands—from her brother.

But he was keeping the Eastons’ servant waiting. He sent down an acceptance of the invitation. He was not going to be committed after one evening at Vauxhall as a member of a party even if he raised expectations. And it was a lovely place to spend an evening, as he recalled from the only previous occasion he had gone there.

But dash it all, he would be going to Vauxhall, as he had come to London, with a view to pursuing a courtship. That was what almost every move of his must be about this spring. How he longed simply to go home. To his lone and lonely existence. To his abdication of duty.

It could not be done. Or rather, since of course it could be done, it must not be. He must stand his ground.

—

Stephanie soothed the tumult of emotions with which Christmas had left her with a few months spent at Ravenswood. She took long walks in the park, visited friends and neighbors, sang with her choirs under the direction of Sir Ifor Rhys, played with Devlin and Gwyneth’s children while Gwyneth dealt with the final stages of pregnancy, wrote letters, and read. She tried reading a few French and German books, not by translating them in her head but by understanding them in the original. She was surprised to discover that she could do it with some success in French, though only if she focused the whole of her attention on the task. She was less successful with German and still had to do the mental translation to English before she fully understood the meaning. But she was determined to persevere until she could do better.

Just as she tried to ignore the translation her mind insisted upon, so did she try very hard to forget where she had learned of such a way of reading foreign language literature. She did not want to remember. Oh, the situation was better now than it had been before Christmas, it was true, but everything had been ruined again when she had seen herself through his eyes right at the end. Buxom and all the rest of it. No, she did not want to have anything to do with him. She had made herself complete in the past few years—with a great deal of effort. But there was always that one thing, that one person, to make her vulnerable. Just like Achilles’ heel in the story of the Trojan War.

And then, just a week before Easter, Devlin appeared in the breakfast parlor one morning, his face pale, his hair uncombed, his brow furrowed, to announce that Gwyneth was in labor and in pain and it was all his fault and he should be led outside and tied to the nearest tree and shot by firing squad.

Stephanie sent for her mother and Gwyneth’s, and her mother sent for the midwife and the physician.

Gwyneth was delivered of a boy, her second son, before noon and declared afterward that this one had been by far the easiest confinement of them all. Devlin, who was not convinced that either mother or child was going to survive, haunted Gwyneth’s bedchamber despite all efforts by the physician, the midwife, her personal maid, and both mothers to coax him to leave the room. Stephanie took him a large cup of hot, sweet tea and a plateful of cold beef and bread and butter, which he declared he could not touch. But she noticed as she left the room five minutes later, after peeping at her plump, slumbering new nephew and kissing her flushed, smiling sister-in-law on the forehead, that he was eating one slice of bread and butter absently even as he gazed broodingly at his wife.

Poor Devlin.

Stephanie went to Penallen to spend Easter with Ben and Jennifer and Aunt Edith and the children and had a lovely time. It was April, and all the spring flowers were in full bloom, while the trees and grass still had their fresh bright green look before everything turned darker and more lush with the advent of summer. Unusually, there was a great deal of sunshine while she was there, and the habitual wind from the west, though it did blow, came mostly in the form of a light breeze. Under the predominantly blue sky, the sea was a slightly darker shade, with waves breaking into foam as they rushed up the beach or receded from it with the tides.

Ben was busy with the spring planting and the newborn lambs, which delighted his children, who had to be dissuaded from treating them as playthings to be picked up and cuddled and cooed over while their mothers baa-ed in alarm. Indoors, Aunt Edith was teaching Joy to incorporate a multicolored pattern into the blanket she was knitting for Belinda’s bed. She also taught Stephanie how to do more advanced crochet work than the basics she had learned on her last visit. And while they all worked, she told Stephanie about Christmas, which she had spent with her other nephew, Ben’s half brother, and his family.

Stephanie was welcomed back by the families of the neighborhood almost as if she were one of them. She never lacked for invitations to dine or to join a group for a walk along the beach or in the countryside. She frolicked on the level sand with the children when they were not in the schoolroom with their governess. She pushed Jennifer’s wheelchair along the hard sand when someone else had brought it down from the house.

Mr. Courtney was indeed in residence at his seaside cottage. He had arrived a week before Stephanie and immediately renewed his acquaintance with her. She fell into an easy friendship with him. Their acquaintanceship really had progressed to that, she decided after engaging in a few lengthy conversations with him when they sat or walked together, always with other people close by for propriety’s sake. On Easter Sunday he dined at Penallen after church and then invited her to stroll in the garden with him.

“It is either that,” he said, “or scandalize your whole family by falling asleep in the drawing room after such a sumptuous meal. And I could not even promise not to snore. You must compliment your cook for me, if you will, Lady Jennifer.”

“I will do that.” She smiled.

Stephanie fetched a warm shawl and stepped outside with Mr. Courtney. When Joy would have come too, Jennifer detained her to help with something, though she did not specify what it was.

It seemed that Jennifer might have sensed something that she had not, Stephanie thought later. Or perhaps it was something her sister-in-law knew that she did not. However it was, Stephanie was alone with Mr. Courtney for the first time, though such was the ease she felt with him now that she really did not notice. Besides, they were in Ben’s garden, within sight of the windows of the house. They strolled down to the cliff path, which cut through Ben’s land but was a right-of-way to all, and then stood for a few minutes on the grassy verge beyond it but still a safe distance from the cliff edge, gazing out over beach and sea and cliff faces on either side of them, and conversing on inconsequential subjects. When he fell silent, Stephanie did too. She found the silence companionable and felt a great welling of contentment. The sun was warm on her face.

“I do not believe anyone could ever have enough of this view even in a whole lifetime,” she said. “It is ever-changing and is always breathtakingly beautiful, even on a stormy winter day.” Yet it was always constant too, she thought. It was elemental and did not change in its essence as did so much in human life.

“It is,” he said. He paused and then spoke again. “Lady Stephanie, I always hope when I come here that you will be at Penallen too. I am disappointed when you are not. I feared this might be one of those times, but your brother assured me after I arrived you would be here for Easter.”

“Yes,” she said. “He and Jennifer invited me at Christmas.”