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During a lull when no one was with the elderly couple, Stephanie went to introduce herself and sat with them for a few minutes, telling them, at their request, something of Ravenswood. Her mother and Matthew joined them after a few minutes.

Footmen moved about with trays of lemonade and cider and fetched tea or coffee for those few who preferred a hot drink. Picnic hampers were carried out after a while, and everyone feasted upon chicken cooked in crisp batter and lobster patties and ham and cheese and crusty bread buns, followed by fruit and pastries and cakes.

Why did food always taste so much better out of doors and from a picnic hamper?

Stephanie went for a short walk with a group of younger people, including Maria, Mr. and Miss Cobb, and Harold Goring after tea. They looked at the flower beds and strolled for a way across the east lawn, which was much like the other, giving a peaceful, rural look to the house.

What a good idea this picnic had been for the first day of their visit. There was almost bound to be much mingling for the remainder of their stay.

But what about Bertrand’s intentions? He had made no move in the twenty-four hours or so since her arrival to single her out, to take her apart from the others, to have any private conversation with her. She found herself throughout the picnic glancing his way, noting how at ease he was, how relaxed and happy with his neighbors and friends, not a guest as he had always been when he came to Ravenswood but a sort of cohost with his father and the marchioness.

Perhaps he was quite deliberately giving her time to relax and enjoy the company of his family and friends and neighbors and time to see him in the comfort of what had once been his own home and would be again sometime in the future.

If this was part of his plan, it was perhaps working, she thought.

She thought it more and more in the next few days while the sun shone and they entertained callers and made calls of their own in various groupings or merely enjoyed their own company. On the one wet day, Stephanie played billiards with Mr. André Lamarr and Peter Wayne and the dowager duchess for a while, and then sat in the conservatory, listening to the cozy sound of the rain on the glass, breathing in the rich aromas of greenery and earth, and feeling the soothing effects of her surroundings while she talked with Maria and Adrian Sawyer and Mr. Cobb, who had come calling with his sister. Miss Cobb had gone up to the gallery with Bertrand and Harold Goring, who had not forgotten the invitation to come to examine the fashions of the men portrayed there.

She was also perhaps growing a little impatient. Why exactly had he invited her? Why had she come?

—

Everything changed on the following day, a Sunday, when the sun shone again and they all walked to church and the Reverend Linford, the current vicar, came for luncheon with his wife and family. His family consisted of one son, who was to take up his first curacy in the autumn at a church fifteen miles away, and three daughters, the youngest of whom was eighteen.

Conversation was lively during the meal. Bertrand suggested a walk outside afterward, and the young people jumped at the idea, including Estelle and Justin and Abby and Gil. It was a high-spirited group that set off for the walled formal gardens west of the house. The Linford sisters chattered with obvious excitement about the village assembly that would happen while the visitors to Redcliffe were still here and hoped everyone planned to attend. Everyone did, and the sisters were in transports of delight and could not wait to pass on the news to all their friends. They walked in a large group together until they reached the gate into the gardens and the narrower paved pathways inside. Then they divided into couples, and Bertrand offered his arm to Stephanie.

“Many stately homes with formal gardens have them positioned before the house,” he said. “It makes sense. They look impressive, and anyone approaching the house sees them immediately. They are on view at all times from every front-facing room inside. They make the perfect setting for a leisurely stroll. However, one of my ancestors had a different vision and had these gardens constructed away from the house as a sort of park within a park, walled on three sides for privacy, with hothouses forming the fourth side and a pavilion built at the other side to provide shade on a particularly hot day or shelter from a rain shower. I have always thought it a clever idea to have a private garden rather than a public one.”

She stopped to inhale. “Oh, I do agree,” she said. “How could you bear to leave here?”

He smiled but did not answer. At the time it had made sense to go back to Elm Court. He had forgiven his father for the years of neglect, and he had been genuinely fond of Viola, but his feelings had still been somewhat raw. His father had come home to stay, but he had been deeply unhappy there until he had married Viola, encouraged to do so by his children. After Bertrand had finished his studies at Oxford, when he and Estelle were already in their twenties, they had decided to go back to Elm Court. It had seemed too late for the sort of family intimacy they had dreamed of all their lives.

But he found himself now thinking about yesterday. He had gone back up to the gallery after young Goring left and wandered along the line of portraits again. His ancestors. He wished there was some written history of the family or some old journals or account books or any sort of documentary evidence from the past. But he knew there was no such thing. His great-uncle had clearly not been interested in the past, or his father before him. But there had been that relatively recent slight bend in the family tree and in family memories, that lack of continuity and oral tradition. Bertrand’s father had never been to Redcliffe or met the late marquess or any of his family more than a time or two in his life before he inherited. But he had begun to write his family’s history as far back as he could, drawing from stories and anecdotes gleaned from longtime residents of the neighborhood. The Reverend Powell was a particularly fruitful source and loved to reminisce about the past.

The trouble with him, Bertrand had thought as he stood at the window of the gallery gazing out into the rain, was that he wanted two lives. Part of him wanted to be at Elm Court, which had always been home. He wanted to huddle there and revel in the old familiarity of it. He wanted to take a wife there and raise a family there. He wanted to hold the world at a safe distance, to be visited and enjoyed upon occasion, but only for brief spells and when he chose.

But part of him wanted to be at Redcliffe, which of course was vast enough to house both the marquess and his heir without their forever tripping over each other. This was where his future lay as well as the past about which he knew so little. He wanted to steep himself in as much history as he could uncover, though it had occurred to him in the past few days that history was not confined to the past. It was the present and even the future. His father was part of the history of Redcliffe and the Lamarr family. So was he. He had lived here for a few years, after all.

And now here he was, strolling through the formal garden and woolgathering while Stephanie was gazing about at the overall layout of it and stopping to look at individual flowers and lean over to smell them. The other couples were doing the same thing, though most of them were now making their way toward the hothouses, where his father’s head gardener was waiting to give them a guided tour.

He should take Stephanie to join them. But he gave in to impulse instead.

“I would like to show you something,” he said. “Somewhere. Not here. Will you come?”

“Yes.” She tipped her head slightly to one side, and he led her out of the formal gardens and back the way they had come until he branched off the main path to lead her around to the back of the house, where the garden party had taken place, and across the lawn toward the summerhouse. It was not his destination, however. He veered off to one side of it as they approached and plunged into the trees beyond.

They had walked the whole way in silence.

Chapter Fifteen

The trees were dense back here and there was no real path. Bertrand walked ahead, warning her of uneven patches of ground and embedded roots, moving aside some low-hanging branches so she could pass.

“There was never a real walking path through the trees,” he said, speaking for the first time since they had left the formal gardens. “I believe it is why I always loved it so much in here. I could escape for a while and be alone with a book or my thoughts or merely with an appreciation of all I saw and heard and smelled around me. It seems like a lonely place, but it actually teems with life, some of it so small it is almost invisible—creatures we are largely unaware of going about the business of their lives while rarely seeing the huge, lumbering creatures who are us.”

Stephanie smiled at his description of a small piece of wild, unspoiled nature. But he was right. We so often think of ourselves as being alone outdoors when we are not with other people, she thought, except for the occasional glimpse we might get of a horse or sheep. But there was life everywhere, including the trees themselves.

He stopped finally beside a large mossy stone. A narrow brook blocked the way forward as it bubbled over an uneven bed of smaller stones, coarse grass and wildflowers hanging over it from both sides, half hiding it from view. On the other side were more trees and a distant glimpse of open fields.

“My own private stone,” he said, brushing twigs and other pieces of nature’s debris from it before removing his coat and spreading it so she could sit.