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“We?” He had not advanced farther into the conservatory.

“The human race,” she said. “More particularly the female half. That child complained about her ugly looks. She wants to look just like me. Can you imagine?”

“Very easily,” he said.

“What nonsense.” She tutted. “She is already very pretty. She is going to be gorgeous in a few more years. Not that it matters. Looks do not matter. Why should they?”

“Why indeed?” he said.

She had been gazing out through the window at what might be a decent sunset if there were not some clouds blocking the view of most of it. She remembered suddenly to whom she was talking and turned her head sharply to face him. She smiled.

“Do you sometimes wish you were not so perfect-looking?” she asked him.

“Often,” he said. “The card tables were being put away when I left the drawing room, and Viola was ordering the tea tray. Do you want to go back there?”

“Yes.” She got to her feet and brushed out the folds from her dress.

“Do you know how Katy found her way into the family?” he asked. “Has anyone told you the story?”

“Is there a story?” she asked.

“There is always a story with the Westcotts,” he said. “Gil was overseas for a number of years, fighting. He brought Harry Westcott, my stepbrother, home sometime after Waterloo when he was not convalescing well in Paris. In the meantime, Gil’s wife had left their daughter with her parents and gone off with a lover and got herself killed. She had convinced her parents that Gil was a brute, and they refused to return Katy to him. There was a court case, in which we were all involved. Gil’s lawyer had told him his best chance of recovering Katy was to acquire a respectable wife to be Katy’s mother. He does look a bit of a brute, after all, with his great height and solid build and that scar across his face. So he married Harry’s sister in a hurry, with only the three of them—Gil, Abby, and Harry—at the wedding. The family soon recovered from the shock and jumped into action to add more support. Aunt Matilda persuaded me, on the strength of my acquaintance with Adrian Sawyer, to take her to have a talk with Dirkson. She had apparently had an acquaintance with him years ago when she was a very young woman. Dirkson turned up at court as support for his estranged son—and not long after that he married Aunt Matilda. But that is another story. Anyway, the judge decided the case in favor of Gil, and we have all had a vested interest in Katy’s well-being ever since.”

“Oh goodness,” Stephanie said, crossing the conservatory toward him. “Is there any part of the story of the Westcott family that is simple and straightforward?”

“No,” he said, offering his arm as she approached. “Not that I am aware of. Perhaps Aunt Mildred and Uncle Thomas, though I am not even sure about them.”

“I love this family,” she said, smiling at him.

“I am somewhat partial to them myself,” he said.

Chapter Sixteen

Stephanie and Bertrand walked across the east lawn toward the lake, following the path that wove its leisurely way about a few ancient trees toward denser woods. The sun was shining again and the sky was clear of all but a few fluffy clouds. Everyone else had left the house before them, bound for their various destinations.

“The weather was a little different, I seem to remember, when we went walking together on Christmas Day,” Bertrand said.

“Yes, indeed,” Stephanie said. “It was a very chilly day. But I remember how marvelously fresh the air felt and how breathtaking the hoarfrost was on the trees. How glad I am to live in a country with four distinct seasons. It is not so in some parts of the world. I would find perpetual summer tedious.”

“And perpetual winter insupportable?” he said.

“Yes, and that too,” she said. “It would break my heart if there were no springtime or autumn to look forward to.”

They conversed with seeming ease upon trivialities as they walked, a triumph in itself, Bertrand thought, when for so many years she had spoken to him as little as possible when she could not avoid him altogether. She was, it seemed, a woman of her word. She had made the commitment to give him a chance, and she was doing just that.

“Did you climb any of these trees when you were a boy?” she asked, stopping when they were beneath the canopy formed by the branches of the trees. She set her hand flat against the sturdy trunk of one and gazed upward.

“I spent most of my boyhood at Elm Court, where I live now,” he said. “Estelle and I chose to return there after my Oxford years. I love coming back here for visits, however.”

He was struck by the truth of that. He had not done it often at first. He had forgiven his father, but the old wariness and resentment had lingered. Perhaps he was past all that by now. Last night it had felt perfectly natural to accept his father’s invitation to join him in the library for a nightcap after everyone else retired to their rooms. They had chattered amiably about nothing in particular for longer than an hour, just father and son together.

The lake came into view through the trees, with the dower house on the far side. Bertrand had always thought it must be a wonderfully peaceful place to live. Its large front windows overlooked a lawn that sloped gradually downward to the bank of the lake, with views across it to the trees on this side and the boathouse close to where he stood with Stephanie. Over to their left there was a stone bridge to provide a convenient link between the two houses.

“Oh, how absolutely lovely,” Stephanie said, coming to a stop. “I was not expecting a house. Does anyone live there?”

“My great-aunt, the dowager marchioness, lived there for a couple of years or so after my father’s marriage,” he said. “But when her health began to fail, she went to live with her daughter until her passing. Oliver Morrow, my cousin on my mother’s side, lives there now with his wife. He is the steward here. He is on a month’s leave at the moment, which was a bit of a disappointment when I first arrived here. He is a few years older than I am, and I always liked and admired him.”

“You saw him often?” she said.