Simply Love (17 page)

She did not have to leave. She could stay here with him for the rest of her life. But he did not say so aloud. He knew the impossibility of it. And she had made her decision back at TÅ· Gwyn. She had said no.

“Perhaps,” he said, “you will come back another year.”

“Perhaps,” she agreed.

But they both knew she would not. They both knew that once she left tomorrow they would never see each other again.

And if it was true that they were just friends, that it was merely loneliness that had brought and held them together, it would not matter that they would never see each other again. Not really. They would quickly forget and resume the normal course of their lives.

But he knew he would not forget.

Losing Anne Jewell was going to be one of the most excruciatingly painful experiences of his life.

He reached for her hand, and her fingers curled about his and clung tightly.

“I have enjoyed knowing you, Anne Jewell,” he said.

“And I you, Sydnam Butler.”

He turned his head to look at her and they both smiled.

Perhaps there was a possibility…Perhaps if she were given time to…

But she pulled her hand abruptly away from his even as he opened his mouth to speak and pointed in the direction of the house and driveway.

“Here they come,” she cried. “I must be there when David arrives. I have been away from him all day. Oh, I do hope he has come to no harm.”

A line of carriages was making its way up the driveway.

“Go,” he said. “You can be there on the terrace waiting for him by the time he arrives.”

She turned her head to look at him.

“Go,” he said. “I'll take the shortcut back to the cottage.”

She hesitated for only a moment, an instant's indecision in her face, and then she turned and ran down the hill as she had the other night, when he had run beside and a little ahead of her to reach the bottom before her.

He looked after her now and wondered if he was sorry or glad that he had been prevented from speaking, from begging her to reconsider.

He rather thought he was glad.

Or would be by next week.

Or next year.

Or the next lifetime.

                  

Anne was very close to tears by the time she reached the terrace just as the first of the carriages rolled to a stop before the doors. She was desperate to see her son, to hear his voice, to hold him in her arms. And yet she was aware too that she had just left Sydnam behind, without any sort of good-bye, that in all probability she would never see him again.

But she hated good-byes. She
hated
them. It was better this way.

David came tumbling out of the second carriage as soon as he spied her standing there and came dashing toward her, his legs pumping, his eyes sparkling, his mouth in motion, the volume of his treble voice almost deafening. She caught him up in a tight hug, laughing, and kissed the top of his head.

“You should have
been
there, Mama…Cousin Joshua…and you should have
seen
me…Davy…and then we…Lord Aidan…it was such
fun
…Cousin Joshua…Becky and Marianne were scared of the winding stairs, but I helped them up and Lady Aidan said I was a perfect gentleman and…Alexander…Cousin Joshua and Daniel…the little ones…I
wish
you had been there, Mama, to see…”

Anne laughed again as they made their way up to the nursery. She had missed most of the details of his day, but it did not seem to matter.

“It would seem, then,” she said, “that you had a good time.”

“I had the
best
time,” he said. “But I wish you could have seen the castle, Mama. You would have loved it.”

“I am quite sure I would have,” she said.

“Did you enjoy the place Mr. Butler took you?” he asked her.

“TÅ· Gwyn?” she said. “Very much.”

“But you really ought to have come with us,” he said. “You would have had much more fun. Cousin Joshua…” And he was off again.

It was wonderful to see him happy and animated, his face bronzed from the sun.

But the day out had tired him. When Anne went looking for him after returning to her room to wash and change for the evening, she found him in his room alone, sitting on his bed in his nightshirt with his knees drawn up and his arms wrapped around them. He was looking listless and anything but happy.

“Tired?” she asked, bending over him to push back a lock of his hair and kiss his forehead.

“We are going home tomorrow,” he said.

At the foot of his bed, his trunk was almost completely packed.

She felt weak-kneed at the thought and sat down on the side of the bed.

“Yes,” she said. “It is time. We have been here a whole month.”

“I do not see,” he said, sounding aggrieved, “why everyone has to go home when we are all having such a jolly time.”

“But the trouble with jolly times,” she said, “is that they would lose their jolliness if they went on forever and become merely tedious.”

“No, they would not,” he protested.

And perhaps he was right. Who had first mouthed that piece of dubious wisdom anyway?

“Everyone else's mama went today except you,” he said, the words coming rather jerkily from his mouth.

It was unlike David to be petulant. Anne was smitten with dismay—and guilt.

“I asked you if you minded my not going,” she said, “and you said no. I would have come if—”

“And everyone else's papa went too,” he said. “Except Davy's, who is dead. But he has his Uncle Aidan, who is as good as a papa because Davy lives with him and they do things together. They go riding and fishing and swimming and other things.”

“Oh, David,” she said.

“And Daniel lives with Cousin Joshua,” he continued. “Cousin Joshua is his
papa
. He takes him into the village where we used to live and out in a fishing boat. And he lets him ride on his shoulders and pull his hair and do all sorts of things.”

“David—”

“I did
so
have a papa once, didn't I?” he asked. “You said no, but Davy says everyone
has
to have a papa even if he is dead. Is my papa dead?”

Anne closed her eyes briefly. Why did all of life's crises seem to come along when one felt least ready to deal with them? She was still feeling raw from a good-bye that had not quite been said. But this was of greater importance. She tried to focus her mind.

It was true that every time David had asked her in the past why he did not have a father she had told him that he was special and had only a mama, who loved him twice as much as any other mama loved her child. It had been a foolish answer even for a young child, and she had always known that she must do better eventually.

She just wished it had not happened tonight of all nights.

“Yes, David,” she said. “He is dead. He drowned. He was swimming at night and he drowned. I am so sorry.”

She braced herself for the question about his father's identity that was surely going to come next. But it seemed there was a more important question to ask first.

“Did he love me?” he asked, his eyes like two large bruises in his pale face. “Did he do things with me?”

“Oh, my sweetheart,” she said, setting the backs of her fingers against his cheek, “he would have loved you more than anyone else in the world. But he died before you were born.”

“How could he have been my papa, then?” he asked her, frowning.

“He had…
given
you to me before he died,” she said, “and I kept you safe until you were born. I will explain to you one day when you are a little older. But right now you are having a hard time keeping your eyes open and tomorrow is going to be a busy day. Wriggle under the sheets now and I'll tell you a story and tuck you in and kiss you good night.”

Ten minutes later he looked up at her with sleepy eyes—and then smiled with pure mischief.

“I am glad you did not come to the castle,” he said. “Now I get to tell Mr. Keeble and Matron and Miss Martin all about it myself.”

She laughed softly. “And about cricket and boating and playing pirates and painting,” she said. “I promise to let you tell it all. It will be good to see everyone again, will it not?”

“Mmm,” he said.

And just like that, in the way of children, he was asleep.

Anne sat beside him until Davy and Alexander came tiptoeing in a while later.

One day soon David was going to think of the questions he had not asked tonight, and she was going to have to give him answers. She was going to have to tell him about Albert Moore. His father.

She shivered.

Glenys, sniffling just as if they had been mistress and maid for years, had insisted upon doing her packing for her. There was nothing to do now, then, except go downstairs to the drawing room to be sociable for an hour or two. And sociable she must be. No one must suspect that the visit to TÅ· Gwyn had been anything more than a pleasant afternoon's outing.

But just so many hours ago—she counted them off on her fingers—she had lain with Sydnam Butler and it had been good. She
knew
it had been good. Perhaps if it could just have happened again her body would have known that as well as her mind.

She ached with a sudden longing to have it happen again.

Was she quite, quite mad to have refused his offer of marriage?

But how could she have said yes? What did she have to offer him?

And what did he have to offer her but a dutiful willingness to take the consequences of what they had done?

If you wish, Anne, we will marry.

“This really must be one of the loveliest places on earth,” the
Duchess of Bewcastle said with a contented sigh, tipping her head sideways to rest on her husband's shoulder. “You were quite right about that, Wulfric. The sight of the moon on the water like this makes me almost weep with awe.”

“It is to be hoped, my love,” his grace said dryly, “that you will resist the urge. I have already got my boots wet this month, not to mention my unmentionables. I was hoping to save my neckcloth from a similar fate.”

She laughed and he tightened his arm about her shoulders.

They were walking along the beach close to the water's edge as they sometimes did late at night after James had been fed and everyone else had retired and they might be assured of some private time for themselves.

“Nevertheless, I will be quite happy to return to Lindsey Hall,” she said.

“Will you?” he asked.

“It is home,” she said with a sigh. “I will be glad to go home.”

“Will you?” he said again, and he paused for a few moments in order to kiss her with unhurried thoroughness.

“Will you sell the white house to Mr. Butler?” she asked him as they walked on.

“It is not really a white house, my love,” he said. “I ought to have taken you over there and shown it to you.”

“But that is what its name means in Welsh,” she said. “
Will
you sell it?”

“My grandfather bought it as a young man,” he told her. “Apparently the rumor was soon making the rounds of fashionable drawing rooms that he was housing his mistress there, but it turned out—though not before my grandmother had blackened both eyes of the man who was foolish enough to drop a malicious word of warning in her ear—that it was her particular friend, a severely battered wife, who had taken sanctuary there. My grandfather killed the husband when challenged to a duel over the matter—an incident that was quite efficiently hushed up, by the way, as such matters usually were in those days. He was a colorful man, my grandfather—and my grandmother no less so. The Bedwyn men, of course, never ever employ mistresses after they are married.”

The duchess laughed softly. “I daresay,” she said, “they gave it up as a hazardous practice after a few of them acquired wives like your grandmother.”

The duke uttered one of his rare barks of laughter.

“I suppose I will sell TÅ· Gwyn to Sydnam,” he said after they had strolled in silence for a few minutes. “In fact, I undoubtedly will, since I know it will be passing into very good hands. But I am not expected to give in too easily on such matters, you know. I will tell him before we leave here.”

“I have been so very disappointed,” she said, “that nothing seems to have developed between him and Miss Jewell after all our efforts. I was convinced that they were made for each other. We all were.”

“I shudder,” he said, “at the realization that a whole generation of Bedwyns and their spouses have descended to the ignoble sport of matchmaking. It is enough to make me seriously wonder where I went wrong with them. They even appear to hold the extraordinary conviction that they had a hand in bringing us together, Christine.”

“He needs someone,” she said as if she had not heard him, “and so does she. And whenever I have seen them together, they have always looked right. Has it struck you, Wulfric, that she might have been the Marchioness of Hallmere if Joshua's cousin had married her, and that Joshua might have been plain Mr. Moore?”

“I do not imagine,” he said dryly, “that Freyja would have liked being plain Mrs. Moore.”

“And I like them both exceedingly,” she added, clearly still talking about Anne and Sydnam.

“I daresay,” he said, “logic seems to point to the conclusion that therefore they must belong together, Christine. But if such logic always prevailed, what in heaven's name are you and I doing together?”

“I had high hopes,” she said, “after he took her to see the white house this afternoon while we were all at Pembroke Castle that we would arrive home to find that he had offered for her and there would be a betrothal to celebrate. I even had tentative plans for persuading everyone to stay another day or two for a grand celebratory party. But instead Miss Jewell had hardly a word to say this evening about TÅ· Gwyn but merely wanted to know everything about Pembroke. And she scarcely stopped smiling all evening. Did you notice? But of course, I ought to have realized it before now—that was the problem, was it not? Why would she have been
smiling
if she had not been secretly nursing a broken heart? Perhaps he simply did not have the courage to make her an offer. I suppose he thinks he is unbearably ugly, foolish man. I wish now I had invited him for the evening, but I did not know when we would be back. Wulfric, do you think—”

“Christine,” his grace said sternly, stopping altogether and swinging her around to face him before gazing down at her with eyes that matched the moonlight, “I did
not
bring you out here in order to discuss the sad state of Sydnam Butler's love life—or that of Miss Jewell.”

“I do beg your pardon,” she said with a sigh. But then she smiled up at him and set her hands on his shoulders, not noticeably chastened by the reproof. “Why
did
you bring me out here?”

This time his kiss was not so much thorough as it was ruthless.

Her grace said no more about Anne Jewell and Sydnam Butler.

The long spell of hot, dry weather appeared to have broken at last. The clouds hung low and gray overhead and rain was drizzling down as Sydnam made his way on foot up the driveway toward the main house. The weather seemed appropriate to the occasion.

There was no real need for him to go there since Bewcastle and the duchess were staying for two days longer, and in fact it was only the Hallmeres and the Rosthorns who were leaving today. But it seemed the courteous thing to do to pay his parting respects to Freyja and Morgan.

Not that he was
that
adept at self-deception, of course.

Anne Jewell was leaving today too, and his heart felt literally heavy within him. He dared not think yet about what his life was going to be like without her.

He ought perhaps to have stayed away this morning. They had effectively said good-bye yesterday, though the return of the carriages from Pembroke Castle had prevented the actual words from being spoken. It probably would be as well to leave them unspoken.

But though he had been up since dawn and had paced his cottage and made a new decision every few minutes, he had known from the start that he would come.

Good-byes, painful as they were, needed to be said.

The end
needed to be written beneath every story.

And so he was on his way to Glandwr.

Halfway up the driveway he realized that he was limping and immediately strode more firmly onward.

He could see that several carriages were already drawn up on the terrace. He pulled the brim of his hat lower in order to shield his face from some of the fine rain.

It seemed to Sydnam as he came around the carriages and glanced toward the open front doors of the house that all the Bedwyns must be gathered in the hall with their spouses and children and other guests. There was a great deal of noise and bustle going on in there.

He stayed outside on the terrace, and finally Hallmere and Rosthorn stepped outside and shook his hand and helped their children's nurses lift their children inside the carriages before they could get too wet. Then Freyja came out between Alleyne and Rannulf, and she shook Sydnam's hand too and informed him in her usual forthright manner—and without explaining herself—that she had never before taken him for a fool. Hallmere handed her into the carriage while Ralf grinned at Sydnam and Alleyne waggled his eyebrows.

Then Morgan came out, hugged her brothers, saw that Sydnam was standing with them, and hugged him too despite the fact that his clothes were considerably wetter than theirs.

“Sydnam,” she said, gazing up into his face, and he could have sworn that there were tears in her eyes. “Oh, my dear Sydnam. I
so
want you to be happy.”

“Morgan,” he protested, “I
am
happy.”

“We are missing Anne,” Hallmere said.

“Mrs. Pritchard is weeping over her,” Rannulf explained with a grin. “And Judith and Christine are still awaiting their turn.”

“Come,
chérie,
” Rosthorn said to Morgan, “and get in out of the rain.”

“We had
all
better get in out of the rain,” Rannulf said, and almost simultaneously he and Alleyne headed back into the house and Hallmere and Rosthorn followed their spouses into the carriages.

Sydnam was left abruptly alone on the terrace—alone with Anne Jewell, who was just hurrying out, head down, her son's hand in hers. Aidan, who was accompanying them, was hauled back inside by someone's hand on his arm.

Ah, Sydnam thought—the Bedwyns were being tactful, were they?

Her head came up when she was no farther than a foot or two away from him, and she looked at him, startled.

It seemed to him that she was pale, though perhaps it was only the absence of sunlight that gave the impression.

“I came to take my leave of everyone,” he said.

Her son smiled up at him, though he looked as if he had been crying.

“I am going to ask Mr. Upton about those oil paints,” he said.

Sydnam smiled back at him.

“David,” Anne said, without taking her eyes off Sydnam, “make your bow to Mr. Butler if you please, and then climb inside the carriage where you will be dry.”

“Good-bye, David,” Sydnam said, “and thank you for letting me see one of your paintings.”

“Good-bye, sir.” The boy bobbed his head in a quick gesture of respect and half dived into the carriage out of the rain.

And so they were left alone together for the last time, he and Anne Jewell—with people beyond the open door into the house on one side and people inside the row of carriages on the other side. The setting could hardly have been more public.

But he ignored everything except the woman standing before him.

Anne. Whom he liked exceedingly well. Whom perhaps he loved.

No—whom he
did
love.

She was leaving. He would never see her again even though his body felt its knowledge of hers like a dull ache.

And his heart? Well, it felt now rather as if it had acquired lead weights to drag it downward.

“You will remember your promise?” he asked, offering her his hand.

“Yes.”

She was looking at his chin. But she set her left hand in his. He bent his head over it and raised it to his lips for a few moments. He was terribly aware then that they had an audience—which quite possibly had assiduously turned its collective attention elsewhere since undoubtedly it had collectively arranged for this final, brief tête-à-tête.

She looked up into his face as he raised his head and released her hand, and he could see the drizzle beaded on her cheeks and eyelashes. A frown creased her brow.

“Good-bye,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.

“Good-bye.” Somehow he smiled at her.

She turned and scrambled up the steps into the carriage with the children before he could offer to assist her, and her attention was taken by Freyja's young daughter, who opened her arms to be picked up.

The coachman put up the steps and slammed the door shut before climbing to his perch, and the carriage rocked into motion and turned almost immediately to follow Hallmere's down the driveway.

She did not look out.

Sydnam was scarcely aware that several other people had stepped out of the house to wave.

He felt lonelier than he ever remembered feeling.

Just this time yesterday he had been looking with satisfaction at the sunshine and anticipating a whole afternoon alone with her at TÅ· Gwyn.

Just yesterday.

Now she was gone.

A hand came to rest on his right shoulder, and he looked up into Bewcastle's austere, impassive face.

“We will withdraw to the library, Sydnam, since you happen to be here,” he said, “and discuss what is to become of TÅ· Gwyn.”

                  

Anne was exhausted with play by the time she arrived in Bath. The nurse's motion sickness was worse than ever on the return journey, and Anne vigorously kept the children amused so that they would not grow petulant with the tedium of long hours spent in the carriage.

When they stopped for meals and for the night, she was determinedly cheerful as she conversed with Joshua and Lady Hallmere. She would not for one moment have them believe that she was in low spirits, though in fact they were as low as they could possibly be.

How foolish of her to have believed that she could lie with a man and then simply forget about it.

How foolish to have believed that they could take away each other's loneliness for an hour and remember simply with gratitude.