“Oh, Lauren,” Gwen said, tightening her grasp on her cousin’s hands, “Mama and I must go home early to prepare for their arrival. Not that we will need to do anything, of course. Lily and Nev will have everything well under control. The duke is Lily’s father, after all, and the baby her half-brother. And Elizabeth is Neville’s aunt as much as she is mine. But—” She smiled, still dewy-eyed.

“But of course you will want to be there when the Portfreys arrive,” the countess said. “That is perfectly understandable. I just hope you will remain for the birthday celebrations tomorrow?”

“We would not miss them for any consideration,” Aunt Clara assured her. “But perhaps the day after tomorrow we will be on our way. Lauren, you must stay and—”

“But of course she will stay.” The countess leaned over to pat Lauren’s knee. “I am beginning to wonder how I ever managed without the help and support of a daughter. I am going to find it difficult to relinquish her, Lady Kilbourne, though I must eventually allow her to return to Newbury to make plans for the wedding.”

“Yes, indeed,” Aunt Clara agreed, and the two older ladies indulged in a comfortable coze on the subject of weddings while Gwen winked and smiled fondly at Lauren and Lauren felt wretched. If only she had stopped to think during that infamous tкte-а-tкte in Vauxhall.

It was later in the morning, as Lauren was returning from the rose arbor with the dowager and Lady Irene, that she found Kit and her grandfather standing out on the terrace, obviously awaiting her approach, both looking almost grim. Aunt Clara’s decision to return home the day after tomorrow with Gwen had made Lauren very aware that her task here had been completed and there was really no further need to linger. But seeing him now, knowing that she must leave soon and then never see him again, made her feel decidedly queasy. She smiled.

“Take a little walk with us, Lauren,” her grandfather said after exchanging courtesies with the older ladies.

“Of course, Grandpapa,” she said, taking his arm and looking inquiringly at Kit. His expression gave nothing away.

They turned in the direction of the stables.

“Aunt Clara has had a letter from the Duke of Portfrey,” she said.

“Yes, so we have heard,” her grandfather said.

Kit walked silently at her other side, his hands clasped behind him.

“I have been anxious about Elizabeth,” she said. “She is rather advanced in years to be having a child.” And perhaps she herself was with child, she thought, not for the first time. What would happen if she was? She would have to marry Kit. He would have to marry her.

They walked in silence until they were on the lawn beyond the stables, on their way to the lake.

“What is wrong?” she asked.

Her grandfather cleared his throat. “You have always been happy at Newbury Abbey, have you not, Lauren?” he asked. “They always treated you well? You never felt that the earl and countess resented you in any way? Loved you less than their own children?”

“Grandpapa?” She looked at him, puzzled. “You know I have always been happy there. You know they have always been kindness itself to me—all of them. Last year was unfortunate. Neville had told me not to wait for him when he went to war. He truly believed when he came back that Lily was dead. He would not in a million years have hurt me deliberately. Why are you—”

But he was patting her hand and clearing his throat again.

“Did you ever think of your mother?” he asked her. “Ever feel sad that she was not there with you? Ever feel hurt that she did not return? Ever feel that she had abandoned you?”

“Grandpapa?”

“Did you?” he asked.

She thought of denial. Denial was second nature to her. What had made him even ask the questions? And why was Kit with them, a silent presence at her other side? She was tired of denial. Mortally weary of it. And of so much else in her life too.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes to all of your questions.”

He drew in his breath and let it out on a sigh. “And did you ever think I did not want you with me?” he asked.

Ah. Sometimes the truth was impossible to tell. Sometimes it would hurt.

“You were alone, Grandpapa,” she said, “and not a young man. Having a child with you all the time would have been a heavy burden. I did not blame you. I never did that. I have always known that you love me.”

“Sometimes I ached to have you with me,” he said. “When I used to visit you, I used to dream of taking you home with me, of your asking me to take you so that doing so would not have seemed so selfish. But you were far happier where you were, among younger people, with other children.”

“Grandpapa—”

“Sometimes,” he said, “children are quiet and obedient and good-natured and one assumes they are perfectly happy. Sometimes one can be wrong. I was wrong, was I not?”

“Oh, no,” she cried. “I was happy, Grandpapa.”

“I have to tell you about your mother,” he said.

They had reached the bank of the lake, the spot where everyone had bathed after the cricket match. It was quiet now, deserted. What did he mean— I have to tell you about your mother?

They were standing side by side close to the water’s edge. She was no longer holding his arm. Kit had strolled away to lean against a tree trunk, but he was well within hearing distance.

Lauren felt cold and inexplicably frightened suddenly.

“What about her?” she asked.

And then he told her.

There was a slight breeze, enough to cause ripples on the surface of the lake. It had been like glass all three times she had bathed in it.

The sky was dotted with moving clouds. It was amazing how variegated the colors of water could be. And of sky.

Someone must have taken the children out for a walk. Their voices, shouting, shrieking, and laughing, were coming from somewhere far off.

Kit, propped against the tree, did not move except to cross his arms over his chest.

Her grandfather cleared his throat but did not speak. It was Lauren who broke the silence that had succeeded his story.

“She is alive?” A rhetorical question.

He answered it anyway. “Yes, or was until recently.”

“There have been letters from her ever since I last heard from her when I was eleven?”

“It was better that you thought her dead, Lauren. Kilbourne and I were agreed on that.”

“She wanted me to join them during their travels?”

“You were far better off where you were.”

She was alive. She had wanted Lauren with her. She was alive. She had kept on writing. She was in India, where she had lived with at least two men who were not her husband. She was alive.

She was alive.

“The letters?” she asked, suddenly frantic. “The letters, Grandpapa? Did you destroy them?”

“No.”

“They still exist? All her letters to me? Fifteen years’ worth of letters?”

“Thirty-two of them,” he said, his voice flat and heavy. “I have them all, unopened.”

She pressed one hand to her mouth then and closed her eyes tightly. She felt herself swaying, then felt strong, steadying hands close about her upper arms from behind.

“I think it would be best if you were to return to the house, sir,” Kit said. “Go and rest. I’ll take care of her.”

“You see?” Her grandfather’s voice was distressed, accusing. “It was the wrong thing to do. Damn you, Ravensberg, it was the wrong thing.”

She pulled herself back from what felt like a long, dark tunnel down which she was falling. But she did not open her eyes.

“It was not the wrong thing, Grandpapa,” she said. “It was not wrong.”

She could sense rather than hear him walk away. Then Kit tucked one arm very firmly about her waist and drew her against his side before strolling with her farther along the bank of the lake. She dipped her head sideways to rest on his shoulder.

“She is alive,” she said.

“Yes.”

“She wanted me. She loved me.”

“Yes.”

“And she has never stopped loving me.”

“No.”

She stumbled and he tightened his arm even more firmly about her. They had come to a stop on a particularly lovely stretch of the bank, with cultivated beds of anemones beyond the grassy bank, and trees beyond them. Across the lake the temple folly was visible.

“Kit,” she said. “Kit.”

“Yes, my love.”

She wept. Long and helplessly, a storm of weeping. Grief for the lonely, wounded child she had been, for the girl who had felt so very alone even though she had been surrounded by love, showered with it at every turn. For the terrible cruelty of love—from people who had loved her. For the mother who was not dead. Who had loved her enough to write thirty-two unanswered letters over fifteen years. Who could never come home because she had behaved in ways that were unforgivable in English polite society.

Kit scooped her up and sat down on the grass with her. He held her on his lap, cuddled her, cradled her in his sheltering arms, crooned nonsense into her ear.

She was quiet at last. The sun, peeking out from behind a cloud, shone full on the white marble of the folly. Its bright reflection shivered in the water beneath.

“ Was it the wrong thing to do?” Kit asked softly.

“No.” She blew her nose in her handkerchief, put it back in her pocket, and settled her head against his shoulder again—he must have removed her bonnet when they sat down. “The people we love are usually stronger than we give them credit for. It is the nature of love, perhaps, to want to shoulder all the pain rather than see the loved one suffer. But sometimes pain is better than emptiness. I have been so empty, Kit. All my life. So full of emptiness. That is a strange paradox, is it not—full of emptiness?”

He kissed her temple.

“It was you, was it not?” she said. “You talked Grandpapa into it?”

“I advised him to tell you,” he admitted.

“Thank you.” She snuggled closer. “Oh, Kit, thank you.”

He kissed her temple again, and when she lifted her face, he kissed her mouth.

“I must look a dreadful fright,” she said.

He drew his head back and looked closely at her. “Good Lord,” he said, “you do. I am going to have to muster all my courage not to run screaming back to the house.”

She laughed. “Silly!”

He was going to have wrinkles at the corners of his eyes long before he was an old man, she thought as they crinkled with laughter.

And that was only the beginning of her eventful day.


Tomorrow was going to be a day for guests and organized celebrations. Today would be for family. It was what they all agreed upon during luncheon, though it was Sydnam who suggested a picnic out at the hill where the wilderness walk ended. The idea was greeted with enthusiasm and immediately acted upon.

The mothers of young children went up to the nursery to get their children ready, most of the other adults retired to their rooms to change their clothes, Sydnam strode off to the stables to have the gig prepared since he had persuaded his grandmother—with the help of a chorus of supporting pleas from various cousins—to come too, and Lauren and Marjorie Clifford descended to the kitchens to cajole the cook into preparing a picnic tea and a couple of footmen into conveying it out to the hill.

The top of the hill was the highest point in the park and afforded a wide prospect over the surrounding countryside in every direction. For that reason the designer of the park and the wilderness walk had decided that there would be no trees up there and no elaborate folly to obstruct the view. What he had done instead was build a hermit’s cavern into the side of the hill, close to the top. There never had been a hermit, of course, but the children loved it. They were first to scramble to the top.

Everyone else toiled up more slowly. The whole family had come, without exception. Frederick and Roger Butler cupped their hands together at the bottom of the slope and carried their grandmother to the top—despite her protests—after she had been helped out of the gig. Boris Clifford had set up a chair for her on the summit, and Nell had plumped up a cushion for her back. Lawrence Vreemont and Kit carried Lady Irene up while Claude and Daphne Willard prepared her chair. The elderly sisters-in-law sat side by side, like twin queens on their thrones, Clarence Butler remarked. Lauren raised their parasols for them and Gwendoline helped Marianne spread blankets on the grass for any other adults who cared to sit and recover from the walk.