THEY were traveling in a new carriage, a wedding gift from the Marquess of Claverbrook. Nothing, it was true, could quite make English roads seem smooth and an unalloyed pleasure to travel, but nevertheless there was a marvelous feeling of luxury about being inside a well-sprung conveyance with soft, new upholstery and the smell of new leather.

It was the afternoon of the second day. They would be arriving at Woodbine Park soon.

Margaret was trying to decide whether women were more or less fortunate than men when they married. They moved to a different home and sometimes – as in this case – one they had never seen before and one that was far from where they had grown up. Everything was new and strange and different, and there was nothing they could do to prevent it. It was always the wife who moved to her husband's home, never the other way around. It was as though she lost part of her identity. Even her name was forfeited on her marriage.

On the other hand, there was something marvelously stimulating about starting a wholly new life. One could not literally become a different person, of course, but with a new name, a new home, a new part of the world in which to live, there was the opportunity to start again, to make life better in every imaginable way than it had been before. To make it happier.

Not that she had been unhappy in her old life. But she had been … Well, she had not been quite happy either. There had been the sense that somehow life had passed her by. Last winter had been the worst. Thirty had been a dreary age to be. Now it seemed the very best age. She was no longer painfully young and vulnerable. But she was still young enough to – "I once thought the world began and ended here," her husband said beside her. "I thought it was ruled by two people who loved me and would always keep me safe." She turned her head to look at him. He was gazing out of the window on his side of the carriage.

All children – if they were fortunate – felt that way, she thought. Even when they did not live among wealth or plenty. "Your childhood was a happy one?" she asked. "Entirely," he said, turning to her, "though I was not always consciously aware of the fact, especially on those occasions when I had to avoid sitting down for a while because of a stinging bottom. Or on those other occasions when I was suffering from a scraped knee or a bruised elbow or, once, a broken arm. But children grow into boys who cannot wait to be men, and security and love mean little to them. They cannot wait to get out into the wide world, to seek adventure and an elusive happily-ever-after. They go off in search of what they already have, and in the process they lose it." "/Were/ you unhappy after you left home?" she asked him. "No," he said. "I was too busy enjoying myself to be unhappy." She smiled. "Do all children imagine," he asked, "that when they grow up they will be free at last and able to do just whatever they wish?" "I suppose most /boy/ children imagine it," she said. "But not girls?" he asked. He answered his own question. "No, I suppose not. There is nothing much for them to dream of, is there?" "Of course there is," she said, smiling. "There is the perfect marriage to dream of, and the perfect husband – handsome, rich, charming, attentive, gentle, tender, considerate, passionate … What have I missed?

Oh, and /doting/. Girls dream of love and romance, I suppose, because there is no real point in dreaming of much else. But it can be a pleasant dream for any girl as she waits for her prince to come riding along." She had never particularly thought about that most basic of all contrasts between men and women. Was it only the pointlessness of dreaming of freedom and adventure that made most women romantics, dreaming instead of home and a warm lover for a husband and children to bear and nurture? Or was it a nesting instinct built into the very fabric of the female being to ensure the preservation of the human race? "And for you that prince was Dew?" he asked.

Her smile faded, and she looked down at her hands clasped loosely in her lap. Lush green countryside moved past the carriage windows. "That is the trouble with dreams," she said, "as you discovered after you had left home. They do not always translate well into reality. But new dreams always come along to take their place. We are, on the whole, an endlessly hopeful species." She certainly had new dreams, even if they were not wildly romantic.

Their marriage had not made a bad beginning, all things considered. And there was hope … "Poor Maggie," he said, reaching across the space between them to set a hand over both hers. "This is hardly the perfect marriage of your dreams, is it?" "And this is not the perfect life of adventure and freedom of /your/ dreams," she said. "But you are on the way home again, where you were happy as a child, and I am married to a man I can respect and admire. We have not done badly. It is up to us to make something special of the future." He was looking broodingly at her when she turned her head again. "/Are/ we a hopeful species?" he asked her. "Or is it just a few of us – or of /you/ rather? Have you always been an optimist?" "Always," she said. "Well, almost always, anyway. Sometimes something happens that is so catastrophic it is impossible for a while – or even for a long time – to see beyond the darkness, even to believe that there /is/ anything beyond it. But there always is. Even, perhaps, at the moment of death. Especially then, in fact." He did not answer her, and she turned away to watch the scenery. They must be almost there now. He had said there were two hours still to go when they had stopped to change horses and eat luncheon, and surely they had been traveling for almost two hours since then. "When were you last home?" she asked him. "Six years ago," he said. "Even when I planned to marry Caroline and bring her here, I was aware that it had been a whole year. And even then it seemed a lifetime. I longed to be back here." "You must have known when you fled with Mrs. Turner," she said, "that you might never come here again." "Yes," he said.

She tried to imagine that decision, that realization of all he would sacrifice if he took her away from an abusive marriage that had become intolerable to her. Had they found comfort together? To a certain degree they must have done if they had had a son together – though he had told her he had never loved Mrs. Turner. What had his life been like during those five years? They had moved about a great deal from place to place, he had also told her. But had he found a measure of contentment, even happiness? Had she? He had said she had fallen into a depression after Tobias's birth. Had it been endless? Or just occasional?

How difficult her moods must have made his life!

Had her death devastated him? Or had there been some sense of release?

But she had been his son's /mother/. She had died only four months or so ago – very recently. Perhaps he was still grief-stricken.

She could not ask him about those years. Not yet. Perhaps never. She did not believe she would ever be ready to talk with him about Crispin. Some things belonged to one's own heart. "But I /am/ coming home again, after all," he said. "You are right, it seems, Maggie. There always is something beyond the darkness." "When will your son arrive?" she asked him. "Tomorrow," he said, "if there are no unexpected delays." She turned one of her hands beneath his and clasped it. "There is the prospect of plenty more light to come, then," she said. "Yes." She had not told her family about the child. She had noticed that he did not mention him to his mother or grandfather either, though she had been present when he explained to them exactly why he had run off with Mrs.

Turner the night before his wedding to the present Mrs. Pennethorne.

His mother had hugged him hard and shed copious tears. She had assured him that she would not say a word to anyone since Graham was seated beside her now and therefore already knew – although it was going to be /extremely/ difficult not to give Randolph Turner a very large piece of her mind the next time she saw him and not to say a thing or two to Caroline Pennethorne the next time she saw /her/.

His grandfather, when they had called upon him later, had frowned fiercely and pursed his lips and harrumphed and told Duncan he was a damned fool. But Margaret had not been deceived for one moment. His eyes beneath the shaggy white brows had been suspiciously bright. "The village," Duncan said quietly now from beside her – his hand had tightened about hers.

She could see through the window on his side that the road curved around a wide bend, following the line of a river, and that around the bend there was a cluster of red-brick cottages and a church spire rising from among them. Trees had been planted on either side of the river.

And then the carriage followed the curve, and they lost sight of the buildings for a few minutes until they were among the cottages and approaching a village green. They drove along one side of it.

They passed the church and, next to it, a thatched and whitewashed public house and inn. The publican, wearing a long white apron, was standing outside brushing off the step with a broom. He raised a hand in greeting after peering curiously into the carriage and seeing who was within. Three children at play on the green stopped to gawk and then went streaking off in three different directions, presumably to tell their mothers that a grand carriage was passing through the village.

And then the carriage turned between two high wrought-iron gates, which stood open, and onto a tree-shaded driveway. Almost immediately the wheels rumbled over a bridge as it crossed the river.

Margaret turned to look at Duncan.

He was looking back, his eyes dark, his face inscrutable.

He had not been here for six years. When he had planned during the past four months to return here, he had not intended to bring a wife. But he was not the only one whose plans had gone awry during the past three weeks.

Oh, goodness, three weeks ago they had not even met each other. Three weeks ago she had been planning to accept an offer from the Marquess of Allingham. "Take comfort," she said, "from the thought that it took Odysseus something like twenty-eight years to get home to Ithaca after the Trojan War." "A sobering thought," he said. And there was that smile lurking deep in his eyes as it had on a few previous occasions. "Look out /your/ window." At first there were only the tall trunks of ancient trees to look at and thick undergrowth between. And then, as the carriage moved out of the woods, she saw a wide, tree-dotted lawn sloping upward to a house on the crest of the hill – a large mansion of mellow red stone and long windows and a gabled roof with a pillared portico and what looked like marble steps leading up to double doors. And a stable block to one side, a little farther down the slope, and a flower garden at the other side – a riot of color flowing down the slope to the river, which looped around behind the hill and the house.

It was, Margaret thought, one of the prettiest houses and parks she had ever seen.

And it was home. /She/ was home. /They/ were.

Duncan's clasp on her hand was almost painful.

Neither of them spoke.

If he had come alone, as he had intended, Duncan thought, he would have prowled about the house, looking for what was familiar, what was not, trying to recapture the presence of his father in the library, of his mother in the morning room and drawing room, standing at the window of his old bedchamber, looking down the steep slope behind the house to the river and across it to the wide, straight, laburnum-shaded grass avenue, which ended with the summer house and views of fields and meadows and woods in every direction. He would perhaps have strolled along the portrait gallery, viewing the old family portraits through adult eyes.

He would have spent the evening slouched in a chair, perhaps in the drawing room, more probably in the library, reading a book.

Reveling in the feeling of being home where he belonged.

At last.

It had been a long, weary exile – much of it self-imposed. He had gone away to sow some wild oats, and he had stayed away because he had stepped past the invisible but nonetheless real boundary between wild oats and that barren land that stretched beyond the pale. For five years he had yearned to be here with a gnawing ache of longing.

Oh, he might have paid a visit now and then, he supposed. But there had been no leaving Laura, even with the Harrises, whom she knew and trusted. A few times he had gone away for a night or two just because he had needed some time to himself, some semblance of a life of his own.