Lauren told her about the death of her father, Viscount Whitleaf, when she was an infant and her mother’s remarriage within the year to a younger brother of the Earl of Kilbourne. She told of her mother’s leaving on a wedding trip overseas and never returning, though they were now back in communication with each other. Lauren had grown up in the Earl of Kilbourne’s home with the earl’s son and daughter and the expectation that she and Neville would wed when they were grown up. Neville went to war and told her not to wait for him, but she waited anyway, and eventually he came home and courted her and their wedding day dawned. But just as she arrived at the church, another woman-a woman who looked like a beggar-arrived there too, claiming that Neville was her husband, that he had married her in the Peninsula.

“And the ghastly thing was,” Lauren said, running one hand softly over the almost-bald head of her sleeping baby as he lay in Anne’s arms, “that she was telling the truth.”

“Oh,” Anne said. “Oh, poor Lauren.”

“I thought the world had come to an end,” Lauren admitted. “As I was growing up my adoptive family could not have been kinder to me if I had been a daughter of the house, but I was always aware that I was not. I spent my growing years trying to be worthy, trying to be lovable-though I already was loved. And all I ever wanted of life was to marry Neville.”

The refined and perfect Lauren had known unbearable pain too, then, Anne thought. Everyone had, she supposed, at some time in life. It was always a mistake to believe that one had been singled out for unusual suffering.

“And then a year later,” Lauren said, “I met Kit. We did not by any means have a smooth courtship, but it did not take me very long to understand why Lily had had to come back into Neville’s life and why I had had to be cut adrift. Fate was saving me for Kit. I do believe in fate, Anne-not a blind fate that gives one no freedom of choice, but a fate that sets down a pattern for each of our lives and gives us choices, numerous choices, by which to find that pattern and be happy.”

“Oh,” Anne said, “I believe that too. I really do.”

“Fate led you to meet Sydnam and he you, I daresay,” Lauren said. “Despite appearances-forgive me!-I can see quite clearly that you are fond of each other.”

They smiled at each other, and soon the conversation moved into other channels, but Anne felt enormously comforted, as if some blessing had been bestowed. She felt that she and her sister-in-law would be friends-perhaps even sisters.

And her mother-in-law had looked on her with approval for staying with Sydnam last night and was to take her visiting this afternoon.

Perhaps families did not always reject. Perhaps at least sometimes they opened their arms in welcome. Perhaps sometimes love was to be trusted.


Sydnam’s day started well enough.

It started with hope. Anne had smiled this morning and even joked with him. She had not repeated her wish to go home without further delay, and she had not objected to being left alone with Lauren and his mother. He and she were, he thought, still friends. And for a while he was content-he must be content-with friendship and with a mutual compassion for the dark places in each other’s life.

The morning proceeded well as he rode about the home farm with his father and Kit, meeting farmworkers and their wives whom he had not seen in years, since he had been steward here, in fact. It was all very enjoyable.

But the afternoon brought home to him a reality that depressed him and might, he feared, put yet another strain on his marriage. Anne had been taken visiting by his mother and Lauren. He went up to the nursery while she was gone to suggest taking David-and the other children too, if they wished-for a walk about the lake. But Kit was there before him to take Andrew out for a riding lesson.

“You must come too, David,” he said.

“But I cannot ride,” the boy protested.

“You have never ridden?” Kit said, setting a hand on his shoulder. “We are going to have to set that right without any further delay.”

“Will you teach me, Uncle Kit?” David asked, his face lighting up with eagerness.

“What are uncles for?” Kit said, grinning down at him. “You will come too, Syd?”

A few minutes later they were all on their way out to the stables, David and Andrew dashing ahead, Sophia riding on Kit’s arm.

A groom mounted Andrew on his little pony in the paddock behind the stables while Kit chose a quiet mare for David and then taught him some of the rudiments of riding before mounting him and leading him about the paddock and finally allowing him to take a slow turn on his own while walking beside him, calling up instructions and encouragement.

David was as animated and excited as Sydnam had seen him once or twice at Glandwr with the Bedwyn men and Hallmere. And he laughed and chattered, quite at his ease with Kit, calling him Uncle Kit as though the two of them had been the best of friends for years.

If David had already had even some small experience at riding, Sydnam thought, he himself might have ridden with the boy and taught him some of the finer points of horsemanship as they went. The shared activity would have offered a chance for them to forge some sort of familial bond. But under the circumstances it had seemed more practical to leave the teaching to his brother, though Kit had looked inquiringly at him before proceeding with the lesson.

Instead Sydnam made friends with Sophia, who had been plucking daisy heads from the grass beyond the paddock and now patted Sydnam on the leg and handed him the bouquet. He stooped down on his haunches to thank her, but though she looked warily at his eye patch, she did not run away. Instead, she suddenly reached out one small finger to touch it and then chuckled.