I am home and now that I am with you again.' 'I daresay,' Duncan said, 'you have been driving poor Mrs. Harris to distraction with all your prattling, have you, imp?' 'Yes, I have,' the child admitted, and patted Duncan's cheeks before wriggling to be set down. His eyes alit upon Margaret. 'Who are you?' 'Not a very polite question, Tobe,' Duncan said, taking his hand. 'I would have told you if you had waited a moment. This is Lady Sheringford, my new wife. Your new mama.' 'No,' the child said, shrinking against Duncan's side, trying to hide behind one of his legs. '/Not/ my mama. I don't /want/ a mama. We don't need her, Papa. Send her away. Now.' Margaret made a slight hand gesture when Duncan would have spoken, his brows knitting together. 'Of course I am not your mama, Toby,' she said. 'I am your papa's wife, that is all. You fell out of a tree a little while ago and bumped your forehead, did you not? Your papa told me. Do you still have the mark there?' He leaned against Duncan's leg and circled one finger about his forehead. 'I think it's gone,' he said. 'But it was the size of an egg. /Two/ eggs.' 'I wish I could have seen it,' she said. 'My brother fell off a horse once when he was about your age or a little older, but the lump on his head was certainly no bigger than one egg. He used to get cuts and bruises all over too – and scabs.' 'I have a scab on /my/ knee,' Toby said. 'Do you want to see?' 'I am sure – ' Duncan began. 'Oh, yes, please,' Margaret said, stepping closer. 'How did you get it?' 'I was /trying/ to catch Mrs. Lennox's cat,' he said, bending to pull up his breeches and roll down his stocking to expose one knee. 'She /never/ lets him out, and when he does escape, he will not let anyone pet him because he is not used to people. I had my hands on him, and then she stuck out her broom and I tripped over it.' 'Nasty,' Margaret said, and bent closer to look at the dried scab that covered his kneecap. 'Did you bleed?' 'All over my breeches,' he said, 'and they were not even /old/ ones.
Mrs. Harris had to scrub them for an hour to get it all out. And then she had to mend the hole. She said Papa would have paddled my bottom if he had been there.' 'It sounds to me,' Margaret said, stepping back as the boy bent to roll up his stocking again, 'as if perhaps it was Mrs. Lennox who deserved to have her bottom paddled.' He shrieked with surprised laughter and reached for Duncan's hand again. 'Is this /really/ home, Papa?' he asked. 'Forever and ever? No more moving?' 'This is really home, Tobe,' Duncan assured him. 'And you are not going away /ever/ again?' 'Ever is a long time,' Duncan told him. 'But we are going to live together here, you and I and – ' He glanced at Margaret but did not complete the thought. 'Come and see your room. And I expect you are hungry. Cook, I hear, has been baking some special cakes just for you.' Toby climbed the steps at his father's side, his hand clasped in his.
But he stopped before they reached the top and looked back at Margaret. 'You can be my /friend/ if you want,' he said. 'Can I?' Margaret asked. 'I'll think about it and give you my answer tomorrow or the day after.' 'All right,' the child said, and disappeared through the door.
Blond delicacy beside dark strength.
A garrulous, active, mischievous child, who was quite innocent of all the ugliness that had surrounded his birth and early years.
Now he was home.
They all were.
She could be his /friend/, Margaret thought as she entered the house more slowly. He had already disappeared upstairs with Duncan.
She smiled. It was better than nothing.
And she and Duncan were going to fall in love.
Would they succeed?
21
DUNCAN spent the rest of the day with Toby. He had tea with him, showed him the schoolroom, which was part of the nursery, and the toys and books that had been there from his own childhood, and he took him outside to show him the river and the wide lawns to the west of the house, where they would play cricket and other games that needed wide open spaces. He took him to the stable block to see the horses and the puppies in the far stall, jealously guarded by their mother, a border collie. And no, Toby might /not/ take one of them into the house – though Duncan did not doubt he would be coaxed and wheedled until he consented to allow one to be adopted, once the animal could be taken from its mother without crying all night in the nursery and keeping everyone awake.
He had dinner in the nursery and suggested that they invite Toby's new friend to join them there. 'But she is not my friend yet,' Toby pointed out. 'She said she would let me know tomorrow or the next day. Perhaps she does not like me. Do you think she does, Papa?' 'I think,' Duncan said, 'she will like you a little bit more if you invite her to dinner. We gentlemen have to be crafty where ladies are concerned, Tobe. If we are always polite and considerate and include them in our various activities, they will usually be our friends.' 'What does /considerate/ mean?' Toby asked. When Duncan told him, he nodded and agreed that Maggie really ought to be invited to dinner.
After the meal, Duncan spent an hour listening to Toby's much-embellished accounts of the adventures he had narrowly survived in Harrogate before telling him a few stories and tucking him into bed for the night. 'Sleep tight,' he said, kissing the child on the forehead. 'Tomorrow we will play again.' 'You will be here, Papa?' Toby asked. 'Promise?' 'I promise.' Duncan smoothed a hand over his soft fair curls. 'And we can stay here, Papa? For always? Promise?' 'Maybe not for all the rest of our lives, Tobe, unless we want to,' Duncan said. 'But for a long, long time. This is home, a place to play and grow up in, a place to come back to whenever we go somewhere else for a little while. A place to belong.' 'Together,' Toby said. His eyelids were growing heavy. 'Just you and me, Papa.' 'Yes,' Duncan said. 'You and me. And perhaps my wife, your new friend – /if/ she decides to be your friend, that is. I think she might, though. She was pleased to be invited to dinner, was she not?' 'It was kind of us to ask her. We will do it again,' Toby said, yawning hugely and closing his eyes. 'Am I safe now, Papa? Nobody will come and take me away, as Mama always used to say?' 'You are as safe as safe can be,' Duncan assured him, and sat where he was until he was sure the child was asleep.
He hoped he had spoken the truth. Devil take it, but he hoped so.
Perhaps after all he should have kept Toby's identity a carefully guarded secret. But no, Maggie was right. The time for secrecy was over.
Except that there were still secrets – heavy ones, which perhaps he ought to have divulged with the others. But Laura had always been adamant that for Toby's sake, and hers, the truth must never be told. And he had promised her over and over again … Did a promise extend even beyond the grave?
Should loyalty to a new spouse supersede all else?
His life had been defined for five interminable years by secrets and the certain disaster that would result if they were uncovered. It was not easy to shake himself free of those years. It was not always easy to know what was the right thing to do – or the wrong.
Especially as it was an innocent child who would suffer if he were to make the wrong decision.
Had he already made it?
What would happen if he went downstairs now and told the whole truth to Maggie? But he feared he knew the answer. She would persuade him that it was in everyone's best interest that the truth be told openly at last, that nothing good ever came from secrecy and subterfuge.
The very idea that she might talk him into agreeing with her made his stomach churn uncomfortably. There was far too much risk involved.
He sighed and stood up, touching his fingers to Toby's hand before tucking it beneath the covers.
He had not forgotten the strange conversation he had had with Maggie down by the river just before Toby arrived with the Harrises. In fact, it had been very much on his mind ever since.
He had no idea where the words had come from. Or the idea behind them.
Falling in love was as much about receiving as it was giving, was it? It seemed selfish. It was not, though. It was the opposite. Keeping oneself from being loved was to refuse the ultimate gift.
He had thought himself done with romantic love. He had thought himself an incurable cynic.
He was not, though.
He was only someone whose heart and mind, and very soul, had been battered and bruised. It was still –
