Simply Love

had behaved cravenly and even cruelly last evening. Now she had a chance-perhaps!-to make amends.

Though she would surely be the very last person he would wish to encounter again today.

Sydnam had walked up to the main house despite the drizzle. He would a million times rather be at home in his cozy cottage, he reflected as he let himself in through the front door, handed his wet cloak and hat to a footman, and climbed the stairs to the drawing room. But Bewcastle had issued the invitation in person this morning, and when Bewcastle invited he was really commanding-especially, Sydnam gathered, when he invoked the name of his wife.

“The duchess was disappointed when you did not come to dine last evening,” he had said while pulling one of the estate books toward him across the desk in the library, where he always did business while at Glandwr. “I have a curious aversion to seeing her grace disappointed, Sydnam, though of course it was unavoidable last evening since you did not receive your invitation until well after the dinner hour. There will not be that problem this evening.”

Bewcastle had recognized a lie when he heard one, of course. Not that it had been an outright lie. Sydnam had not actually read the invitation before going outside to walk, but he had seen it and guessed what it was and deliberately avoided opening it until it was too late.

“I will apologize in person to her grace this evening,” he had said while Bewcastle turned pages as if he were not even listening.

And so here he was to eat humble pie before dining. He amused himself grimly with the mental picture of all the Bedwyns and their spouses being forced to sit at table with a patch over one eye and their right arms bound behind their backs. But he must not be vicious, even in his thoughts. The invitation was a kind one. And being human, with all the contrariness to which human nature was prone, he supposed that if they were here for a month and never once extended an invitation to him to join them, he would be hurt and offended.

He grinned ruefully at the admission.

He must be somewhat late, he thought as he approached the drawing room doors. Or if he was not late-and he knew he was not-he nevertheless was last to arrive. A grand entrance was all he needed. But even as he stood in the doorway looking about for Bewcastle or the duchess, Rannulf and Alleyne bore down on him, one from either side, and suddenly he felt that the ordeal would not be so bad after all. Many of the people here were old friends of his, and none of the others would bear him any ill will. It was not as if he were a houseguest to be in their sight every moment of every day, after all. And none of the children would be here.

“I have been cowering inside a cave down on the beach,” he said in answer to Rannulf’s question, “as you might have discovered for yourself if you had come down there to look, Ralf. But a little rain kept you indoors, did it? Or is it the steep cliff path that deterred you?”

Alleyne clamped a hand on his right shoulder, a gesture that endeared him to Sydnam since most people avoided his right side whenever they were able.

“How are you, Syd?” he asked. “It is a veritable age since I saw you last. We have brought a stack of messages from home, some from Lauren, a dozen or more from your mother, one or two from Kit, one from your father-but I cannot for the life of me recall a single one of them. Can you, Ralf?”

“Something about wearing warm woolens in the damp weather, at a wager,” Ralf said with a grin. “Of course I do not remember. The ladies will, though. You had better come and meet the people you do not already know, Syd. Ah, here comes Christine. Have you met our formidable duchess?”

“He has,” the duchess said, smiling warmly at him. “I am so glad you were able to come this evening, Mr. Butler.”

She gave him her left hand and he bowed over it.

“I must apologize most humbly, your grace,” he said, “for last evening. I was from home and did not read your invitation until-until it was too late.”

The sudden pause had been occasioned by the glance he had stolen at the lady through whose arm the duchess’s right hand was drawn.

He recognized her instantly.

He had certainly not been mistaken about one thing, he thought. She was quite breathtakingly beautiful, with hair the color of warm honey and blue eyes made smoky by long lashes, and regular, perfect features. And now that she was no longer wearing a cloak, it was obvious that she had a figure to do justice to the face.

So his first guess had been correct, he thought. She was one of the Bedwyn wives.

He felt a curious, quite unreasonable bitterness.

“No apology is necessary,” the duchess assured him. “May I make you known to Miss Jewell, a particular friend of Freyja and Joshua’s? Mr. Butler is Wulfric’s steward at Glandwr,” she explained for the lady’s benefit.

Sydnam bowed and she curtsied. Miss Jewell. Her name suited her well. And she was not one of the wives. But he felt no kindness toward her.

He remembered suddenly that he had dreamed of her last night. She had stood on that path waiting for him, and he had walked close enough to touch her cheek-with the fingertips of his right hand. And he had looked into her lovely blue eyes-with both his own. He had asked her please not to pinch him as it was important never to wake up, and she had told him that they needed to wake up without delay so that they could go searching for his arm, which had fallen over the cliff, before the tide came in and washed it away. It had been one of those strange, bizarre dreams that sometimes have one hovering between reality and fantasy, dreaming but knowing that one dreams.

“Miss Jewell,” he said now.

“Mr. Butler,” she murmured in return.

The duchess took him about the room then, without Miss Jewell’s company, and introduced him to the people he did not know.

He still disliked meeting strangers, though he was long past the stage of trying to keep the right side of his body out of sight. His ugliness had been hard to accept. He had been accustomed to seeing nothing but admiration in the eyes of others-and even adoration in some female eyes. Not that he had taken a great deal of advantage of the latter. He had still been very young when everything changed. And he had never been conceited about his good looks. He had taken them for granted-until they were destroyed forever.

Everyone here had known about him in advance, he realized as he made his way to the dining room a short while later with Miss Eleanor Thompson, the duchess’s sister, on his arm. None of them had openly flinched.

But she had not known-Miss Jewell, that was. She had run from him last night as if he were the devil himself. He found himself resenting her incredible beauty even though he recognized that it was somewhat childish to do so. Some people just had an easy path through life.

He turned his head to note that Morgan was seated on his blind side and set himself to making conversation with her as well as with Miss Thompson. At least, he thought, the kitchen staff here knew him and understood that they must not place anything before him that could not be cut one-handed, preferably with the edge of a fork.

Miss Jewell, he could see, was smiling warmly at Baron Weston beside her and saying something to him that brought an answering smile to his face. She was charming him, enslaving him.

No, he would not dislike her, he decided. Or resent her. Or envy Weston or Alleyne on her other side.

Good Lord, he was not a man normally given to petty jealousies.

Or to spite. Or resentment.

He picked up his soup spoon with his left hand and tackled the first course.

The evening turned out to be slightly less of an ordeal than Anne had anticipated. Not all the guests were aristocrats or the offspring of aristocrats.

Mrs. Pritchard, near whom Anne sat at the dining table, had once earned her living down a Welsh coal mine, and her niece, Lady Aidan Bedwyn, had been brought up as a lady only because her father had made his fortune in coal and then set up as a gentleman on an English estate he had purchased. Lady Rannulf Bedwyn, Anne discovered in the drawing room later, was the daughter of a country clergyman-and the granddaughter of a London actress, she mentioned as something of which she seemed proud. The duchess herself was of the lower gentry class, as she