Simply Love

The Reverend Charles Lofter and his wife drove into the nearby village the next morning to pay their respects to the vicar. They took Mrs. Thompson and their children with them, including ten- year-old Alexander. The Duchess of Bewcastle went calling upon some neighbors with Lord and Lady Aidan, who had met them during a previous visit to Wales. Davy and Becky went too, though both her grace’s baby and Lady Aidan’s two-year-old daughter, Hannah, remained in the nursery.

Both groups invited David Jewell to accompany them, but he chose to remain behind. Anne found him in the nursery, playing good-naturedly with several of the younger children, who were squabbling fiercely over which of them was to ride on his back next.

“It is Laura’s turn,” he was telling Daniel, “and then Miranda’s.”

One of Lord Alleyne’s young twins climbed triumphantly on and David crawled across the floor with her, bucking and neighing a couple of times as he went and causing her to squeal and giggle and grasp him more tightly about the neck while Lord Rannulf’s Miranda and the other children jumped up and down in anticipation of their next turn.

Ten minutes later he announced that the horse needed its oats and came toward Anne, his hair tousled, his face flushed, his eyes sparkling and happy.

“They wanted me to stay,” he explained, “and so I did.”

“That was good of you,” she said, pushing back an errant lock of hair from his forehead. Almost immediately it fell back into place again, as it always did. She realized how much it meant to her son, who had always been very much the youngest of all the pupils at the school in Bath, to be the older hero to the little children.

“I am going to play cricket with everyone again this afternoon,” he said. “Cousin Joshua is teaching me to bowl.”

Cousin Joshua? For a moment Anne felt angry. She had never wanted to acknowledge that relationship between the Marquess of Hallmere and her son, much as she was fond of Joshua and much as she appreciated all he had done for her and continued to do. But she curbed her first instinct, which was to instruct her son rather sharply to call Joshua Lord Hallmere. Calling him Cousin Joshua had clearly not been David’s idea.

“And are you good at it?” Anne asked.

“Not yet,” he admitted. “But the duchess told me I had promise after she had hit a four off me, and I shattered the wickets when Lord Rannulf was up at bat, though I think he let me do it.”

“And so,” she said, smiling at him and stooping to pick up Jules Ashford, the toddler son of the Earl of Rosthorn, who was pulling insistently at David’s leg, “you are going to learn how to bowl him out even when he is not letting you, are you?” She held the young child suspended above her head until he giggled, and then lowered him far enough to rub noses with him.

“Mama,” David said, a renewed element of eagerness in his voice. “Lady Rosthorn is going painting this morning, and she has said I may go with her. She has an easel and paints I can use. May I go? Please? And will you come to watch?”

“That is remarkably kind of her,” Anne said, while the child in her arms bounced and giggled and otherwise indicated that he wanted to be lifted into the air again. Anne obliged him and laughed up at him.

David had always loved to draw and paint, and she had always thought him good at it. Mr. Upton, art master at Miss Martin’s school, insisted that he had real talent that should be nurtured.

“You have made a friend for life, Miss Jewell,” the Earl of Rosthorn said from behind her. “But he will exhaust you given half a chance. Come here, mon fils.”

Jules was already reaching for him.

The countess had come into the nursery with her husband.

“Has your mama given you permission to come and paint, David?” she asked.

“I hope,” Anne said, “he will be no trouble to you.”

“None whatsoever,” the countess assured her, stooping to pick up her three-year-old, who had come skipping across the nursery to meet her. “I am delighted to discover a dedicated artist in a young boy. And you, Jacques, my sweetheart, are to go outside with Papa and Jules and Aunt Judith’s William to look at the sheep, perhaps even to ride one if Papa can catch one. Will that be fun?”

“Watching me chase after the sheep doubtless will be,” the earl said ruefully.

“You will come with David and me, Miss Jewell?” the countess asked. “I am going to paint the sea. I persist in believing that one day I will capture the very essence of it, though I have been told that doing so is as impossible as it would be to hold a cupful of it in my bare hand.”

“But you have not been told that by me, cherie,” the earl said. “I have seen you do it with a river-capture the essence of it, that is.”

It was a lovely, sunny morning, and Anne enjoyed herself even though she chose not to paint. The countess set up her easel on the very promontory where Mr. Butler had been standing three evenings ago. It seemed a rather bleak setting to Anne, who would have chosen somewhere more picturesque, but the countess explained her choice before sitting down on the coarse grass, clasping her arms about her knees, and withdrawing into a silent world of her own.

“My poor governess used to despair of me,” she said. “She would find the prettiest parts of the park at Lindsey Hall and instruct me to paint the flowers and the trees and the birds. And then she would hover over me as I painted and disapprove of everything I did while telling me exactly how I ought to be doing it. But painting has nothing to do with prettiness, Miss Jewell, or with following the rules. At least to me it does not. It has to do with getting inside what I see with my eyes to the reality within.”

“To see things as they see themselves,” David said unexpectedly.

“Ah.” The countess laughed. “You do understand, David. Have I chosen a place you would not have chosen for yourself? Have I been very selfish?”

“No, ma’am,” David assured her. “I can paint anywhere.”

Anne sat basking in the sunshine for what she was sure must have been a couple of hours while her two companions worked in silence.

She was to go walking with Mr. Butler again this afternoon, she thought. But this time they had a deliberate assignation. He had asked her and she had agreed. It was surprising that either had happened. She had had the distinct impression just two evenings ago that he did not really like her, though admittedly that was before they had sat and talked with each other for a while. And he was someone with whom she was not physically comfortable even though they had strolled on the beach with each other. It was not easy to look at him.

And yet what a conversation they had had! She could hardly believe she had spoken so openly to him about things she usually avoided admitting even to herself.

She rarely thought of herself as lonely.

She was twenty-nine years old. Ten years ago-a little longer than ten actually-she had looked forward to a life of conventional happiness with the man of her choice. She had still believed in happily-ever-after at that time. But then there had been David-and what had preceded David-and her planned future had been in tatters.

For nine years-almost ten-David had been her all in all. He was her present. But he was not her future-she was well aware of that. Was the future so important to her, then, even though it did not really exist except in the imagination? Ought not the present to be enough?

But it was not so much the future that she needed, she realized, as hope.

It was her lack of hope that made her lonely and occasionally brought her to the edge of what felt frighteningly like despair.

Would she live out her life at Claudia Martin’s school? She loved teaching there. She really did. And she was very fond of all the girls, especially the charity pupils, and of Claudia and Susanna, and the other teachers too to a slightly lesser degree. There was nothing at all bleak about the prospect of spending the rest of her life there.

Except that there was.

Now Mr. Butler had invited her to walk with him, and absurdly such a little thing felt like something rather momentous. He, a gentleman, the son of an earl, had invited her to walk out with him simply because he wished to spend more time with her. There