Simply Love

holiday in Wales had already begun. She had expected her stay here to seem endless, yet now she could not believe it was already almost over. She felt rather sad for David’s sake, but she felt equally sorry for herself. Most of all she felt sad at the imminent end of a friendship that was only just blossoming but was giving her such pleasure.

And it would end. It was hardly likely that they would meet again or that they would exchange letters after she had gone. By this time next month, she thought, they would only half remember each other. By this time next year they would think of each other only fleetingly, if at all.

She thought he had forgotten about his offer to take her to see Ty Gwyn, the house and property he hoped to purchase from the Duke of Bewcastle. But he mentioned it again when there were only three days left before her departure. He had been at Glandwr for dinner, and they were sitting slightly apart from everyone else in the drawing room afterward, the two of them, as they had done on other occasions too. No one had ever remarked upon their partiality for each other’s company or made them feel either unsociable or self-conscious.

But then she supposed that she was unimportant enough that no one particularly noticed her anyway-though everyone had been unfailingly kind and amiable toward her. And Mr. Butler was only the steward. Why should anyone single them out for notice?

“Will you come there the day after tomorrow?” he asked. “Unfortunately, I need to be busy all day tomorrow, but the day after I will be free. I thought we could take a picnic tea over to Ty Gwyn, and at the same time I can see that the work I assigned after my last visit has been done.”

An excursion had been arranged for the day after tomorrow-they were all to go on a lengthy outing to Pembroke Castle. The older children were very excited at the prospect of climbing up onto the battlements and descending to the dungeons. Anne had been looking forward to going too. But she knew that her presence was not strictly necessary. Although all the adults gave special attention on occasion to their own children, all of them also parented all the children equally on most occasions with the result that David had a number of substitute fathers- and a number of substitute mothers too.

And it was not as if she had neglected him. Quite the contrary. Despite her frequent outings with Mr. Butler, she had actually spent far more time with David-or at least with the large group of adults and children that included him-than she ever did during the school term.

She really wanted to see Ty Gwyn. It was the place that Mr. Butler hoped would be his own one day. It was where he would perhaps live out the rest of his life.

She wanted to see it. She wanted to be able to picture him there when she remembered him.

She also wanted to spend one more afternoon with him before leaving. It would be the last one.

It was a rather depressing thought.

“I would love to come,” she said. “I will have a word with David to be sure that he does not mind my not going to Pembroke Castle with him, and I will ask Joshua if he minds watching David for me. But I do not believe either of them will mind.”

“I will have a gig outside the door here at one o’clock, then,” he said, “if I do not hear otherwise from you.”

A gig. It would be the first time they had ventured anywhere they could not reach on foot. She wondered if a groom would drive them. Three of them would be very crowded on the seat of a gig.

But she looked forward very much to the outing even though going would mean giving up seeing the castle. She even found it difficult to get to sleep after she went to bed-like a child with a promised treat, she thought, rather disgusted with herself. Though it was not all excitement that kept her awake.

It would be their last afternoon together.

She hoped the fine weather would hold for one more day.

The fine weather did hold.

When the carriages left for Pembroke Castle in the middle of the morning, the sun was beaming down from a clear blue sky. When Mr. Butler arrived on foot later and a gig appeared on the terrace from the direction of the stables at almost the same moment-Anne had been watching from the window of her bedchamber-there was still not a cloud in the sky.

She tied the ribbons of her straw bonnet beneath her chin and half ran down the stairs without waiting to be summoned. She felt like a girl again.

Mr. Butler was standing in the middle of the hall, looking up at her, a smile on his face. It was strange, she thought, how quickly she had become accustomed to his looks-to the empty right sleeve, the purple, nerveless right side of his face, the eye patch.

“It looks as if we are going to have a lovely afternoon for a drive,” he said.

There was a groom standing at the horse’s head, Anne saw when they stepped outside, but he pulled his forelock respectfully to them both and stayed where he was as Mr. Butler handed her up to the seat on the left side of the vehicle and then took the seat beside her. The groom handed him the ribbons and stepped back, and they were on their way.

Mr. Butler was going to drive them himself, then? She ought to have expected it. She knew he was up to most challenges-including riding a horse.

“You will be quite safe,” he assured her as if he had read her thoughts. “I have had a great deal of practice at doing this. It is amazing what can be done one-handed. I have even driven a team of horses on occasion, though admittedly that was somewhat hair-raising.”

His left hand, which she had noticed first for being long-fingered and artistic and then for being deft and skilled as it wielded a fork, was also very strong, as well as the arm that went with it, she realized as he turned the horse onto the driveway without any apparent effort and later, after they had stopped at his cottage for a servant to load a picnic basket onto the back of the gig, drove through the gates and across the bridge and made the sharp turn off the main road onto the narrower road through the village and beyond.

“Are you able to write with your left hand?” she asked him.

“I can produce something that looks like a cross between a spider’s web and the tracks of chicken feet,” he said. “But remarkably, it seems to be decipherable to other people. I am also now able to produce more than one three-letter word in a minute, though only if my tongue is tucked into my cheek at just the right angle.”

She laughed as he chuckled. It seemed strange now to remember that she had seen him at first as a tragic, broken figure of a man, and he had admitted to loneliness. But he was certainly not a man sunk into self-pity or defeat. He was able to laugh at all sorts of absurdities, and even at himself, the sign of a man with considerable inner strength.

“Can you not hold a paintbrush in your left hand, then?” she asked.

She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. Although they had been deliberate and she really wanted to know if he had tried-if he had taken on that challenge as he had others and had simply been defeated by it-she also realized that she had crossed an invisible line they had set between them early in their acquaintance. There was no outer sign that his mood had changed, but there was a tense quality to the short silence that ensued that had not been there before.

“No,” he said after a while. “My brushes are always in my right hand, Miss Jewell.”

Present tense. She did not know what he meant. But she would not ask. She had already intruded too far.

They negotiated another sharp bend beyond the village, and the road became so narrow that the hedgerows brushed against the wheels on both sides.

“What if we were to meet another vehicle?” she asked.

“One of us would have to back up,” he said. “It would be more productive than sitting and glowering at each other. One becomes an expert at backing up in this part of the world.”

Green crops waved in the breeze beyond the hedgerows to their right. Sheep grazed on the more stony land to their left. And always in the distance there were the ever-present cliffs and the sea. And there was the warm salt air to breathe.

“You must be very proud of your son,” he said. “He is a lovely child.”

She looked at him in surprise and gratitude.

“Ralf and Alleyne and Freyja were telling me a few days ago how eager to please and to learn he is,” he explained, “and how ready to play with all the younger children. There is rather a crowd of them, is there not?”