Simply Love

“We would really like to take the lad with us, Anne,” Joshua said. “What do you say?”

Anne bit her lip and sat down again.

“It is always one of my greatest concerns,” she said, “that he is growing up at a girls’ school with women teachers except for the art and dancing masters. He is a general favorite and is made much of by everyone-I could not be more fortunate in that respect. But he has very little contact with men and almost none at all with boys.”

“Yes,” Joshua said, “I realize that. I still intend to send him to school when he is older, with your permission, of course, but in the meantime he ought to have some contact with other children. Daniel and Emily are much younger than he, but they are his second cousins. And therefore all the other Bedwyn children are loosely related to him too. I will not press the issue because I know it distresses you, but it is the truth nevertheless. Will you let him come?”

An unreasonable sense of panic balled in the pit of Anne’s stomach. She had never been separated from David for longer than a few hours at a time. He was hers. Though he was only nine, she knew she would lose him in the not too distant future. How could she deny him a proper schooling with boys of his own age, after all? But must it start even now? Must she give him up for a whole month or longer now, this summer?

But how could she say no? If the question were put to David, she knew very well that she would see that brightness of excited anticipation in his eyes as he looked to her for permission.

Her hands, she realized as she spread them across her lap, were actually shaking. For the first time in the more than ten years that she had known him, she resented Joshua. She almost hated him, in fact-especially his insistence that David was his blood relative and therefore partly his responsibility.

David was not his relative.

He was her son.

“Miss Jewell,” the marchioness said, “a child of nine is too young to be separated from his mother for a whole month. And though I can speak at present only as the mother of a three- and one-year-old, I am even more convinced that no mother is ready to be separated from her child when he is only nine. Of course you must come to Wales too.”

“You are quite right, Freyja,” Lady Potford said. “Is your presence at the school for the summer quite essential, Miss Jewell?”

“No, ma’am,” Anne said. “Miss Martin and Miss Osbourne will both be remaining there too.”

“Then it is settled,” Joshua said cheerfully. “You and David will both come, Anne, and Daniel will be so excited that we may well have to tie him down. Will you come?”

“But how can I?” she asked, aghast. Inviting her, she was well aware, had been an afterthought. “It is the Duke of Bewcastle’s home.”

“Oh, pooh,” Lady Hallmere said with a dismissive gesture of one hand. “It is a Bedwyn home, and I am a Bedwyn. It is also a very large home. You must certainly come.”

The Duke of Bewcastle, Anne reflected, was reputed to be one of the coldest and most toplofty aristocrats in the country. All the Bedwyns had a reputation for being impossibly high in the instep. She was the daughter of a gentleman of very little social significance beyond the neighborhood in which he lived. She was also a teacher, an ex-governess. All of which paled beside the fact that she was also the unmarried mother of an illegitimate son.

How could she possibly…

“We will not take no for an answer,” Lady Hallmere said imperiously, looking along the length of her rather prominent nose at Anne. “And so you might as well resign yourself to returning to your school after tea to begin packing your bags.”

The house in Wales was a large one, the marchioness had said. There were many Bedwyns, and they were all now married with children. It would surely be easy enough, then, to remain aloof from them. She could spend most of her time making herself useful with the children. And in the meantime, David would have the freedom of a country house and estate close to the sea, and-more important-he would have other children to play with, some of them boys of his own age. He would have Joshua, whom he adored, as an adult male role model.

She could not possibly deny him all that. But equally, she could not possibly let him go alone.

“Very well,” she said. “We will come. Thank you.”

“Splendid!” Joshua said, beaming at her and rubbing his hands together.

As Anne walked back to the school a short while later, though, she was not at all sure she agreed. But it was too late to change her mind now. Joshua had already told David and Daniel while Anne was acquainting herself with his young daughter in the nursery, and her son was now skipping along at her side like a much younger child and prattling in a loud, excited voice that drew more than one glance from passersby.

“And we are to go boating and swimming and rock climbing,” he was saying. “And we will build sand forts and play cricket and climb trees and play pirates. Davy is going to be there-do you remember him, Mama, from years ago, before we came to Bath? And there is to be a boy called Alexander. And some girls-I remember Becky. Do you? And the little ones will need someone to play with them, and I will enjoy doing that. I like Daniel-he follows me around as if I were a great hero. Is he really my cousin?”

“No,” Anne said quickly. “But to him you are a hero, David. You are a big boy. You are all of nine years old.”

“It is all going to be such fun,” he said as they turned the corner from Sutton Street onto Daniel Street and knocked at the school doors. “Let me tell, Mama.”

And he proceeded to do just that to the elderly porter, who exclaimed in amazement in all the right places.

“Yes,” Anne said, meeting his eyes over her son’s head. “We are going to Wales for the summer, Mr. Keeble.”

David was already on his way upstairs to tell Matron the glad tidings.

“You are doing what?” Claudia Martin asked an hour later after the crocodile had returned to the school and resolved itself into a group of chattering girls, who all declared as they passed Anne on the stairs that she had missed a treat and that the Sally Lunn buns were so huge that they were sure they would not be able to eat another thing until morning.

Claudia’s question was rhetorical, of course, since she was not by any means deaf and the only other occupant of her private sitting room was Susanna, who was sprawled in a chair beside the fireplace recovering from the long walk in the summer heat. She was fanning her face with the straw bonnet she had just removed from her head.

Claudia, in contrast with the younger teacher, looked as cool as if she had spent the whole afternoon in this very room. She looked neat too, her brown hair drawn into a severe knot at the back of her neck.

“I am going to Wales for a month, if I can be spared, Claudia,” Anne repeated. “It is said to be a beautiful country. And it will be good for David to enjoy the sea air and meet children both older and younger than he, and boys as well as girls.”

“And those children are Bedwyns?” Claudia spoke the name as though she referred to some particularly odious vermin. “And your host is to be the Duke of Bewcastle?”

“I will probably not even set eyes upon him,” Anne said. “And I will have little or nothing to do with the Bedwyns. Apparently there are a number of children. I will spend my time in the nursery and the schoolroom amusing them.”

“Doubtless,” Claudia said tartly, “they will have nurses and governesses and tutors enough to fill a mansion.”

“Then one more will make no difference,” Anne said. “I could hardly say no, Claudia. Joshua has always been very good to us, and David loves him.”

“I pity the man from my heart,” Miss Martin said, resuming her seat on the other side of the hearth from Susanna. “It must be a severe trial to him to be married to that woman.”

“And to have the Duke of Bewcastle for a brother-in-law,” Susanna said, smiling at Anne, her eyes dancing with merriment. She even winked when Claudia was not looking. “It is a great shame that he is married. I would have come with you and wooed him. It is still my primary goal in life to marry a duke.”

Claudia snorted-and then chuckled.