Simply Love

“Sometimes,” Anne said, “men who are quiet and artistic feel the need to prove their masculinity, especially when they are very young, as Sydnam was. What better way to prove it than by going to war?”

All three women shook their heads at the foolishness of the male of the species, and it struck Anne suddenly that her decision to stay with Sydnam last night when Kit had been prepared to deal with him had actually endeared her to his family. Perhaps after all they would come to accept her and understand that she had not schemed to marry a wealthy, well-connected man.

“Do any of his paintings still exist?” she asked.

Lady Redfield sighed.

“They used to hang all over the house,” she said. “But after he was brought back here and long before he was able to leave his own rooms he commanded us to destroy every one of them. Yes, our gentle son commanded us. They are stacked up in the attic with his old easels and painting supplies. I have sometimes thought of hanging one or two of them again now that he has gone from Alvesley, but I cannot bring myself to do what I believe would still be against his wishes. And I am not sure I would be able to bear to see any of them after so long.”

“But Sydnam is not a tragic figure,” Lauren said, smiling at Anne. “You must have discovered that for yourself, Anne. He has made a meaningful new life for himself, difficult as it has been with his disabilities. And now he has a wife and family for his personal happiness.”

Her smile seemed to possess genuine warmth.

“You will come visiting with Lauren and me this afternoon, Anne,” the countess said in a tone that brooked no contradiction. “You must be presented to our neighbors, and the hasty, secret nature of your marriage must be somehow explained. We will not take your son with us.”

Lauren laughed softly and got to her feet.

“David is delightful,” she said. “He was playing with Andrew and Sophie when I went up to the nursery to feed Geoffrey last evening and even settled a quarrel between them before I could intervene. Shall we go up there now, Anne?”

They spent the rest of the morning there, though there was no need to amuse the children. Andrew was clearly delighted to have an older cousin willing and able to build an impressive castle with him out of painted wooden bricks, and Sophia was content with gazing at her new cousin and edging closer to him until she was able to reach out and touch his hair. David turned and smiled at her, and she was permitted to hand him the bricks, though Andrew forbade her to touch the castle.

David was simply happy.

Geoffrey, plump and contented, lay in Anne’s arms after he had been fed, his eyelids fighting a losing battle with sleep. He had his mother’s startlingly violet eyes, she noticed.

“I think,” Lauren said after a while, “it is going to be remarkably pleasant to have another sister. And for my children to have another aunt and more cousins.”

“You have sisters of your own, then?” Anne asked.

“Cousins by marriage, with whom I grew up,” Lauren told her. “I still think of Gwen as a sister and of her brother Neville as my brother. I almost married him at one time. Indeed, I had arrived at the church for our wedding.”

Anne stared at her. “What happened?” she asked.

Lauren told her about the death of her father, Viscount Whitleaf, when she was an infant and her mother’s remarriage within the year to a younger brother of the Earl of Kilbourne. She told of her mother’s leaving on a wedding trip overseas and never returning, though they were now back in communication with each other. Lauren had grown up in the Earl of Kilbourne’s home with the earl’s son and daughter and the expectation that she and Neville would wed when they were grown up. Neville went to war and told her not to wait for him, but she waited anyway, and eventually he came home and courted her and their wedding day dawned. But just as she arrived at the church, another woman-a woman who looked like a beggar-arrived there too, claiming that Neville was her husband, that he had married her in the Peninsula.

“And the ghastly thing was,” Lauren said, running one hand softly over the almost-bald head of her sleeping baby as he lay in Anne’s arms, “that she was telling the truth.”

“Oh,” Anne said. “Oh, poor Lauren.”

“I thought the world had come to an end,” Lauren admitted. “As I was growing up my adoptive family could not have been kinder to me if I had been a daughter of the house, but I was always aware that I was not. I spent my growing years trying to be worthy, trying to be lovable-though I already was loved. And all I ever wanted of life was to marry Neville.”

The refined and perfect Lauren had known unbearable pain too, then, Anne thought. Everyone had, she supposed, at some time in life. It was always a mistake to believe that one had been singled out for unusual suffering.

“And then a year later,” Lauren said, “I met Kit. We did not by any means have a smooth courtship, but it did not take me very long to understand why Lily had had to come back into Neville’s life and why I had had to be cut adrift. Fate was saving me for Kit. I do believe in fate, Anne-not a blind fate that gives one no freedom of choice, but a fate that sets down a pattern for each of our lives and gives us choices, numerous choices, by which to find that pattern and be happy.”

“Oh,” Anne said, “I believe that too. I really do.”

“Fate led you to meet Sydnam and he you, I daresay,” Lauren said. “Despite appearances-forgive me!-I can see quite clearly that you are fond of each other.”

They smiled at each other, and soon the conversation moved into other channels, but Anne felt enormously comforted, as if some blessing had been bestowed. She felt that she and her sister-in-law would be friends-perhaps even sisters.

And her mother-in-law had looked on her with approval for staying with Sydnam last night and was to take her visiting this afternoon.

Perhaps families did not always reject. Perhaps at least sometimes they opened their arms in welcome. Perhaps sometimes love was to be trusted.

Sydnam’s day started well enough.

It started with hope. Anne had smiled this morning and even joked with him. She had not repeated her wish to go home without further delay, and she had not objected to being left alone with Lauren and his mother. He and she were, he thought, still friends. And for a while he was content-he must be content-with friendship and with a mutual compassion for the dark places in each other’s life.

The morning proceeded well as he rode about the home farm with his father and Kit, meeting farmworkers and their wives whom he had not seen in years, since he had been steward here, in fact. It was all very enjoyable.

But the afternoon brought home to him a reality that depressed him and might, he feared, put yet another strain on his marriage. Anne had been taken visiting by his mother and Lauren. He went up to the nursery while she was gone to suggest taking David-and the other children too, if they wished-for a walk about the lake. But Kit was there before him to take Andrew out for a riding lesson.

“You must come too, David,” he said.

“But I cannot ride,” the boy protested.

“You have never ridden?” Kit said, setting a hand on his shoulder. “We are going to have to set that right without any further delay.”

“Will you teach me, Uncle Kit?” David asked, his face lighting up with eagerness.

“What are uncles for?” Kit said, grinning down at him. “You will come too, Syd?”

A few minutes later they were all on their way out to the stables, David and Andrew dashing ahead, Sophia riding on Kit’s arm.

A groom mounted Andrew on his little pony in the paddock behind the stables while Kit chose a quiet mare for David and then taught him some of the rudiments of riding before mounting him and leading him about the paddock and finally allowing him to take a slow turn on his own while walking beside him, calling up instructions and encouragement.

David was as animated and excited as Sydnam had seen him once or twice at Glandwr with the Bedwyn men