Chapter Ten #2
“With your brother’s help,” he said. “He ought to know every step involved in pursuing his passion. He is big enough. You may stroll along behind like a benevolent aunt and describe to me some of the things he has sculpted since that mouse. I once saw Michelangelo’s Pietà in Rome.
It was breathtaking. Matthew Taylor, my mother’s husband, saw it once too and it inspired him to take his wood carving to the next level of skill.
If you have not seen any of his carvings, you should ask to do so.
They are in the rooms above the smithy in the village.
I am sure Owen would be happy to take you there. ”
He was lifting the stone with Andrew’s help as he spoke. He wondered what the boy had seen in this one. He hoped it was more than an ant or a ladybird.
“You are going to have to do all the talking,” he said as they made their way back to the house. “Andrew and I have more important things to do—like breathing, for example.”
She laughed.
She seemed to have recovered her spirits.
He guessed he had come across her earlier in one of her rare moments of open vulnerability.
She had never struck him as a moody person.
She spoke warmly now of the figures, mostly animals, her brother had released from a seeming eternity of captivity inside stone.
And yes, they were always bursting with animation as though at any moment they might breathe and move.
Only his first effort, the mouse, had been sleeping.
“While I,” she said as they approached the stables at the back of the house, “have no artistic talent whatsoever despite all the benefits sound and sight bring me and the proximity of a marvelously talented father and a mother who encourages all her children to try their wings even if they sometimes crash. It is very provoking.” She sighed, but there was laughter in the sound.
“Believe me,” he said. “You have talents in great abundance.” He felt embarrassed then, hearing the fervent intensity in his voice.
But it was hard to believe this was the goody-goody, overpious schoolgirl who had been detested through much of her needy childhood, if she was to be believed.
And the change had come entirely because she had been offered love, total and unconditional, on the happiest day of her life.
She seemed to spend her days now giving back that love in superabundance.
She was directing them to set the stone down in a clear space just inside the stable doors and squeezing the boy’s shoulder again.
“We will know exactly where to find Andrew for the next week or so,” she said.
“Papa brought his tools. We do not go anywhere far from home without them. He is usually the most patient boy in the world, but when he has found a new stone, he will not rest until he has it and all the tools to work on it.”
She was really quite delightful when she forgot herself.
Owen was going to be a fortunate man—if he ever got to the point, that was.
He did not seem to be in any hurry, though the two of them were undoubtedly the best of friends.
Why on earth had he not taken that opportunity for the romantic encounter Gwyneth and Devlin had offered on a platter by suggesting a walk in the alley at sunset?
He would have said a firm no to Owen’s suggestion that he and Grace join them if Grace had not first accepted it.
But what made him an expert on relationships?
Winifred was talking to Andrew without the medium of sound, enticing him back to the house for tea, assuring him that the stone would be safe where it was, that no one was going to run off with it.
She signed something else Nicholas could not decipher until Andrew turned and offered his right hand and bobbed his head in an obvious gesture of thanks.
Nicholas shook it and winked and smiled at him.
The boy smiled back.
They must have been on their way to the lake to share in Gwyneth’s picnic, as he had been too, he thought. But they had been ambushed by a large ugly stone.
Winifred drew Andrew’s arm through hers and led him out of the north wing, through to the courtyard, and on into the house for tea. Nicholas fell into step behind them.
Who would have guessed that such a seemingly plain, almost drab creature was so filled to the brim with life and warmth?
—
Winifred took Colonel Ware’s suggestion and asked Owen at the breakfast table the following morning if he could arrange for her to see Mr. Taylor’s wood carvings sometime.
She had heard he kept several in the building that housed the smithy in the village.
She had also heard they were well worth seeing.
“But of course,” he said, beaming at her.
“We will go this afternoon if he is not busy. He will be delighted that you are interested. He is sure to have something entered in the wood-carving contest at the fete next Saturday, of course, but there will be many more to see. He will almost surely take first prize at the fete, but when he offered to refrain from entering anything one year so other people would have a chance, there was a storm of protest, even from some of his most fierce competitors. He is very popular, you know. I think it is because he is so unassuming. He mingles with everyone, high and low alike. He lived a quiet, humble life in those rooms for years before he married my mother. I tell you what we will do, Winifred. We will call on Mama at the cottage first. Have you been there yet?”
“No,” she said. “Though I have seen it from the village.”
He chuckled. “We all thought she had taken leave of her senses when she begged Devlin for permission to have it built on Ravenswood land,” he said.
“I do not believe she even had it in mind to marry Matthew at the time. She intended to live there alone. There was the whole of this vast house for her to kick around in, and she had a very spacious and luxurious apartment here for times when she wished to be private. I always thought it was a sort of house within a house. But she was adamant. She was turning fifty, she was going through some sort of crisis, and she wanted a place of her own. We were all dashed upset about it and worried about her. But she assured us that none of us had done anything to offend her—except try to smother her in loving care, I suspect. We so wanted to make her life comfortable, as she had made ours when we were children. We were always afraid she would be lonely while we rushed about on our own selfish business. It’s funny how sometimes we can love someone too much, isn’t it? ”
“I suppose most of us want to be free as well as loved,” she said. “I suppose mothers want some freedom to be themselves again after all their children are grown. But will your mother mind if I arrive at her cottage unannounced?”
“I very much doubt it,” he said. “She loves to entertain close family and friends. I’ll dash off a note to her, though, if it will make you feel easier in your mind. You will enjoy yourself there, and I will enjoy seeing you enjoy yourself.”
It was one of those moments when she felt that there was something about her after all that made her special to him—just as there was something about him.
They set out an hour or so after luncheon, alone together miraculously. No one else had attached themselves and decided to come too. Everyone had something else to do.
Papa was in the gallery, working on his portrait.
Mama had gone too, taking the twins and Awen Ware with her.
Their real destination, though, was the glass sunroom above the gallery, where there was a basket of children’s books as well as masses of cushions to be jumped on or fought with or napped upon.
Robbie and Nelson were out in the north wing, keeping guard with fierce intensity at the entrance to the stables to make sure Andrew was not disturbed as he carved his stone.
The other children had gone with Stephanie and the earl and countess to play at Cartref with Mr. and Mrs. Rhys’s children. Sarah went too to play with their baby.
Colonel Ware had taken Miss Haviland for a drive out to the hills that bordered Ravenswood to the east. He had explained to her that there was a narrow but quite safe road along the top with views across Ravenswood on the one side and Cartref on the other.
Inevitably General and Mrs. Haviland had gone with them—at the invitation of Miss Haviland herself, though that had not been the colonel’s intention, Winifred realized with one glance at his face before he masked his annoyance and smiled politely. What was wrong with that woman?
The dowager countess was strolling in her flower garden when Winifred and Owen arrived at the cottage. She smiled warmly at their approach.
“I am delighted Owen has brought you to take tea with us, Miss Cunningham,” she said, reaching out a hand for Winifred’s.
“I am happy too that it is a perfect day so you can see the cottage and garden at their best. I am quite sure nerves are fraying for miles around here, with everyone fearing that the weather will break any day now and we will be rained upon for the fete. By some miracle it has never happened before, but the naysayers will warn that there has to be a first time for everything.”
She had been leading the way inside the house as she talked and was seating them in the cozy living room as Mr. Taylor came downstairs to join them, his hair damp from a washing.