Chapter Thirteen #2
Was this it? Winifred wondered. Was it to be what she had hoped for when she came here?
More recently, though, she had lost hope and convinced herself she did not want any closer relationship with him than friendship.
Was he going to ask her to join him in bringing his plans to life? Was he going to ask her to marry him?
Were all her dreams about to be restored?
She could not imagine a happier outcome.
If she blocked the memory of this afternoon, that was.
Oh, she was so mixed up, so very unsure of what she wanted.
Probably what she needed to do was to go home to Bath next Monday as planned and get back to her familiar life there.
She could be happy at home, as she had always been with Mama and Papa and her brothers and sisters and all the people who came to their house to pursue their own dreams. It was a happiness that had held true since she was nine years old.
But she was twenty-one now. Things had changed, though she did not know quite what she meant by things.
Anyway, perhaps Owen intended nothing more than a walk and a continuation of their conversation. She hoped that was all. For now, anyway. Perhaps after she had had time to think in the familiarity of her home surroundings and got her head straight on her shoulders again…
Well, who knew what would happen after? One could be sure only of the present.
—
It was an enormous relief to Nicholas to watch Owen and Miss Cunningham at dinner—seated side by side and talking almost exclusively to each other.
That was not normally acceptable in polite circles.
One was expected to converse equally with one’s dinner companions on both sides.
However, this was more a family gathering than a formal occasion, and he was glad to see them wrapped up in each other, talking with bright animation, laughing together, their heads almost touching.
Neither of them ate a great deal. They were more interested in talking.
More interested in each other, by the look of it.
And then, at the end of dinner, Owen told Devlin that they were going to walk along the riverbank—in the opposite direction from the cottage, Nicholas imagined.
And though he held his breath in the hope that Owen would not ruin his sense of relief by inviting someone else to join them, it did not happen.
It was his sincere hope that all was well between those two, that he had not done irreparable harm this afternoon by making a full outing of his ride with Miss Cunningham and holding her hand and actually kissing her on the island. He still felt hot under the collar when he remembered that.
In the meantime, he was taking care of business on his own account, though business was probably an unfortunate word to choose.
He sat beside Grace at dinner and addressed most of his conversation to her.
It did him good to be reminded of how quietly dignified, even charming, she was.
When he did not try to look deeper, that was.
She seemed to have very much enjoyed her visit to Cartref this morning.
She told him that Lady Rhys had talked at tea about her former home in Wales and all the family she still had there.
She and Sir Ifor spent several weeks of each summer with them, and it was always good to discover that they still had not forgotten how to speak Welsh, even though their relatives insisted that they had very English accents.
“I believe that part of Wales would be a lovely place to visit,” Grace said to Nicholas. “It is by the sea and close to long golden beaches.”
Nicholas found himself almost promising to take her there for their honeymoon. He caught himself in time. There needed to be a proposal and a wedding before there could be any honeymoon.
“They are a people full of music and warm, spontaneous emotion,” he said.
He thought that for a moment she looked almost wistful.
“Would you allow me to order a tea tray sent up to the glass room on the west tower?” he asked her. “It is a lovely place to spend an evening like this and watch the sunset.”
She hesitated. “Will you invite Mama and Papa too?” she asked him.
“No,” he said firmly. “But I will certainly inform them that we are going up there. It is in many ways a very public place, you know. One can see for miles in all directions through the glass, but one can also be seen by anyone who cares to look up. Have you been up there?”
“No,” she said. “I have been to the portrait gallery, but we did not go up to the turret room. Mama was too weary.”
“Will you come now?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”
General and Mrs. Haviland, when applied to for permission, looked only too happy to give their consent.
Grace did not immediately sit down when they got to the tower.
She turned slowly all about, gazing at the views.
Nicholas could see Miss Cunningham and Owen on the road down to the bridge, about to turn right onto the river path, which would take them past the bottom of the meadow and under the overhanging trees beyond.
They would have some privacy there. They were obviously talking, their faces turned toward each other, though she did not have her arm through his.
She was holding a shawl in place about her shoulders, and Owen had his hands clasped behind his back.
Nicholas wondered if Owen had made up his mind. Did he intend it to be a romantic tryst?
But this was not the time to be thinking of his brother. Or, more important, of Winifred Cunningham.
“It is lovely here,” Grace said. “How wonderful it must have been to grow up here at Ravenswood.”
“Indeed it was,” he said. “And it is lovely to be able to come back here whenever I wish. Devlin and Gwyneth are very sociable. They are never happier than when they have guests here, whether family or friends. Even family and friends with children. And dogs.”
It struck him that she had had a very different upbringing from his.
General Haviland as a man of means owned a large home on one of the fashionable squares in London.
Mrs. Haviland and her daughter would always have remained there in spacious luxury when he had distant postings.
When they were not so distant, they would have joined him and seen a bit of the world. But there was no home in the country.
“They have been very kind,” she said.
A servant arrived carrying a tray with tea for two and a plate of fruitcake sliced thin. He poured the tea for them and withdrew quietly. Grace sat down on one of the sofas, and Nicholas sat beside her. He was relieved to discover that he felt a wave of affection for her.
“You have been avoiding me,” he said.
Her face visibly paled as she stared back at him, her eyes wide. “That is quite untrue,” she said. “It is unfair of you to say such a thing, Colonel Ware. I—”
“Yes, it is,” he said, instantly contrite. “You have been unfailingly courteous to everyone, including me. What I meant was that you have avoided being alone with me. On the day we went driving over the crest of the hills, for example.”
“Just as I have avoided being alone with any gentleman here,” she said. “Even those who are married. I have been raised always to behave with strict propriety even while remaining courteous to all.”
“And you do it superbly well,” he said. “However, we both know why you have been invited here.”
The color had not returned to her cheeks. “Papa is your commanding officer,” she said. “You have become friends. Lord Stratton has been kind enough to invite him here for a few weeks of the summer with his family.”
Her cheeks flooded with color then and she turned her face away and looked out toward the lake.
“I do beg your pardon,” he said. “We have enjoyed an easy friendship for some time, Grace, you and I. I have been a frequent guest in your home. I have been invited to join a number of your family outings—to the theater, to Kew, to private soirees and concerts. You have driven in Hyde Park with me. You have been unfailingly charming and amiable. But it has occurred to me since you came here how little I know you.”
“What more do you need or want to know?” she asked. She picked up her cup with a steady hand and drank from it.
“Tell me about your betrothals,” he said. “Or is the subject too personal? Still painful, perhaps? Did you love them both? You were very young at the time, I understand. Do you still grieve?”
He really ought not to have asked. The questions were indeed too personal and intrusive.
But he needed to know. He needed to know her.
Had those betrothals been the result of duty, pressed upon her by her parents at the appropriate time, when she was still in her late teens and very early twenties?
Or had they been personal choices? Had the deaths of the two men been merely painful?
Or had they been heartbreakers, sending her to hide deep inside herself behind the facade of the perfect lady? He needed to know.
She opened her mouth as though to speak and then closed it again. She sat and thought for a while. He had offended her, he thought. Then she drew a deep, not quite steady breath.
“Oh, I was a foolish girl,” she blurted.
“Giddy. I believed in happily-ever-after even while the men with whom I mingled lived the most unsafe existences possible. They were all military men at a time of warfare. I fell deeply in love with both of them, Colonel Ware. Separately, of course. I fell in love with the second two years after losing the first. Each time my heart was broken irrevocably—or so I thought.”
She stopped speaking and swallowed awkwardly. “I believe I was in love with the idea of being in love,” she said. She sounded unusually bitter, and he knew the admission had cost her dearly.
“But eventually you recovered from your grief?” he asked after a few silent moments.
“I moved onward with my life,” she said.
Which was not necessarily the same thing. He watched as she almost visibly dragged her usual dignity about herself again. She finished her tea and set her cup down quietly on the saucer. He drank his own, though by now it was merely tepid, the way he most hated drinking tea.
“I am no longer that girl,” she said. “I learned my lesson and am far happier for it.”
He felt chilled. She was telling him, or so it seemed to Nicholas, that she was no longer foolish enough to believe in romantic love or any display of feeling—passion anyway.
And it struck him that she was not happy.
How could she be when she had amputated that part of herself that could bring joy and all the other array of emotions to her own life and to the lives of those around her?
Loss, heartbreak. She had insulated herself against them all.
“You are ready again for marriage?” he asked.
She turned her face sharply away again. For a while she did not say anything.
“Mama and Papa will not live forever,” she said.
She did not elaborate. He did not know if General Haviland would leave everything to her or if there was a male relative somewhere who would take precedence over her.
He had not yet had that conversation with her father.
But clearly she felt the insecurity of a future in which she might be alone.
It was an understandable reason for choosing to marry.
But did he want such a bride?
He had no choice now, though. Could he make her feel again? Trust love again?
“But do you wish to marry?” he asked her.
An unfair question. How could she answer it honestly when he was the man who had been chosen for her, the man she had tacitly accepted when she came here?
Winifred Cunningham would answer such a question honestly, but the two women were as different from each other as night and day.
“Wishes are such pointless things,” she said. “Magic wands, fairy godmothers—they are for children, Colonel Ware. I am not a child. I am close to thirty years old.”
She had neatly sidestepped the question. He had not used the word wish in the sense she described. But he would not press the issue. She had effectively answered him by refusing to answer.
She was not in love with him, or anyone else for that matter.
She did not wish to marry him. But she would do so because it was the practical, sensible thing to do.
She would not do it cynically, however. He knew that much about her.
She would be a good wife, even a perfect wife.
And she would be a good mother, though he guessed she would not raise her children to be free and spontaneous as the Cunninghams did. Or as Devlin and Gwyneth did.
She poured them a second cup of tea before sitting back on the sofa and looking out calmly over the lawn and meadow and across the river and village to the patchwork of open fields beyond.
“I hope this lovely weather will hold for Saturday and the fete,” she said. “There will be many disappointed people if it rains.”
“Strange as it may seem, given the unpredictability of the British climate,” he said, “it never seems to rain on the day of the fete. I daresay there will be many indignant people if this year should prove to be the exception. There are always alternative plans, of course, but one always hopes they will not have to be implemented.”
Their discussion was at an end, it seemed. She wanted no more of it.
The daylight was gradually turning to dusk. There were the beginnings of sunset in the west, with pale pinks and lemons lighting the sky. The colors would multiply and become more intense and fiery within the next half hour or so, and the sky a darker blue and star-studded. The hour for romance.
Nicholas found himself wondering if Owen and Winifred Cunningham were finding romance at the sight of the sunset both on the horizon and reflected in the water of the river.
For one unguarded moment he felt the ache of envy.