Chapter Twenty-Three
His work kept Nicholas busy, for which fact he was thankful.
Usually, he did not give much thought to the passage of time, but four and a half months was indeed a long time.
He missed Winifred. He missed her cheerful demeanor, whether she was playing an energetic game with the children, or sitting patiently watching her deaf brother as he ran down slopes or chiseled away at a large stone for hours on end, or talking and laughing with Owen or Watley or Stephanie.
He missed her plain, no-nonsense appearance, absent of all intent to lure or look different than she naturally was.
He missed her conversation, whether serious or light and teasing, her very direct way of looking at him as she spoke.
He missed her essential beauty, her…Oh, he missed her.
He did not neglect his social obligations. There were not many through the summer, of course. Most people who were fortunate enough to own country homes or were on friendly terms with those who did were happy enough to leave behind the closer confines of London, with its smoke and grime and smells.
He dined a few times with General and Mrs. Haviland.
He had feared at first that it might be awkward, though he had told the general about his betrothal.
But if they were annoyed with him, they did not show it.
They greeted him as amiably as they always had.
And he was spared the possible embarrassment of having to spend time with Grace, even though they had agreed that they would remain friends.
She had gone to Gloucestershire almost immediately upon her return from Ravenswood to stay with a widowed aunt, who was only a few years older than she.
She had not remained there long, however.
The two women had embarked upon a walking tour of Wales.
“She is like a new person,” Mrs. Haviland commented. “It is as if she had suddenly woken from a long sleep. I beg your pardon. Is that offensive to you under the circumstances, Colonel Ware?”
“On the contrary, ma’am,” he said. “When it came time for us to decide whether to take the next logical step in our relationship and marry, we came to the surprising and quite mutual realization that it was not what we wanted. We were, and we remain, friends, but it would have been a mistake to try to make something else of it. I am delighted to hear of her transformation. I saw the beginnings of it, I believe, at Ravenswood itself, during the fete.”
“It is good of you to say so,” Mrs. Haviland said.
“And of course, we are both delighted by your betrothal to Miss Cunningham. Grace will be happy too when she reads my letter. She actually predicted it when we were on the way home from Ravenswood. Will you convey our best wishes to Miss Cunningham?”
Nicholas did so in the letter he wrote the following day.
It had been a bit rash of him, he thought sometimes, to promise that he would write every day, when every day he must be confronted with a blank piece of stationery and little idea of how he was to fill it or at least make his mark upon it.
However did Winifred manage to write at least one crowded page, often two, sometimes even three, every single day?
Women were just better about such things than men, he concluded.
They were brought up to it. While men went out for early morning rides and generally made themselves useless, women wrote letters.
He knew how she filled one paragraph each day, of course.
She described a dress each time, sometimes in what he suspected was deliberately tedious detail, describing not only the color and the style but also the fabric and the size and manner of the stitches and the number of frills and flounces and ribbons and bows that adorned it.
At other times—most times, in fact—he suspected there was no such dress as any of the fantastic monstrosities she described.
They included everything from brilliant, bilious mustard in color to rich, see-in-the-dark puce—was there even such a color?
—and everything from monstrous skirts or sleeves, or both, to skirts so narrow one had to shuffle along with mincing little steps and did not dare sit down. She was endlessly inventive.
He found himself looking forward to that paragraph each day and having a regular chuckle over it.
Sometimes he would give in to defeat. He would begin his own letter with bold handwriting and something like “My dearest love,” followed by a long blank space and ending with something bold along the lines of “Your ever-adoring servant, Nicholas Ware.” In tiny writing at the bottom, he might add “Nothing happened.”
He did not tell her about the house hunt.
He had decided he would not. His brain was addled enough as it was.
It might well explode if exposed to her comments and opinions and suggestions and vetoes.
After all, he told himself, if he already owned a house of his own, as he had thought of doing a number of times but had never got around to actually doing, she would expect to be taken there after their wedding, would she not?
He hired an agent to find a house for him and undertake all the tedious business of looking over likely prospects to see if they fulfilled the detailed list of essential criteria with which Nicholas had provided him.
The man first recommended a house in Richmond, which backed onto the River Thames and came complete with a long, beautifully landscaped garden and a jetty for a boat.
Nicholas went to see it and agreed it was gorgeous.
Winifred would love it. But probably not to live in, he decided a bit reluctantly.
The neighbors were exclusively upper-class people and frequently opened their homes to their peers for dinners and soirees and garden parties.
Winifred would not be intimidated by them—her uncle and aunt were the Duke and Duchess of Netherby, after all, and her grandmother was a marchioness.
But she would soon be bored by them. She would consider their lives frivolous.
She would consider them shallow. Boring.
She would never be able to have what she called a real conversation with any of them.
He rejected the Richmond house and settled instead for a small manor south of the river.
The agent referred to it as a cottage despite the fact that it boasted twelve bedchambers upstairs and comfortable servants’ quarters in the attic.
Nicholas went to see it, expecting that he might find it rather too pretentious for his needs.
But he knew instantly that it was the one.
It was on the edge of a small village and within relatively easy reach of London.
It was surrounded by a garden almost large enough to be called a park, a lovely expanse of lawns and trees and flower beds and sitting areas and kitchen gardens.
The village boasted a church, a school, and an inn with sizable assembly rooms used for balls and community feasts and school concerts and rehearsals and performances by a drama group and a book club and a knitting club and an occasional debating chamber, the landlord explained when Nicholas bought a pint of ale and settled at the bar for a chat.
A few other customers joined in, uninvited and unrebuked.
There were people of all social classes in the village, and on the whole they mingled happily with one another and with neighbors, mostly farmers, from the surrounding countryside.
It was a friendly place to live, the landlord added, swiping at the counter with a wet cloth. There was no better in all England.
Except perhaps Boscombe, Nicholas thought. This place sounded rather similar.
He purchased the house and then hired a husband-and-wife team to decorate and furnish it for warmth and comfort more than for pure elegance.
When they showed him some samplings of furniture and draperies and carpet and paint and wallpaper they hoped would suit him, he knew that they did indeed understand, almost as if they knew Winifred.
He gave them carte blanche to proceed, hoping he would not live to regret it.
He ought, of course, to have consulted Winifred—on both the house and its furnishings.
It would, in addition to anything else, have given him something to write about.
But it would be too cumbersome and too frustrating to check every detail with her.
And inviting her to London to see for herself was out of the question, though he longed to see her.
The Netherbys, who would have welcomed her as a guest, were not in London.
She would have had to stay at a hotel. And someone would have had to accompany her here—her mother or her father, who were busy people and had children at home in need of their care.
So he said nothing.
Every day he expected her to ask about the house search, but surprisingly she never did.
She had other things on her mind, of course.
There were wedding preparations in progress in Bath, and he guessed that the women at least were fully occupied with all the busy details.
He was surprised, however, when he learned that his mother was on the way there so she could more comfortably help Mrs. Cunningham with the plans.
But it was just like Mama, he decided. Everything was going to have to be perfect for her second son’s wedding, as it had been for Devlin’s and Ben’s.
Pippa’s had been a rushed affair, occasioned by the imminent death of Lucas’s grandfather, who had wanted to see his grandson and heir married before he passed.
That must have been a severe disappointment to Mama.