by Mary Balogh
“Mama,” he cried, “I cut my finger on tree bark, see? But Lady Aidan took me up to the nursery and cleaned it and bandaged it for me, and it really does not hurt very much at all except that it is harder to catch the ball. How do you do, sir? I went painting again this morning, but I can’t wait to get Mr. Upton to teach me to paint with oils. Oh, there is Jacques calling-I must go.”
And off he went without waiting for any response. Anne looked at Mr. Butler and found him smiling at her.
“When I was a boy,” he said, “I do not believe I had even that much time to spare for adults. I feel honored.”
“He is very happy here,” she told him. “I am afraid he is going to be dreadfully dejected when we return to Bath.”
“Except,” he said, “that he will have the challenge of Mr. Upton to tackle when he gets there.”
It felt good to have a friend to whom she could talk about anything, but from whom she could also withhold certain things about which she did not want to speak without provoking either undue curiosity or resentment. On one occasion, for example, when he had asked about her family again, she talked instead about Frances and how she had furnished a room especially for her or Susanna or Claudia at Barclay Court in Somersetshire and kept it for their visits whenever a school holiday coincided with her being at home. Mr. Butler had made no comment on the change of subject. He too had silent places where she would not tread. She knew that his artistic talent was a painful subject with him, and she did not quiz him on it again.
It came as something of a surprise when one day she worked out dates and realized that the final week of the holiday in Wales had already begun. She had expected her stay here to seem endless, yet now she could not believe it was already almost over. She felt rather sad for David’s sake, but she felt equally sorry for herself. Most of all she felt sad at the imminent end of a friendship that was only just blossoming but was giving her such pleasure.
And it would end. It was hardly likely that they would meet again or that they would exchange letters after she had gone. By this time next month, she thought, they would only half remember each other. By this time next year they would think of each other only fleetingly, if at all.
She thought he had forgotten about his offer to take her to see Ty Gwyn, the house and property he hoped to purchase from the Duke of Bewcastle. But he mentioned it again when there were only three days left before her departure. He had been at Glandwr for dinner, and they were sitting slightly apart from everyone else in the drawing room afterward, the two of them, as they had done on other occasions too. No one had ever remarked upon their partiality for each other’s company or made them feel either unsociable or self-conscious.
But then she supposed that she was unimportant enough that no one particularly noticed her anyway-though everyone had been unfailingly kind and amiable toward her. And Mr. Butler was only the steward. Why should anyone single them out for notice?
“Will you come there the day after tomorrow?” he asked. “Unfortunately, I need to be busy all day tomorrow, but the day after I will be free. I thought we could take a picnic tea over to Ty Gwyn, and at the same time I can see that the work I assigned after my last visit has been done.”
An excursion had been arranged for the day after tomorrow-they were all to go on a lengthy outing to Pembroke Castle. The older children were very excited at the prospect of climbing up onto the battlements and descending to the dungeons. Anne had been looking forward to going too. But she knew that her presence was not strictly necessary. Although all the adults gave special attention on occasion to their own children, all of them also parented all the children equally on most occasions with the result that David had a number of substitute fathers-and a number of substitute mothers too.
And it was not as if she had neglected him. Quite the contrary. Despite her frequent outings with Mr. Butler, she had actually spent far more time with David-or at least with the large group of adults and children that included him-than she ever did during the school term.
She really wanted to see Ty Gwyn. It was the place that Mr. Butler hoped would be his own one day. It was where he would perhaps live out the rest of his life.
She wanted to see it. She wanted to be able to picture him there when she remembered him.
She also wanted to spend one more afternoon with him before leaving. It would be the last one.
It was a rather depressing thought.
“I would love to come,” she said. “I will have a word with David to be sure that he does not mind my not going to Pembroke Castle with him, and I will ask Joshua if he minds watching David for me. But I do not believe either of them will mind.”
“I will have a gig outside the door here at one o’clock, then,” he said, “if I do not hear otherwise from you.”
A gig. It would be the first time they had ventured anywhere they could not reach on foot. She wondered if a groom would drive them. Three of them would be very crowded on the seat of a gig.
But she looked forward very much to the outing even though going would mean giving up seeing the castle. She even found it difficult to get to sleep after she went to bed-like a child with a promised treat, she thought, rather disgusted with herself. Though it was not all excitement that kept her awake.
It would be their last afternoon together.
She hoped the fine weather would hold for one more day.
The fine weather did hold.
When the carriages left for Pembroke Castle in the middle of the morning, the sun was beaming down from a clear blue sky. When Mr. Butler arrived on foot later and a gig appeared on the terrace from the direction of the stables at almost the same moment-Anne had been watching from the window of her bedchamber-there was still not a cloud in the sky.
She tied the ribbons of her straw bonnet beneath her chin and half ran down the stairs without waiting to be summoned. She felt like a girl again.
Mr. Butler was standing in the middle of the hall, looking up at her, a smile on his face. It was strange, she thought, how quickly she had become accustomed to his looks-to the empty right sleeve, the purple, nerveless right side of his face, the eye patch.
“It looks as if we are going to have a lovely afternoon for a drive,” he said.
There was a groom standing at the horse’s head, Anne saw when they stepped outside, but he pulled his forelock respectfully to them both and stayed where he was as Mr. Butler handed her up to the seat on the left side of the vehicle and then took the seat beside her. The groom handed him the ribbons and stepped back, and they were on their way.
Mr. Butler was going to drive them himself, then? She ought to have expected it. She knew he was up to most challenges-including riding a horse.
“You will be quite safe,” he assured her as if he had read her thoughts. “I have had a great deal of practice at doing this. It is amazing what can be done one-handed. I have even driven a team of horses on occasion, though admittedly that was somewhat hair-raising.”
His left hand, which she had noticed first for being long-fingered and artistic and then for being deft and skilled as it wielded a fork, was also very strong, as well as the arm that went with it, she realized as he turned the horse onto the driveway without any apparent effort and later, after they had stopped at his cottage for a servant to load a picnic basket onto the back of the gig, drove through the gates and across the bridge and made the sharp turn off the main road onto the narrower road through the village and beyond.
“Are you able to write with your left hand?” she asked him.
“I can produce something that looks like a cross between a spider’s web and the tracks of chicken feet,” he said. “But remarkably, it seems to be decipherable to other people. I am also now able to produce more than one three-letter word in a minute, though only if my tongue is tucked into my cheek at just the right angle.”
She laughed as he chuckled. It seemed strange now to remember that she had seen him at first as a tragic, broken figure of a man, and he had
admitted to loneliness. But he was certainly not a man sunk into self-pity or defeat. He was able to laugh at all sorts of absurdities, and even at himself, the sign of a man with considerable inner strength.
“Can you not hold a paintbrush in your left hand, then?” she asked.
She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. Although they had been deliberate and she really wanted to know if he had tried-if he had taken on that challenge as he had others and had simply been defeated by it-she also realized that she had crossed an invisible line they had set between them early in their acquaintance. There was no outer sign that his mood had changed, but there was a tense quality to the short silence that ensued that had not been there before.
“No,” he said after a while. “My brushes are always in my right hand, Miss Jewell.”
Present tense. She did not know what he meant. But she would not ask. She had already intruded too far.
They negotiated another sharp bend beyond the village, and the road became so narrow that the hedgerows brushed against the wheels on both sides.
“What if we were to meet another vehicle?” she asked.
“One of us would have to back up,” he said. “It would be more productive than sitting and glowering at each other. One becomes an expert at backing up in this part of the world.”
Green crops waved in the breeze beyond the hedgerows to their right. Sheep grazed on the more stony land to their left. And always in the distance there were the ever-present cliffs and the sea. And there was the warm salt air to breathe.
“You must be very proud of your son,” he said. “He is a lovely child.”
She looked at him in surprise and gratitude.
“Ralf and Alleyne and Freyja were telling me a few days ago how eager to please and to learn he is,” he explained, “and how ready to play with all the younger children. There is rather a crowd of them, is there not?”
“He is always a good boy,” she said. “The teachers and girls at the school are all fond of him. At first, when he was younger, I thought the school a wonderful environment for him. But he cannot stay there indefinitely. I have become more than ever aware of that this month. I dread the thought of letting Joshua find a boys’ school for him, though. Oh, Mr. Butler, it is very much harder to be a parent than I could possibly have expected.”
“Is it?” He looked across at her before turning the gig off the narrow road and onto a rutted path between two fields.
“I find myself wanting to mold him and control him,” she said, “because I know what is best for him and because I know what sort of person I wish him to be. I have tried, for example, to persuade him to think of painting merely as an interesting pastime. He is going to have to earn his living when he grows up. But I have been surprised to discover that he is a unique individual quite separate from myself and very different from me-and with a will of his own. Why should that be a shock? I have always known with my intellect that it is true of all people. But some lessons have to be learned with the heart too before we really understand them. It is so easy to be a parent before we have children of our own.”
He laughed softly. “You make me believe, Miss Jewell,” he said, “that perhaps it is fortunate I will never have children of my own.”
“Oh,” she said, turning sharply toward him, “please do not misunderstand me. David is the most precious being in my life.”
And she felt immediately guilty because she had been enjoying a day without him. She had scarcely spared him a thought, in fact. Was he enjoying the castle? Was he taking unnecessary risks on the stairs or battlements? Was Joshua keeping a careful enough eye on him? Was he behaving well?
Mr. Butler turned his head to smile at her.
Why would he never have children of his own? Because he intended never to marry? Because he could not? Had the torture included…
But her attention was suddenly distracted. He had drawn the gig to a halt, and Anne saw that ahead of them the land fell away into what looked like a large, shallow bowl. It was ringed about with trees, except here where the track gave way to a wider, graveled driveway beyond a wooden, five-bar gate with a rustic stile beside it and a footpath. Ahead of them wide grassy meadows stretched to either side of the driveway, woolly sheep grazing on them, some taking shelter from the sun beneath the shade of a few old oaks and elms.
There must be a ha-ha close to the bottom of the slope opposite, Anne thought. Above it she could see close-cropped lawns and flower beds and what looked like a rose arbor. But it was the house, also on the far slope, that drew most of her attention. It was of gray stone, and architecturally it was not particularly beautiful. It was three stories high and square and solid, with long windows on the bottom two floors and square windows at the top. The walls were more than half covered with ivy. It was framed by trees.
It was neither house nor mansion. It was small in comparison with Glandwr just a few miles away. Manor was the right word for it. The hollow in which house and park were nestled gave an impression of seclusion and intimacy if not quite of smallness.
The sea was on the other side of the road they had turned off, maybe a mile or two away.
Mr. Butler had made no move to get down to open the gate, Anne realized. He was looking at her.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I think,” she said, her eyes drinking in the house, the trees, the flower garden, the sheep-dotted meadow, the whole circle of the park, “you will be happy here, Mr. Butler. How could you not be?”
How could anyone not be happy here? Suddenly she was consumed by such envy and such a yearning that it seemed there was a definite physical pain about her heart.
“A retired naval captain and his wife were living here on a ten-year lease when I came to Glandwr,” he said. “When they left last year, I made very little effort to find new tenants. I believe it is the only instance of neglect I have been guilty of in my duties as Bewcastle’s steward.”
“Will he sell it to you?” she asked.
“He has not said no,” he told her. “But he has not said yes either. He will give me an answer before he leaves here, though.”
It struck her suddenly that he must be a very wealthy man if he was able to make an offer for such a property. There was a huge distance between them socially. It was a good thing she did not have designs on him.
But she was very glad they had become friends.
“Will you hold the ribbons while I open the gate?” he asked.
“Let me do it.” She did not wait for his answer but jumped out of the gig, opened the gate, and swung it back on its hinges. She stood on the bottom bar and rode part of the way, looking up as she did so to laugh at Mr. Butler in the gig. She was very aware suddenly of the rural beauty of her surroundings, the green grass, the blue sky, birds singing, insects whirring, a very slight breeze. She could smell vegetation and animals and the sea. She could feel the heat of the sun.
It was one of those vivid, blessed moments, she realized, that burn themselves into the memory and are there forever.
He was gazing back at her, unsmiling. It was impossible to know what he was thinking. Perhaps she had offended him by opening the gate herself. Perhaps he thought she believed him incapable of doing it for himself.
“I could not resist,” she said. “Will you wait a moment longer while I climb over the stile?”
“When the gate is open?” He grinned his lopsided smile at her.
“Stiles were made to be climbed over,” she said. “I have never been able to resist one.”
He gestured toward it, making her a mocking little half-bow from his seat as he did so.
But by the time she had climbed up the two stone steps and swung both legs over the wooden bar and sat on it in order to turn and smile down at him, he had got out of the gig and looped the ribbons loosely over the top bar of the gate, and was striding toward her in order to offer her his hand to help her descend.
“Now if I just had two arms,” he said, �
�I could play the complete gallant and lift you down.”
“But then,” she said, placing her right hand in his left and holding up her skirt with the other, “I would miss the chance of descending like a queen, Mr. Butler.”
She became a very undignified queen, though, when the bottom step wobbled precariously under her weight and she came rushing down to the ground and stopped only just in time to prevent herself from colliding headlong with him. She laughed and looked up into his face-only a few inches away from her own.
Deja vu struck hard, like a fist to her lower abdomen. It was like the scene up on the rocks between two beaches all over again.
His left eye looked very dark, very intense, his unsmiling mouth very beautiful. She could feel his breath against her face. She could feel his heat along the full length of her body. For one dizzying, mad moment she swayed a little closer to him. She half closed her eyes.
And then she pulled sharply away and laughed again, removing her hand from his as she did so.
“Thank you, sir,” she said lightly. “I would doubtless have come to grief if you had not been holding on to me. I suspect my pride and my dignity would have been hurt more than any other part of me, but pride and dignity must also be preserved.”
“I must have that step seen to,” he said.
They were seated side by side in the gig a few moments later and proceeding down into the shallow bowl that held the house and park of Ty Gwyn.
She had almost touched him again, Anne thought-not just his hand, but him. She had almost kissed him-and he had known it. He was seated rigidly beside her now, aware that she had shrunk from him. But he would have misunderstood the reason.
It was not him. Not really.
It was her.
She was terrified of physical intimacy.
But perhaps he was as relieved as she that she had turned away. She was not a virgin. She had been raped. She had a child. All of those facts might well make him feel a revulsion quite equal to anything she could feel about him.
