by Mary Balogh
“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 and Hallmere. And he laughed and chattered, quite at his ease with Kit, calling him Uncle Kit as though the two of them had been the best of friends for years.
If David had already had even some small experience at riding, Sydnam thought, he himself might have ridden with the boy and taught him some of the finer points of horsemanship as they went. The shared activity would have offered a chance for them to forge some sort of familial bond. But under the circumstances it had seemed more practical to leave the teaching to his brother, though Kit had looked inquiringly at him before proceeding with the lesson.
Instead Sydnam made friends with Sophia, who had been plucking daisy heads from the grass beyond the paddock and now patted Sydnam on the leg and handed him the bouquet. He stooped down on his haunches to thank her, but though she looked warily at his eye patch, she did not run away. Instead, she suddenly reached out one small finger to touch it and then chuckled.
“Funny, is it?” he said. “Is Uncle Syd funny?”
She chuckled again, a happy infant sound.
They spent the next half hour picking daisies and buttercups together.
When it came time for them all to return to the house and Kit would have picked her up, Sophia shook her soft curls quite firmly and lifted her arms to Sydnam. He gave her their flowers to hold and scooped her up on his arm, and Andrew trotted along beside them asking Sydnam what it had felt like to have his arm chopped off.
But David walked with Kit, still animated and chattering after his first riding lesson. And when they arrived back at the nursery and found Anne waiting for them there, looking flushed and lovely in one of her smartest new dresses, the boy rushed to her to tell her of his accomplishments, the name Uncle Kit prominent on his lips.
It was small consolation to Sydnam that Sophia patted his leg again in order to show him one of her dolls.
He had missed an opportunity to be the sort of father his stepson craved. Yet he could have done it. He could have taught David to mount without having to lift him bodily onto the horse’s back. But he had allowed himself to feel inferior to Kit and so had held back. He mentally kicked himself now that it was too late.
He could only urge patience on himself. Perhaps next time he would not miss such a chance.
His resolve was put to the test later that very day-and for a while it wavered again.
Anne had gone upstairs after dinner to tell David a story, as she always did at bedtime, and to tuck him into bed for the night. Sydnam hesitated for a while, having been aware on the evening of his wedding in Bath that the boy had resented his intrusion into the ritual, but then followed her up. His father was reading in the drawing room and his mother was engrossed in her embroidery. Lauren was also up in the nursery feeding Geoffrey, and Kit had gone with her.
Sydnam let himself quietly into David’s room after tapping on the open door and sat in a chair somewhat removed from the bed while Anne tol
d her story. He smiled when she broke off, as she had done in Bath, at a particularly suspenseful point in the narrative. He did not say anything this time, though.
“Mama!” the boy protested, as he had then.
“More tomorrow night,” she said, getting to her feet and bending over him to kiss him. “As always.”
Sydnam noticed that Kit had come to stand in the doorway.
“Mothers can be the cruelest of creatures, David,” he said with a wink. “They should be made to finish a story once they have started it. There ought to be a law. Are you going to come riding again tomorrow? Maybe beyond the paddock this time?”
“Yes, please, Uncle Kit,” David said. “But most of all I want to paint. He…my…Mr. Butler bought me oil paints and lots of other things in Bath, but I cannot use them because there is no one to show me how. Can you show me? Can Aunt Lauren? Please?”
He had sat up in bed and was gazing pleadingly at Kit.
Kit glanced at Sydnam-rather as he had done in the paddock earlier.
“I was never a painter, David,” he said. “Neither is Aunt Lauren-not in oils anyway. I cannot think of anyone close by who is. Except…” He glanced at Sydnam again and raised his eyebrows.
Sydnam gripped the arm of his chair with his left hand. He felt suddenly dizzy.
And then he could see that David, still sitting up in bed, had turned his attention to him too and was gazing imploringly at him.
“You can show me how, sir,” he said. “Will you? Please?”
“David-” Anne said rather sharply.
Sydnam had a sudden, sickening memory of an almost-identical moment in his own life. His parents had given him paints for Christmas when he was nine or ten, and he had wanted desperately to use them. But there was a houseful of relatives staying at Alvesley, and parties and other activities, all planned for the amusement of the children, had filled every moment of every day. He had been told to put away the paints until after everyone had left and their tutor had returned from his vacation. It had been the longest, dreariest Christmas of his childhood.
“Please, sir?” David said again. “It has been two whole days. And it is going to be forever until we get to Wales and my teacher.”
Sydnam licked dry lips.
It was ridiculous really. Ridiculous! He had dabbled in painting during his growing years and had enjoyed it. He had even had some skill at it. He had since lost his right arm and could no longer paint. It was no big thing. There were plenty of other things he could do. He could be a father to his stepson for one. But-
“David,” he said, “I was right-handed. I can no longer paint. I-”
“But you can tell me how,” the boy said. “You do not have to do it for me. Just tell me.”
But that was not the point at all. It was simply not the point.
“David,” Anne said firmly. “Can you not see-”
“I suppose I can do that,” Sydnam heard himself say as if his voice were coming from far away. “I can tell you how. You are good enough to pick up the skills without my having to hold your hand.”
“Sydnam-”
“You will, sir?” David leaned across the bed, all eager excitement. “Tomorrow? We will get out all my new things and I will paint?”
“Tomorrow morning after breakfast.” Sydnam smiled at him and got to his feet. “Lie down and go to sleep now or we will both incur the wrath of your mother.”
David plopped himself back on the pillow, both his cheeks suddenly flushed.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “is going to be the best day. I can hardly wait!”
Sydnam slipped out of the room ahead of Anne.
Kit had already disappeared.
It would not hurt him to give his stepson some pointers. This aversion he felt to painting-even to other people painting-was something he just had to get over. It was amounting to something like a sickness. He had felt actual nausea when he had smelled Morgan’s paints back at Glandwr-and when he had been buying David’s in Bath.
Anyway, he had committed himself now. He was going to do something with his stepson-because his marriage and his commitment to the boy were more important than his own particular sickness.
But for a moment he had to pause on the stairs. He felt dizzy.
Anne was sitting on a low chair in a large, light-filled, almost completely unfurnished room on the nursery floor that she guessed was the schoolroom whenever there were children in the house old enough to need one.
In the middle of the room David’s very new easel was set up. A small canvas rested on it, and David stood before it, his new palette in his left hand, a new brush in his right. On a table beside him was propped an oil painting of the sea, which Sydnam was using for instruction-he was standing behind David’s right shoulder.
The air was heavy with the strong smell of the oils.
Anne watched Sydnam more than she did David or his painting. He was abnormally pale. Last night he had been uncommunicative. He had not touched her after they went to bed, but had turned onto his side away from her and pretended to fall asleep fast. But he had not slept for a long time, just as she had not, though she had pretended just as diligently as he.
Did he believe what she had told him the night before-though he had not asked for and she had not offered details? Or did he still think himself ugly and untouchable?
She guessed that he had felt a failure during the afternoon because it was Kit who had given David his first riding lesson. And she knew that he had agreed to the painting lesson in order to redeem himself and be the father he was determined to be. She knew too that painting was something he did not even like to think about, let alone involve himself in.
But this was a challenge he had chosen to face-for the sake of her son. She fell a little deeper in love with him as she watched. How many men, even if they had married her, would have been prepared to do more than tolerate her illegitimate son?
“No, no,” she heard him say now. “You are still gliding the brush as if you were using watercolors. Try using your wrist more to produce the texture of those waves. Flick the brush.”
“I just cannot do it,” David said in exasperation after trying again. “Show me.”
Something happened then-or did not happen-that made Anne turn cold. How she knew she never afterward understood-but she did know that Sydnam had lifted his right hand to take the brush, only to discover that it was no longer there.
She covered her face with her hands and drew a few slow, silent breaths before looking again.
Sydnam had the brush in his left hand and was bending closer to the canvas. But the hand shook, and it was obvious that he could not perform the demonstration he had intended. He made a low, inarticulate sound of distress and then bent forward to take the end of the brush in his mouth while adjusting his hold on the brush so that he held it grasped in his fist. He made a few bold brushstrokes on the canvas and drew back.
“Ah!” David cried. “Now I understand. Now I can see. Those are waves and they are not flat. Let me try.”
He took the brush from Sydnam’s hand and made his own strokes on the canvas before looking up with triumph into Sydnam’s face.
“Yes,” Sydnam said, laying his hand on his shoulder. “Yes, David. Now you have it. Just look at the difference.”
“But it is all one color,” David said after returning his attention to the canvas. “Water is not all one color.”
“Exactly,” Sydnam said. “And you can do much more mixing and blending of colors and shades with oils than with watercolors, as you will soon discover. Let me show you.”
Anne watched them, her two men, their heads bent together, utterly absorbed in what they did, quite oblivious to her presence.
Was there to be some healing after all?
Was healing possible when grave damage had been done?
Was wholeness possible when one had been horribly maimed?
She spread a hand over her abdomen, where she sheltered the unborn member of their family.
The food on Sydnam’s plate tasted like straw.
He could not get the smell of the oils out of his nose or out of his head.
“Are Kit and Lauren going to accompany you and Anne to Lindsey Hall this afternoon, Sydnam?” his mother asked.
They ought to have called there yesterday. He had written to Bewcastle, of course, to inform him that he was taking a short leave of absence-to which the terms of his employment entitled him. But he had not explained the reason. Common good manners dictated that he call at Lindsey Hall with his new bride before Bewcastle heard from someone else that he was at Alvesley. They certainly ought to go today.
“Perhaps you would like to take my place in the carriage, Mama,” he said. “I feel a little indisposed. I will stay here.”
Anne looked at him sharply across the table.
“So will I,” she said. “We can go to Lindsey Hall some other time.”
It was impossible to argue with her when they were not alone together. But all he wanted was to be left literally alone.
“We will take the children riding, then, Lauren, will we?” Kit suggested. “I daresay David will come too, with your permission, Anne.”
“Oh, certainly,” she said. “He is looking forward to it.”
Not long afterward Sydnam and Anne were upstairs in their rooms together.
“I need some air,” he said, “and some solitude. I am going outside to walk. Will you stay here or do something with my mother?”
“I want to come with you,” she said.
“I will not be good company,” he told her. “I feel indisposed.”
“I know,” she said.
And the trouble was that he thought she probably did.
It struck him suddenly that loneliness was not perhaps the least desirable state in the world. Was marriage going to feel too crowded? It was an alarming and unwelcome thought. He had always longed for a wife, for a life’s companion. But foolishly he had thought of marriage as a happily-ever-after, as a destination rather than a new fork in the path through life.
