by Mary Balogh
“Children do need other children,” he said. “They also need a father figure, especially perhaps if they are boys. But most of all, Miss Jewell, they need a mother. I daresay you did the right thing in coming here with him.”
“Oh.” She drew unexpected comfort from his words. “That is very obliging of you.”
“I hope,” he said, “Bewcastle has not intimidated you. But if he has, you may be consoled to know that he intimidates almost everyone. He was removed abruptly from a wild childhood when his father knew he was dying, and he was carefully, even ruthlessly trained to take over all the vast responsibilities of the dukedom, which he inherited when he was only seventeen or eighteen. He learned his lessons consummately well-too well, some would say. But he is not unfeeling. He has been remarkably good to me.”
“I met him for the first time this evening,” Anne told him. “He was very gracious, though I must confess I was ready to sink through the floor with fear.”
They both laughed again.
“The duchess is exceedingly amiable,” she said.
“According to Lauren, my sister-in-law,” he told her, “it was a love match. It was the sensation of last year. No one would have predicted that Bewcastle would marry for love. But perhaps he did.”
The tea tray was being brought in, and two of the card games were coming to an end.
“I must be going home,” Mr. Butler said. “I am pleased to have made your acquaintance, Miss Jewell.”
She set both hands on the arms of her chair and got to her feet. She noticed that he got up a little more slowly from his low chair, and it occurred to her that being without one arm and one eye must shift the natural balance of the body that she took so very much for granted. How long had it taken him to adjust to the change? Had he ever adjusted completely?
“I shall go and convey my thanks to the duchess,” he said, holding out his hand to her. “Good night.”
“Good night, Mr. Butler.”
She held out her own hand and he shook it before releasing it and turning away.
Anne was left biting her lip. She should, of course, have given him her left hand as she remembered the duchess had done earlier. Their handshake had been horribly awkward-as if they had been holding hands and swinging them. It had felt almost intimate. Embarrassingly so.
He was bowing to the Duchess of Bewcastle, who smiled warmly at him and set one hand on his arm while she leaned a little toward him to say something. Lord Rannulf came up behind him and slapped a hand on his right shoulder. The two men left the room together.
Where did he live? Anne wondered.
Would she see him again?
But it would not matter too much if she did. She had got past the awkwardness of what had happened last night. She was vastly relieved about that. It would be easier to meet him next time.
But how tragic for him to have lost a limb and an eye and to have had his looks so marred.
Was he lonely? she wondered.
Did he have friends?
Outcasts were frequently both lonely and friendless. Her mind touched upon her years in the Cornish village of Lydmere, living on the very fringes of local society.
She had never ceased to give thanks for the fact that she finally had found friends at the school in Bath and that three of those friends-Claudia herself, Susanna, and Frances-had come to be as close as sisters to her. It was so much more than she had ever expected-or felt she deserved-after those long, lean years.
She hoped Mr. Butler had some close friends.
“Come and have tea, Anne,” Joshua said, appearing suddenly at her side. “I hope you are enjoying your stay here.”
“Oh.” She smiled at him. “I am, yes, thank you, Joshua.”
But most of all, Miss Jewell, they need a mother. I daresay you did the right thing in coming here with him.
The remembered words that Mr. Butler had spoken warmed and comforted her. She had done the right thing. David had been animated and happy all day long with the other children. But he had hugged her when she went to say good night to him before dressing for dinner.
“Thank you, Mama,” he had said, “for bringing me here. I am so glad we came.”
We, not I.
She would suffer the discomfort and embarrassment of the month here only to see David happy-for though he was well loved at the school by staff and girls alike, he had no close friends.
And no father.
Sydnam was busy for most of the next day. It was never hard to find things to do. But now, in addition to his usual routine, there was Bewcastle to accompany on a morning inspection of the home farm and calls at a few of the tenant farms. The duke might spend very little time on his Welsh estate, but he knew all there was to know about it, since he conscientiously studied each monthly report that Sydnam sent him. And whenever he did visit, he spent only a little time poring over the books and a great deal of time riding and tramping about the land observing and talking with the people.
But Bewcastle was now also a husband, and it intrigued Sydnam to find that he returned home at noon because the duchess had arranged a picnic on the beach for everyone during the afternoon. The old Bewcastle would not have dreamed of participating in such frolics.
The Duchess of Bewcastle seemed like a very ordinary person to Sydnam. She was pretty without being beautiful, trim and smart without being elegant, courteous and amiable without being overrefined or in any way domineering. She was vivacious and filled with laughter. And she was the daughter of a country schoolmaster. She was, in fact, the very antithesis of the woman one would have expected Wulfric to choose for a bride-which fact left Sydnam wondering about the strange power she seemed to wield over him. Good Lord, he had even noticed Bewcastle smiling at her once last evening.
She made Sydnam feel lonely. Not that he fancied her himself. But it must be wonderful beyond belief, he thought, to have someone to go home to after work, someone for whom to cut the workday short on occasion, even for something as seemingly unimportant as a picnic on the beach. It must be wonderful to have someone to draw one’s smiles.
And there was a baby in Bewcastle’s nursery.
He avoided the beach and the cliff top above it and the lawns leading to it all afternoon. He was not, after all, a member of the house party, and besides, he did not want to frighten any of the children. He kept himself busy on the home farm, being reluctant to spend a sunny, warm day indoors when it so often rained along the coast of South Wales.
Late in the afternoon, though, when he was riding back to the cottage, he could see that a noisy game of cricket was in progress on the lawn before the main house and that there appeared to be a vast number of people of all sizes involved. The picnic on the beach was obviously over.
It would be safe to go there himself.
He loved the beach. He loved the cliff tops too, but the perspective was different. From the cliff top one was aware of the wildness of nature, the potential cruelty of it, the panoramic beauty of it, with the land above and the sea stretched beneath and spreading to a far horizon, beyond which lay the coast of Cornwall and beyond that the coast of France and the Atlantic Ocean.
But on the beach he was aware only of the golden sands stretching in a great arc before him and behind him and to either side of him, land in its most elemental form, land worn away by the power of the ocean. And there too he was aware of the vastness and power of the deep, of the great, elemental mystery of this origin of all life.
It was on the beach that he could feel most strongly the paintbrush clasped in his right hand and see the vision that would never be captured on any real canvas. It was on the beach that sometimes the vision was enough.
He was halfway down the steep but quite wide path that led along a fault line from the top of the cliffs to the beach when he realized that not everyone had returned to the house. Someone remained. She was walking along the shiny wet sand over which the ebb tide had just receded, parallel to the water, her skirt caught up in one hand while the other
held what must be her shoes.
He sighed aloud and almost turned back. He felt unreasonably resentful. He had come to think of this park and this beach as his own, he realized. But they were not his. They were Bewcastle’s, and Miss Jewell was Bewcastle’s guest here.
It was Miss Jewell down there on the sands.
There was room for both of them, he supposed. The beach was vast enough, and the tide was going out and making it larger by the minute.
He continued his descent.
She had a son. Yet she was Miss Jewell. She taught at a girls’ school and had her son there with her. The Marquess of Hallmere and Freyja knew her and had invited her here. No, correction-Hallmere had wanted to bring her son here, and then Freyja had invited the mother to come too.
It seemed strange to him that either one of them would want her here, since she had not mentioned any connection with Hallmere that would explain his interest in her son. It seemed stranger that Bewcastle would countenance such an intrusion into his family circle-an unwed woman with a bastard son. And she herself had not expected to be received as a guest but presumably as a servant. Intrigued as he was, though, he recognized that her presence here at Glandwr was none of his business.
He wished, even so, that Freyja had not invited her. He wished she were not here at Glandwr. He had been pleasantly surprised when she apologized to him last evening. He had found her company congenial during their short conversation. But he had dreamed about her again last night. She had been the one standing on the promontory this time, and he was the one on the path. She had been wearing something loose and diaphanous that blew against her shapely form in the breeze, and her long honey-colored hair had been loose and blowing back from her head. But when he had approached her this time and reached out to touch her, she had looked suddenly horrified and had turned to run-right off the edge of the cliff while he tried to grab her with an arm that was not there. But somehow in the dream he had become the faller. He had woken up with a jolt just before he landed on the rocks below the cliff.
He had no wish to be dreaming such idiotic dreams. He had enough problems with the usual nightmares.
He reached the bottom of the path, clambered over the loose rocks and pebbles at the base of the cliff, and then stood on the sand looking at Miss Jewell as she walked, unaware of his presence. She had lifted her face to the breeze and was moving her head slowly from side to side. He could see now that she held her bonnet as well as her shoes in one of her hands.
It was strange how he could see her differently now than just twenty-four hours ago. Then he had thought of her as a superbly beautiful woman who could not possibly have known troubles in her life and must therefore be without either depth of character or compassion. Without knowing anything about her except that she had fled from him that first evening, he had disliked her.
But last evening she had deliberately sought him out to beg his pardon. And then she had mentioned her child and her feeling of intimidation as Bewcastle’s guest. Her beauty, he had realized, did not give her an immunity to feelings of insecurity. But then he supposed that unwed mothers did not have easy lives. In her own way she had quite possibly gone through hell and back just as he had, the only real difference being that his hell was visible to the beholder whereas hers was not.
He moved, intending to turn and walk in the opposite direction from the one she took. But something must have caught at the edge of her vision, and she turned her head to look at him and then stopped walking.
It would have been churlish to make off in another direction. And of course, he did not really want to even though he did not wish to walk with her either. He made his way reluctantly across the beach toward her.
She was wearing a pale blue high-waisted dress, whose hem she held above her ankles on one side. Her hair was dressed more simply than it had been last evening. Somehow she looked more beautiful. She looked quite achingly lovely, in fact. She looked strangely as if this were her proper milieu, as if she belonged here.
“Mr. Butler,” she said as soon as he was within earshot. “Everyone went back to the house quite awhile ago. I stayed to enjoy the quiet after all the noise and turmoil.”
“I am sorry to have disturbed you, then,” he said.
“Oh, you need not be,” she said. “I daresay I am disturbing you.”
“Did everyone enjoy the picnic?” he asked her, stopping at the edge of the wet sand a short distance from her.
“I believe so.” For a moment she looked bleak, but then she smiled and her eyes sparkled with such merriment that he was suddenly dazzled by her. “The duchess went paddling in the waves with a few of the children, but somehow she lost her balance and fell right in. And then the duke waded out to rescue her, Hessian boots and all, and got himself almost as wet as she. The other adults thought it all a huge joke, and the children screeched with glee. The duchess was laughing helplessly too even though her teeth were chattering. It was all quite extraordinary.”
“That would have been something to behold,” he said. “Bewcastle wading into the sea with his boots on. Did he laugh too?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “And yet there was a certain gleam in his eyes that might possibly have been inner laughter.”
They grinned merrily at each other. To add to all her other perfections, she had white, even teeth.
“I should go back to the house,” she said, her smile fading, “and leave you here in peace.”
It was what he wanted, surely. It was what he had come in search of. He certainly had not come here looking for her. And yet…
“Shall we stroll together for a while?” he suggested.
He realized suddenly what it was he had most admired about her last evening-and she was doing it again today. She was looking directly into his face. Most people, he had observed, either did not look quite at him at all or else focused their eyes on his left ear or his left shoulder. With most people he felt the urge to turn his head slightly to the side so that they would not have to be repulsed quite so badly. He did not feel that urge with her, though she had run from him at first.
She might be repulsed by him, he thought-and how could she not be?-but she was displaying unusual courtesy in her dealings with him. He was grateful to her.
“Yes.” Her gaze dropped to his top boots and she smiled again. “Shall I come onto the dry sand?”
But he walked deliberately onto the wet sand and fell into step beside her.
They strolled in silence for a while. He watched the sun sparkle off the water and felt the light breeze against his left cheek. He breathed in the salt warmth of the air and had the feeling that had assaulted him more and more of late-the feeling of home. He had come here to this particular corner of Wales five years ago because Kit’s return home from the wars and marriage to Lauren had made it impossible for him to remain at Alvesley, a mere younger son clinging to his family because he was too broken to step out into the world on his own account. He had come here as Bewcastle’s steward and had concentrated all his energies upon doing the job twice as well as a two-armed man might have done it. He had felt like an alien, though. And he had been treated for some time as something of an outcast. He had known that people found it hard to be in company with him, to look at him.
But he had persevered. And sometime during the past year or two he had come to understand that a force beyond himself had had a hand in bringing him here-in bringing him home. Fate, perhaps.
He had not yet broached the subject of Ty Gwyn with Bewcastle. But he would. He must. He needed his own home here.
His awareness of the woman beside him was almost a pleasant thing. She had not been forced to walk beside him. She might easily have said no.
“Do you ever feel lonely?” she asked him suddenly and abruptly. And then, as he turned his head to look down at her in some surprise, she looked at him in apparent dismay. “I am so sorry. Sometimes I think aloud.”
Because he was maimed and ugly and lived in what she must see as a remote corner
of civilization? His first reaction was anger. She really was no different from anyone else after all. Why had he imagined that perhaps she was?
“Do you?” He threw the question back at her.
She looked away from him again. She had dropped the hem of her dress, he noticed. She held her shoes and her bonnet with both hands behind her back.
“I live at a girls’ school,” she said. “I scarcely have a minute to myself. I have my son to fill every spare moment while he is awake. And I have dear friends among the teachers, particularly Miss Martin herself and Susanna Osbourne, who is also resident at the school. I correspond frequently with another friend who used to teach there. She is now the Countess of Edgecombe. How could I be lonely?”
“But are you?” he asked her.
He knew suddenly that she was, that she had asked her question, not out of morbid curiosity, but out of her own loneliness. Perhaps she had recognized in him a kindred spirit. And perhaps he had recognized the same in her. He knew she was lonely, incredible as it seemed. How could such a beautiful woman be lonely? But she was an unwed mother.
“I am not even sure what loneliness is,” she said. “If it is not literally being solitary, is it the fear of solitude, of being alone with oneself? I feel no such fear. I like being alone.”
“What do you fear, then?” he asked her.
She glanced briefly at him and smiled, a fragile expression that spoke for itself even before she found words.
“Never finding myself again,” she said after a minute or two of silence, during which he thought that perhaps she would not answer at all.
“Have you lost yourself, then?” he asked softly.
“I am not sure,” she said. “I have tried to be the best mother I can possibly be. I have tried somehow to be both mother and father to David. If he grows up to be happy and productive, I will be happy too. But what will I discover about myself when he leaves me as he inevitably must, first to go to school and then to live his own adult life? Will I discover an empty black hole that is seventeen or eighteen years wide and deep? And what on earth am I talking about? I have never said these things to anyone else. I have not even allowed myself to think them.”