by Mary Balogh
She remembered her mother’s happy tears-and Sarah’s.
She remembered the cousins of Sydnam’s who had been located in time and brought to Bath and were introduced to Anne-though he had to remind her of all their names the next day.
She remembered that for the first chaotic minutes children dashed noisily about getting under everyone’s feet until someone arranged to have them all shooed into the ballroom. Anne suspected it might have been the Duke of Bewcastle-he had probably raised an eyebrow or perhaps even his quizzing glass in the right direction.
And she remembered Sydnam’s bright and happy look, his laughter-and of course the impromptu speech of thanks he gave from both of them for such an unexpected gathering.
“You may all expect,” he said to much laughter, “that Anne and I will put our heads together over the winter when there is nothing else to do and devise a suitable revenge.”
But there was one part of the reception that was not at all jumbled in with all the other memories.
Music had been wafting from the ballroom all through the tea-or the breakfast, if one wished to humor the duchess. No one seemed to have been paying it much attention. But Joshua, seated close by, must have noticed.
“It was just here that we waltzed for the first time, Freyja,” he said. “Do you remember?”
“How could I forget?” she said. “It was while we waltzed that you begged me to enter into a fake betrothal with you, and before we knew it we were in a marriage together-but not a fake one at all.”
They both laughed.
“And it was here we danced together, Frances,” the Earl of Edgecombe said, “though it was not quite the first time, if you recall.”
“The first time,” Frances said, “was in a cold, dark, empty ballroom with no music.”
“It was heavenly,” the earl said with a grin.
“It would be a shame,” Kit said, “to have an orchestra and the use of one of the most famous ballrooms in the country and not dance. I shall instruct the orchestra to play a waltz. But we must remember that this is a wedding celebration. The bride must dance first. Will you waltz with me, Anne?”
But he was looking, Anne noticed, at Sydnam.
Sydnam stood up.
“Thank you, Kit,” he said firmly, “but if it is not the custom for the bridegroom to be first to dance with his bride, then it ought to be. Anne, will you waltz with me?”
For the merest moment she felt alarm. Everyone had hushed and was listening. They all would doubtless come and watch. She had not done a great deal of dancing herself, except at school, but Sydnam-
But Sydnam could do anything in the world he set his mind to-except perhaps clap his hands.
She smiled at him.
“Yes, I will,” she said.
She did not think it was her imagination that the guests gathered around them let out a sort of collective sigh.
She set her hand on Sydnam’s offered sleeve and he led her into the ballroom. Almost everyone, it seemed to her, followed them and arranged themselves about the perimeter of the room while Kit spoke to the orchestra leader. The children were drawn back too, though most of them ran off into the tearoom to play.
And they waltzed together, Anne and Sydnam, three weeks after their wedding while their wedding guests looked on.
He took her right hand in his left, and she set her left hand on his shoulder. When the music began, they moved rather slowly and rather awkwardly until he smiled at her, drew her hand to rest against his heart, and so invited her to slide her other hand up behind his neck and thus stand closer to him.
After that they moved as one and twirled about to the music until other couples gradually joined them on the floor-Joshua with Lady Hallmere, Kit with Lauren, Frances with Lord Edgecombe, the duchess with the Duke of Bewcastle, the other Bedwyns with their spouses, Sarah with Henry, Susanna with Viscount Whitleaf, and Susan with Matthew.
“Happy?” Sydnam asked against Anne’s ear.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Yes, I am. Yes, I am. Are you?”
“More than I can say,” he said.
And they smiled at each other, their faces only inches apart.
No, Anne had no difficulty at all in remembering that part of their wedding reception.
She would remember it for the rest of her life.
Anne and Sydnam arrived home at Ty Gwyn with David on a crisp afternoon in November. But, cold as it was, the sun was shining and Sydnam let the window down impulsively when his coachman stopped to open the gate into the park and informed him that he could continue on alone to the stable and coach house.
“We will walk the rest of the way,” he said.
And so they stood, the three of them, a few minutes later, watching the carriage drive down into the slight bowl of the park before climbing up the other side.
“Well, David,” Sydnam said, setting his hand on the boy’s shoulder, “this is Ty Gwyn. This is home. What do you think?”
“Do those sheep belong here?” David asked. “May I go closer to them?”
“You may indeed,” Sydnam said. “You may even try to catch one if you wish. But I warn you that they are quite elusive.”
The boy ran off into the meadow with whoops of delight after hours of being cooped up inside the carriage. The sheep, forewarned, moved out of his path.
Sydnam turned to smile at his wife.
“Well, Anne,” he said.
“Well.” She was staring off at the house in the distance. But then she turned her eyes on him. “I am going to have to go over the stile, you know. I have to redeem myself. I was horribly clumsy the last time.”
“I did have the bottom step seen to,” he said.
He watched as she climbed then sat on the top bar and swung her legs over to the other side, warmly clad in her russet pelisse, her cheeks already rosy from the cold, a few strands of honey-colored hair pulled loose from her neatly pinned hair and wafting in the breeze, her eyes bright and laughing. His beautiful Anne.
He strode toward her.
“Allow me, ma’am,” he said, offering his hand.
“Thank you, sir.” She set her hand in his and descended to the ground. “You see? Like a queen.”
They stood face-to-face, their hands still joined, and gazed deeply at each other for several moments while her smile faded.
“Sydnam,” she said, “I know you did not want any of this-”
“Do you?” he said.
“You were contented as you were,” she said, “and I was not the sort of woman you would have chosen to marry.”
“Were you not?” he said. “And was I the sort of man you would have chosen to marry?”
“We were lonely,” she said, “and we came here on a lovely day and-”
“It was a lovely day,” he said.
She tipped her head to one side and frowned slightly.
“Why will you not let me finish anything I am trying to say?” she asked.
“Because,” he said, “you are still not sure I do not regret our marriage deep down, are you? And I suppose I am still not sure you do not. I suppose I ought to have told you something long ago. But at first I did not want you to pity me or feel obligated to me, and after that I convinced myself that the words were not necessary. Men do tend to do that, you know, Anne. We do not find it easy to spill our feelings in words. But I do love you. I always have, I think. And I know I always will.”
“Sydnam.” Tears sprang to her eyes. The tip of her nose was growing rosy, he noticed. “Oh, Sydnam, I do love you. I love you so very, very much.”
He leaned forward, rubbed his nose against hers, and kissed her. She wound her arms about his neck and kissed him back.
“You always have?” She tipped back her head and laughed at him. “Right from the start?”
“I thought,” he said, “that you had stepped out of the night into my dreams. But then you turned and fled.”
“Oh, Sydnam.” She tightened her grip about his neck again. “Oh, my lo
ve.”
“And I have in my pocket something that always lives on my person,” he said, “and may convince you that I have always loved you. If you even remember it, that is-or them, since there are more than one.”
She stepped back and watched curiously as he drew a handkerchief out of the inner pocket of his greatcoat and flicked open the folds with his thumb to reveal a little cluster of seashells within. He would, he thought, feel foolish if she did not remember.
She touched one forefinger to them.
“You kept them,” she said. “Oh, Sydnam, you have kept them all this time.”
“Foolish, was it not?” He smiled at her.
But a shout distracted them as he flicked the corners of the handkerchief in place and put it back into his pocket.
“Mama, look!” David called from the middle of the meadow. “Look, Papa, I have caught one.”
But even as they looked the indignant sheep pulled free and ambled away to resume the serious business of cropping grass and clover. David, laughing gleefully, went chasing after it.
Sydnam wrapped his arm about Anne’s waist and drew her back against him. He spread his hand over her abdomen and hid his face against the side of her neck as she tipped back her head onto his shoulder. He felt almost dizzy.
“He called you Papa,” she said softly.
“Yes.”
He raised his head and looked around him at his home. All of it-the house and stables, the garden, the meadow, the circling trees, the boy chasing sheep, the woman in his arms. And he felt the future beneath his fingers in the slight rounding of his wife’s womb.
“Are we mad,” he asked her, “standing out here in the cold like this when a warm house awaits us?”
“Utterly mad.” She turned her head to smile at him and kiss his lips. “Take me home, Sydnam.”
“We are home, love,” he said, releasing her in order to take her hand in his. “We are always home. But I’ll take you to the house. I want to see if the morning room looks like sunshine.”
“And if the hall looks more cheerful without the browns,” she said.
They half ran down the slight slope in the direction of the house. They were also laughing. Their fingers were laced together.
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