by Mary Balogh
Agnes had decided to keep well out of their way. It should not be difficult, she had thought, although she often went up to the house to see Sophia, especially during the last couple of months before Thomas was born, when it had been increasingly difficult for Sophia to come to see her, and during the month since his birth. She would stop going while there were houseguests. She would have stopped even if he was not one of the Survivors, for Sophia would be busy entertaining them all. And though Agnes often went into the park to sketch, at the express invitation of both Sophia and Lord Darleigh, she would avoid the parts of it where the guests were most likely to stroll, and she would be very careful not to be seen coming and going.
She had been careful today—until she had lost track of time. None of the guests would be likely to arrive before the middle of the afternoon, Sophia had told her. Agnes had gone, then, to paint the daffodils, when it was still morning. She could not delay altogether for three weeks, because the daffodils would not delay. She would be home soon after noon, well before anyone could be expected to arrive, she had told Dora before she left. But then she had started to paint and had forgotten the time.
Even then she had taken great care while walking home. She had been painting way over beyond the lake and the trees, close to the summerhouse, not even nearly within sight of the main house. The park about Middlebury was vast, after all. She did not return around the lake and across the bottom of the lawn to the drive. That would have brought her within distant sight of the house for a few minutes, and she would have been exposed along much of the length of the driveway too. No, she had walked down into the woods that grew in a thick band inside the southern wall of the park, and had threaded her way about the ancient trunks, enjoying the green-hued solitude and the lovely smells of the trees. She had emerged far down the driveway, only a few yards from the gates, which stood wide-open, as they usually did during the daytime. Then she had proceeded along the village street toward home. There had been no one in sight except Mrs. Jones, who was standing at the gate outside the vicarage indulging in a gossip with Mrs. Lewis, the apothecary’s wife. And Mr. Henchley was brushing sawdust out through the door of his butcher’s shop at the far end of the street for someone else to have to deal with. Agnes had put her head down and hurried toward home.
She had thought herself safe until she heard the clopping hooves of an approaching horse. She had not looked up. Horses were not an uncommon sight in the village, after all. But she had had no choice as it drew closer. It would be very ill-mannered of her not to acknowledge a neighbor. So she raised her head and looked straight into the sleepy green eyes of the very guest she had most wanted to avoid. Indeed she had no reason to avoid any of the others, all of whom were strangers to her.
It was wretchedly bad luck.
And she had despised herself anew as she looked at him. She had shaken off the whole nonsense of falling in love only weeks after that infernal ball. Nothing like it had ever happened to her before, and she would make good and sure nothing like it ever happened again. Then Sophia had told her about the Survivors’ Club coming here. And Agnes had convinced herself that if she set eyes upon him—which she would take great pains not to do—she would be able to look at him quite dispassionately and see him merely as one of Lord Darleigh’s aristocratic friends with whom she happened to have a slight acquaintance.
He was quite impossibly handsome. And a whole lot of other things she would prefer not to put into words—or even thoughts, if the wretched things could only be suppressed.
Which they could not.
All the nonsense from last autumn had come rushing back, just as if she did not have a droplet of common sense in her whole body or brain.
“I wonder,” Dora said as they returned to their chairs, “if we will be invited to the house at all, Agnes. I suppose not, but you are a particular friend of the viscountess, and I am her music teacher as well as Lord Darleigh’s. Indeed, he remarked to me just last week that since his friends will merely ridicule his efforts on the harp, I had better come and play it for them as it ought to be played, and then they would not laugh. But he was laughing as he said it. I think his friends tease him a great deal, and that means that they love him, does it not? I believe they must be very close friends. I do not suppose Lord Darleigh will invite me to play, will he?”
Agnes shook off her own foolish palpitations and focused her attention upon her sister, who both looked and sounded wistful. Dora was twelve years her senior and had never married. She had lived at home in Lancashire until their father remarried, a year before Agnes’s own marriage. Then she had expressed her intention to answer the advertisement she had seen for a resident music teacher in the village of Inglebrook in Gloucestershire. Her application had been accepted, and she had moved here and stayed and prospered in a modest way. She was well liked and respected here, and her talent was recognized. She always had more work than she could accept.
Was she happy, though? She had a whole neighborhood of friendly acquaintances but no particular friend. And no beau. She and Agnes had grown very close since they had lived together here—as they had always been at home. But they were for all intents and purposes of different generations. Dora was contented, Agnes believed. But happy?
“Perhaps you will indeed be invited to play,” she said. “All hosts like to entertain their houseguests, and what better way than with a musical evening? And Lord Darleigh is blind and therefore more attached to music than any other form of entertainment. Unless there is a great deal of musical talent among the guests, it would make perfect sense for him to invite you to play for them. You have more talent than anyone else I have known, Dora.”
Perhaps it was not wise to raise her sister’s hopes. But how insensitive not to have realized until this moment that Dora too had feelings and anxieties related to the arrival of these guests and that she dreamed of playing for an appreciative audience.
“But confess, dear,” Dora said, a twinkle in her eye. “You have not known many people, talented or otherwise.”
“You are quite right,” Agnes admitted. “But if I had known everyone in the polite world and had heard them all display their talents at musical evenings galore, I would absolutely have discovered that there is no one to match you.”
“What I love about you, Agnes, dear,” her sister said, “is your remarkable lack of partiality.”
They both laughed and then scrambled to their feet again to watch yet another carriage go by, this one with a distinguished-looking older gentleman and a young lady inside—and a ducal crest emblazoned on the door.
“All I need to be entirely happy,” Dora said, “is a discreet and genteel little telescope.”
They laughed again.
3
For what remained of that first day, after they had all arrived, and for all of the next day as well as much of the night between and the night following, they stayed together as a group and talked almost without ceasing. It was always thus when there was a year’s worth of news to share, and it was still so this year, despite the fact that most of them had met a few times since last spring’s gathering at Penderris Hall and when three of them had married.
Flavian had been a bit afraid that those marriages would somehow affect their closeness. He had been a lot afraid, if the truth were told. It was not that he resented his friends’ happiness or the three wives they had acquired, all of whom were at Middlebury Park with them. But the seven of them had been through hell together and had come out of it together as a tightly knit group. They knew one another as no one else did or could. There was a bond that would be impossible to describe in words. It was a bond without which they would surely crumble—or explode—into a million pieces. At least, he would.
All three wives seemed to know it and respect it, though. Without being in any way overt about it, they gave space to their husbands and the others, though they did not hold themselves entirely aloof either. It was all very well-done of them. Flavian soon had a definite affection for t
hem all, as well as the liking he had felt when he had first met each of them.
One thing he had always valued as much as anything else about the annual gatherings of the Survivors’ Club, though, was that the seven of them did not cling together as an inseparable unit for the whole of their three-week gatherings. There was always the company of friends when one wanted or needed it, but there could always be solitude too when one chose to be alone.
Penderris was perfectly suited for both company and solitude, spacious as the house and park were and situated as they were above a private beach and the sea. Middlebury Park was hardly inferior, however, even though it was inland. The park was large and had been designed in such a way that there were public areas—the formal gardens, the wide lawns, the lake—and more secluded ones such as the wilderness walk through the hills behind the house, and the cedar avenue and summerhouse and meadows behind the trees at the far side of the lake. There would even soon be a five-mile-long riding track around the inner edge of the north and east walls and part of the south; the construction of it was almost finished. The track was to allow Vincent the freedom to ride and to run despite his blindness, and had been his viscountess’s idea, as had the guide dog and other additions to the house and park.
On the second morning, they all had breakfast together after Ben—Sir Benedict Harper—and Vincent had come up from what Ralph Stockwood, Earl of Berwick, described as the dungeon but was in reality an extension of the wine cellar, which had been turned into an exercise room. It was a sunny day again.
“Gwen and Samantha are going to stroll down to the lake,” Lady Darleigh said, indicating Lady Trentham, Hugo’s wife, and Lady Harper, Sir Benedict’s, “while I spend an hour in the nursery, and then I am going to join them. Anyone else is quite welcome to come too, of course.”
“I must spend some time in the music room,” Vincent said. “I have to keep my fingers nimble. It is amazing how quickly they develop into ten thumbs when they are not exercised.”
“Lord love us,” Flavian said. “The v-violin, Vince? The p-pianoforte?”
“Both,” Vincent said with a grin, “as well as the harp.”
“You have persevered with the harp, then, despite all your frustrations with it, Vincent?” Imogen Hayes, Lady Barclay, said. “You are a marvel of determination.”
“You are not planning to favor us with a recital by any chance, Vince?” Ralph asked. “It would be sporting of you to give us all fair warning if you are.”
“Consider it duly given.” Vincent was still grinning.
George Crabbe, Duke of Stanbrook, and Hugo Emes, Lord Trentham, were going to walk over to see how the riding track was coming along. Ralph and Imogen were going to explore the wilderness walk. Ben, who was still very much in the honeymoon stage of his marriage, having been wed to Lady Harper for less than two months, chose to accompany her and Lady Trentham to the lake.
That left Flavian.
“Come with us out to the track, Flave?” Hugo suggested.
“I am going to stroll over to have a look at the cedar avenue,” he said. “I never did get there when I was here last autumn.”
No one protested his seemingly odd and antisocial decision. No one suggested coming with him. They understood his unspoken wish to be alone. Of course they did. They must have half expected it after last night.
The late evenings during their gatherings were almost always taken up with the most serious of their talks. They spoke of setbacks they had encountered with their recoveries, problems they faced, nightmares they endured. It had not been planned that way, and even now they never sat down with the express intention of pouring out their woes. But it almost always ended up that way. Not that they were unalloyed grumbling sessions. Far from it. They spoke from their hearts because they knew they would be understood, because they knew there would be support and sympathy and advice, sometimes even a real solution to a problem.
Last night it had been Flavian’s turn, though he had not intended to talk at all. Not yet. Perhaps later in the visit, when he had settled more fully into the comfort of his friends’ company. But there had been a lull in the conversation after Ben had told them how his recent decision to use a wheeled chair after he had insisted for so long upon hobbling about on his two twisted legs between sturdy canes had transformed his life and actually been a triumph rather than the defeat he had always thought it would be.
And yet they all felt his sadness too, for taking to a chair had been his admission that he would never again be as he once was. None of them would. There had been a brief silence.
“It is almost a whole year since Leonard B-Burton died,” Flavian had blurted out, his voice jerky and unnaturally loud.
They had all turned blank looks upon him.
“Hazeltine,” he had added. “After a shockingly brief illness, it s-seems. He was my age. I never did write letters of c-condolence either to his f-family or to V-Velma.”
“The Earl of Hazeltine?” Ralph said. “I remember now, though, Flave. You told me about his passing when we were in London soon after leaving Penderris last year. He was—”
“Yes.” Flavian interrupted him with a flashing smile. “He was my former best f-friend. I knew him and was almost inseparable from him from my f-first day at Eton right up until—”
Well, right up until.
“I remember your talking about him,” George said, “though I did not know of his death. He never came near London, did he? You were never reconciled, then, Flavian?”
“He may r-rot in hell,” Flavian said.
“I had not heard either,” Imogen told him. “What has happened to Lady Hazeltine?”
“Her too. M-m-may sh-she r-r-r-o-o-t-t-t—” He thumped the side of one closed fist several times against his thigh in impotent rage and gasped for air.
“Take your time, Flave,” Hugo said, getting to his feet and taking the empty glass from the table beside Flavian in order to fill it again. He squeezed his friend’s shoulder as he passed him on the way to the brandy decanter. “We have all night. None of us is going anywhere.”
“Take a deep breath,” Vincent suggested, “and keep inhaling until the air blows a bubble out of the top of your head, like a balloon. It has never worked for me, but it may for you. Even if it does not, though, waiting to feel a bubble form takes your mind off whatever it was that was getting beyond your endurance.”
“I am not really upset,” Flavian said after drinking half his brandy in one gulp. His voice was suddenly toneless. “It happened almost a year ago, after all. He was not my friend for more than six years before that, so I have not missed him. And Velma preferred him to me, as was her right, even if she was betrothed to me. I never wished them harm. I don’t wish her harm now. She means nothing to me.”
He had not stammered even once, he realized. Perhaps he really was over it. Over them.
“Are you still feeling guilty that you did not write to her, Flavian?” Imogen asked.
He shook his head and spread his hands just above his knees. They were quite steady, he was happy to see, even though they were tingling with pins and needles.
“She would not have wanted to hear from me,” he said. “She would have thought I was g-gloating.”
But he had felt guilty in all the months since he had heard—and resented the feeling.
“You have never been able to close the door on that part of your life, have you?” George asked. “And Hazeltine’s dying would seem to make it harder for you ever to do so. It really is too bad, Flavian. I am sorry.”
Flavian lifted his head and looked broodingly at him. “It was shut and bolted and locked and the key thrown away s-seven years ago.”
He knew—damn it all!—that it was not true. They all knew. But no one said so, and no one pursued the topic until he did. They never intruded beyond a certain point upon one another’s privacy. But there was a silence to allow him to say more if he wished.
“She is c-coming home,” he said. “Her year of mournin
g over, she is coming b-back.”
His mother and her infernal letters! As though he was interested in all the latest gossip from Candlebury Abbey, his ancestral home in Sussex, in which he had not set foot for longer than eight years. Lady Frome had called on his mother with the news, her letter had explained. Sir Winston and Lady Frome lived eight miles from Candlebury, at Farthings Hall. The two families had always been on the best of terms, Sir Winston and Flavian’s father having grown up together and attended school and university together. Velma was their only daughter, much adored by her parents.
The letter had reached Flavian in London, just before he came to Gloucestershire. He would surely wish to return home to Candlebury for Easter this year, now that he would have an incentive, his mother had written. She had underlined the four key words.
Velma was coming home and bringing her young daughter with her. Len’s daughter. She had had no son. No heir.
“It does not m-matter that she is returning to Farthings,” he added, tossing back what remained in his glass. “I never go near C-Candlebury anyway.”
Imogen had patted his knee, and after a brief silence Vincent had started to tell them about the joy the birth of his son had brought into his life—and about the panic attacks he had to fight whenever he was overwhelmed by the realization that he would never see the child or any brothers and sisters he might have.
“But, oh, the joy!” There had been tears swimming in his eyes when Flavian had looked up at him.
No one wondered this morning, then, why Flavian chose to be alone. Some things had to be dealt with on one’s own, as they all knew from experience. Which fact led him to wonder about marriage—in particular, the marriages of three of the Survivors—as he stepped out of the house half an hour after breakfast and turned his steps in the direction of the lake. Was there space in marriage? There would have to be, wouldn’t there? Or one would feel suffocated. Even if one was wildly in love. Happily-ever-after did not mean being welded together for all eternity—ghastly thought.