by Liz Carlyle
The feeble afternoon sun had finally emerged by the time Lord Wynwood and his sister departed their great-aunt’s house. They left Lady Charlotte in good spirits, intent upon paying an afternoon call to the vicar, which was yet another duty Quin had neglected.
Suddenly, he decided to neglect it just a little longer. Squinting his eyes against the low sun, Quin helped Alice up the steps into his carriage. “You go on without me, Allie,” he said when she had settled in. “I cannot bear another call today.”
Alice frowned down on him. “We shan’t be over half an hour,” she said. “Really, Quin! What has got into you? And how will you get home?”
“I shall walk,” he answered. “The fresh air will do me good.”
He did not wait to hear his sister’s further protests and set off in the direction of the footpath, a shortcut through the woods. He had no taste for the endless round of social calls which life in the country now required of him. Instead, he found himself surprisingly eager to return to Arlington. He wished to summon Herndon to his office so that they could discuss the planned repairs to Chandler’s granary.
After his day spent touring tenant farms, Quin realized it was also time to review Herndon’s list of projects, to see what other urgent needs had been left hanging. And in doing all of this, Quin had begun to feel the faintest stirring of usefulness. That feeling had been bolstered by Herndon, who had seemed grateful, and eager to begin the work. They had parted quite amicably. And yet, Quin had been avoiding his estate manager ever since.
Quin looked up to see that the rolling grounds of the gatehouse had given way to the dense patch of forest which encircled Arlington Park. Within, it was darker, and a little colder, too. Quin realized he had not fastened his greatcoat, and did so at once. He thought again of Herndon, and wondered what, if anything, he ought to say to the man. There was something which had been weighing on his mind.
That same evening he had given Herndon his list, Quin had escaped the house after dinner in a strange state of mind. Still disconcerted by his little contretemps with Viviana at the cottage, Quin had decided to walk alone in the Tudor garden. At least, he had believed himself alone—until he had seen Herndon with Alice.
Quin still could not quite put his finger on what it was that had so disturbed him. Perhaps it was the way they had walked, like the very dearest of friends, their heads so close together they almost touched. Or perhaps it was his sister’s light, lilting laugh; the one he had not heard since well before her marriage. But most likely, it had been the expression of unadulterated joy which he had caught on Herndon’s face.
Quin had always thought of his estate manager as being stern, almost emotionless. He certainly had not looked emotionless with Alice. And Quin had felt—well, not anger. He had not even felt that Herndon was being presumptuous. He had felt…envy. Yes, that was it. Envy that someone—two people, actually—whom he admired so thoroughly could find such joy in one another’s company.
Quin wondered if he would ever know that kind of joy. Oh, he had known pleasure and comfort aplenty—perhaps too much of the former. He had had the good life handed to him on a crystal platter, and fed to him with a silver spoon. He knew it, and was not ungrateful. But where joy should have been there seemed only a restive emptiness.
Of course he had once loved Viviana—or thought he had—and he had experienced a great many emotions in her company. A rushing, crashing riptide of emotions. Angst. Pleasure. Jealousy. Desire. But joy? No, that he could not recall.
Yes, he envied Alice and Herndon. He wished them both very happy, though he deeply doubted they would find happiness together. His mother would put a stop to that. And he could not manage Allie’s problems for her. He could barely manage his own.
Just then, something hard struck the top of his beaver hat, bounced off, and landed on the path. Quin stopped and picked it up. A conker—round, brown, and perfect. And enormous. For a moment, he studied it, boyhood bloodlust surging in his heart. He weighed the nut in his hand. Yes, a sixer, for sure. He would not even need to wheedle Mrs. Prater into baking this one. It could probably take out a pane of glass at a hundred paces. Feeling silly, and strangely sentimental, Quin slipped his prize into his pocket.
But no sooner had he set off again than another struck him, a little harder this time. And this time he did not miss the spate of soft giggles which followed. He turned all the way around on the footpath, the hems of his greatcoat swirling out around his boots. Nothing. And then he looked up, as he should have done at the outset.
From amongst the bare branches, a soft, perfect oval of a face looked back at him. Viviana. But not Viviana, either.
“I saw you,” said the child in the tree.
Quin picked up the horse chestnut. “I noticed,” he said, tossing it up at her.
She tried to catch it and failed miserably. “No, I meant I saw you at the amphitheater,” she said, scrabbling down one branch as if to better study him. “Nadia was flirting with you. I think she wanted you to kiss her.”
Ah, the fetching little acrobat! He had quite forgotten. But he had not forgotten the child. “You’d best come down, Cerelia,” he ordered. “You are up too high—unless you have become an acrobat since last we met.”
“I can climb,” she said disdainfully. Then, clever as an organ-grinder’s monkey, the girl swung down another branch, her petticoats flouncing about her dainty boots as she did so.
Quin tried to scowl at her. “The truly professional tree climbers don’t go it alone, you know,” he remarked after a few moments had passed. “Who would send for help if you fell?”
The girl was halfway down. Her heavy, bronze-colored hair was sliding from its braid on one side, and he could see that she’d rent a seam under the arm of her coat. “I shan’t fall,” she said in her faintly accented English. “I never do. Besides, I’m not alone.”
“Oh?” he asked. “Who is with you?”
She clutched tight to a branch and grinned down at him over her shoulder. “You are, signore,” she said.
Quin could not help but grin back at her. “Ah, but I am a most unreliable sort of chap,” he answered. “Never around when I’m needed. Ask anyone who knows me.”
The girl kept winding her way down, carefully placing her hands and feet. Somehow, he knew better than to offer his help. “Actually, I came with my friends,” she said, as she caught the last branch. “Lottie and Christopher. Do you know them?”
Her feet touched the ground, light as a thistle blossom. Quin swept off his hat, for it somehow seemed the right thing to do. “I do indeed,” he said. “But I certainly don’t see them here, and I am fairly sure I would recognize them. I am their uncle, you see.”
Her face brightened a little at that. “Are you?” she asked, looking up at him. “Your name is Lord Wynwood, is it not? Do you know the little brook just at the bottom of this hill?”
“Yes, yes, and—er, yes. I do know the little brook.”
She gestured toward the coombe below. “Well, they went down there to look for salamanders.”
Quin crooked one brow. “Isn’t it a little cold for that?”
Looking mildly embarrassed, she shrugged. “I don’t know what it is, this salamander,” she confessed, as a cascade of bronze hair slithered over her shoulder.
Quin searched his mind. He had briefly studied Italian, back when he had harbored the foolish notion of rushing off to the Continent and dragging Viviana back to England. “A salamander is a creature,” he said. “And rather like un…un alamaro.”
“A frog?” she said sharply.
He shook his head. “No, not a frog,” he responded, trying to dredge up the right word. “I meant to say una lucertola. I think.”
The girl was trying not to laugh. “A lizard, do you mean?”
He gave up, and nodded. “Yes, like a lizard.”
Her face broke into a smile that was like a ray of sunshine. “You are very kind to try to speak Italian to me.”
“Grazie,” he sai
d. “I fear I do not know any Venetian. It is much the same, is it not?”
She laughed. “Somewhat, yes,” she said. “But at home, Mamma and I speak Italian or English.”
Lord, she was going to be a beauty, he thought. Her face looked so much like her mother’s it was breathtaking. A pity her father was dead. In a few years, it was going to require six or seven resolute parents to keep the young men at bay. At that thought, something swift and protective surged through him. Followed by a sense of grave unease.
Quin remembered himself as a young man, recalled with horror the lascivious thoughts and wicked imaginings which had utterly possessed his mind. God preserve her from that! But she was not his responsibility, was she?
Well, no. But she was a child. A child who was standing in the freezing cold in the middle of his wood. There was a certain moral obligation in that, wasn’t there? He looked up through the bare, clattering branches, and saw something—snow, or perhaps just ash—come swirling down.
“You had best go fetch the others, Cerelia,” he said. “We shall walk you home first, then I will take Chris and Lottie back to Arlington Park.”
The girl stuck out her lip. “I wanted to climb another tree.”
“This isn’t negotiable,” he said firmly. “I think we might be in for a little snow.”
The child’s face lit up. “Snow—?”
Just then, a crashing arose in the tangle of rhododendron which meandered up from the stream’s edge. The two wanderers burst from the greenery. “Uncle Quin! Uncle Quin!” Lottie rushed up the hill to greet him. “Have you come to find us? We are not lost, you know.”
“Are you not?” Quin caught her around the waist, lifted her off her feet, and spun her round on the footpath. “Perhaps I am lost, Lottie. Perhaps you have found me. Did you ever think of that?”
“Oh, poo!” said Lottie. “Mamma says you are a vagabond. They are never lost.”
She was laughing when he set her back down on her feet again, and she clung to him dizzily, her arms wrapped round his neck. It was then that he noticed the expression on Cerelia’s face. She looked…not envious, but almost painfully alone. She literally stood apart from them, on the opposite side of the footpath, which might as well have been a gaping chasm.
Lottie and Chris, however, did not notice their little friend. “Look, Uncle Quin,” said Chris, ramming his hand deep in his coat pocket. “We’ve got conkers! Great, hard ones!”
“Oh ho!” Never one to be outdone on such an important point as the size of his conker, Quin dug into his own pocket, and produced the one Cerelia had bounced off his hat.
“Lud!” said Lottie.
Quin smiled. “Now this, Christopher, is a conker,” he said. “Go ahead and string yours up if you’ve a mind to take a thrashing. But it shan’t stand a chance against this behemoth.”
“Crikes!” said the boy. “That’s the biggest ever! Where’d you find it, Uncle Quin?”
Quin restored the nut to his pocket. “Actually, it belongs to Cerelia,” he said, turning to wink at her. “I am just keeping it for her.”
“See, Lottie!” The little boy tossed a disdainful glance at his sister. “I told you there wouldn’t be any salamanders down there. Perhaps I could have found that one.”
“They’re just big acorns,” said Cerelia. “I cannot see what all the fuss is about.”
“Actually, Cerelia, they are chestnuts,” said Quin. “But not the kind you eat. Now, it is going to be dark soon. Let’s be off, shall we? And on the way, we shall tell you all about conkers, and how we English like to string them up, and swing them at one another, usually until someone’s nose gets bloodied.”
Cerelia cut a strange glance up at him. “That sounds silly.”
“It is silly,” said Quin. “Frightfully silly—especially when grown men engage in it.”
They set off for home with the girls on either side of him. Lottie, of course, slipped her gloved hand into Quin’s. On impulse, he caught Cerelia’s hand in the other. Chris darted on ahead, pausing now and again to shuffle through the dead leaves beneath the chestnut trees.
Cerelia’s good humor was restored. She and Lottie chattered gaily as they wound their way back out of the wood and in the direction of Hill Court. But as the evening’s chill deepened, the girls’ teeth began to chatter. Quin opened his greatcoat, tucked them close to his sides, and folded it around them as best he could. Laughing, they waddled along together, looking, he imagined, rather like a drawing he had once seen of a great American grizzly bear.
It felt strangely pleasant to be walking with his arms and his coat wrapped about two small children. It also felt as though he’d seen more of his nieces and nephew these last few days than he had in the whole of their lives. And to his surprise, he had rather enjoyed it. They seemed genuinely fond of him, especially Alice’s youngest, who had developed something of an obsession with his cravat pin.
Each time he visited them in the nursery, Diana would clamber onto his lap and pluck at it most determinedly. He had finally decided simply to remove it and give it to the child, but Alice had caught him and soundly scolded him. Four-year-olds, apparently, were prone to swallowing small, pretty objects.
Such a thing would never have occurred to him. Indeed, he knew nothing at all of children. Oh, he had always assumed he would have two or three; it was expected. It was necessary, especially for his mother’s sake. But he had always imagined they would be like small adults, and that he would see little of them. They would be raised by nurses and governesses, he had supposed.
But why had he supposed it? He and Alice had not been reared in such a way. Their parents had been an ever-present force in their lives. Family outings had been frequent affairs. Their father, for all his reserve, had seen them two or three times a day. Their mother doted on them; never had she failed to kiss them good night and see them tucked safely into bed.
The truth was, he simply felt no connection to these preordained children he was meant to have. He had not actually tried to imagine what it would be like to be a father since—well, since Viviana Alessandri. It was almost an embarrassment to recall it now, how he would sometimes thrust himself so deep inside her, reveling in the rush of his seed toward her womb, and hope.
In those rash, heedless moments, he had been unable to stop the vision of what it would be like to see her soft, smooth belly grow round with his child. He had wanted it so very desperately, even as he had realized the hell they both would pay should it ever actually happen. Good God, his father would have disowned him. His mother would have swooned and taken to her bed for a week.
But neither of those reactions seemed so horrific now. He was almost ten years older. He had lived through some dark days. To worry about his parents having fits and swoons seemed almost laughable now.
They were not so laughable when one was but twenty years old, and unsure of one’s place in the world. And yet, those had been the only children Quin had ever pictured in his mind. The ones he had wanted to give Viviana Alessandri. He was damned lucky he hadn’t got his wish, too.
Then, he had assumed Viviana understood conception—or rather, how a woman avoided it. She had seemed so sophisticated, so urbane. But he now realized that, in all likelihood, she had done nothing. Certainly she had taken no steps which he, now older and wiser, would have recognized as contraception.
He looked down again at Cerelia, who looked so very much like her mother it suddenly made his heart ache. Gianpiero Bergonzi had got his wish, had he not? He had made three children with the wife he had so boldly married. Quin wondered if all three were this beautiful. If they looked anything like their mother, then the answer was a resounding yes.
Unexpectedly, Cerelia tugged on his hand. “I know the way from here, Lord Wynwood,” she said softly. “You may let me go now.”
They were nearing the end of the wood, and through the thinning trees, he could see the soft lights of his uncle’s stables coming into view. He felt Cerelia’s fingers loosen about
his own. And suddenly, Quin became aware of an awful, choking knot in his throat. His hand tightened on the child’s almost involuntarily.
He did not want to let her go, this beautiful piece of the woman he had once loved. He wanted to gaze upon her face and think upon the past. The awful, miserable past he had once sworn to forget. But something seemed to have changed.
Oh, he knew what had changed. Everything. His whole life. The past had returned to torment him, and his future seemed blighted and barren again.
Good God, Viviana Alessandri! After all these years. And this time, he was not at all sure he could survive it. This time, there was no easy way to deaden the pain of an old wound sliced open to bleed anew. And though he would never have admitted it to anyone, he was tired, so bloody weary of living a life devoid of hope and joy. A life where one could imagine, and even wish for, a future, and for the love and the family which came with it.
Yes, he was beginning to fear that he knew what had changed—or perhaps not changed was the more correct phrase.
“Lord Wynwood?” said the small voice again.
He gave her hand one last squeeze and let her go.
Cerelia slithered her way out of the folds of his coat. Cold air breezed in and wrapped around his heart. They watched her go in the swiftly approaching dusk, the hem of her heavy wool skirt brushing across the lawn as she dashed up the hill toward his uncle’s house.
She had almost reached the back terrace when he saw an indistinct figure come sweeping round from the front of the house. A woman in a bottle green gown and cloaked in black, whose face he could not see. But he did not need to see it, for the proud set of her shoulders and the angle of her chin gave her away.
At the corner of the house, mother and daughter met. He saw Viviana embrace Cerelia ardently, then urge her up the terrace steps. Neither spared a glance toward the three who waited at the foot of the hill.
He waited until they had reached the back door. A shaft of glowing gold lamplight spilt out across the terrace as they opened it. Then they slipped inside, their happy laughter carrying down the hill on the cold winter’s wind. The door closed, and the shaft of golden lamplight vanished. Quin felt, inexplicably, as if he had just been shut out. Viviana and the children were safe and snug together now. They were happy. They were a family, the four of them. And he was not a part of it. A sinking sense of emptiness weighed him down.