Someone to Care (Westcott #4)(93)

It had been hard to recover fourteen years ago, when she had been a young, unhappily married woman. But at least then she had only been in love with him. She had not loved him. She had not known him in any of the meanings of the word. It had taken her a long time to forget anyway. It would take longer now. She understood that and set out to be patient with herself.

Her clothes began to hang a bit more loosely about her, but that at least was a positive effect of heartache. She had been intending for some time to lose a bit of weight, to get back the figure she had always had until her courses stopped two years ago.

And she was going to Brambledean for Christmas. She felt obliged to go—for Abigail’s sake and for her mother’s and Michael’s and Mary’s. They would feel awkward being there if she was not. And of course everyone had written—as she had written to everyone—and all, without exception, had variously hoped, urged, or begged or wheedled her to come too. She wondered why they bothered. She really had not treated her family well since Humphrey’s death. And while it was understandable that they would make allowances for a while, there surely ought to be limits. It was closer to three years than two. Yet it must seem to them that she was still sulking and behaving erratically and even discourteously. And good heavens, she had dishonored them. She had been discovered in the midst of an affair with a man who was not her husband.

Did love really know no bounds when it was true love? Was it really unconditional? She felt ashamed of something she remembered telling Marcel one day when he had asked her what she wanted most in life. She had told him she wanted someone to care for her—for her, not just for the mother or daughter or sister or whatever else label could be put upon her. She was ashamed, for they had proved over and over, her family, that they cared indeed—for her and for one another. What Humphrey had done to wreck the structure of the family had not wrecked what lay beneath it—love, pure and simple.

She would go to Brambledean out of gratitude and a returning love. And because she missed the children—Winifred and Sarah and Jacob. And even Anna and Avery’s Josephine. And Mildred and Thomas were to bring their boys, whom she had not seen for several years. They had been mischievous little boys then. Now they were apparently boisterous big boys, forever getting into scrapes at school and causing their parents mingled anguish and wrath. She was missing Elizabeth with her unfailing calm common sense and twinkling eyes, and Wren, who had grown up as a recluse, her face always veiled to hide the birthmark that covered one side of it, but who had found the courage to face the world and fall in love with Alexander. She was missing her mother and Camille. And her former sisters-in-law. Oh, all of them.

She had fled the stifling affection of her family a few months ago. Now she was ready to embrace it. Perhaps something good had come from all the turmoil and heartache.

She would go because she was lonely. Because her heart was broken and she could not seem to find the pieces to fit it back together.

She would go to show them all that she was neither lonely nor heartsick.

They worried about her. She would show them that they did not need to, that she was fine.



* * *



? ? ?

Marcel was in the boathouse down by the lake, looking at the two overturned rowboats inside. It was not a happy sight.

“They look as if they have not been used this side of the turn of the century,” he said.

“I do not know,” Bertrand told him.

Marcel turned to look at him. “You have never wanted to use them yourself?” he asked.

“Aunt Jane thought it would be unwise, sir,” his son replied.

Jane had not allowed much that was joyful into his children’s lives, it seemed. Every day he discovered more examples. Not that the twins ever complained. They were amazingly docile young persons—with the exception of Estelle’s grand fury and rebellion and epic journey to Devonshire. He wondered at that now, at the feeling that had burst the bounds of a lifetime of training. She must have been very angry indeed with him. A promising sign? There were not many such signs from either of them, though they were the most dutiful children any father could ask for.

“Let me guess,” he said. “It was because Estelle was a delicate girl and you were the heir.”

“Well, I am the heir,” Bertrand said apologetically. “The only one, sir.”

“My fault, I suppose,” Marcel muttered. “Yes, my fault. Perhaps you were so perfect, Bertrand, that I did not believe you could be replicated.”

“I am not perfect,” his son said with a frown.

“To me you are,” Marcel said. “I will have these looked at in time for summer next year. I will test them myself before I allow you to row off to the far shores of the lake. If I sink and leave nothing but a bubble behind, at least I will have left an heir too.”

Bertrand looked slightly shocked. Estelle, who had come to stand in the doorway, giggled. Yes, really. She did not just laugh. She giggled. It was music to her father’s ears. And Bertrand, after a glance at her, laughed too.

“I daresay you can swim, sir,” he said.

“Yes, I daresay I can,” Marcel agreed.

They continued on their walk about the lake. He tried to spend time with them each day and had felt some easing of their very formal relationship. Bertrand had become almost enthusiastic when he learned that his father had not idled all his time away at Oxford but had actually earned a first-class degree. Estelle had looked at first dubious when he had suggested that they invite some young people to the house occasionally. Apparently Jane had believed the son and daughter of the Marquess of Dorchester must hold themselves aloof from inferior company. Perhaps now they were close to eighteen, Marcel had suggested, and their characters were fully formed, they might relax that rule somewhat. Estelle was ecstatic. Even Bertrand had looked pleased.