Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(14)
People of all ages came, dressed in their best daytime finery, and people from all walks of life. The Reverend Paul Danver came from the vicarage on the green next to the church with Mrs. Danver and their three children, ranging in age from nine to fourteen. The Misses Miller closed their shop for one of the few times in the year—in addition to Sundays, of course—and came. As the elder of the two remarked to a group of neighbors while they waited on the lawn for the vicar’s prayer to open the day’s festivities, there was no point in keeping the shop open when there was no one to come shopping.
George Isherwood, the physician, came with Alan Roberts, the schoolteacher. Mrs. Proctor, the dressmaker, came with Audrey, her daughter. The day of the fete was always something of a triumph for the former, as a number of the women wore dresses she had designed and sewn herself, with some help from Audrey. Oscar and Amy Holland, the blacksmith and his wife, and their son, Cameron, and daughter, Sally, came as well as Mrs. Holland’s mother. Matthew Taylor, the carpenter, who had his shop above the smithy on the village green, came with them.
And then there was Mrs. Barnes, once nanny to two generations of the Ware children at the hall, who came with Alice, her great-niece. And Colonel Wexford with Miss Prudence Wexford, his sister, and Ariel, his twelve-year-old daughter. And Mrs. Shaw, the new resident, came alone, her companion being one of the few villagers—perhaps even the only one—who stayed at home. There were numerous others. The farm laborers all came from their cottages on the west side of Boscombe—it was almost like a village within a village, the cottages almost identical to one another but very picturesque nonetheless with their whitewashed walls and thatched roofs and doors of different colors, which helped distinguish them from one another.
Families came from miles around, some of them modest landowners like David Cox and his wife, who supplied the village shop with milk and eggs and vegetables in season. Others were tenants of the Earl of Stratton. A few were landowners of some substance and social prominence. The Rhyses were of this number, as was Charles Rutledge, Baron Hardington, with his wife and children, the eldest of whom was twenty-four, the youngest fourteen.
Members of the extended Ware family came if they lived close enough, as many of them did. Some still bore that name. For others it had changed upon the marriage of a Ware daughter. Some members of the family had come even if they lived at a considerable distance, arriving the day before the fete and staying so they could dress in the comfort of a Ravenswood guest chamber and consume breakfast at their leisure. They would stay for a night after the fete too. These house guests included Richard and Ellen Greenfield, parents of the Countess of Stratton, and their son George, the countess’s younger brother, a childless widower.
On the earl’s side the house guests included his mother, the dowager countess, and Margaret Beecham, her unmarried sister, with whom she now lived in what had been their childhood home. There were also his uncle and aunt Edward and Beatrice Ware, and his widowed aunt Enid Lamb, with Malcolm, her eldest son, and his wife, Jane, and two of their children. The earl’s younger brother, Charles Ware, with his wife, Marian, and their three children had come to stay too, whereas the earl’s elder sister, Eloise Atkins, arrived on the day of the fete with her husband, Vincent, and both their children, the younger of whom—Kitty—was with her new husband, Peregrine Charlton, this year and was already displaying to the observant eye evidence that she was in expectation of an interesting event.
By the middle of the morning all these family members were out on the wide, flat lawn before the house with neighbors and friends and villagers. It was crowded and buzzing with the noise of jovial greetings. The weather was, of course—had anyone really doubted it?—perfect for the occasion. The sky was clear, the air warm, the breeze slight. The only visible evidence of the breeze, in fact, was the fluttering of the brightly colored ribbons on the maypole on the west side of the lawn.
The Wares of Ravenswood itself were all outside too, greeting their guests with warm smiles and hearty handshakes and a few personal words for everyone, even those who labored on their farms every day except Saturday afternoons and Sundays and holidays—of which today was one. Those servants who were required to work were to be rewarded with a whole day off, for which they would be paid, on a day of their choice in August.
At last the vicar, in response to a gesture and a smile from the countess, took his place on the cobbled terrace at the foot of the wide marble steps, flanked by the Earl and Countess of Stratton and Viscount Mountford on one side and their other children on the other. Mr. Roberts, the schoolmaster, was helping Sir Ifor Rhys marshal into lines the members of the youth choir—which would include Owen and Stephanie after the prayer and opening remarks were finished—ready to take their places on the terrace to sing the songs they had practiced with great diligence for the past couple of months. The maypole dancers—the ladies in pastel-shaded dresses with floral wreaths on their heads, the men dressed in dark breeches and waistcoats with shirts to match their partners’ dresses in color—were standing close to the maypole with the two fiddlers who would play for them.
An expectant hush fell upon the gathered guests as they turned their attention toward the terrace. The vicar raised both arms and invited everyone to bow their heads.
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Gwyneth stood on the lawn with everyone else, Idris on one side of her, her mother and father on the other. She was feeling unabashedly pretty in her new pink muslin dress. The bright shade had been the right choice, unusual though it was for her. She was not wearing a bonnet. Rather, she had had her maid gather her hair in a knot high on her head, with a cascade of curls and tendrils falling from it. They were all lightly threaded with small artificial flowers and leaves so that she looked, according to her father, like a spring garden.