Her son resumed his tripping progress along the driveway.
The viscount was indeed very handsome, she thought, though she had only those smiling blue eyes to judge from. Kindly blue eyes, smiling at a child. She felt a sudden envy of Eve. Eight years was a long time. Such a very long time. It was becoming more and more difficult to remember exactly what Zach had looked like or what his voice had sounded like. Sometimes she tried desperately to recall what his kiss had been like and what his body had felt like when she was conceiving Zachary.
She could barely remember. Perhaps she could not remember at all. After so long it was difficult to know what had actually been and what she had embellished in her imaginings.
Valentine's was a difficult time. She was forgetting Zach and she did not want to forget him. She had loved him all through her girlhood, though her parents had never encouraged their friendship, since he had been the son of a mere baronet of moderate means. They had only grudgingly agreed to the marriage after Zach had inherited a sizable fortune on the death of a great-aunt. Now Barbara had nothing by which to remember him except Zachary, who mercifully looked very like him. Zach’s father had died less than a year after him, and an unknown branch of the family now lived in their former home.
She was forgetting Zach, and she was restless and longing for something to which she could not—or dared not—put a name. And Valentine’s Day was always the worst day of all. She dreaded it and wished it past already.
She quickened her steps with gladness when the dower house came into sight. Home. And it was a chilly day despite the glimpses she had had of primroses amongst the trees.
The ladies unanimously declared that it was too cold a day for riding farther. It was the wind, Miss Sterns said with a shiver. It cut through one to the bone.
And so William Hanover, Earl of Meacham, led the way back to the stables with the Honorable Miss Woodfall, and the gentlemen helped the ladies to dismount amidst much laughter and chatter.
“A cup of hot tea will never be so welcome as now,” Lady Eve said, smiling at Lord Brandon, who had just lifted her from the saddle. Her cheeks were glowing from the exercise and the chill air. With her green riding hat and its jaunty feather curling about one ear, she looked extremely pretty. “I shall order the tray as soon as we are inside.”
“I could think of something more sure to warm the insides than tea,” Sir Anthony Hutton said, and there were cheers from two of the other gentlemen.
“Well, perhaps,” Lady Eve said, releasing her hold of the viscount’s shoulders. “If you are very good, Anthony. But where are you going, William?”
The Earl of Meacham was mounting his horse again. “I promised Zach a treat,” he said.
His sister nodded without replying and turned to lead the way to the house.
“I shall come with you, if I may,” Lord Brandon said. “The air feels too good to be abandoned so soon.”
“He is just a child,” the earl said. “But come by all means if you wish, Brandon.”
There was the perverse need to be away from the crowd after less than a full day of being with them, the viscount thought. And yet he was enjoying himself. The duke and duchess had welcomed him warmly, as they had all their guests.
Lady Eve had greeted him with a smile and a look in her eyes that had suggested that she would welcome his suit. And the other eleven guests were an amiable lot who appeared to have come with the intention of enjoying the week to the full. Viscount Brandon was acquainted with most of them.
It was clear already that he had done the right thing to come, that his expectations for the week were not to be disappointed. He was looking forward to the activities of the remaining seven days of the house party. And he was looking forward to his betrothal, which was appearing to be an almost certain thing if he wanted it. It would be good to have another woman on whom to focus his attentions.
It would be good to put Anna-Marie finally to rest, a dearly cherished memory but no longer a present pain.
But there was this need to be away from the group for a short while. A need to ride in the fresh air for longer than the half-hour of the group ride.
“I like children,” he said, swinging himself back into his own saddle and grinning down at Miss Sterns, who told him that he must be a glutton for punishment. He assumed that she was referring to the weather rather than to the fact that they were going to take some treat to a child.
“He lives at the dower house,” Lord Meacham explained as they turned their horses’ heads for the driveway. “I promised to bring him up to see the puppies. One of them is to be his when it is weaned. Children need pets when they have no brothers or sisters.”
“And even when they do,” the viscount said. “My mother always complained when I was growing up that if she was not falling over children, she was tripping over dogs or sitting on cats. I always rather pity people who come from small families. There was never a dull moment with the nine of us—ten with Anna-Marie.”
“Your wife,” the earl said.
Lord Brandon nodded. “And you have had only one sister with whom to fight,” he said. “A shame.”
The earl did not reply.
The walls of the dower house were covered with ivy, the viscount noticed, looking more closely at the house than he had from his carriage window the afternoon before. The garden was full of rosebushes. Doubtless it would be a riot of color later in the year. He sat his horse outside the gate at the earl’s suggestion while the latter dismounted and walked up the cobbled path to knock on the door and disappear briefly inside.
He emerged a couple of minutes later with the little boy the viscount’s carriage had passed the day before.
“Uncle Will,” the boy was asking, “am I to ride up with you? When may I ride my pony again?” “Soon,” the earl said. “As soon as the weather warms up a little more, Zach.”
“But as soon as the weather warms,” the boy said, “you will be going. Mama says you will be going to London for the Season.”
