Thankfully, one of the nursemaids poked her head around the door, and Nathaniel beckoned her in.
“Maisie will read you another story, and I will come back after dinner to make sure you are asleep,” he told Lilian, handing the book to the nursemaid. “You don’t want all the food to go to waste now, do you?”
“But I wantyouto read to me!” the little girl protested loudly, too young to care very much about the adults in her life eating a cold or burned dinner. “It’s not fair!”
“Goodnight, Lilian,” Nathaniel said firmly, sighing as he left the room and telling himself that despite his daughter’s hollering, she was safely in the care of someone else.
Cecily, Mary, and Patrick were sitting at the dinner table when he came back downstairs, although the food had not yet beenserved. Patrick and Mary were bickering over some foolish detail in an earlier game of cards, so he tuned them out.
“We waited for you,” Cecily told him, nodding to a footman to indicate that dinner might be served. “Did it take Lilian a long time to go to sleep?”
“Three stories and still wide awake,” Nathaniel reported wearily. “I left her with Maisie for the night. I can’t understand how you get away with only one story, Cecily.”
A flash of impatience crossed his wife’s otherwise calm features. “Lilian is trying to keep you with her for longer, Nathaniel, because she is still unused to having you around,” she explained. “She is still very young. It will pass once she knows she can rely on you.”
“Will it?” he returned without such optimism, doubt still lingering in his mind.
“Yes, it will. That reminds me, you must not forget her piano recital tomorrow at three o’clock.”
Nathaniel had to think for a moment before he remembered what she was talking about. “Ah, yes, Lilian was talking about the piano at breakfast, wasn’t she?”
Cecily sighed, as if his vagueness on the subject hurt her.
He looked down the table at her. She looked both sweet and regal in her gold evening dress, with loose golden-brown ringlets framing her face. From a distance, she was still hard to read. Only when he touched her, kissed her, or held her in his arms did he feel certain of anything.
“Lilian has been learning a new piece on the pianoforte and wants to play it for you at three o’clock tomorrow. You told her that you would be there.”
“Of course,” Nathaniel acknowledged with a nod. “Yes, I remember now. What a good memory you have, Cecily.”
* * *
“Fine ponies, Sir Charles,” Nathaniel commended his neighbor, Sir Charles Bath, as they walked around the two small white Shetland ponies cropping the grass in the paddock outside Sir Charles’s stables.
It was a little before noon on the day after his not-quite-successful attempt at reading a bedtime story to Lilian. When the head groom at Greyhaven Park had mentioned the ponies to him, Nathaniel had immediately thought of acquiring them for his daughter. He really wanted to make her happy.
“No use to Elizabeth and Grace now, though,” Sir Charles mused. “Plenty of life left in them nonetheless, and sturdy creatures too.”
“Yes, I can see that they are too small for your granddaughters,” Nathaniel agreed. “They must be twelve or thirteen now.”
“Great tall girls, both of them,” the white-haired man replied with a loud guffaw and tweak of his bushy mustache. “Their feet would touch the ground if they tried to ride these poor beasts. How old is Lady Lilian?”
“Seven years old.”
“Perfect age for these two, I’d say. We’d be glad to see them go to a good home, too. If you’re sure you want them, I’ll have them delivered at your convenience.”
“Yes, I’ll take both,” Nathaniel decided. “It would be a shame to break up the pair, and Lilian has been badgering me for a white pony for her collection for months now. Two of the creatures ought to satisfy her.”
“A collection of ponies, by God! Most little girls collect ribbons or flowers, but Lady Lilian collects ponies.”
The good-natured old man slapped his thigh and roared with laughter as though this was the funniest thing he’d heard in a long time.
“Well, now, you must come back to the house with me for a celebratory sherry and a spot of luncheon. Lady Bath would never forgive me if I didn’t invite you in, although she’ll be sorry you didn’t bring your new wife with you.”
“Maybe next time,” Nathaniel replied. “I’m sure Cecily would be happy for Lady Bath to call on her at any time.”
“Oh, you know how women are, Your Grace. Lady Bath says she can’t call on a duchess until a duchess calls on her. Nonsense, I say to her. The poor young woman doesn’t know anyone in the neighborhood yet and will be glad of a friendly face. But will she listen? No, of course she won’t…”
As they walked from the stables to Sir Charles’s manor house, Nathaniel smiled back sincerely at the bluff old man whose straight-talking irritated him far less than the polite manners of many members of the ton.
