Always remember, p.21
Always Remember, page 21
“I would remind you that I am lord of the manor here,” Devlin said, his eyes twinkling at her. “He will come if the Earl of Stratton himself summons him, or even if he simply asks him, which I am far more likely to do. He is also very aware of the fact that your brother is His Grace, the Duke of Wilby. He is suitably awed. It is rather a grand title to have. I am quite envious.”
“But I hate to be a bother to anyone,” Lady Jennifer said.
“I cannot think of anything that would be less of a bother,” he assured her. “I will send him a note first thing in the morning—with a liveried footman. That always impresses people.”
“I will come to the gallery with you, Jenny,” Lady Catherine said.
“No, Aunt Kitty,” Lady Jennifer said. “You are going to be busy all day planning the displays with Lady Stratton and Lady Rhys, and I know you are vastly looking forward to it.”
“But—” Lady Catherine said.
“Phil and I will come to the gallery with you, Jen,” Lucas said, interrupting. “I can carry you up and then make sure you do not overexert yourself.”
“Baron and Lady Hardington have invited you to luncheon, Luc,” Lady Jennifer reminded him. “You are to take the babies with you—at the express request of Lady Hardington.”
“I will send word—” he began.
“You most certainly will not,” she told him. “I refuse to be a nuisance to anyone or to upset anyone’s plans for the day. I have told you all that I can wait until Monday.”
“I have no particular plans for tomorrow,” Ben said, “beyond taking Joy to see her puppy early in the morning and making sure everything is ready to set up for the races on the front lawn. That will take me no longer than an hour or so in the afternoon. I can take you up to the gallery, Lady Jennifer, and remain with you there.”
All attention swung his way, and he was sure he did not imagine the brief moment of silence.
“Oh, will you?” she asked, turning toward him, her eyes shining, her cheeks glowing. “It would be very fitting. You, after all, Mr. Ellis, were the one who started this whole business of my walking shoes by suggesting to me once upon a time that dreams can sometimes be helped along with a bit of practical thought.”
“And courage,” Philippa said. “Ben supplied the one and you the other, Jenny.”
There was another moment of silence, so brief that Ben thought he might have imagined it.
“That would seem to be settled, then,” Devlin said. “I will have Rogers sent up to the gallery when he arrives—shall we say at eleven o’clock?”
Stephanie clapped her hands. “I am so glad,” she said. “It would be horribly dreary for you to have to wait until Monday, Jenny. That is eons away. And of course Ben can carry you up to the gallery. He carried you all the way up the hill to the temple this afternoon when he saw you stuck alone in your chair outside the ballroom while the rest of us were on the way up to the turret room for a cushion fight.”
There was no mistaking the silence about the table this time.
“I do hope you will be able to walk in your new shoes, Jenny,” Philippa said, beaming across the table at her friend. “Even if just for a few minutes each day. What a wonderful feeling it will be for you.”
“It will,” Lady Jennifer agreed. “But that is quite enough about me. You have entered the archery contest, Owen? And you too, Bertrand? Do you like your chances?”
“Not one little bit,” Owen said with a grimace. “Though Bert can at least hit the target most of the time.”
“Which is not much of a recommendation,” Bertrand said. “I believe one has to hit the bull’s-eye at least once if one is to stand a remote chance of winning. A very remote chance even then.”
“Joy has entered some of the races,” Mother said. “She assures me that she almost never drops the egg from her spoon when she is practicing.”
“It is no boast,” Ben said.
“Remember that you have taken it upon yourself to gather enough eggs for the race,” Mother reminded him. “The hens must do their part in assuring the success of the fete.”
“They have been given their orders,” he told her.
The conversation remained back on the main topic for the rest of the meal, until Gwyneth got to her feet to lead the ladies from the room.
Ben went with them. It was time to tuck his daughter into bed for the night and tell her a few stories.
His family and Lady Jennifer Arden’s were alarmed again, he thought. It was more than a little annoying. Both of them were adults. Good God, he was thirty-three. And both of them were rational beings. Neither was likely to do anything outrageous, like thinking of marrying each other, for example. They were friends. They had decided this afternoon that they would not deny that fact or try to hide it any longer just to reassure their families.
To the devil with them all. Their anxieties were their problem, not his.
“Papa,” Joy said after two stories, her voice sleepy as he fluffed her pillow and straightened the covers on her bed and made sure her cat was beside her. “Can Mama come with us to see the puppies tomorrow?”
“Mama?” He frowned.
“My pretend mama,” she explained. “Can she come? I want to show her my puppy.”
And why the devil not, he thought, quelling his first instinct, which was to say a firm no. Why the devil not?
“I will have to ask her,” he said. “She may be busy, but I will ask.”
She yawned and pressed the cat’s ear to her mouth.
Chapter Seventeen
After an early breakfast the following morning, the gig was brought around to the terrace outside the front doors. Lucas lifted his sister onto one of the seats while Ben took the other with Joy on his lap, Devlin placed the haversack cushion beneath Jennifer’s right foot and handed her the ribbons, and almost the whole family, their faces wreathed in smiles, waved them on their way to visit the litter of collie puppies.
“Mama is driving!” Joy shrieked.
It was surely the most bizarre scene Ben had ever been witness to—or a participant in. He had passed on Joy’s request to Lady Jennifer in the hearing of everyone else after coming down from the nursery last night, and she had said yes—if they could take the gig and she could drive it. They had survived the brief silence that seemed to follow all their public communications with each other. Then Owen had commented that he hoped Jenny did not intend to spring the horses, Stephanie had said she wished she could go too but she had choir practice, and Mother—aided and abetted by Gwyneth—had changed the subject.
So here they were on the descent to the village, Lady Jennifer looking slightly tense as though she expected that the horse might try to bolt at any moment, while Joy clapped her hands and Ben resisted the urge to laugh.
It was a brief visit. They had not brought either Lady Jennifer’s wheeled chair or her crutches, so she stayed in the gig while Joy fetched the collie puppy she had chosen to be her own once it was weaned. It was the smallest and liveliest of the litter. It bounced and yipped and nipped in her hands. She laughed as she handed it carefully up to Lady Jennifer, who settled it on her lap, her skirts forming a sort of nest about it, while Joy scrambled up to the seat beside her and Ben stood on the other side ready to catch the puppy should it be in danger of falling. But he need not have feared. Lady Jennifer soothed the little thing with one finger stroking its head and ears while Joy murmured nonsense words at it and tickled its chin. Both of them were totally absorbed in the puppy as it squeaked and licked and nipped at them.
“Does she have a name?” Lady Jennifer asked.
“Cariad. Carrie for short,” Joy said without hesitation—it was the first Ben had heard of it. “Cariad means love where Marged and Mari live. Their mama calls them that all the time. Lady Rhys says it too.”
“Carrie is a pretty name,” Lady Jennifer said. “I think she may be falling asleep.”
“She does that lots because she is a baby,” Joy said. “I love her.”
“I am not at all surprised. She is adorable,” Lady Jennifer said while Ben gazed from one to the other of his girls and felt utter contentment—until he heard the echo of his thoughts almost as if they had been spoken aloud. His girls?
“Can we take Carrie home with us when we go, Papa?” Joy asked.
She asked frequently in the hope, he supposed, that his answer would have changed since the last time—or that conditions would have changed.
“She is going to need her mother for a while yet,” he told her. “But Uncle Owen has promised to bring her to Penallen when she is ready and stay with us for a few days.”
“Ye-e-es,” she cried, her face brightening. “He can play with me and come swimming in the sea with us. We can show him the fishing boats and take him to the shop with all the sweets. He can come with us when we take the puppy for a walk.”
“Perhaps we will persuade Aunt Stephanie to come too,” he said.
“Ye-e-es,” she said again. “And Uncle Nick and Uncle Bert? And Mama?” She turned her eager smile upon Lady Jennifer.
“Uncle Nicholas has to go back to work soon,” Ben told her. “All the way across the sea to France. Uncle Bertrand will be going home next week to see his sister. He misses her and I daresay she misses him. Lady Jennifer will be going home too. So will Lady Catherine and Aunt Pippa and Uncle Lucas.”
“Going home is always lovely, is it not?” Lady Jennifer said. “Even when a vacation has been great fun.”
The puppy sneezed and woke itself up, and Joy laughed and was distracted. A few minutes later Ben took her to the pen to set the puppy back inside and then to the house to thank the farmer and his wife for allowing them to come. It was time to go and play with Marged and the other children at Cartref, he told Joy. Mrs. Howell had offered to have Joy for the day, since she had been told that all was going to be busy activity at Ravenswood and indeed throughout the village as everyone prepared for tomorrow’s festivities. She would be happy to have Joy to keep young Marged company.
Ben drove them there while Lady Jennifer held Joy on her lap and the two of them laughed over the little dog’s antics and Lady Jennifer told Joy how good collies were as sheepdogs when they were properly trained.
Joy dashed off hand in hand with her friend into the garden a few moments after the gig had arrived at Cartref. After a brief chat with Eluned and Mrs. Howell, Lady Jennifer insisted upon driving the gig home.
“I think you are showing off now,” Ben said.
She turned her head to smile at him before concentrating upon the road again. “I have twenty years of lost freedom to catch up on, Mr. Ellis,” she said. “Indulge me, please.”
My girls. He could not get the phrase out of his mind. How wonderful it would be . . . But he shook his head. How wonderful it was going to be when he had chosen a bride and married her and settled down with her at Penallen.
* * *
—
Bruce whisked Lady Jennifer away to parts unknown—probably her room—as soon as the gig arrived on the terrace. But Ben found her in the library less than an hour later. Pippa was there too, rocking a sleepily crying Christopher in her arms while Lady Jennifer had Emily on her lap and was amusing her with a few silver bangles that dangled from her wrist.
“Poor Chris,” Pippa told Ben. “Those new teeth of his have still not pushed through the gum, and he is feeling very sorry for himself. Emmy had hers more than a week ago.”
Ben kissed the top of his sister’s head and smoothed a hand over his normally placid nephew’s.
“Will he be well enough to go with you for luncheon?” he asked.
“Oh yes,” she said. “I believe Lady Hardington is more eager to see the children than she is to see Luc and me. Lowering, is it not? She will be only too happy if one of them is in the mood to be cuddled.”
Lady Jennifer raised her arm until the sunlight from the window caught the silver of her bangles, and Emily blinked and reached more determinedly for them.
“Am I being a tease?” She lowered her arm so the child could get a good grip.
“There is no sign of Rogers yet?” Ben asked unnecessarily.
“It is only ten minutes to eleven,” Lady Jennifer said.
But even as she spoke there was the faint sound of approaching horses, and Ben moved to the window to see who was coming. It was a carriage, but it did not turn onto the terrace toward the main doors. It proceeded along the east wing, presumably to the servants’ entrance.
“I believe he is just arriving,” Ben said. “Good man. He is eight minutes early. I will take you up, Lady Jennifer. Shall I ring for help with the children, Pippa?”
But before she could answer, the door opened and Lucas came into the room. Emily bounced on her aunt’s lap and reached out her arms for her father.
“Well. This is a lovely welcome,” he said, picking her up and kissing her plump cheek before settling her on one arm. “A smile for Papa this morning? I think the cobbler is arriving, Jen. Let Phil and me come up to the gallery with you. There is time before we need to leave for the Hardingtons’. And you really ought—”
“You really ought to be getting ready to go,” she said. “All I am doing, Luc, is trying on a new pair of shoes. It is nothing to fuss about. And I trust Mr. Ellis to take good care of me. He is my friend, after all, as well as the possessor of two strong arms.”
That information—probably both parts of it—were doubtless not what Wilby would want to be hearing, but perhaps he had learned some wisdom in the past few days, for he did not argue the point. Instead he was probably counting down the days until his sister—and Ben too—could be safely away from Ravenswood.
They reached the gallery before John Rogers was shown up. Ben was able to settle Lady Jennifer on a sofa partway along the room, opposite one of several long windows that filled the gallery with natural light during the day and offered lovely views over the park and lake to the west. The room was hung with family portraits going back generations. They culminated, Ben knew, in a large canvas painted when Stephanie was a baby about the twins’ present age and he was almost seventeen. He had overheard his father asking Mother if she minded having Ben included in the painting. She had sounded quite indignant when she answered.
“Ben has been a member of this family for fourteen years, Caleb,” she had said. “As far as I am concerned, he is our son. Of course he will be in the portrait for future generations to see.”
So there he was in the family portrait, standing a bit awkwardly half behind his father’s head and half behind his left shoulder—fourteen-year-old Devlin had been squarely behind his right—while everyone else was arranged artistically in front of their father, Steph on his lap.
There was a separate portrait of Devlin striking a casual but elegant pose beside his horse, painted when he turned twenty-one. The heir.
“What a breathtakingly lovely room,” Lady Jennifer said.
“Yes,” he agreed. “It is an indoor promenade as well as just a gallery.”
He had not been up here, he realized suddenly, since before he went to the Peninsula with his brother. He had never brought Joy here. And he knew the reason even though he had not thought of it consciously until this moment. There were no portraits of his father anywhere else in the house. Only here. He had always used to think that the family portrait was an incredibly accurate one of his father, who was smiling genially, beaming love upon his wife and children, who surrounded him. It was unusual in that most such portraits depicted solemn, dignified subjects. None of the rest of them had been smiling—except three-year-old Owen.
Ben could not bear the thought of seeing that portrait after his return. He did not want to see it now.
“Are you in any of the paintings here?” Lady Jennifer asked.
“Yes, the family one.” He pointed vaguely along the gallery.
“I would like to—” she began.
But they were interrupted by the arrival of John Rogers, who looked a bit awed by his surroundings, and Cam Holland, who grinned at Ben and inclined his head politely to Lady Jennifer.
“My lady,” he said. “I came too, bearing your crutch. I hope you do not mind.”
“Not at all, Mr. Holland,” she said, smiling at him. “Is this whole thing going to work? Or are we going to go down in ignominious defeat?”
“Never say that,” he said in mock horror as Rogers unwrapped her shoes and Ben saw them for the first time. “John and I don’t know the meaning of those words, do we, John? We cannot have you crippled for the rest of your life just because of one lame leg. If these contraptions do not quite work for you, we will keep at them until they do. You ought to be walking just like everyone else. Like I told you before, I’ve made you a crutch, because that is what you are accustomed to. But eventually I think you will be able to manage with a cane, provided we give you plenty to hold on to and lean on.”
He had been unwrapping his metal crutch with its leather-bound straps and pads while he talked. Rogers more characteristically worked in silence.
“I do not expect perfection, Mr. Holland,” Lady Jennifer said.
“Well there, if you will pardon the impertinence, you do not have the right attitude, my lady,” Cam said. “A person should always expect perfection and success. I do and John does. Ben too. When he was steward here back in the days of the old earl, I always used to think to myself when he came into the smithy, Uh-oh, here comes trouble, though it was my pa in those days who took the brunt of it.”
“Was I really such a tyrant, Cam?” Ben asked in some surprise.
“Not a tyrant,” Cam said. “Just someone who did not stand for even the smallest suggestion of shoddy workmanship. Here we go, then, John.”
