Page 15 of Second Chances
He did not ask what that wrong idea was. He regretted the end of the embrace, but at the same time he was relieved by it. He had just extricated himself from one entanglement. He did not want to land himself in another before he had had time to consider. He had known her for only a week, and during most of that time he had avoided her or she had avoided him. He was not sure which.
“We are in a beautiful place on a warm summer’s day,” he said, offering his arm and strolling onward with her, “and we are a man and a woman. I think we can be forgiven for a little harmless dalliance. Would you not agree?”
He wished he had chosen a different word. Dalliance sounded trivial, a little sordid.
“I would,” she said.
“It is strange, is it not,” he said, “how one arrives at adulthood believing that one’s childhood and youth have been a journey leading to a fixed destination and a settled and lasting happiness. Happily-ever-after. It is only as one grows older that one realizes that nothing is static, that nothing is assured. All of us suffer the troubles of life sooner or later, no matter how carefully we have planned our lives.”
“Ah, but life is not all troubles,” she said. “There are delights too, pinnacle moments of extreme joy and longer spells of contentment. Perhaps we need both extremes so that we do not remain the shallow beings most of us are when we first grow up but develop depth of character and empathy with others. Perhaps we would not recognize or appreciate happiness if we did not also know unhappiness.”
“Of course you are right.” He looked at her and laughed. “And wise.”
“This is one of those pinnacle moments,” she said—and flushed.
Of extreme joy? Yes, all caution aside, it was.
“Yes,” he said.
“And the future always holds endless possibilities,” she said. “As Wulfric just observed, we can always dream new dreams to replace the old.”
Bewcastle had said such a thing? It was hard to imagine. But Michael’s preconceptions of the icy duke had been shaken a few times during the past week.
“And yet,” he said, “I suppose most people dream of the same thing in essence—of love and happiness.”
“Do we?” She turned her head, frowning slightly as though she were considering the truth of what he had said. “Are we—”
But he never heard what she was about to ask. They had walked almost completely about the lake by now.
“Papa, Papa-a-a,” a voice cried from ahead of them, and they both looked up to see Robert dashing and skipping toward them, exuberant excitement in every line of his body. “Georgie said she saw you come this way. Papa, I hit the ball. I hit it a great whack and that man with lots of hair and a big nose—William’s papa—tried to catch it and almost did but dropped it. I scored a run.”
He had wormed his way between them and was beaming up at Michael even as his hand found its way into Miss Thompson’s.
“What a clever boy,” Michael said, ruffling his son’s fuzzy blond hair and blessing Lord Rannulf Bedwyn for deliberately fumbling the ball. “My son, the star cricketer. And then you abandoned your team?”
“I came to tell you,” Robert said, quite unrepentant, and he beamed ecstatically from one to the other of them.
“I am glad you did,” Michael said, smiling down into his face and feeling very close to tears.
“I came to tell you both,” Robert said.
“Well, thank you,” Miss Thompson said. “I am honored, Robert.”
She was smiling at his son. And yes, Michael thought, taking the child’s other hand in his own, he was filled to the brim with joy. She had been quite right about pinnacle moments. One must always be careful not to miss them.
Georgette and Robert shared a bedchamber with Mrs. Harris on the nursery floor. Although it was close to bedtime, however, they were both still in the main nursery, Georgette talking with Becky and Lizzie and Becky’s older brother Davy, and Robert sitting in a huddle of small children over by the window, all of them listening intently while the red-haired Lady Rannulf Bedwyn read them a story. Michael seized the opportunity to send Georgette to the room while his son was otherwise occupied. There was a screech of laughter from the little ones as Lady Rannulf acted the part of one of the nasty, evil characters—she was, Michael had gathered, something of an actress.
Georgette was sitting cross-legged on her bed when he entered the room and nodded to Mrs. Harris to leave them for a few moments. He sat down on the edge of the bed and patted one of his daughter’s knees. She favored him with one of her dazzling guilty smiles.
“Just a one-word, question,” he said. “Why?”
“Why what, Papa?”
The smile turned to a wide-eyed innocent look, which disappeared when he merely waited quietly for her answer. He was surprised and not a little alarmed when tears welled into her eyes. This was not one of her usual tactics and was perhaps not a tactic at all. He waited nonetheless.
“They would send me away, Papa,” she said. “I don’t mind so much being sent to school. I might enjoy it though I think I would rather stay at home. But they would not really be sending me to school, Papa, but away from you and Robbie. And then they would insist that he be a proper boy like all others and that he stop sitting on your lap and cuddling up to you and lifting his face at night for you to kiss him. They told me how surprised they were that you allowed such unmanly behavior in your son and heir. And before you know it, they will be sending him away too to a school that will toughen him up, and we all know how boys get toughened up in the schools that are supposed to be for the education of gentlemen.”
Good God!
