Page 25 of Second Chances
Lady Manning looked at her daughter over the tops of her eyeglasses before returning her attention to her sewing. “And Sidney,” she said. “He always was the most amiable of young men once he grew past a mischievous boyhood. But it would be as well to remember, my love, that he is now a man grown and come of age and that you are no longer children, the two of you. It would be unwise to expect too much of his company. I don’t want to see you disappointed or hurt.”
Constance watched the rain slanting against the darker background of a tree and smiled to herself. She had kept the secret all over the winter and spring. No one knew but her—and Sidney. But soon everyone would know. Her birthday was three weeks and one day in the future. On her birthday Sidney would be talking with Papa and at the dance in the evening the announcement would be made. She was to be betrothed. And sometime soon—perhaps next summer—she was to be Mrs. Sidney Hayes. She would be married to her dearest friend and would be comfortable and happy for the rest of her life.
“He is to help me organize the treasure hunt for my party,” she said. “And he has already reserved the opening set at the dance with me. And two sets at the assembly the week after next. Oh, Mama, I am so glad summer has come at last.”
Lady Manning glanced at the window and at the fire and sighed. “If it can be called summer,” she said. “Sometimes I wish we lived in Italy or the south of France. Anywhere but England.”
“But it is summer,” Constance said. “Everyone is coming home again.”
Georgina Parkinson, her particular friend, had come home from her second Season in London, and Marjorie Churchill from her first. And Rodney Churchill, Marjorie’s brother, was down from Oxford, and Hadley Fleming was home from London. And now Sidney was home.
Constance hated every other season of the year except summer. Oh, that was not strictly true. Of course it was not, she thought guiltily, visualizing spring flowers and autumn leaves and winter frost on the trees. But every other season was lonely and filled with longings that made her feel ungrateful. For Papa, though he was a baronet, was not a wealthy man, and the little wealth he had, had been spent on physicians and medicines for Mama and on journeys for the two of them to sunnier climes. There was no money for a Season in London, for a come-out for his only daughter.
Only during the summer did the longings subside. Then everyone came home. Especially Sidney. Constance sometimes wondered how she would bear her life with patience if it were not for her enduring friendship with Sidney—and the deeper feelings that had developed between them the summer before.
“If the weather would just clear and warm up,” Lady Manning said, “perhaps Papa would be able to move my chair outside some afternoons. I long to feel the sun on my face. But it begins to look as if there just will be no summer this year.”
Constance turned her head and smiled affectionately at her mother. “It will come,” she said. “The sun always shines for my birthday, Mama. And this year it must, because I have the treasure hunt all planned and only the outdoors will do for that.”
“I hope so, my love,” her mother said. Constance turned her head back sharply to the window. “Papa is back,” she said, watching the carriage proceed to the stable block without stopping first at the front doors for its passenger to alight.“He is going to be soaked. He has gone to the stables. I wonder if Sidney is with him.”
But he was alone, she saw as he came striding in some haste toward the house a few minutes later, head bent against the wind and rain.
“Ah,” he said, coming into the parlor as he bent to kiss his wife’s forehead, “my two ladies are wise enough to stay indoors and close to a fire. It is a miserable day.”
“You are wet, my love,” Lady Manning said, brushing at the sleeve of her husband’s coat. You should go and change before you catch your death.”
“I thought you would want to know that you will be having your dinner guest,” he said, smiling broadly. “You can step up the preparations, Doris. I was the first to call and therefore the first to issue an invitation.”
“Oh, splendid,” his wife said. “It will be so good to see a different face again.”
“What?” Sir Howard Manning said. “The old faces are no longer good enough for you? Do you hear that, Connie, heh? We are no longer good enough for your mama but she must be entertaining viscounts.”
“Oh, my love,” Lady Manning said, laughing. “What nonsense!”
“And Sidney is coming too, Papa?” Constance asked eagerly.
“Eh?” he said. “Young Sidney? Oh, I daresay. There was no sign of him this morning. He was probably wise enough to keep his distance from all the callers.” He chuckled.
“But you did invite him too, Papa?” There was a note of anxiety in Constance’s voice.
“Young Sidney needs no invitation to come here, girl,” her father said. “The problem would be keeping him away, now, would it not, if we decided we did not want him here. Where are you off to now, Doris, eh? Can’t you ask me to fetch you something but must be so independent? And Connie here too, just waiting to run and fetch for you.”
Lady Manning was getting slowly to her feet with the aid of two canes. “I am going to consult Cook about dinner,” she said. “And I am not a total invalid, my love, though you would breathe for me too if you could, I do believe.”
“Well at least,” he said, “let me take one of your arms. Let me be one of your canes, eh, Doris? Watch that rain, Connie.” He chuckled as he left the room with his wife. “It might forget to fall if you do not keep an eye on it.”
Constance smiled. She did a quick mental calculation. Five hours. He would be here in five hours and then all boredom would be at an end. Never a day passed when Sidney was at home-rain or shine—without his calling at the house on some pretext. Not that he ever needed a pretext.
She wished the Viscount Whitley was not coming too, but there was nothing she could do to prevent that. Anyway, four years had passed since he was last at home. She had been only fifteen then. A very young girl. She was a woman now. And he must be close to thirty. He was seven years older than Sidney. Eight-and-twenty.
She had always hero-worshiped him as a child, as had Sidney. And he had always treated them as an elder brother might—with careless indifference most of the time, sometimes with indulgence, sometimes with open irritation.
And then she had been fourteen and budding into womanhood long before Sidney was anything but a boy, and hero worship had begun to take on a different nature. And the following year, when she had been fifteen. It had been painful that year, her feelings for the handsome and fashionable and twenty-four-year-old Jonathan. She had not been able to sleep at night or look at him without aches in unfamiliar places or talk to him without stammering and feeling her mind turn totally blank—or think of him without taking flight into wild and soaring fantasies.
He had talked with her more than usual that summer and she had longed for his attention and found herself terrified by it whenever it came and quite unable to take advantage of it. She had always turned in noisy relief to Sidney, always her dearest friend and still a boy and quite unthreatening to her fragile and budding femininity.
Not that that summer pain had lasted long. Jonathan had left soon after the traditional Esdale picnic in July. He had left before her sixteenth birthday— and after trying to kiss her at the picnic.
