She tipped back her head, pursed her lips, and frowned in thought before shaking her head. "No, you did not."

"Ah," he said, "but I do. I find you s.e.xually attractive, Dora."

"Do you?"

"You do not believe me?"

"Perhaps," she said, "you had better show me what you mean."

And they smiled slowly at each other and oh, she loved him, loved him, loved him.

He showed her, taking all of fifteen minutes to do it. She lay in his arms again afterward, warm, a bit sweaty, a little bit breathless, and tried to remember her impression of him last year, when they had met at Middlebury Park. He had been handsome certainly, though a bit austere, kindly and charming too, confident and self-a.s.sured, the consummate gentleman and aristocrat, a man without troubles or needs, a man upon whom the sun must always have shone. In her dreams she had made a sort of fairy-tale prince out of him.

The real man was very different, far more vulnerable.

Far more lovable.

He was sleeping again, she could tell from his breathing. Soon enough so was she.

"Ah," George said while they were looking through their letters at the breakfast table the following morning, "Imogen and Percy are back in Cornwall. It seems they hosted a grand ball themselves and invited every member of his family to the third and fourth generation-Percy's words-with the warning that it was their farewell to London until at least next spring and there would be no point in anyone's organizing any further parties in their post-honeymoon honor. One has to be firm with one's doting relatives, he declares."

"I do like Percy," Dora said.

"I was appalled when I first met him," George told her. "He seemed rude and bl.u.s.tering and bad-tempered and about as unsuited to Imogen as it was possible to be. It did not take me long to realize that in fact they are perfect for each other. Ah, I must read you this."

And he read a paragraph full of complaint over the fact that Lady Lavinia Hayes's menagerie of canine and feline scruffs had noticeably increased in size since he was last at Hardford even if she did try to keep them hidden in the second housekeeper's room-and still no one had been able to explain to Percy why that particular room was so named.

"Lady Lavinia," George explained, "is the elderly sister of the last earl and has lived at Hardford all her life. She takes in strays of both the animal and human variety. You have not seen Percy's dog, have you? Have I described it to you before? According to Percy, it was the ugliest and scrawniest of the lot when he first went to Hardford, and it attached itself to him like glue despite his horrified and vigorous discouragement. He professes still to be exasperated that it follows him everywhere, but it is perfectly obvious to anyone with half a brain that he adores it."

Dora laughed.

"You have another letter from Mrs. Henry?" he asked.

"She is back living in the cottage at Inglebrook," she told him. "She is working for Mr. and Mrs. Madison, the new music teacher and his wife, and is enjoying their children, though she misses me. She could hardly say otherwise, though, could she, when she is writing to me."

"But she would not write at all if she were not missing you," he said "Oh, dear, listen to this, George," she said. "The Corleys are complaining about him to anyone who will listen. Mr. Madison has informed them that they are wasting their money and their daughter's time and trying his patience to the limit by insisting that she continue her lessons. Apparently I was far more appreciative of Miranda's superior talents, but-oh, goodness!-that was because I had a musical ear while 'some people' do not." She put the letter down with a shake of her head. "Oh, the brave, foolish man. I simply must hear Sophia's version of this. She will surely write to tell me."

She looked up and joined in George's laughter. He reached out and covered one of her hands with his own.

"Your other letter is from your mother?" he asked.

"Yes." She had been saving it for last. She always felt a turmoil of unexamined emotions when she saw the familiar handwriting on the outside of a letter and thought of her mother and remembered that visit in London. Dora broke the seal and read what was written in the careful hand within. "There is nothing very startling. They have been to a card party with a few friends. They went for a long walk in Richmond Park one afternoon and had a picnic there on the gra.s.s. They have been working in their garden, both of them. They have not been able to keep the wilderness at bay with only one gardener employed there, but that very fact makes their flower garden more precious to them. There are flowers to nurture and weeds to banish."

She stopped there and bit her upper lip hard. She bent her head forward over the letter.

"Dora?" George's hand was upon hers again. "What is it?"

"Nothing," she a.s.sured him, swiping at her tears and fumbling with the handkerchief he pressed into her hand. "How foolish of me! It is just that she says the weeds may bloom in the wilderness with her blessing, but not in her flower beds. It is just exactly what I always said of my garden at Inglebrook. I- Oh, forgive me. How silly." She dropped the letter to her plate and spread his handkerchief over her eyes.

He waited while she dried her eyes and blew her nose and lifted her head to give him a rather watery, red-eyed smile. Then her gaze turned to the windows.

"It looks as if today will be as lovely as yesterday," she said. "Today I am not going visiting. Perhaps we can go down onto the beach later. I have a yearning to take off my shoes and stockings and paddle in the water. Is it childish?"

"Yes," he said. "But children are wise, spontaneous creatures and we would do well to imitate them more often than we do." He was silent for a moment, gazing at her. "Dora, let us invite your mother and her husband here."

Her eyes widened in shock. "To stay?"

"Well, it would hardly be practical," he said, "to invite them for tea one afternoon, would it?"

She gazed mutely at him.

"Let us invite them for a couple of weeks," he said, "or a month. Or longer if you wish. I believe you long to know your mother again, and perhaps Sir Everard Havell is not quite the villain you have always supposed him to be. Let them come. Get to know them."

"You would not mind?" she asked him. "Perhaps they would not be well received here."

"Of course they would," he said. "They are the mother and stepfather of the d.u.c.h.ess of Stanbrook, are they not? The in-laws of the duke? I am sure you know by now that we can count on our neighbors to receive them accordingly. Write to your mother after breakfast, while I write to Imogen and Percy. Tell her I will send the carriage for them. We can do some entertaining while they are here. You would enjoy that, would you not, now that you have met most of our neighbors and exchanged courtesy calls with them?"

"You have never done much entertaining here?" she asked him.

"Not on any grand scale," he said, "and not much on a small scale either. But . . . times have changed and I am happy to change with them. Would you enjoy hosting dinners, perhaps a few parties?"

"A ball?" she said.

He looked surprised for a moment and then smiled at her. "Why not?" he said. "Poor Briggs will have an apoplexy. Or perhaps not. He is fond of complaining that he is underworked."

"Oh, but I will help him," she said, her hands clasped to her bosom.

"You have a world of experience at organizing grand b.a.l.l.s, I suppose?" he said.

"How difficult can it be?" she asked him.

His grin persisted. "Perhaps I will be kind enough," he said, "not to remind you of that question at a later date."

She gazed earnestly at him then, remembering suddenly what had started all this.

"George," she said, "are you sure about inviting Mama and Sir Everard?"

"I am perfectly sure," he said, serious again. "But what about you, Dora? It must be as you wish."

"I am so afraid," she said.

He raised his eyebrows.

"Since I called on her," she explained, "I have dreamed that something I thought irrevocably broken could perhaps be mended again-slowly and cautiously. At a distance. What if she comes here and I discover that it is impossible? It will be like losing her all over again."

He got to his feet, reached out a hand for hers, and drew her up into his arms.

"I truly do not believe that will happen," he said. "But if you wish to let matters remain as they are, then that is how they will be. Do you want to think about it for a day or two?"

"No," she said after a mere moment's hesitation. "I shall write this morning. And George? May I say your carriage will already be on the way by the time she reads my letter? So that she will know that we mean it? So that she will not say no? So that I will not have to wait too long?"

He laughed softly against the top of her head.

"We had better move," he said, "or the carriage will be arriving for them even before your letter is written."

He was very, very good, Dora thought a short while later as they sat in the library together, writing their letters, at persuading other people to solve their problems and be happy. But what of himself? He had told her enough last night to make it seem that he had told her everything. But she knew that was not so.

He was, she feared, fathoms deep in pain and grief, but for some reason preferred to bear them alone. Why would he not share with her? He had encouraged her to share her pain over her mother's defection, and some good had come of it-oh, perhaps a great deal of good. Pain, even pain from long ago, could heal. But repressing it, refusing to talk about it even with one's spouse, would not do that. Perhaps the difference was that her mother was still alive, while his wife and son were dead. Perhaps there seemed no way to heal the wounds of the past.

But oh, she wished she knew at least what the wounds were. They were not just grief, were they?

The realization that it was indeed more than grief that burdened her husband and caused his pain was almost more than Dora could bear. But did she really want to know? The answer was surely no. But . . .

She needed to know.

If their marriage was ever to be a truly happy one, then she needed to know.

And yet she also needed to respect his right to privacy.

She shook her head and returned her attention to her letter.

16.

Dora was excited by the prospect of being hostess at her very own ball. She also experienced a bit of panic at the realization that she had no experience at organizing such a grand event. Perhaps she ought to have started with a dinner or a small, select party, and expanded from there. But it could not be that difficult, could it? And indeed it could not, she soon discovered, for her own part in planning the ball was to be a very small one.

She made her way to Mr. Briggs's office that same afternoon after her walk on the beach with George. But almost before she could mention the word ball to her husband's secretary, he slid across his desk toward her an impressively long guest list he had prepared for her perusal. He also had the tentative draft of an invitation card. A short while after, she summoned Mrs. Lerner to her sitting room, but her announcement of the coming event drew no exclamation of surprise from the housekeeper. Instead, she produced a written list of plans and details that Her Grace might wish to look over.

When Dora went belowstairs the following morning in the hope that she was not interrupting the chef at a particularly busy time, she discovered that indeed she was. But Mr. Humble ushered her over to one end of the long wooden kitchen table, sat her down with a steaming cup of tea and two large oatmeal and raisin biscuits fresh from the oven, and set before her a lengthy list of suggested delicacies for the refreshment room at the ball and a prospective menu for the sit-down supper at eleven. By that time Dora was not even unduly surprised. The servants of a large house, she was learning, knew everything almost before their master and mistress did. Mr. Humble even informed her that he knew of a number of people within five miles of the hall who would be delighted to provide the extra help he and the butler and housekeeper would need from a day or two before the ball until a day or so after. Her Grace must not worry her head about it.

Dora was quite unsurprised to discover when she ran the head gardener to earth in one of the greenhouses beyond the kitchen garden behind the house that he already had ideas about what flowers would be blooming and what greenery would be ready for filling the urns and vases that would decorate the ballroom and the main hall and staircase and other rooms that would be used on the evening of the ball. And she was almost expecting when she went to the stables to consult the head groom that he had plans already well in place for the handling of a large number of carriages and horses. Her expectations proved quite correct-Her Grace need not worry her head over it.

Mr. Briggs had informed her earlier that he was in the process of discovering and engaging the best orchestra available-subject, of course, to Her Grace's approval. He had also begun to draw up a suggested program of dances suitable for a ball in the country, though he did need to know whether Her Grace wished to include any waltzes. Although the waltz was by now widely danced in London, even at Almack's, he explained, there were people in the more rural parts of England who still considered it a somewhat scandalous invention. Dora instructed him to include two sets of waltzes, one before supper and one after.

The invitations had not yet been written when Dora called upon Barbara Newman at the vicarage one morning. Barbara was teaching her youngest daughters, aged eight and nine, to knit. They sat side by side on a sofa, as neat as two pins, wielding fat needles and thick wool, with identical looks of frowning concentration upon their faces. Dora already loved them dearly, as she did their mother. It was difficult sometimes to understand what drew one to some people as friends, above the level of friendly acquaintance. It had not happened often to her, but it had happened twice already at Penderris. She was very well blessed.

"Everyone is as excited as can be about your ball," Barbara said as soon as the initial greetings had been dispensed with. "There has not been one or indeed any sort of grand entertainment at the hall in living memory. How delightful that it is to happen now when the duke is a happy man at last."

Dora stared at her in surprise. "But how did you know?" she asked.

Barbara laughed. "Do you really imagine that there is a person left within five miles of here who does not know?" she said.

Dora laughed too. But her friend's attention was taken by the silent tears of the younger of the two girls, who had dropped a st.i.tch and thought her work had been ruined. Barbara picked up the st.i.tch, worked it through the loops down which it had run, and handed the needles back to the little girl with smiles and words of encouragement.

The ball, then, Dora thought as she made her way home later, would happen of itself, almost without her a.s.sistance. There was certainly no going back now, was there?

"I could easily grow accustomed to having an army of servants," she observed to George when he found her sitting in the flower garden before luncheon with a book open on her lap. She laughed when he raised his eyebrows and looked amused. "Not only do they have every detail of the ball well in hand already, but also they have left me not a single weed in any of the flower beds to pull."

In one way, she thought as the days pa.s.sed, it was a pity there was so little for her to do as she waited in an agony of mingled excitement and trepidation for her mother's arrival-or for the return of the empty carriage. But gradually, during those days, something else happened to nag at her thoughts when she was idle. Or, rather, something did not happen, something that always happened with dependable regularity every month but had failed to materialize two weeks ago or on any of the days since.

She accompanied George on a tour of the farm one day and listened to explanations of crop rotation and drainage and lambing and pasture and shearing. She was able to a.s.sure him in perfect truth that she was not bored. On another day she went with him and his steward to look at a few of the laborers' cottages that the steward thought needed repairs and that George thought needed replacing altogether. While they discussed the matter and circled the buildings and climbed ladders and talked with a few of the men who lived in the houses concerned, Dora called upon their wives and exchanged recipes and knitting patterns with a couple of them while she observed from the inside the dilapidated condition of their cottages.

She returned alone the following morning with some baked goods for the families and sweetmeats for the children, all of which she had made herself the evening before after a.s.suring a wary, somewhat shocked Mr. Humble that she would neither burn the kitchen down nor leave a mess behind her. She took her small harp with her and played for some of the elderly and the children. More important, she was able to take the news-with George's blessing-that the cottages would be replaced before winter came on.

On another day Dora accompanied George on the longish drive to visit Julian and Philippa. She found them as delightful as she had when she met them in London. She had feared they might resent her and even see her, perhaps, as a fortune hunter. But she saw no evidence of any such thing. Of course they did not yet know . . . If there was anything to know, that was.

"Uncle George is so clearly happy," Philippa told Dora while they were strolling together across a lawn to the lily pond. "Just look at him."

They both turned to look back to where Julian and George stood talking on the terrace outside the morning room. George held young Belinda on one arm, and the child was bouncing up and down. It felt to Dora as though her stomach performed a somersault.

Was he happy? she wondered as they drove home in the carriage later and she gazed at his profile next to her. Both Philippa and Barbara had used that word to describe him. But if he was, it was surely a fragile thing, easily destroyed. If she- But perhaps it was not so.

He turned his face toward her and took her hand in his.

"What is it?" he asked her.

She shook her head. "Oh, nothing," she said. "I am anxious about my mother's coming. And I am fearful that she will not come."

His eyes searched hers. "That is all?" he asked.

"All?" she said. "I have not known her for twenty-two years, George, a longer time than I knew her. And Sir Everard Havell is the man who took her away from us, though I have come to understand that perhaps it was a sense of honor more than villainy that motivated him. I do not know what to expect of either of them-or of myself. Sometimes it may be wiser to let sleeping dogs lie."

"But only sometimes?" he asked.

"It is an academic question anyway," she said with a sigh. "They have been invited and the carriage has been sent."

He was content to leave it at that. Perhaps she ought to have answered his original questions truthfully since she had not actually been thinking of her mother at the time. But she had not done so, and it was too late now.

They rode the rest of the way home in what might have been a companionable silence if she had not been trying to convince herself with every pa.s.sing mile that it was the uneven surface of the road and the resulting jolting of the carriage that was making her feel slightly bilious.

It had been good to have a lovely summer's day on which to visit his nephew, George thought, but it was a shame much of it had had to be spent cooped up inside the carriage. And Dora looked slightly peaked, though she claimed it was only nervousness over her mother's antic.i.p.ated visit that was causing it.

The evening was as lovely as the day had been, only cooler. It was perfect for a stroll. He suggested one after dinner, and took her walking along a country lane behind the house instead of along the headland or down on the beach. Ripening crops waved in the slight breeze to either side of them, sheep baaed in the distance, a lone gull called overhead. The sky was turning pink in the west. The air was warm and slightly salty.

"Perfect," he said, drawing a deep breath of it into his lungs.