Oh, she thought with a sudden pang, how she still missed Agnes. Her sister had lived with her here for a year after losing her husband. She had spent much of her time outdoors, painting the wildflowers. Agnes was wondrously skilled with watercolors. That had been such a happy year, for Agnes was like the daughter she had never had and never would. But Dora had known the interlude would not last. She had not allowed herself even to hope that it would. It had not, because Agnes had found love.
Dora was fond of Flavian, Viscount Ponsonby, Agnes’s second husband. Very fond, actually, though initially she had had doubts about him, for he was handsome and charming and witty but had a mocking eyebrow she had distrusted. Upon closer acquaintance, however, she had been forced to admit that he was the ideal partner for her quiet, demure sister. When they married here in the village last year, it had been evident to Dora that it was, or soon would be, a love match. And indeed it had turned out to be just that. They were happy together, and there was to be a child in the autumn.
Dora turned away from the window when she realized that she was no longer really seeing the garden. They lived in faraway Sussex, Agnes and Flavian. But it was not the end of the world, was it? Already she had been to visit them a couple of times, at Christmas and again at Easter. She had stayed for two weeks each time, though Flavian had urged her to stay longer and Agnes had told her with obvious sincerity that she might live with them forever if she chose.
“Forever and a day,” Flavian had added.
Dora did not so choose. Living alone by its very definition was a solitary business, but solitude was infinitely preferable to any alternative she had ever discovered. She was thirty-nine years old and a spinster. The alternatives for her were to be someone’s governess or companion on the one hand or a dependent relative on the other, moving endlessly from her sister’s home to her father’s to her brother’s. She was very, very thankful for her modest, pretty cottage and her independent employment and lonely existence. No, not lonely—solitary.
She could hear the clatter of china downstairs and knew that Mrs. Henry was deliberately hinting to her, without actually calling upstairs, that the tea had been brewed and carried into the sitting room, and that it would go cold if she did not come down soon.
She went down.
“I suppose you heard all about the big wedding in London when you went up to Middlebury, did you?” Mrs. Henry asked, hovering hopefully in the doorway while Dora poured herself a cup of tea and buttered a scone.
“From Lady Darleigh?” She smiled. “Yes, she told me it was a very grand and a very joyous occasion. They married at St. George’s on Hanover Square, and the Duke of Stanbrook hosted a lavish wedding breakfast. I am very happy for Lady Barclay, though I suppose I must refer to her now as the Countess of Hardford. I thought her very charming when I met her last year, but very reserved too. Lady Darleigh says her new husband adores her. That is very romantic, is it not?”
How lovely it must be . . .
She took a bite of her scone. Sophia, Lady Darleigh, who had arrived back at Middlebury Park from London with her husband the day before yesterday, had said more about the wedding they had gone there to attend, but Dora was too tired to elaborate further now. She had squeezed an extra pianoforte lesson for the viscountess into what was already a full day of work and had had scarcely a moment to herself since breakfast.
“I will no doubt have a long letter from Agnes about it in the next day or two,” she said when she saw Mrs. Henry’s look of disappointment. “I will share with you what she has to say about the wedding.”
Her housekeeper nodded and shut the door.
Dora took another bite from her scone, and found herself suddenly lost in memories of last year and a few of the happiest days of her life just before the excruciatingly painful one when Agnes drove off with her new husband and Dora, smiling, waved them on their way.
How pathetic that she relived those days so often. Viscount and Viscountess Darleigh, who lived at Middlebury Park just beyond the village, had had houseguests—very illustrious ones, all of them titled. Dora and Agnes had been invited to the house more than once while they were there, and a few times various groupings of the guests had called at the cottage and even taken tea here. Agnes was a close friend of the viscountess, and Dora was comfortable with them herself as she gave music lessons to both the viscount and his wife. On the basis of this acquaintance, she and Agnes had been invited to dine one evening, and Dora had been asked to play for the company afterward.
All the guests had been incredibly kind. And flattering. Dora had played the harp, and they had not wanted her to stop. And then she had played the pianoforte and they had urged her to keep on playing. She had been led up to the drawing room for tea afterward on the arm of no less a personage than the Duke of Stanbrook. Earlier, she had sat between him and Lord Darleigh at dinner. She would have been awed into speechlessness if she had not been long familiar with the viscount and if the duke had not made an effort to set her at her ease. He had seemed an almost frighteningly austere-looking nobleman until she looked into his eyes and saw nothing but kindness there.
She had been made to feel like a celebrity. Like a star. And for those few days she had felt wondrously alive. How sad—no, pathetic—that in all her life there were no other memories half so vivid with which to regale herself when she sat alone like this, a little too weary to read. Or at night, when she lay in bed unable to fall asleep, as she sometimes did.
They called themselves a club, the male guests who had stayed at Middlebury Park for three weeks—the Survivors’ Club. They had survived both the wars against Napoleon Bonaparte and the dreadful injuries they had suffered during them. Lady Barclay was a member too—the lady who had just married. She had not been an officer herself, of course, but her first husband had, and she had witnessed his death from torture, poor lady, after he had been captured in Portugal. Viscount Darleigh himself had been blinded. Flavian, Lord Ponsonby, Agnes’s husband, had suffered such severe head injuries that he could neither think nor speak nor understand what was said to him when he was brought back to England. Baron Trentham, Sir Benedict Harper, and the Earl of Berwick, the last of whom had inherited a dukedom since last year, had all suffered terribly as well. The Duke of Stanbrook years ago had gathered them all at his home in Cornwall and given them the time and space and care they needed to heal and recuperate. They were all now married, except the duke himself, who was an older man and a widower.