Perhaps it can be normal again, perhaps even happy. I like you. You are better than I could possibly have hoped." "But I may not marry him," Margaret protested.
Lady Carling smiled, though her eyes were suspiciously bright. "And you will go away from here," she said, "convinced that I have behaved unscrupulously and used emotional blackmail on you when I ought to have been entertaining you as any good hostess would do. And you would be quite right." Margaret smiled at the admission. "He has not spent every day of his life abandoning innocent young ladies and running off with married ones," Lady Carling said. "He did those things once, both on the same occasion. I make no excuse for him, Margaret – as you have observed, he makes none for himself. But he is thirty years old. Multiply those years by three hundred and sixty-five, and even if you ignore the leap years, that is a large number of days in which he has /not/ behaved in a dastardly manner. Find out about those days, Margaret. Find my son. Marry him if you can. Love him if you will.
And now, let me offer you another cup of tea and compliment you on the bonnet you were wearing when you stepped into the house. Where did you find such a pretty thing? I look and look and never see anything I really like – except on the heads of other ladies. Graham would be horrified to hear me say so as he complains loudly about all the bills for bonnets he is obliged to pay, but if I could just find one or two really pretty ones I would not have to keep buying plain or even downright ugly ones, would I?" "I bought a plain bonnet," Margaret explained, "and trimmed it myself." "Well, then, that does it," Lady Carling said. "I absolutely must have you for a daughter-in-law, Margaret, and will hear no argument to the contrary." They both laughed – just at the moment when the drawing room door opened to admit Lord Sheringford. "I have been pleading your case, Duncan," his mother said. "I have discovered that Margaret trims her own bonnets and that I simply must therefore have her for a daughter-in-law." "And I suppose, Mama," he said as Margaret got to her feet to take her leave, "that argument has weighed heavily with her. I suppose she is ready to permit me to place an announcement of our betrothal in tomorrow's papers." "Not at all, you foolish man," she said. "She will permit it when you have convinced her that marriage to you is the only thing that can possibly bring her real happiness for the rest of her life. Why else would a woman marry and become the possession of any male – just as if she were a thing? It is the reason why I married your papa and lived happily with him for almost twenty years. And it is the reason why I married Graham even if he /does/ appear to be Sir Gruff and Grim half the time." "Ah," he said as his mother got to her feet to hug Margaret again, "so I have your blessing to continue wooing her, do I, Mama? "Not my blessing, Duncan," she said, "but my maternal /command/.
Margaret, we will deal famously together. I feel it in my bones. We are both interested in bonnets." Margaret doubted as she stepped out of the house on Lord Sheringford's arm that he even suspected how deeply his mother loved him or how passionately she had pleaded his case. "That visit," he said dryly, confirming her suspicion, "was doubtless enlightening." "I /like/ your mother," she said. "If I marry you, it will be at least partly because I wish to have her for a mother-in-law." He looked at her sidelong without really turning his head.
Margaret smiled.
But she was thinking of him as a boy and young man – before the great folly of his life. His mother had not given much detail, but it was easy to picture a boy who frolicked with animals and stood up for them when they were being treated badly, and a young man who was happy and carefree and a little wild. A perfectly normal young man, in fact. Like Stephen.
Would everything that was Stephen be negated if he did anything as shockingly distasteful as what Lord Sheringford had done? The answer was, of course, yes. But would he not still be Stephen? But Stephen without the light and the joy? And the honor?
Had there once been light and joy in Lord Sheringford?
And honor? "You are looking very serious," he said. "Are you realizing with regret that it is me you would be marrying, not my mother?" "A shame, is it not?" she said. "Who /are/ you, Lord Sheringford? And who /were/ you?" "And then," he said, "there is the crucial in-between time." "Which you have refused to discuss," she said. "Yes." "Then I will have to content myself with the before and after," she said.
But they did not talk more during the walk home. Was it because there was too much to say? she wondered. Or too little?
He stepped inside Merton House with her but would come no farther than the hall. "Are you to attend the Johnston concert this evening?" he asked her. "I have a dinner invitation to honor," she said. "Sir Humphrey and Lady Dew, our former neighbors at Throckbridge, are in town for a short while and have invited my whole family." "Ah." He raised his eyebrows. "And the gallant major will be in attendance too, I assume?" "I suppose so," she said. "My competition?" he asked her. "Not at all," she told him. "I play no games, my lord. I have told you quite truthfully that I may or may not marry you in … What is it now?