They had let him down badly five years ago, those guardians-not to mention his mother. But basically, he had come to realize, they had given him a sound upbringing. It was time to stop feeling sorry for himself and punishing himself as well as them-it was time to become the person he wanted to be. No one else could do that but him after all.
It had felt enormously satisfying to put himself finally in charge of his own life.
Of course, he had promised to spend a month at Hareford House with Raycroft after the Season was over, and he would honor that promise, he had decided, and go home afterward. But the closeness of the Raycroft family, the warmth of their dealings with one another and with their friends and neighbors, had only strengthened his resolve and his yearning finally to be master of his own home. And so he had decided to cut short his visit and go home to Sidley Park after only two weeks. It was already late August and the harvest would be ready soon. He longed to be home for it this year and to stay home.
Now his mother’s letter had put a dent in his dreams. It appalled him that she appeared to have been so little affected by the events of five years ago. Or perhaps she was merely trying to make amends in the only way she knew how. It was her dream to see him settled in life with a wife and a few children in the nursery.
They were interrupted before he could reply to Raycroft’s invitation by the arrival in the breakfast parlor of Miss Rosamond Raycroft, John’s young sister, who was looking rosy-cheeked and bright-eyed and remarkably pretty after an hour spent out in the garden gathering flowers with her mama. Peter looked at her with affectionate appreciation as she kissed her brother’s cheek and then turned a deliberately pouting face toward him. He stood to draw back a chair for her.
“I am quite out of charity with you, ” she said as she took the seat. “You might have agreed to stay a little longer.”
“You break my heart,” Peter said, resuming his own place. “But I am not at all out of charity with you. I have something to beg of you, in fact, since you are dazzling my eyes with your beauty and would have robbed me of appetite if I had not already eaten. I humbly beg you, Miss Raycroft, to reserve the opening set at the coming assembly for me.”
The mock pout disappeared, to be replaced with a look of youthful eagerness. “You are staying after all?” she asked him. “For the assembly?”
“How can I resist?” He set his right hand over his heart and regarded her soulfully. “You ought not to have gone out into the sunshine and fresh air this morning and improved upon your already perfect complexion. You ought to have appeared here pale and wan and dressed in your oldest rags. Ah, but even then I fear I would have found the sight of you irresistible.”
She laughed.
“Oh, you are staying,” she said. “And I am dressed in my oldest rags, silly. You are staying. Oh, I knew you were just teasing when you insisted that you must leave tomorrow. I shall dance with you-of course I shall. You would not know how very few young gentlemen ever attend the assemblies, Lord Whitleaf. And even many of the ones who do attend play cards all evening or merely stand about watching as if it would kill them to dance.”
“It probably would, Ros,” her brother said. “It is a strenuous thing, dancing.”
“The Calverts will positively expire of envy when they know that I have already been engaged for the opening set, and by no less a person than Viscount Whitleaf, ” Miss Raycroft continued, clapping her hands together. “I shall tell them this morning. I promised to go over there so that we can all go out walking together. You really ought to ask Gertrude for the opening set, John. You know Mama and Mrs. Calvert will expect it even if you are betrothed to Alice Hickmore. And Gertrude will be relieved. If she has promised to dance it with you, she will not be able to dance it with Mr. Finn, who was born with two left feet, both of them overlarge, the poor gentleman.”
Peter grinned.
“I’ll come with you and ask her now,” John said cheerfully. “Finn is a farmer and a dashed good one too, Ros. And he could shoot a wren between the eyes at a hundred paces. One cannot expect him to be an accomplished dancer too.”
“Shoot a wren?” Miss Raycroft paused with her hand stretched toward the toast rack and looked stricken. “What a horrid idea. I certainly hope he does not ask me to dance.”
“It was merely a figurative way of speaking,” her brother told her. “What would be the use of shooting wrens? Nobody would eat them anyway.”
“Nobody would shoot a wren for any reason at all,” Peter assured the girl as he got to his feet. “They are gentle, beautiful birds. I shall accompany you on the walk too, if I may, Miss Raycroft. The weather and the countryside alone would tempt me, but even if it were raining and cold and blowing a gale, the company would be quite irresistible.”
She acknowledged the blatant flattery with a bright smile and eyes that still twinkled. She was seventeen years old, not yet officially “out,” and she knew as well as anyone that he was not seriously smitten with her charms-or with anyone else’s of her acquaintance for that matter. He would not have dared flatter and flirt with her if there were any likelihood that she might misunderstand-her brother was his closest friend and he was staying in their parents’ home.
“I shall go up and change my clothes and wash my hands and face,” she said, getting to her feet again, the toast forgotten. “I shall be ready in fifteen minutes.”
“Make it ten, Ros,” her brother said with a sigh. “You look perfectly decent to me as you are.”
Peter, meeting her pained glance, winked at her.
“Go and improve further upon perfection if it is possible,” he said. “We will wait for you even if you take twenty minutes.”
It seemed, he thought ruefully, that his decision had been made. He was not going home after all. Not yet, anyway.
An hour later Viscount Whitleaf was reflecting upon the singular handicap of possessing only two arms when three or four would have been far more convenient. He had Miss Raycroft on his right arm and the eldest Miss Calvert on his left, while Miss Jane Calvert and Miss Mary Calvert flittered and twittered about them like dainty, colorful birds, chattering and laughing, and John Raycroft walked nearby, swinging his arms and lifting his face to the sun and the sky when he was not beaming genially about him at the late summer countryside and remarking that the harvest was sure to be an excellent one this year.
Peter certainly hoped it would be good on his own farms at Sidley Park too. Having once thought about it, he ached to be there for the harvest, to be able to tramp the fields in old breeches and top boots, to be with his laborers, to shed his coat and roll up his shirtsleeves and work alongside them, to feel the sweat of honest labor along his back. To do all those things, in fact, that he had not been allowed to do as a boy and had done only one glorious year when he was twenty and looking forward with such eagerness to reaching his majority.