There was a comfortable familiarity about such a life.
Except that diversions did not always divert.
Activities that had always amused him well enough before suddenly seemed to have lost their power to distract his mind from his overall dissatisfaction with the way his life was proceeding.
His mother’s letters informed him that the new paintings had arrived for the drawing room, which was now looking so much lovelier than any other room in the house that she was considering making changes to the dining room next.
Good Lord, he was going to have to do something to stop her.
Barbara, his eldest sister, who happened to spend a few days in London with her husband during the autumn, mentioned Christmas.
“You will be at Sidley, I hope,” she said. “Clarence and I will be there with the children, and it will be too, too dreary if you are not also there, Peter. Besides, Mama is inviting other guests, and it is only right that you be there as host.”
“Other guests?” He grimaced. “Who is she this time?”
Barbara clucked her tongue while Clarence waggled his eyebrows at his brother-in-law and held his peace.
“I have no idea,” she said. “But there will be someone, of course. Mama is concerned about you, Peter. She wants to see you well settled. It is foolish of you to be stubborn merely because you did not like Bertha Grantham five years ago and did not admit it until the last possible moment.”
None of his sisters had any idea what had happened on that occasion, and he had no wish to enlighten any of them.
Peter met his brother-in-law’s eyes again and watched one of them depress in a slow wink.
“I’ll choose my own bride in my own good time, Barb,” he said. “I’ll think about Christmas.”
But thinking about brides made him feel more wretched than ever. In the almost two months since he had left Somerset, he had still not recovered from his terrible sense of guilt.
Good Lord, he had debauched an innocent!
There were no excuses. None.
He felt sick whenever he thought of that afternoon on the wilderness walk. And it was almost impossible not to think of it at least a dozen times every day.
It seemed somehow worse to have learned that her father had killed himself. Not that that sad event was in any way his fault or linked to the events of the summer, but even so…He had liked Osbourne. He liked the daughter.
Whenever such thoughts threatened to cause his head to explode, he went out again in search of another entertainment to take his mind off things.
Finally, at the end of October, he decided that a change of scenery might cheer him up and headed off to spend a week or two with his cousin Lauren, Viscountess Ravensberg, at Alvesley Park in Wiltshire, where she lived with Kit, her husband, and their children, and with Kit’s parents, the Earl and Countess of Redfield. He had a standing invitation to go there and always enjoyed himself when he did.
They were fond of each other, he and Lauren, perhaps because they had been kept apart until he reached adulthood and discovered an invitation to her wedding among his pile of mail one day after he returned from one of his walking tours. His mail had never come directly to him until he turned twenty-one, and he had never met Lauren-had hardly even heard of her, in fact, except as the possibly illegitimate daughter of a mother of loose morals: widow of his father’s elder brother, a former Viscount Whitleaf. He had gone to the wedding, though he had arrived only just in time, and discovered that Lauren was lovely and charming and most definitely not illegitimate-her eyes were the exact same unusual color and shade as his own.
He went to Alvesley now to stay and did indeed enjoy himself there-spending hours in company with Lauren and the Countess of Redfield, playing with the three children, riding and discussing farming business and politics with Kit and the earl, visiting neighbors, including the Duke and Duchess of Bewcastle, playing with their baby, much to the amusement of the duchess and her sister, Miss Thompson, who remarked with a laugh that the babe was habitually too cross to be anyone’s favorite except his mama and papa’s. And his grandmama’s, Mrs. Thompson added reproachfully.
Though enjoyment, of course, seemed to be a relative term these days. He still could not shrug off his underlying feeling of restlessness and dissatisfaction with himself.
And then fate took a startlingly strange hand in his destiny.
Perhaps it ought not to have startled him quite as much as it did. Already, soon after his arrival, he had discovered the almost incredibly coincidental fact that he had just missed seeing Sydnam Butler, Lauren’s brother-in-law, who had been home for a week with his new bride, the former Miss Anne Jewell, a teacher at Miss Martin’s School for Girls in Bath-and one of Susanna’s particular friends, Peter remembered. And already, on visiting Bewcastle, he had remembered the connection Susanna had felt existed between the school and Lady Hallmere, Bewcastle’s sister.
But then, almost a week into his stay, he learned that Lauren and the duchess between them had just finalized plans for a surprise wedding breakfast in honor of the newlyweds, who had married quietly and by special license in Bath. Lauren was involved because Sydnam was her brother-in-law, the duchess because he was the steward at Bewcastle’s Welsh estate.
Their plan was to gather as many relatives and friends in Bath as they could muster on short notice, lure the bride and groom there on some pretext, and then surprise them with a grand celebration of their marriage at the Upper Assembly Rooms.
“We are all going from here,” Lauren explained one day during tea. “We would love for you to come with us, Peter, would we not, Kit? But I understand that a journey to Bath and a wedding breakfast may hold out no great allure for you. Perhaps you would prefer to go home, though if you do go, I will feel that I have driven you away.” She laughed. “Oh, will you come? To please me?”
She would never know the turmoil her words had set up within him.
He was actually being invited-even urged-to go to Bath. But not just that. It seemed altogether probable that he would see Susanna there if he went. Surely as a friend and former colleague of the bride she would be invited to this wedding breakfast.
He could see her again.
She surely would not wish to see him, though, he reminded himself. By now she probably hated him as some sort of archvillain, and how could he blame her if she did? Dash it all, first he had debauched her, then he had made her a most improper offer, and then he had escorted her back to Barclay Court, bidden her a cheerful farewell in company with the Edgecombes, and gone riding off without a backward glance.
At the time he had convinced himself that it was because she had said it must be that way.
But he had guessed something about the newlyweds, though neither Lauren nor the duchess was indiscreet enough actually to put it into words. The new Mrs. Butler was probably with child-a fact that would explain both the haste and the secrecy of the nuptials. She had spent a month of the summer in Wales, he could recall Susanna’s saying-doubtless on the very estate where Sydnam was steward. She had gone there with the Hallmeres, had she not?
And his suspicions led him suddenly to wonder if perhaps Susanna too…
The very thought was enough to cause his stomach to lurch into a somersault and leave him feeling decidedly queasy.
But surely if it were so she would have let him know. She would have written to him.
Would she?
He knew very well she would not.
Good Lord! Damn it to hell! He should have thought of it sooner and made an effort to discover the truth for himself. That would have been the gentlemanly thing to do-if there were a gentlemanly way to handle such a situation. Or had he thought of it and suppressed the ghastly possibility? He was not a total ignoramus after all, was he? He knew what frequently resulted when men slept with women.