Lauren would be hurt that she had chosen solitude. Joseph would frown slightly and look a little puzzled—rather the way Lily and Neville and her mother had been looking at her lately, in fact.
It was so unlike her not always to be gregarious, cheerful, even sunny natured. She had tried to be at least cheerful since coming back home. She had even thought she had succeeded. But obviously she had not.
She had cried the day she knew she was not with child. What an absurd reaction. She ought to have been over the moon with relief. She had been relieved. Just not in an over-the-moon kind of way. Apart from anything else, it had been a further reminder that she could not conceive.
Sometimes—often, in fact—she tried to picture the child she had lost as he or she would have been now at the age of almost eight. Foolish imaginings. The child did not exist. And such imaginings merely left her wretched with grief and guilt.
When was she going to shake herself free of this massive, all-encompassing ennui? She was thoroughly irritated with herself. If she was not careful, she was going to develop into a whiner and would attract only fellow whiners as friends.
She was walking along the secluded woodland path that ran parallel to the perimeter of the park and parallel to the cliffs a short distance away until it reached the steep descent to the grassy valley below and the stone bridge over to the sandy beach beyond. She had always liked this path. She could walk straight onto it from the dower house, and it was overhung with the branches of low trees, which hid the cliffs and the sea. It was quiet and rural. It was not quite muddy today. It was not quite perfect for walking either, and it might yet turn muddy if it rained again—when it rained again.
Perhaps her mood would lift once they all moved to London after Easter and all the myriad entertainments of the Season began.
Hugo would be in London too.
Looking for a wife—of his own sort.
Gwen had made a decision in the secrecy of her heart. She was going to give serious consideration to any gentlemen who seemed interested in courting her this year—and there were usually a few. She would at last entertain the thought of marrying again. She would look for a kind, good-natured man, though he would have to be intelligent and sensible too. An older man might be better than a younger. Perhaps a widower who, like her, would be looking for the comfort of quiet companionship more than for anything more exciting. She would not look for passion. She had had passion quite recently and she did not want it ever again. It was far too raw and far too painful.
Perhaps by this time next year she would be married again. Perhaps she would even be … But, no. She would not think of that only to be horribly disappointed again. And she would not seek out the opinion of a physician who might be able to give her an informed opinion on her fertility. If he were to say no, even the faintest of her hopes would be dashed forever. And if he were to say yes, then she would be setting herself up for a worse disappointment if nothing happened after all.
She could live without children of her own. Of course she could. She was doing it now.
She had reached the end of the path and was at the top of the steep descent to the valley. This was the farthest she had walked since returning from Cornwall.
She rarely went down to the valley even though it was very picturesque with the waterfall that fell sheer from the cliffs to the deep, fern-surrounded pool. Her grandfather had built a small cottage beside the pool for her grandmother, who had liked to sketch there. She did not go down today either. She would not have done so even if the rain had not started. But suddenly it did, and it was no drizzle, as it had been earlier in the morning and all day yesterday. The heavens opened in a deluge from which even her umbrella was not going to provide much protection.
She turned to flee homeward. But the dower house was quite a distance away, and she knew it would be unwise to dash that far on her weakened ankle along a rain-slick path. The abbey was far closer if she cut diagonally across the sloping lawn to one side of the path. And she had been planning to go there later anyway.
She made her decision quickly and hurried up the grass, her head down, one hand holding up the hems of her dress and pelisse in a vain attempt to save them from becoming soggy and muddy, the other hand holding her umbrella at an angle best designed to keep at least part of herself dry. Before she arrived at the house she needed both hands on the umbrella handle to prevent the wind from blowing it away.
She arrived wet and breathless.
Lily must have seen her through the drawing room window. She was already downstairs in the hall waiting to greet her, and a footman was holding the door wide.
“Gwen!” Lily exclaimed. “You look half drowned, you poor thing. You had better come up to my dressing room and dry off. I will lend you something pretty to wear. Everyone is in the drawing room, and there is a visitor too.”
Gwen did not ask who the visitor was. Some neighbor, she supposed. But she followed Lily gratefully up the stairs. She could hardly appear in the drawing room looking as she did.
The drawing room door opened, however, as they reached the top of the first flight of stairs, and Neville stepped out. Gwen half smiled, half grimaced at him and then froze, for another man loomed in the doorway behind him, filling it with his massive presence. His dark eyes burned into hers.
Oh, dear God, the visitor.
“Lady Muir,” Lord Trentham said, inclining his head without removing his eyes from hers. He looked fierce and dour and rather like a coiled spring.
Whatever was he doing here?
“Oh,” Gwen said foolishly, “I look like a drowned rat.”
His eyes moved over her from head to toe and back again.
“You do,” he agreed, “though I would have been too polite to say so if you had not said it first.”
He was as blunt as ever.
Lily chose to be amused and laughed. Gwen merely stared and licked her lips, surely the only dry part of her person.
Oh, heavens, Hugo was here. At Newbury.
“I was about to whisk Gwen upstairs to dry off and change,” Lily said, “before she catches her death of cold.”
“Do that, my love,” Neville said. “Lord Trentham will wait, I do not doubt.”
“I will,” Hugo said, and Gwen yielded to the pressure of Lily’s hand pulling her in the direction of the stairs.
Whatever was he doing here?
Gwen donned a pale blue wool dress of Lily’s that was a little too long for her but otherwise fit well enough. Her hair was damp and curled more than it usually did, but it was not quite unmanageable. She was feeling breathless and dazed as she prepared to go back down to the drawing room.
Lily knew why Lord Trentham was here. He was on his way home from Cornwall, and since Newbury Abbey was not far out of his way, he had called to see that Gwen had fully recovered from her mishap.
“It is very obliging of him,” Lily said as she took Gwen’s soaked garments and set them in a heap close to her dressing room door. “And it is such an honor to meet him. Everyone is happy to see him at last. And he does not disappoint, does he? He is so large and … severe. He looks like a hero.”
Poor Hugo, Gwen thought. How he must be hating every moment. And he would not have had any idea, poor thing, that large numbers of her family were here. All of them aristocrats. None of them from his world.
Why had he really come? Surely he had not been at Penderris all this time? But there was no point in speculation. She would find out.