Chapter 25
The time we have on earth is finite. The good we might do for those we love in that short span is infinite.
—Lawrence Sinclair, who is trying mightily to make up for lost time.
Lawrence paused at the edge of the meadow to survey the improvements to the dower house. The plastered wattle-and-daub between dark half timbers gleamed with fresh whitewash. A new thatched roof topped the structure. Glass glinted in every previously broken window. The wooden awnings, which had hung drunkenly over each portal, were now repaired, repainted, and shaded the interior of the cottage, like half-closed eyes. The chimney was being repointed by the estate’s mason and his apprentice. Once it was thoroughly cleaned, it would heat the whole cottage. Inside, all the walls had been replastered, the oak floors sanded and restained.
Best of all, his mother was there, seated by the newly planted flowerbed, enjoying the sunshine and watching the workmen at their tasks. Lawrence had ordered a simple chaise to be built so his mother could be carried out by a couple of servants to benefit from the fresh air. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it would do until a Bath chair, specially fitted with four wheels, arrived next week.
“I’d never have thought it possible, Master Lawrence,” Mrs. Bythesee said as she came up beside him, “but your mother hasna looked this good in months.”
“Your receipt for horehound cough syrup seems to have helped her.” With regular doses of Mrs. Bythesee’s concoction, his mother coughed less often and less virulently. When she did, she took pains to conceal her bloodstained handkerchief, but Lawrence was too observant for his own comfort. Despite her brave smiles, the disease marched on. Consumption took its victims slowly, like a gentle tide going out, and like a tide, was just as relentless. “I know this new medicine is not a cure.”
“Perhaps no’,” the housekeeper agreed, “but she feels better, and there’s a mercy. Every day is a blessing. Besides, the best medicine for your mother has been for you to come home. For the now, at least.”
He couldn’t stay. Everyone knew that without saying. Once Lord Ware and his new bride returned to Cumberland, Lawrence would be cordially invited to leave. Probably for good this time. But during this precious time, he was determined to make his mother’s brief future at Ware as comfortable as possible.
“A letter has come for you.” Mrs. Bythesee handed him a many-folded piece of foolscap. The red blob of sealing wax was embossed with the Chatham crest. The letter had been franked, a privilege of the noble class, so Mrs. Bythesee hadn’t been required to pay the carrier for its delivery. Lawrence’s heart raced.
A letter from Lovell House. Caroline?
He thought he’d let it go, but hope sprang up to lodge in his throat. Then, when he tore the letter open, he recognized the masculine scrawl. It was from Bredon.
My dear Sinclair,
Chances are good we shall arrive before this missive does, but in case the post is running faster, or we are running slower—a real possibility when one is traveling with four ladies!—I am writing to let you know we have accepted the invitation to your house party and shall descend upon you shortly.
“What invitation?” Lawrence muttered without reading further.
“I beg your pardon?” Mrs. Bythesee said. “Did ye say something, sir?”
Lawrence shook his head and read on in disbelief. Apparently, he was about to become an unwitting host.
“Somehow, my friend Lord Bredon is under the mistaken notion that I’m throwing a house party here at Ware.”
“A house party, aye? Well, that’s grand, is that!” Mrs. Bythesee said, skipping right over the mistaken part of Lawrence’s sentence. “Ware hasna seen enough merriment these past years and that’s a fact. How many guests will ye be expecting, then?”
Lawrence shook his head. He’d never even been a guest at a house party. He hadn’t the first clue how to host one. “It’s a mistake. It must be. I don’t know how this could have happened.”
“Well, if it be a mistake, ’tis a happy one,” Mrs. Bythesee said, cheerful as a cricket. “Guests will liven up the old walls of Ware Hall, indeed they will. How many?”
Clearly, Mrs. Bythesee wouldn’t be dissuaded. Lawrence scanned the letter again.
Father insists on staying in London until the House of Lords calls a recess, but my lady mother, my sister, her two friends—though, in truth, I wonder at you for including Horatia and Frederica; a couple of parakeets chatter less than those two—three of my brothers, and yours truly are on our way.
Lawrence did a quick count. “Have we room for eight?”
Mrs. Bythesee laughed. “We’ve room for eighty. The rooms will want airing and fresh linens, o’ course. Some of ’em have been shut up for years. Mercy on us, there’s much to be done.” She began to tick off the tasks on her bony fingers. “There’s a fair fiddle player in the village. Ye’ll want him for the dancing, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“There’ll be dancing?”
“If there’s lads and lasses about, it follows there’ll be dancing,” Mrs. Bythesee said. “I’ll have Mr. Holt set up archery butts. Like as not there’ll be some among your party who’ll wish to have a tournament. Let me see. What else?”
“I expect they’ll want to ride.” Lawrence knew Caroline enjoyed taking a turn on Rotten Row during the fashionable hour for it. If she rode here at Ware, he could show her some of the loveliest places on the estate, the river that cascaded down from the peaks and the overlook with a long view of Conniston Water. Lawrence began to warm to the idea of a house party. It might well be the best mistake of his life.
“Aye, a good suggestion, sir,” Mrs. Bythesee said. “The stable hands will make sure we’ve enough saddles and mounts for your guests to go riding of a morning. Cook will be in fine fettle when I tell her she must do up some special dainties for each night. And I’ll have to check do we have supplies enough to feast your guests good and proper.”
The housekeeper scrunched up her face and frowned, as if trying to visualize the manor’s pantry. “I expect we’ll have to slaughter a calf or two to add to the larder. A few chickens willna come amiss either.”
“I had no idea so much was involved in hosting a party.”
“Of course not. Men never do. But just you leave it to me. I’ll see ye through this right enough. It’ll do everyone who works here good to have a bit o’ purpose again,” Mrs. Bythesee said. “When will your guests be arriving?”
The letter was dated three days ago. “Soon.”
“Then there’s no time to lose.” The housekeeper turned and started to scurry away.
“Wait! What about Mother?” Lawrence said. “Won’t she be upset by the commotion of having so many people about?”
“Commotion is life, Master Lawrence. Your mother will dearly love watching you enjoy a slice of it. Mark my words, this house party might even put a rose or two back into her cheeks.” She took another couple of steps toward the manor, then stopped and turned back to him. “Oh! One more thing. How long will your guests be staying?”
“Lord Bredon doesn’t say.”
“Undoubtedly, ye must have mentioned a length of time in your invitation, sir,” she suggested, as if he were a schoolboy who’d failed to study and must be coaxed to come up with the right answer.
“But I didn’t—oh, never mind,” he said. Mrs. Bythesee refused to believe Lawrence hadn’t actually issued an invitation. He decided not to fight her on it. “Plan on a fortnight. Maybe more.”
It was a long way from London to Ware, after all. They must expect to stay a while.
Bredon was playing a joke on him. That’s all it was.
Still, the part of his heart he kept tucked away lest it become too painful to bear began to throb afresh.
Caroline is on her way.
* * * *
When the Lovell party, along with the Misses Tilbury and Englewood, arrived around teatime the next day, Lawrence got a rather nasty surprise.
Oliver Rowley had joined them en route.
“We happened upon Rowley in York when the coach stopped to change horses,” Bredon explained when he stepped down from his conveyance. His expression said he was sorry, though his good manners forbade him to voice the sentiment. “As Rowley had no pressing business elsewhere, he decided to join us.”
Rowley stood there with that smug look of his, daring Lawrence to be rude to him before the Lovells and Caroline’s friends. “Isn’t it a wonder? I’ve seen the splendors of the capitals of Europe but never the Lake District. No time like the present, eh, Sinclair?”
Lawrence didn’t see a way around it. The only decent thing to do was welcome all his guests. After all, he hadn’t invited any of them.
That first night, once the gentlemen had finished their after-dinner port, he cornered Rowley as the rest of the men left the dining room to join the ladies in the parlor.
“Not so fast,” Lawrence said, his hand heavy on the door through which Rowley intended to follow Bredon. “Why did you come here?”
“Following your advice, Sinclair,” Rowley said smoothly. He was one of those few souls who could not be shamed, no matter what he did. “Aren’t you the one who told me to leave London for a bit of rusticating in the country?”
“I expected you to retire to your own estate, not descend upon my uncle’s.”
“Well, there’s a bit of a problem with my going back to Rowley End. It’s rather the first place my creditors will look for me.” He had the grace to hang his head for a heartbeat or two, but his sly expression was anything but penitent.
“So you expect me to shelter you from them.”
“Not for long. Perhaps a month or so…”
“That’s not possible.” Lawrence folded his arms across his chest. Not even he would be allowed to remain at Ware once his uncle returned.
“Come, Sinclair, be reasonable,” Rowley said. “Once the House of Lords acts on my petition, I’ll be able to sell off the woods and settle everything in one fell swoop.”
Until the next time you find yourself in Dun territory, Lawrence thought but didn’t say. It wouldn’t matter if Rowley owned a hundred thousand acres, a fleet of merchant ships, and married an heiress to boot. He would never have enough to cover his impulsive extravagances.
“Very well; you may stay as long as the Lovells do.” Lawrence held up a hand to stop him when Rowley would have started thanking him. “But only so long as you behave yourself. And by that I mean I don’t catch you trying to seduce Miss Tilbury again.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Being caught or seducing?” Lawrence figured he’d better nail this slippery eel to the floor.
Rowley raised a hand as if taking an oath. “I will not seduce Miss Tilbury.”
“Or any other lady.”
“You have my word.”
Lawrence scoffed. “Or any of the help.”
“Be serious, Sinclair.”
“I am serious.”
“I can’t be held to account if one of your serving wenches takes a shine to me.” Rowley chuckled. “Besides, what else is a chambermaid for?”
“For doing her job without being molested by the likes of you.” Lawrence grasped his wrist and squeezed hard enough to make the bones grate against each other. Rowley cowered in pain. “If I catch you putting so much as a toe out of line around any woman at Ware—and I don’t care if it’s the washerwoman or the goose girl—I will thrash you into next week and send you packing. Am I understood?”
Biting his lip, Rowley nodded. Then, once Lawrence released him, he slinked away to join the others in the parlor.
As it happened, Lawrence needn’t have worried about Rowley trying to ruin Freddie.
None of the women were ever left alone, which meant Lawrence had no opportunity to speak with Caroline privately either. Not during the heart-stopping moment when she alighted from the coach and the soles of her feet touched Ware for the first time, nor at any time thereafter. Part of the charm of a house party, it seemed, was in keeping the group together for myriad activities punctuated by endless picnics, teas, and meals.
Lawrence would have been hopelessly out of his depth as a host if Mrs. Bythesee hadn’t kept the party on schedule. She appeared at his elbow at the most opportune of times, whispering what came next.
And as an added blessing, the housekeeper’s prediction about his mother came true. Eleanor Sinclair brightened more each day. She and Lady Chatham clicked like magnets, delighting in each other’s company. They were invariably side by side, engaged in companionable embroidery or poring over Lady Chatham’s newest edition of Bell’s Court and Fashionable Magazine. Then, once Eleanor’s Bath chair arrived, she was nigh unstoppable. She joined in when the whole group played at cards or listened to Ben play his violin.
His mother passed as happy a time at this unexpected house party as Lawrence could have wished. However, he didn’t fool himself into believing this improvement was a turning point in her disease. Consumption often came in sieges, allowing for a respite before it returned to ravage its sufferer. But this was a sweet respite, and if not for the fact that Caroline was just as unreachable as if she were still in London, Lawrence would have been in perfect charity with the world.
He tried seeking Caroline out during the day, but invariably her friends, or her mother, or even his mother—drat the luck!—were at her side. After supper, everyone gathered in the large drawing room for games or music or read-alouds. When the whole group was together, Caroline barely met his gaze. Even when the fiddler came so they could dance, Caroline partnered with her brothers instead of him. Every time he screwed up his courage to approach her, she was already being led away on someone else’s arm. When the fiddler struck up a waltz, Lawrence ached to hold her, but he knew he didn’t deserve to.
Not after he’d left her weeping in London.
After a whole week, Lawrence still didn’t know why the Lovells had brought a house party to Ware’s door. But he knew why Caroline was there.
She’s come to torture me.